Dark of the Moon

Joan said, delighted, when it was over. “He looked like a movie star.”
    “He was good,” Virgil said.
    “You’ve been holding out on me, too,” Joan said. She’d stacked a duffel bag near the front door, and picked it up on the way out. “You never told me that you guys were rolling, you’ve been all downbeat.”
    “Yeah, well…” he mumbled.
    “What?”
    “Nothing,” Virgil said.
    “What’d you say?” They’d just gotten into the truck. “You said something.”
    He leaned over, kissed her on the cheek, and said, “It’s all bullshit. We got nothing.”
    She was flabbergasted. “Virgil.”
    “That’s the way it is.”
    “Virgil…”
    “We got ten days.”
    He backed out of the driveway, and she didn’t say another word until they were out of town. Then, “Did you bring the food?”
    “Exactly what you ordered,” Virgil said.
    “You got nothing?”
    “Well. Maybe something.”
    “Virgil!”
    He then fumbled behind the seat, in his briefcase, and hooked out one of the color Xeroxes and passed it to her. She recoiled: “Yuck.”
    “Any idea who it is? Probably before your time, though…”
    “No. Where’d you find this?” she asked.
    “In Roman Schmidt’s safe-deposit box. Nothing but the photograph. No other paper that might suggest what it is. I have a feeling that it’s before the middle of 1970.”
    “Did you look in the paper?”
    “The paper’s on microfilm, in the library,” he said. “Somebody stole a roll from the middle of 1969, but there’s no way to know if that’s the one we’re looking for.”
    “Really. Virgil, you may…” She hesitated, then: “Does Jim know about this?”
    “Not yet. I’m going to tell him when I see him, but I think he might be out of town at the moment,” Virgil said.
    “Out of town? He can’t be,” she said. “What else happened?”
    He grinned. “I swore I wouldn’t tell anyone.”
    “I don’t care—tell me anyway.”
    Virgil laughed and said, “I think he’s taking Jesse Laymon out to dinner. Someplace far away, where nobody’ll see him. Because he’s supposed to be working the Roman Schmidt case night and day, even if there’s nothing to do.”
    “Oh, my God.” She pulled her bottom lip: “Well, I hope he gets laid. And if he does, I hope it’s worth it. Because he really is in trouble, here, Virgil. I wouldn’t be surprised if one of the Curlys declares that he’s running for sheriff, one of these days.”
    “You think?”
    “Big Curly thought he was the natural successor to Roman Schmidt. He might be past it now, but Little Curly would take the job in a minute.”
    “Neither one of them struck me as a wizard,” Virgil said.
    “No, but their families have been here forever, they know everyone, they’ve slapped every back in the county, and, they’re fairly good-natured. If Jim really slips, one of them will run.”
    “Ah, we’ll get the guy. Next week or so,” Virgil said.
    “You think?”
    “Yup.”
    “Will anybody else be killed?” she asked.
    He had to think for a minute, then said, “Maybe.”
     
    J OAN MADE HIM park the truck in the barn, a gesture toward discretion, and then they walked through the low weeds to the creek, and up the path into the Stryker’s Dell. The running shoes made the going easier; cowboy boots weren’t made for climbing rocks. At the top, on the left side of the pond, Joan opened the duffel and took out a quilt. “Straight from Wal-Mart; makes the rocks softer,” she said.
    Virgil unloaded the food and beer, and when he looked up, she was unbuttoning her blouse. He squatted on the rock, watching, as she took it off, slipped out of her shoes, socks and jeans, popped the brassiere, tossed it with the other clothes, and slipped out of her underpants. “See anything you like?”
    “Well, yeah,” he said.
    “Last one in,” she said, and she was over the side of the rock, six feet into the water, and Virgil was shedding shoes, shirt and pants as quickly as he could get them off. Fifteen seconds after she went over the side, he followed, the water a bracing slap. When he came up, she was there to push his head back under.
    They played around the pool for a few minutes, laughing and sputtering, the water cool but not cold, refreshing in the summer heat; and the stones in the direct light of the setting sun were warm as toast.
    The pool’s back wall, to the east, where the spring came down, had eroded into a steep ramp. At the top of the ramp was a