Dark of the Moon

“Hello?”
    She did have a nice whiskey voice, Virgil decided. “This is Virgil,” he said. “I’m calling on behalf of Jim’s sister, who’s reluctant to gossip with you. But did we see you guys up in Marshall last night? About seven? We had to dodge a restaurant because she was sure it was you guys.”
    “Not us. We went over to Sioux Falls,” Jesse said.
    “Ah, shoot. So I ate pizza while you guys were doing surf ’n’ turf. You pay? Being a rich woman?”
    She laughed, and said, “No, I didn’t. And really, why are you calling? You’re sneaking up on something.”
    “I am not,” Virgil said cheerfully. “Honest to God, this is nothing but the purest gossip. I personally took his beautiful sister up to the Stryker Dell late last night. You guys coulda come along.”
    “I don’t think so,” she said. “Skinny-dipping with your sister? Jim’s waaaaayyy too straight for that.”
    “Didn’t think of that,” Virgil said. “I’d be, too, if I had a sister…So’d you have a good time?”
    “Yes, I did. He’s just like a puppy,” Jesse said. “But he pays attention to me.”
    “Told you, that you might like it,” Virgil said. “I was afraid he wasn’t going to make it at all, with the Schmidt case. I couldn’t see how he’d be out of there before eight o’clock, and everything around here closes up at nine.”
    “No problem,” she said. “He just dumped what he was doing and came over; that’s what he said, anyway. We were in Sioux Falls by eight-thirty.”
    “Ah, well…so now I come to the real reason I called,” Virgil said.
    “I knew it…”
    “I haven’t been able to catch him this morning,” Virgil said. “He isn’t there, is he?”
    “Virgil!”
    “Sorry, honey, I need to find him.”
    “I don’t sleep with guys on the first date,” she said. “Not at home. Most of the time, anyway.”
    “Suppose that leaves something for him to look forward to,” Virgil said. “Don’t tell him I called and asked you this, or he’d probably beat the snot out of me.”
     
    T HEY CHATTED for another minute, then he closed the phone. All right: if they’d been in Sioux Falls at eight-thirty, Stryker picked her up at eight, and would have been available to do the shooting. Why? That was another question, but knowing who was available was a step in the right direction.
    Though he really, really didn’t think Stryker had anything to do with it.
    Really.
     
    H E STOPPED AT the courthouse, found Stryker leaning in the window at the assessor’s, chatting with a clerk. He straightened when he saw Virgil, and Virgil asked, “You got a minute?”
    “Yup.” As they walked away from the assessor’s desk, Stryker said, “Larry called me, said you got a letter this morning…”
    They went into Stryker’s office and closed the door, and Virgil sat in a visitor’s chair and grinned and said, “I don’t know how to exactly approach this particular report…”
    “Spit it out.”
    “A friend of mine from here in town…”
    “Joanie…”
    “…and I decided to go for a swim last night, and she knew this famous local swimming hole…”
    Stryker’s eyebrows went up. “You went skinny-dipping up at the dell? With my baby sister?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Do any good?”
    “Somebody with a rifle ambushed us,” Virgil said.
    He was watching Stryker’s face, and Stryker’s smile died so naturally that it seemed impossible that he already knew. “What!”
    “Two shots, from up on that hillside. Trying to hit me, not Joanie,” Virgil said.
    “Virgil…”
    “I hit a nerve someplace,” Virgil said.
    “Holy shit, man.” Stryker bucked up in his chair, the wheels skittering over the plastic floor-protecter. “You gotta stay away from Joanie until this is over. Jesus, he coulda killed both of you. Like shooting sitting ducks, down in there…”
    “Yeah. I’ve been trying to figure out why he missed. Maybe just a bad shot,” Virgil said.
    They talked about it for a couple of minutes, then Virgil said, “They’re not after Joanie, whoever it is. I think…I gotta run down the letter from this morning. Are you looking at prints?”
    “Yeah, they’re doing the glue thing right now…”
    “All right.” Virgil pushed out of his chair. “I got one more thing—I tell you because you’re a friend. I was going through Roman Schmidt’s e-mail this morning. Big Curly was trying to get Schmidt to support Little Curly in a run against you this fall. They were talking