Dark of the Moon

than Microsoft Word, with automatic formatting of letters and envelopes with Judd’s return address and a letterhead. Nothing at all in the documents file. The e-mail file hadn’t even been set up. A fancy typewriter, Virgil thought.
    He was closing it down when he caught sight of the secretary’s machine in the outer office: non-networked, both freestanding.
    “Judd still have a secretary?” he asked Stryker, who was sitting on the floor of the file room.
    “Yup. Amy Sweet. We told her to go on home and to send the probate lawyer a bill for her last week of work.”
    “Gotta talk to her,” Virgil said. He dropped behind the secretary’s desk, booted up the computer. More files, this time. He ran a search on Arno and one on Florence Mills, and the Florence Mills search kicked out a half-dozen documents.
    “Got Florence Mills,” he called to Stryker. He opened the documents, one at a time: payments to High Plains Ag & Fleet Supply, in Madison, South Dakota. Stryker came to look over his shoulder: “Sonofabitch,” he said, reaching past Virgil to tap the screen, a payment for one thousand gallons of Bernhard Brand AA. “Look at this.”
    “I don’t know what that is,” Virgil said.
    “Anhydrous ammonia. They’ve got an ethanol plant somewhere, and they’re buying AA. I mean, it could be legitimate if they’re growing, as well as cooking, but I’ll tell you what I think: I think they’re manufacturing methamphetamine, bigger than life.”
    “Ah, man,” Virgil said.
    Stryker: “I checked Feur with the NCIC. He’s had some run-ins with the law, since he got out, but they were all bullshit. You know, disorderly conduct for protests, that sort of thing. Nothing hard, like dope.”
    “Sit tight,” Virgil said. He got on his phone, called Davenport. “You told me once if I ever needed anything really bad from the federal government, you’ve got a guy high enough up to get anything.”
    “Maybe,” Davenport said. “I’d hate to burn up a favor on an errand, though.”
    “Call him. Tell him to go to the DEA and see if there’s anything on a George Feur—any possible connection to methamphetamine distribution through one of those fascist white supremacist convict groups. I need it just as fast as you can get it.”
    “You break it?”
    “Maybe; not what I thought, though,” Virgil said.
    “I’ll have him dump it to your e-mail, if there’s anything,” Davenport said.
     
    V IRGIL TO S TRYKER: “Do you know any accountants that you can trust, who don’t work for Judd?”
    “One…”
     
    C HRIS O LAFSON ran a bookkeeping, financial planning, and accounting service out of a converted house on the west side of town. Stryker swore her to secrecy: “This is about the murder investigation,” he said. “Virgil has a hypothetical question for you…”
    “Go ahead.” She was a bright-eyed, busy, overweight woman, of the kind that drip efficiency.
    “If you had a rich father—a millionaire, I don’t know how many millions—and you borrowed a lot of money from him, over the years, how would that complicate your inheritance?” Virgil asked.
    She knitted her fingers together and said, “That depends. Did the father gift any money to Junior…to his son?”
    They all smiled at each other, acknowledging the fact that she knew who they were talking about, and Virgil said, “I don’t know. What do you mean, gift?”
    She gave them a short course in the estate tax. When she was done, she asked, “So, hypothetically, how bad is Junior screwed?”
    Virgil rubbed his head. “We’d have to get down some exact numbers to know that,” he said. “I’ve got some tax records down at the motel…but they’re all bureaucratic bullshit. So…I don’t know if he’s screwed at all.”
    “He’s not a real good businessman,” Olafson said brightly. “They should have had an estate plan. Does anybody even know where all of Judd’s money is? Was it in trusts, or what? Did the killer burn down the house to get rid of planning documents?”
    “We don’t know any of that stuff,” Stryker said.
    “Maybe I ought to run for sheriff,” she said.
    “Get in early, avoid the rush,” Stryker said.
     
    T HEY BOTH STOOD, and Olafson said, “Sit back down for a minute. Would you like Cokes? I want to give you my hypothetical.”
    “We’re in a bit of a hurry,” Virgil said.
    “Take you five minutes,” she said. “Cokes?”
    They both took a Coke, and Olafson said, “Suppose Bill Judd