Dark of the Moon

golf course, and find out where he went.”
    “I’ll do that.”
     
    V IRGIL HUNG OUT at the Historical Society for a while, looking at an exhibit on early photography, all those Civil War guys with white eyes and stolid faces. Stryker called back: “Nothing there. I mean, there’s something there, but it’s nothing. The child was turned over to protective services on August second. That’s it. You’ll have to work it from that end.”
    “And it’s Sunday.”
    Stryker: “Wonder what’s happening with the DEA?”
    “That’s what I’m wondering. If I stay up here, and it goes down tomorrow, I could miss it.”
    “Well…get the research chick to work it,” Stryker suggested. “Get back here. I’ve been thinking about it, and it’s all Feur. No mystery, no weirdness. Just Feur.”
    “Give me the logic,” Virgil said.
    “We’ve got a series of huge crimes, murders,” Stryker said. “Then we find out there’s a professional criminal, right in our backyard, selling dope all over the country, and he’s been doing it for years. Back at the beginning, he needed seed money to get started, and he needed a way to hide the operation. That’s about the time all these little farmer-sponsored ethanol plants were popping up. This crime we know about, with Feur, involves some of the same people involved in the others: the Judds. I don’t know how you tie the Gleasons in, but I could see a reason for Roman Schmidt: Schmidt was monitoring the cops through the Curlys. The Curlys might not even have known about the rest of it. You say Schmidt was willing to cover up a murder, take money for it. When you’ve done it once, you’ll do it again. In fact, the Judds might even have pulled him into it.”
    “I don’t know,” Virgil said. “If somebody had to kill the Gleasons, they could have done it in a quiet way. Kill them, but don’t pose them. Try to make it look like a murder-suicide. Something…But the way it was done, was nuts.”
    “Got your head up your ass, Virgil. It’s Feur.”
    Virgil scratched his nose, made the call: “I’m coming back.”
     
    H E WAS BACK by five o’clock, having stopped in Mankato to check his mail, pay bills, and run a load of laundry through the washer and dryer. Before he left home, he went into his closet and took out his third-most-favorite deer rifle, a Browning Lightweight Stalker semiauto in .30-06, an extra magazine, and a box of cartridges. The rifle wasn’t as accurate as his best bolt action, but it was as accurate as he was, and could put some heavy metal on a target in a big hurry.
    Heading west, into the sun, he could feel some kind of climax just over the horizon: too many things going on, not to have something shake loose.
     
    T HAT NIGHT, they went out to Barnet’s Supper Club in Sioux Falls, five of them—Stryker and Jesse Laymon, Virgil and Joan, and Laura Stryker. There was one tough moment on the way over, when Laura told Jesse that she should get Stryker to take her up swimming at the dell some hot night.
    Jesse giggled and admitted that they’d already been. Then Joan and Virgil had to spontaneously join in teasing Stryker, and they pulled it off. And then the three women began working on Virgil and Stryker. Something was up with the case, they knew, but Virgil and Stryker weren’t talking.
    Later that evening, Virgil was looking at the jukebox when Laura Stryker came by, on the way back to their table from the women’s room, and she stopped and asked, “Are you and Joanie going to get serious? You look like it.”
    “Not that serious,” Virgil said. “She gave me a little talk. I’m not husband material. I’m her transition guy.”
    “Damn it. I need a grandchild,” Laura said. “I want to be around long enough that my grandchild can remember his grandmother.”
    “You’ve got a few years,” Virgil said.
    “ I’ve got enough years to be a great-grandmother, ” Laura said. “But one side of the family stops when Joan’s clock runs out. I think Jim and Jesse…I think I’ve got something going there.”
    They both turned and looked at Joan, who was leaning across their table, making a point to Stryker and Jesse. “She’ll be okay,” Virgil said. “I’m her transition guy, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she has somebody picked out, on the other side of the transition zone.”
    “I hope so,” Laura said, “or I’d suggest that you go ahead and knock her up.”
    Before they left, Virgil went out in the parking