Dark of the Moon

bark,” Virgil said.
    “What?”
    “He’s at every crime scene—he knows everything. But I didn’t see him at the Judd fire. Where the hell was he? The fire trucks went out there with their sirens screaming, where was Williamson?”
    Stryker said, “I don’t know. Maybe…running away from it?”
    Virgil nodded: “He’s the guy. Bet you a dollar.”
     
    T HEY WERE TALKING to the judge about a search warrant when Sandy called again: “Lucas screamed at a man at CPS and they won’t cough the file without a court order, but the guy confirmed off the record that the kid was Baby Boy Lane.”
    “I will kiss you on the lips next time I’m up there,” Virgil said.
    “I’ll look forward to it,” she said, primly.
     
    T HE JUDGE SUGGESTED that there was little evidence to support a search warrant.
    Stryker said, “Randy, goddamnit, don’t dog us around with some pissant evidence bullshit. It’s about fifty percent that Todd is the killer and he’s gonna do it again. I want to get all over him before he has a chance.”
    “What if you don’t find anything? He’s gonna sue your pants off,” the judge said.
    “Not my pants, the county’s pants,” Stryker said. “If I don’t solve this case pretty damn quick, I’m gonna lose my job anyway, so why should I care? Sign the warrant.”
    “Okay, okay, keep your shirt on.”
    Outside the judge’s office, warrant in hand, Virgil said, “Your judicial efficiency is a marvel.”
    “Out here, you take care of yourself,” Stryker said.
    They brought in Larry Jensen, the investigator, and four other deputies. Stryker and two of the deputies took the newspaper office. Virgil, Jensen, and two more deputies headed for Williamson’s home. “Call me every five minutes, tell me what you got,” Stryker said. “Find a .357.”
    “Find a typewriter,” Virgil said.
     
    W ILLIAMSON LIVED in a square, flat, single-story white house with a flat-roofed garage set farther back, and a long screen porch on the front, in an old neighborhood on the east side of town. From Williamson’s house, Virgil thought, getting to the Gleasons’ would have been a snap: Williamson was two blocks from the riverbank.
    In the heavy rain the night of the murders, he could have walked over to the bridge across the river, off the far end of the bridge, along the riverbank, and up the slope to Gleason’s. After the killings, he could be back home in fifteen minutes. No muss, no fuss, no cars in the night. And that, he thought, was why the killings may have taken place during a thunderstorm. The neighbors wouldn’t be out, everybody would have been snuggled up in front of the TV.
    Virgil drove over, alone in his truck, because he’d learned that if he went to a crime scene in somebody else’s vehicle, he’d need to leave before they did, or after they did. Jensen and the other two cops followed in two sheriff’s patrol cars. Virgil stopped in front of the house, and the deputies pulled into the driveway, one car going all the way to the garage, to cover the back door.
    They got out, watching the doors, Virgil with a hand on his weapon, Jensen with a hand on his own. The screen door was open and he and Jensen went through, hammered on the front door. No answer. Tried the door: locked.
    Jensen said, “Wait one.” He went out to his car, brought back a long-shaft Maglite, and used the butt end to knock out a pane of glass in the door. Reaching through, he flipped the lock. “We’re in.”
     
    T HEY CLEARED the place, making sure that Williamson wasn’t inside, then started pulling it apart. The furniture was comfortable, but old, as if it had come from a high-end used-furniture place. There were six rooms, all on the first floor: kitchen, small dining room, living room, good-sized bath, a bedroom used as a home office, and the actual bedroom. Exterior doors leading out through the kitchen to the garage; and out the front.
    Virgil took the bedroom, Jensen took the office, one of the other deputies did the kitchen. Virgil opened and emptied all the drawers, worked through the closet, checking all the pockets in all the clothes, checked the walls and baseboards for hidey-holes, plugged a lamp into the outlets to make sure they were real, turned and patted the mattress, lifted and turned the box springs, lifted the braided rug.
    The only thing he found of even the remotest interest was a half-dozen vintage Penthouse magazines, featuring well-thumbed hard-core porn, stashed under