Dark of the Moon

said “Merrill.” He was nervous and blunt. He wore gold-rimmed glasses and a brush mustache.
    “But this is a murder case,” Virgil said. “If you’ve got something to say, you oughta say it. I can’t promise to hold it confidentially.”
    Merrill rubbed his nose, looked at the door, and then said, “I saw you up to the fire at Judd’s.”
    Virgil nodded: Let the guy talk.
    “So…this is probably nothing, and that’s why I hate to say anything…but…”
    “Say it; I ain’t gonna bite,” Virgil said.
    “Jesse Laymon was there. Drinking beer, rubberneckin’.”
    “Yeah?”
    “Well, she’s seeing the sheriff, socially, everybody knows that. The thing is, I know her truck, and I didn’t see it come in, and I didn’t see it go. I never saw her ride off with any of the other people there. I know about everybody in the county, everybody who was up there, and I’ve been asking around…I can’t find anybody who took her, or who brought her in. It was raining like a cow pissing on a flat rock; seems odd to think that she walked in.”
    “She had a can of beer in her hand when I saw her,” Virgil said.
    “Yup,” Merrill said. “I assumed that she came up with the folks from the bar. But I can’t find anybody she rode with.”
    “You sure you’d know her truck?”
    “Man, Jesse is…one of the hottest chicks in the county. I know her truck. I wave at her every time I see her.”
    Virgil looked at him for a minute, then said, “Keep your mouth shut on this.”
    “You gonna do something about it?”
    “I will.”
     
    B UFFALO R IDGE was something like the hill at the Stryker farm, but twenty or fifty times as large, covered with knee-high bluestem grass, outcrops of the red rock, with a spring, a stream, and a lake on the north side, and Judd’s house and the Buffalo Jump bluff on the southeast. There were park roads both north and south; the south road came off a state highway and curled around the top of the mound; halfway to the top, Judd’s driveway broke off to the east to the homesite, now just a hole in the ground.
    Virgil took the drive, parked next to the foundation hole. He got out and looked in. The ash had been worked over with rakes. Looking for a safe, Virgil thought; Junior hoping for a will.
    Okay. If he were going to kill a man, and set fire to his house, how would he run? Wouldn’t run south, because you’d fall over the bluff and kill yourself. Wouldn’t go east, because there was nothing there but a lot of hillside, weeds, and rocks. You could break a leg in the dark.
    You could run back down the drive, to the park road, then down the park road to the entrance. Would you get to the entrance before the fire department? Must be a mile or more, and the fire department had a couple of first responders on duty all the time. If you were in a car, or a truck, you could get down there in a minute, but running, even with a small flashlight, would take you eight minutes or so.
    Or you could go north, climbing the hill, and then circling around. That would be more dangerous, again risking rocks and holes, but you could take it slow in the rain, and work up behind the rubberneckers…
    He knew the road, so he walked the north route, across the hillside. Came over the top, saw the first of the buffalo. They were far enough away not to be a problem, but he kept an eye on them; and they kept an eye on him. The day was still warm, close to perfect, but the clouds were thickening up. He zigzagged looking for a trail, a break that somebody might have followed through the high grass, but saw nothing in particular.
    And the going was rough. He tried walking with his eyes closed, and floundered around like a two-legged goat. Huh.
    He looked back at the road. The road was it.
     
    B ACK IN B LUESTEM, he walked down to Judd Jr.’s office. His secretary was standing in the door of the inner office, talking, and stopped when Virgil came in. She said, “Mr. Flowers is here.”
    Judd stepped into Virgil’s line of view, cracked a smile: “You got old Todd hung from a light post yet?”
    “Not yet,” Virgil said. “I need to talk to you for a minute.”
    Judd pointed at a chair, and said to the secretary, “Run up to Rexall and get me a sleeve of popcorn.”
    She wanted to stay and listen, but shook her head and shuffled off. Virgil waited until she was gone. Judd said, “I don’t need any more family members, Mr. Flowers. I already had one too many.”
    “Yeah, well, I guess you