Storm Front

not reasonable to let people die, to make things better for a woman who won’t even know that they’re better.”
    She thought about that and said, “If I know where it is, I’ll tell you.”
    Virgil took the chance. “He said it’s where the sun comes through.”
    “Yeah.” She stood up and dusted off the seat of her shorts, and said, “It’s at the house. His house.”
    “We’ve looked through there pretty thoroughly,” Virgil said. “I was there today, looking around.”
    “It’s not inside, it’s outside,” she said. “The house next door to his has a big tree in the backyard, next to the garage. On exactly the day of the summer solstice, and only on that day, you can see the sun come up in the crack of space between the tree and the garage. He used to say it was like one of those ancient observatories. It’d put this shaft of light across our yard, and it’d hit this clump of hollyhocks on the fence on the west side of the yard. He’d get up at dawn on the first day of summer just to see it, and he’d make Mom and me and Danny get up, too.”
    “All right,” Virgil said. “Let’s go look.”
    “Might not be there,” she said. “He might’ve figured you’d find that note, and that’s why he ran away last night. He might’ve gone over to get it.”
    “Let’s look anyway,” Virgil said. “Then we’ll know.”

14
    V irgil followed Ellen back into town, the sun sinking in his rearview mirror as they headed southeast through the bugs along the river, and the late-day heat waves coming off the tarmac. The evening would be spectacular, he thought, the air soft and cooling after the hot day, the moon coming up big and yellow; a good night for sitting on the back patio of a bar, talking with friends, the jukebox playing low, Guy Clark’s “Rita Ballou,” two-stepping with Georgina . . . or Ma.
    The sun was down by the time they got to Jones’s house. Virgil got a flashlight and Ellen led the way into the backyard, and pointed at the tree and the edge of the neighbor’s garage, and by stepping back and forth and cocking their heads, they figured out where the shaft of sunlight would fall along the west fence.
    The search took a few minutes: Jones had scraped fallen leaves and grass back over the hole he’d dug, and it was hard to see in the heavy shadows cast by the flashlight. Virgil eventually encountered a spot with an unnatural texture, and pushed into the earth with an index finger. After a half-inch of soft, loose soil, his finger hit stone.
    He was shoulder to shoulder with Ellen—she smelled of woman work-sweat with a touch of something, maybe Obsession—both of them on their knees, and he said, “Here’s something.”
    He scraped the dirt away, then more dirt, found the stone was dark, at least, in the light of the flash, and heavy. They both worked at it, clawing up the soil. Three or four minutes after Virgil located it, the stone came loose, and he lifted it out onto the lawn.
    “Oh my God,” Ellen said. “It really is . . .”
    “That’s it,” Virgil said, shining the flash on the side of it. He could feel the carvings, but not see them through the dirt.
    “What should we do with it?”
    “Take it back to my place, where we’ve got some good light,” Virgil suggested.
    —
    V IRGIL CALLED S HRAKE and told him to get Jenkins and go home. “I’ve got the stone. I don’t care what the Hezbollah guy does.”
    “Good. I’ve been here so long I’ve been thinking about starting a family,” Shrake said.
    Virgil called Yael. “Did you go shopping?”
    “For a short time only, to survey the possibilities,” she said. “Has there been any progress in finding Jones?”
    “No, but I’ve got the stone,” Virgil said.
    “You have the stone? This is wonderful. May I see it?” she asked.
    “Sure. I’ll come by and get you.”
    Ellen said she wanted to take a shower, and so she’d wait at her father’s house until Virgil got back from picking up Yael. “But I’d like to be there when you guys look at it.”
    “Fifteen minutes,” Virgil said.
    —
    Y AEL WAS WAITING on the curb outside the motel. Virgil popped the passenger-side door for her, said, “Don’t step on the stone,” which he’d placed on the floor. Yael climbed in, then bent and lifted the stone into her lap. “Wonderful,” she said. “I will ask my department to issue you a commendation.”
    “All part of the job,” Virgil said.
    They went past Jones’s house again,