Storm Front

took down her address in the town of St. Peter, and she said that her next-door neighbors, the Jensens, had an emergency key to the house. Virgil gave her the phone number for the duty officer at the BCA in St. Paul, asked her to call and have him record her saying that it was all right for Virgil Flowers to enter her home. “Then have him call me and tell me he has it.”
    “Okay. Do you want me to call the Jensens and tell them to give you the key?”
    “Not right now,” Virgil said. “I’ll go there and call you from there.”
    —
    O N THE WAY out the door, he paused at Ma’s table, where she and Bauer were both eating shrimp platters, which Virgil had considered and rejected, feeling that Red Lobster would have given him a better quality seafood entrée. Ma looked up as Virgil approached and said, “What?” and Virgil bent over the booth and kissed her on the forehead.
    “Thank you,” he said.
    “For what?”
    “I thought about it. Like you said.”
    —
    J OHNSON LIVED in the northern part of St. Peter, on Inverness Lane, a pleasant enough neighborhood probably three minutes from where she worked at the college.
    Virgil found the address and made a pass: no car was visible, nor were there any lights on. He made another pass. Nothing. He finally pulled into the driveway of Johnson’s next-door neighbor, where there were lights, and rang the doorbell.
    A man came to the door, holding a magazine, looked out at Virgil, and opened the door. “Yes?”
    Virgil identified himself. “Are you Mr. Jensen?”
    “What’d I do?”
    “You live next to Annabelle Johnson,” Virgil said. He said he was interested in activity at Johnson’s house; the coming and going of her car, the red Volvo station wagon.
    Jensen’s wife had come up behind him, to listen to the conversation, and she said, “I saw the car come and go a couple of times yesterday, but I assumed it was Roger.”
    “Roger?”
    “Her son. He’s supposed to be keeping an eye on the place while she’s in Israel. He lives up in the Cities. Haven’t actually seen him, though.”
    “She was on that dig with this Jones guy,” the man said. “You think
he’s
been using the car?”
    Guy was no dummy, Virgil thought. He said, “We’re just checking possibilities. Johnson said you have the emergency key to the house. I’d like to call her in Israel—she’s waiting for me to call—so she can tell you to give it to me.”
    “Cool,” said Jensen.
    Virgil made the call, Johnson asked Jensen to give Virgil the key, and then Mrs. Jensen and Johnson talked for ten minutes on Virgil’s dime, about what was happening in the neighborhood, whether Roger had been around, about a faculty dispute over an LGBT issue, and whether Johnson’s lawn sprinklers had been on; and then Virgil got his phone back, and the key.
    He told the Jensens to close the door and stay inside, at least for a few minutes.
    —
    H E MOVED his truck well down the block, got a flashlight and, as an afterthought, his gun, and walked back to the house. The house was single-storied, a ranch style, and he could see narrow basement windows set into the foundation. He went in through the back—the locks were single-keyed. Using the flashlight, he first cleared the top floor, and checked the garage, which was empty.
    One-third of the basement held the mechanicals for the house, along with the laundry. The other two-thirds had been converted into an office, a small theater area with a large TV and a music system, with some exercise equipment in another corner. Two windows looked down into the office area, and both had been blocked with pillows—so Jones could hole up and watch TV, Virgil thought.
    He looked at the couch facing the TV. A white garbage bag lay on the floor beside the couch, and showed what may have been a bloodstain. Jones, he thought, was trying not to bleed on his friend’s couch.
    Finished with the basement, he went back upstairs and looked at the rooms in detail. The bedcovers were badly rumpled, and when he pulled them back, he found two small patches of dried blood on the sheets below. He’d been careful in the basement, not so careful in the bedroom.
    Nothing else. No stone, no clothes. The refrigerator was stocked with beer and sandwich meat, and a loaf of bread sat on the kitchen counter. When Virgil squeezed it, it felt like it might be a couple of days old.
    Would Jones be back?
    No way to tell. But Virgil wasn’t doing anything, anyway, and Johnson’s