"Keep coming…"

AT THE TOP of the canyon, two hundred yards into the hillside, was a natural rock pool fifty or sixty feet across, fed from a spring that fell down the back wall of the canyon. A few small trees struggled to stay alive in the thin dirt, and cattails rimmed what must've been a muddier flat on the far side. "Cool," Virgil said.

"Called the Stryker Dell on the geological surveys," she said. "Us kids used to come up here and swim. It's good in the evenings, when the sun's coming down the canyon. It's a little gloomy in morning, and cold."

Virgil stepped down to the water, stuck his hand in. Cool, but not frigid, and he said so.

"Because the water's trickling down that rock in the sunshine," Joan said. "This spring will go mostly dry in the fall, it'll just be a stain on the rock. The pond never goes dry, because it's too deep-twenty feet, right below our feet-but sometimes, no water runs out of it. There used to be a pipe up here, that'd feed the stock tank down below. Anyway, it's why the farm was here: year-round water without much work, just by siphoning. If it wasn't for this, my great-grandfather probably would have built out by the road."

Virgil took a picture of her standing on a rock on the edge of the pond, said, "Must've been a great place to come when you were a kid."

"It was; if only there'd been more people around, it would have been perfect."

THEY SAT on the rock, in the sunshine, and Virgil showed her how the Nikon worked. A red-winged blackbird showed up and did some stunts on the cattails, and he took a couple of shots. They compared small-town childhoods, and chatted about college years, dope-smoking and rock 'n' roll, the price of corn-ethanol, about their parents. "My mom lives one street over, and one block down from me," she said. "By now, she knows about your trying to feel me up last night."

"Only teenagers get felt up," Virgil said. "I was expressing a physical affection."

"Huh. Seemed like getting felt up," she said.

"I'd like to dedicate some time to do it right," Virgil said. "But this Gleason case, Judd…"

So they talked about the case, and he worked the conversation around: "So your mom and dad were good friends with Judd? You think your mom would know something that went on back then? There's gotta be something. Who the hell is the man in the moon?"

"Maybe if we took my mom over to see Betsy Carlson, she could find out," Joan said.

"We could do that," Virgil said. "Think she'd go along?"

"If they let you back in. They might not be too happy to see you, if you had Betsy all freaked out when you left." She stood up and brushed off her seat and yawned. "We oughta get back before dark. I've got my payroll to put together for tomorrow."

HE LEFT HER at her house, in town, after spending another two minutes on her porch. She offered him a cup of coffee, but he had some online research to do, and she had her payroll. "Will you have time tomorrow night?" Virgil asked. "Maybe we could run up to Marshall, go to a place that has candles and wine."

"I'd like that."

"Call your mom," Virgil said. "Ask if she could run over to Sioux Falls to see Betsy."

"Yeah." She looked out at the coming night, the houses with big backyards, a kid's voice not far away, laughing, and the first of the lightning bugs. "What a great night," she said. "If it were July in Minnesota all the time, you'd have to put up fences to keep people out."

VIRGIL WROTE a little more fiction that night, and invented characters named Joan and Jim Stryker, and himself, whom he called Homer. Homer was terrifically good-looking, and certainly well hung, which might possibly come up later in the story. He smiled in the glow of the computer screen, thinking about it. Had to be funny, however he put it…

He wrote,

Homer felt as though he were being pointed at the Strykers. But if the Strykers had been involved in the murders, why would they call in Homer? They had to know about Homer's clearance record on murders. If Jim Stryker remained in charge, he might take a risk of losing an election, but that was better than dong thirty years in Bayport max.

The abortion thing was out there-and abortion would be a major matter for Feur, of course. Godless commie feminists with their coat hangers, gong after our virgins. Would it be possible that some local disciple of George Feur had killed the Gleasons, and then somehow, in the Feur group's dealings with Bill Judd, let it slip? Had said something that led Judd to an inference, or even an accusation? If so, how would Homer ever find that person, given the lack of direct evidence?

Homer lay on his bed, his hands behind his head, all four pillows thrown to the floor, and wondered about the man in the moon. And who Jerry was? Jerry had been there for the man in the moon…And about the sex. Given the fact that the ex-postmaster wasn't creeping around town, was is possible that one of the other sex partners had slipped over the edge? Again, it could be a religious thing, inspired by Feur.

Anna Gleason…What had she been dong all those years ago? Sleeping with Feur? They were of the same age…

Goddamn laptop keyboard. Kept missing an i when he typed doing or going, which then came out dong and gong-could be an embarrassing typo if it happened in the wrong place.

He shut it down, went to bed, spent his two minutes thinking about God, and another ten seconds thinking about dongs and gongs, and finding a new keyboard in a small town, and then fell fast asleep.

8

MOONIE LAY BACK with a little weed, in a little weed-out in the backyard-and blew smoke at the sky and watched the Big Dipper rolling around, under the glow of the Milky Way, and considered the question.

THE NUMBER of necessary killings was growing. There was no emotional problem there, but the risk had increased. Moonie recognized risk.

Two of the remaining killings, Jerry Johnstone and Roman Schmidt, were matters of honor, simple as that. They were essential and inescapable and had already been delayed too long. If not done now, the targets might escape forever.

Moonie blew some more smoke at the sky.

Once the honor killings were done, and the reality had soaked in-the completion of his task, the pleasure of the memories-there'd be time to rest. Sleep had never come easily-four good hours were hard to find, and after thirty-plus years of sleep deprivation, Moonie had built up a great crankiness.

Or maybe insanity.

Whatever.

Made no difference.

TWO MORE KILLINGS were business necessities. A third, that of Virgil Flowers, might become necessary, because of the way Flowers was deliberately roiling the town. People were closing down, locking doors, talking from behind chains.

Maybe…maybe, Moonie thought, the dope wasn't helping. The tactics of the killings had been fine, but the strategy now seemed wrong. Judd should have been last. Could have been last. Moonie had killed him simply because the urge had no longer been containable. And because the old man's brain had been going. No good killing him, if he didn't know why he was dying.

Not an easy thing to manage, multiple murder.

SO WHAT about Flowers?

Flowers would be purely business: he was too competent, a danger.

Flowers also seemed to have a kind of karmic presence: he'd come into Bluestem in the middle of a thunderstorm, had virtually driven into the Judd killing. Then, instead of pushing, probing, demanding, investigating, he'd sort of…bullshitted his way around town, not to put too fine a point on it. Gone around talking to everybody, telling lies, telling stories: had taken even the clerk at the Holiday Inn into his confidence.

And in bullshitting his way around town, he'd caused a disturbance. Waves from the disturbance were washing around the county. Instead of waiting for something official to be done, for cop cars and crime-scene crews, people were asking questions, and some were looking backward…