"You think it's a woman?" Stryker's eyebrows went up.

"I had an open mind on the issue. These guys are old, and don't weigh much, but they were dragged. I'm thinking, now, Curly's right-it's a guy."

"Uh…"

"A strong woman could have dragged them, as long as she didn't worry about hurting them, which she wouldn't, because they were dead. But: take a guy from Schmidt's generation. He's up, he's got his gun, he goes to the door, sees who it is-recognizes him-and opens the door. Gets shot."

Stryker was puzzled. "A woman couldn't do that?"

"A woman could-but Roman wouldn't have opened the door with his dick sticking out of his shorts. He would have said, 'Hang on, let me get some pants on,' and he would have put something on, and then he would have opened the door."

Stryker looked at him for a minute, and then said, "Sometimes I suspect you're smarter than I am."

"Better ballplayer, too," Virgil said. "But where that leaves us, is right back at what you were assuming anyway. Not a major advance."

"SPEAKING OF major advances," Virgil said, "have you heard from Jesse?"

For a moment, the issue of Roman Schmidt flicked out of Stryker's eyes: "You sonofabitch, you've been messing with my love life."

"And…" Like Davenport.

"I appreciate it." Stryker started to laugh, remembered where he was, and choked it off. "She called me up last night and she said, 'Jimmy, you want a chance with me?' I said, 'Yes,' or something like that. I actually mumbled a lot, but the basic bottom line is, I was gonna take her to Tijuana Jack's tonight."

"It's off?"

"Of course it's off," Stryker said, looking sideways at Schmidt. "If I took her out tonight, and somebody from town saw me, I'd be dead meat, politically. That'd be the end of my job. They'll want me out there twenty-four/seven, driving the back roads, looking for Roman's killer."

Virgil looked around, making sure nobody would overhear them: "That's horseshit, Jim. Not that they wouldn't think it, but you're not gonna find the killer driving the back roads. You want some advice?"

Stryker shrugged. "Depends on what it is."

"Take her to Brookings. Or Marshall. That's what, an hour? Give you time to talk. Tell her straight out what's going on, why you've got to go so far. She seems pretty bright; she'll understand it. She'll understand that you're taking a risk for her."

"Gotta think about it," Stryker said.

"Just don't be too nice," Virgil said. "She likes edge. Mix up nice, with a little law-enforcement edge."

"That what you're doing with Joanie?"

"Joanie and I are operating on a higher level," Virgil said. "You're not. So do what I tell you." He looked back at Schmidt, sitting in the dirt, with the fork under his ears. "Isn't this the most fucked-up thing you've ever seen?"

"When I get this cocksucker, I'm gonna kill him," Stryker said.

"Atta boy," Virgil said. "Feel the burn."

A WHILE LATER, Virgil said, "I'm going back to town. As soon as your crime-scene people will let me inside, I want to know. Something in there might tell us what's going on. It'll be on paper, if there's anything. I don't think this guy is leaving any DNA behind."

"What's in town?"

"Historical research," Virgil said.

He drove back to town, parked, got his briefcase out of the car with his laptop, went to the newspaper office, and found a scrawled note Scotch-taped to the window: "Out on story, back later." The note looked like it had been written in a rush. He'd probably passed Williamson as the newspaperman headed to Schmidts', and he was coming in.

Frustrated, he rattled the doorknob, and to his surprise, it turned under his hand. He had a quick snapshot vision of Williamson lying on the floor, with two black holes where his eyes should be. He pushed in: the place was empty. He really needed to look at the files…

He reached back, pulled the taped note off the window, and let it fall to the floor. Hey, he never saw it, and the door was open. On the counter inside was a fresh stack of papers, with a coin box. The lead story was headlined NEW CLAIM FOR JUDD FORTUNE.

That would sell a couple papers, he thought.

Back in the morgue, he pulled clip files on every name he had in town: the Judds, the Gleasons, the Schmidts, the Stryker family, the Laymons, George Feur.

Judd's wife had been named Linda-and when she died, in 1966, the story must've been the biggest one in the paper that week, with a seventy-two-point headline. She'd been rushed to the hospital, the story said, but had been declared dead on arrival by a doctor named Long. An autopsy had been done, and found the cause of death to be an aortic aneurysm. The clip on the autopsy said that the coroner, Thomas McNally, declared that "once the aneurysm tore open, there was no possibility of survival. She bled to death within a minute or two."

Judd was characterized as "distraught."

That was not quite the story he'd gotten from Margaret Laymon, who remembered it as a heart attack, but it was close enough.

HE READ FORWARD in the Judd files, but after Linda Judd's death, it appeared to be mostly business news, and then the Jerusalem artichoke scandal.

He went back, looking through the huge collection of clips on Roman Schmidt, who had even more than Judd Sr., and found a few intersections with Russell Gleason. Gleason was occasionally cited as the coroner, apparently alternating with Thomas McNally. That hadn't been uncommon in country towns, Virgil knew, where local doctors took turns doing an unpaid extra duty.

Roman Schmidt and Gleason were cited together in fifteen or twenty highway accidents, an accidental gunshot death during deer season, a man who was killed by a deer, old people found dead at home, several drownings and infant deaths, one "miracle baby," a kid who'd stuck his arm in a corn picker and had bled to death, and several more gruesome farm accidents, including a man who'd been cut in half by an in-gear tractor tire, after the tractor rolled on him.

But Virgil couldn't find Judd's name in any of them.

The Laymon files he'd already seen, but there was nothing to indicate that Margaret Laymon had had a romance with Judd. Garber, the alcoholic schoolteacher, had no file at all; to his surprise, neither did Betsy Carlson, Judd's sister-in-law. Shouldn't there be a story at the time of the sister-in-law's death, since she was the witness? Or maybe, like Williamson had said, they only filed the most important names, and she just wasn't important enough. Have to ask, but it seemed strange.

The Stryker files were large: Mark Stryker's suicide was covered extensively, but most of the story detailed the family history before Mark. Laura Stryker was mentioned as working as an office manager at State Farm. Virgil checked files under "State Farm Insurance," and found that the local agency was owned by Bill Judd Sr.

Huh. Nobody had mentioned that. No way to tell from the clips when she began working there, or when she left…

THE ROOM WAS close and warm, and after a while, Virgil leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes. Let Homer out: worked on a little fiction.

Laura Stryker rolled away from Bill Judd, both covered with a sheen of sweat, gasping from the sex, and dropped her feet to the floor. No doubt about it: she was missing life with Mark. Nice guy, but not what she needed. "I'm going to tell him," she said, pulling up her underpants.

"Aw, don't do that. You know that we're not long for this. We're just fooling around, honey."

"Doesn't necessarily have everything to do with you, Bill. Has to do with me: and I'm telling him…"

Try again.

Mark Stryker, trembling with anger, rigid there in the kitchen, shaking: "I won't put up with it. I put up with shit all of my life, and I won't put up with this. I'll tell the kids, I'll tell your folks, I'll talk to anybody who'll listen. You're not leaving me, you're leaving Bluestem. You won't be able to walk down the street…"