"Where's Jim?"

"At the office. He said you'd probably show up and want to get in. We're just about done. Let me go talk to Margo."

"Okay. I got a note in the mail today, I was wondering if you could check it for fingerprints."

He explained, and gave Jensen the note and envelope, folded into a piece of hotel writing paper. Jensen read it, frowned. "Shoot. That's not a direction we've gone."

"Hardly had time," Virgil said. "Anyway, I'm on it. I've got a researcher up in St. Paul who can pull the corporate information, and I've got some income-tax forms coming in. If you could check this letter…"

"Wonder who uses a typewriter?"

"Somebody Roman's age," Virgil said.

MARGO CARR, the crime-scene specialist, showed him Schmidt's home office, a table made out of a wooden door, set across two filing cabinets. A computer, no typewriter. "Everything in here has been worked," she said.

"You think the killer was in here?"

"No. I think the killer shot Roman, shot Gloria, then came and shot Roman twice more, then dragged him outside and propped him up with a stick he'd already cut. I don't think he went anywhere in the house, off the line of the bedroom."

"Do you think he knew the inside of the house?" Virgil asked.

"Maybe. Or maybe Roman turned on a light in the bedroom and gave it all away."

"Find anything at all?"

"One thing," she said. She went back to a plastic trunk, opened it, and brought back a Ziploc bag with a cigarette filter in it. "Found this right by the back steps. Cigarette butt. I can figure out what kind, I'm sure, but I know it's a menthol-I can smell it. Wasn't rained on, so it's recent. The Schmidts didn't smoke."

He looked at the butt, and then at Carr: "You think?"

"I'm grasping for straws, here. That's what I got."

A MOMENT LATER, he was sitting at Roman's desk, his eyes closed, trying to remember: the pack of cigarettes next to George Feur's elbow, when Virgil interviewed him at his house. Salems? Virgil thought so. His visual image was of a green package, an aqua green…

His cell phone rang: Joan.

"How are you doing?" she asked.

"Not bad. I'm confused, but I'm looking pretty good," he said. "I might go out tonight, see if I can pick up some chicks."

"Good luck."

"Yeah. Anyway, I'm at Schmidt's. I've got something for you to think about: how many people, once they figured we were going out to the farm, would have known how to come down that slope to a place where they'd have a free shot at us?"

She thought for a moment, and then said, "Well, probably not everybody."

"Not everybody?"

"It's a fairly famous swimming hole, Virgil. Kids would park up on that hillside, up in the trees, then sneak in past the stock tank and go up the canyon and skinny-dip. I mean, if you didn't do that at least once in high school, and get laid up on that rock, you were nobody."

"How often did you do it?" he asked.

"We agreed not to talk about our histories," she said.

"No, we didn't."

"We have now," she said.

He offered to take her to the Dairy Queen, having exhausted the fine-dining possibilities at McDonald's.

"I'll order a pizza from Johnnie's," she said. "My place at four o'clock, we'll go back out to the farm. It's a great day. Be careful. And bring a better gun."

"You be careful."

VIRGIL DUG THROUGH the Schmidts' filing cabinet, which turned out to be a waste of time. He did learn that they were fairly affluent: Gloria had been an elementary-school teacher in Worthington-a friend of the alcoholic schoolteacher? Probably not, though: Gloria was most of a generation earlier, and would have taught in a different school. Wonder where the money came from? They had half a million dollars in a Vanguard account; but then, they'd had a long time to build it up.

The most interesting material was in Schmidt's computer. He had a dial-up account, and he had e-mail from Big Curly, and they were talking politics. Curly was looking for support for his son to run against Stryker in the next election.

Schmidt was talking, but wasn't eager to side with someone who might be a loser. "We better wait until we are close to the time, have a better idea of what the opportunities are," he wrote back in one of the notes. But he didn't say no.

Sitting there, looking at the Schmidt material, Virgil started thinking about the letter he'd given to Larry Jensen. How many people knew what tree he was barking up? The banker, of course, and anyone he might have gossiped with.

And the Johnstones.

"That damn picture," he said aloud. Had the photograph somehow generated the note?

STYMIED at the Schmidts'-there was nothing right on the surface, and a full analysis of all the Schmidts' financial transactions would take a lot of time. He heard people knocking around in the back of the house, and gave up. Back another day, if nothing else popped up.

He went out through the kitchen, saw Big Curly, Little Curly, and a deputy he didn't know, standing in the yard with Jensen. He waved and said, "I'm outa here."

"Anything?" Jensen asked.

"We need an accountant," Virgil said.

"Yeah…"

He'd be back to Schmidts', Virgil thought, to see if somebody erased that e-mail about the election…if somebody would mess with evidence at a murder scene. Be an interesting thing to know.

ON THE WAY into town, he saw another hawk circling, like the one he'd seen out at the farm, and that made him think of the shooting, and the slope, and the farm, and skinny-dipping, and the whole question of why the shooter hadn't come closer and taken the sure shot.

And how he'd missed by two feet at three hundred yards. Of course, it wasn't that hard to miss by two feet. But if you had the rifle sitting on a stump, the shot should have been closer than that.

He thought about that for a minute and then slowed, pulled to the side of the road, and called up the Laymon place. Jesse picked up the phone: "Hello?"

She did have a nice whiskey voice, Virgil decided. "This is Virgil," he said. "I'm calling on behalf of Jim's sister, who's reluctant to gossip with you. But did we see you guys up in Marshall last night? About seven? We had to dodge a restaurant because she was sure it was you guys."

"Not us. We went over to Sioux Falls," Jesse said.

"Ah, shoot. So I ate pizza while you guys were doing surf 'n' turf. You pay? Being a rich woman?"

She laughed, and said, "No, I didn't. And really, why are you calling? You're sneaking up on something."

"I am not," Virgil said cheerfully. "Honest to God, this is nothing but the purest gossip. I personally took his beautiful sister up to the Stryker Dell late last night. You guys coulda come along."

"I don't think so," she said. "Skinny-dipping with your sister? Jim's waaaaayyy too straight for that."

"Didn't think of that," Virgil said. "I'd be, too, if I had a sister…So'd you have a good time?"

"Yes, I did. He's just like a puppy," Jesse said. "But he pays attention to me."

"Told you, that you might like it," Virgil said. "I was afraid he wasn't going to make it at all, with the Schmidt case. I couldn't see how he'd be out of there before eight o'clock, and everything around here closes up at nine."

"No problem," she said. "He just dumped what he was doing and came over; that's what he said, anyway. We were in Sioux Falls by eight-thirty."

"Ah, well…so now I come to the real reason I called," Virgil said.

"I knew it…"

"I haven't been able to catch him this morning," Virgil said. "He isn't there, is he?"

"Virgil!"

"Sorry, honey, I need to find him."

"I don't sleep with guys on the first date," she said. "Not at home. Most of the time, anyway."

"Suppose that leaves something for him to look forward to," Virgil said. "Don't tell him I called and asked you this, or he'd probably beat the snot out of me."