Idaho, he thought, might be easier, and it was: called the Idaho secretary of state's office, was told how to look at online public records, and with a certain sense of what he'd find, looked up St. John Ventures: George Feur, chief executive officer and chairman.

He called Stryker: "What happened with Judd Sr.'s office? Did you seal it up, or what?"

"Yup. Couldn't say for sure that Junior didn't get in there, though. They're right next to each other. If there was a big pot of cash or something…"

"I need to get in," Virgil said. "Right now."

"I'll walk down. Meet you there in ten."

JUDD'S OFFICE included a small outer waiting room with a secretary's desk, a side room with a Xerox machine, a printer and a half-dozen file cabinets, and a large inner office with leather chairs, dark-wood paneling, and a new wide-screen television sitting on top of a bar. The newspaper office was on one side, and Judd Jr.'s office on the other; they hadn't seen either the newspaper editor or Junior when they unlocked Judd Sr.'s office.

Stryker locked the door behind them and Virgil said, "Not too much light. Just the inner office and the file room. I'd just as soon that not everybody in town knows that we're here."

"Probably know anyway," Stryker said, gloomily. He was discouraged by the results of the Schmidt investigation: "Nothing's coming up, man. What about you? Anything working?"

"The letter this morning implied that Bill Judd Jr. has money problems, and mentioned Florence Mills," Virgil said. "It supposedly was set up to make ethanol out of corn and switchgrass-and it's half owned by George Feur."

"Feur?"

"Yeah. I can't find out who owns the other half, because that half is owned by a Delaware corporation. We could probably find out next week, but it's too late today. We're gonna need some papers, and it's already two o'clock on the East Coast. I'm thinking that if the Judds are involved with Feur, and…I don't know. There's something going on there."

"Ethanol? Shoot, it could be another goddamn Jerusalem artichoke scam. There's the same kind of gold-rush thing going on…the people who got killed weren't only old, they were mostly pretty well-off. Could have been investors in another scam."

"Yeah. Even the Schmidts. They had half a million in Vanguard." Virgil thought for a second, and then asked, "Is Larry Jensen still out there?"

"Yeah."

"Get him to check the Vanguard statements. There should be monthly statements, like with a checking account. See if there've been any big withdrawals in the past three years. Not like for a car…bigger than that."

"I'll call now."

While he went to call, Virgil began going through Judd's files, looking for anything involving Arno Partners or Florence Mills. Stryker came back: "Larry'll check. What are we looking for?"

"Arno Partners, A-R-N-O, or Florence Mills. If you could crack open his computer, run a search on either name…"

"Why don't I do the files, you do the computer. You gotta be better at computers than I am…"

JUDD'S COMPUTER wasn't password-protected and had almost nothing on it other than Microsoft Word, with automatic formatting of letters and envelopes with Judd's return address and a letterhead. Nothing at all in the documents file. The e-mail file hadn't even been set up. A fancy typewriter, Virgil thought.

He was closing it down when he caught sight of the secretary's machine in the outer office: non-networked, both freestanding.

"Judd still have a secretary?" he asked Stryker, who was sitting on the floor of the file room.

"Yup. Amy Sweet. We told her to go on home and to send the probate lawyer a bill for her last week of work."

"Gotta talk to her," Virgil said. He dropped behind the secretary's desk, booted up the computer. More files, this time. He ran a search on Arno and one on Florence Mills, and the Florence Mills search kicked out a half-dozen documents.

"Got Florence Mills," he called to Stryker. He opened the documents, one at a time: payments to High Plains Ag amp; Fleet Supply, in Madison, South Dakota. Stryker came to look over his shoulder: "Sonofabitch," he said, reaching past Virgil to tap the screen, a payment for one thousand gallons of Bernhard Brand AA. "Look at this."

"I don't know what that is," Virgil said.

"Anhydrous ammonia. They've got an ethanol plant somewhere, and they're buying AA. I mean, it could be legitimate if they're growing, as well as cooking, but I'll tell you what I think: I think they're manufacturing methamphetamine, bigger than life."

"Ah, man," Virgil said.

Stryker: "I checked Feur with the NCIC. He's had some run-ins with the law, since he got out, but they were all bullshit. You know, disorderly conduct for protests, that sort of thing. Nothing hard, like dope."

"Sit tight," Virgil said. He got on his phone, called Davenport. "You told me once if I ever needed anything really bad from the federal government, you've got a guy high enough up to get anything."

"Maybe," Davenport said. "I'd hate to burn up a favor on an errand, though."

"Call him. Tell him to go to the DEA and see if there's anything on a George Feur-any possible connection to methamphetamine distribution through one of those fascist white supremacist convict groups. I need it just as fast as you can get it."

"You break it?"

"Maybe; not what I thought, though," Virgil said.

"I'll have him dump it to your e-mail, if there's anything," Davenport said.

VIRGIL TO STRYKER: "Do you know any accountants that you can trust, who don't work for Judd?"

"One…"

CHRIS OLAFSON ran a bookkeeping, financial planning, and accounting service out of a converted house on the west side of town. Stryker swore her to secrecy: "This is about the murder investigation," he said. "Virgil has a hypothetical question for you…"

"Go ahead." She was a bright-eyed, busy, overweight woman, of the kind that drip efficiency.

"If you had a rich father-a millionaire, I don't know how many millions-and you borrowed a lot of money from him, over the years, how would that complicate your inheritance?" Virgil asked.

She knitted her fingers together and said, "That depends. Did the father gift any money to Junior…to his son?"

They all smiled at each other, acknowledging the fact that she knew who they were talking about, and Virgil said, "I don't know. What do you mean, gift?"

She gave them a short course in the estate tax. When she was done, she asked, "So, hypothetically, how bad is Junior screwed?"

Virgil rubbed his head. "We'd have to get down some exact numbers to know that," he said. "I've got some tax records down at the motel…but they're all bureaucratic bullshit. So…I don't know if he's screwed at all."

"He's not a real good businessman," Olafson said brightly. "They should have had an estate plan. Does anybody even know where all of Judd's money is? Was it in trusts, or what? Did the killer burn down the house to get rid of planning documents?"

"We don't know any of that stuff," Stryker said.

"Maybe I ought to run for sheriff," she said.

"Get in early, avoid the rush," Stryker said.

THEY BOTH STOOD, and Olafson said, "Sit back down for a minute. Would you like Cokes? I want to give you my hypothetical."

"We're in a bit of a hurry," Virgil said.

"Take you five minutes," she said. "Cokes?"

They both took a Coke, and Olafson said, "Suppose Bill Judd had a big tank of money somewhere, that nobody knew about but his son. Like money and interest from the Jerusalem artichoke scam."

Stryker started to say something, but she held up a finger. "Suppose Judd Senior starts to fail, first mentally, and then physically, and it looks like he's about to die. Once he's dead, any money taken from the account could only be taken by fraud. And the fraud would be pretty visible: the bank says money was taken out on August first, but lo, Judd was dead three weeks before that. Even Junior's smarter than that.