"What if he doesn't do all that?" Jesse asked. "What if he goes home and goes to bed?"

Virgil said, "Well, shoot. Then we'd have to start over with something else. But he was calling you because he wants to make some kind of move. I think."

"I'd like to get it over with," Jesse said.

"We all would," Virgil said. "So. You want to take your shirt off?"

WHEN HE LEFT Worthington the second time, at seven-thirty, Jesse was ready to roll, the wire tested both for recording fidelity and for direct sound.

At five after eight, Virgil was back at the courthouse. Daylight was beginning to fade, the shadows long across Main Street, red light reflecting off west-facing windows. Sundown would come a few minutes before nine o'clock.

Stryker was waiting, with the two Curlys, Jensen, Carr, and two guys named Padgett and Brooks.

Virgil leaned on the front edge of Stryker's desk. "I've pulled together evidence that suggests that Todd Williamson might have been capable of doing the Gleason and Schmidt killings, and the two Judds, and might have been inclined to do them. I'm going to feed that evidence back to him, tonight, through Jesse Laymon, and hope that it forces him into an overt act. They're going to meet at ten o'clock at the Dairy Queen. After the meeting, which I'm set up to record, and to monitor, Jesse is going to take off as fast as she can, for home. So fast that Williamson won't be able to ambush her, or run her off the road, on the way.

"Deputies Padgett and Brooks"-he nodded at them-"will already be at her house, waiting. Jim and Larry will try to figure out where Williamson is, before he goes to the meeting, stake him out, and track him toward the Dairy Queen.

"The two Curlys will be down south of the Dairy Queen, in separate cars. Once Jesse takes off, I want you two in front of her, heading back to her place…The rest of us will follow behind, so we'll have him boxed in if he goes after her."

"What about me?" Carr asked.

"I've got something touchy, if you're willing to do it," Virgil said. "I want you in civvies. But with a gun: this guy is dangerous. You'll be in your own car, and as soon as Larry sees Williamson walk into the Dairy Queen, I want you to pull in and order an ice-cream cone. Sit outside on one of those benches, and lick it down. One hand on your gun."

She smiled: "Sounds good to me."

"Where'll you be?" Stryker asked Virgil.

"I'll be in my truck, parked behind Jane's Nails. I want to stay back in the dark, but I've got to be in radio range, too, so I can monitor the meeting."

"I've got a couple of questions," said Brooks.

"ALL RIGHT," Virgil said. "Let's do the details. But: we've got to be in place an hour before Williamson is due to meet Jesse, by nine o'clock. Williamson is at his office: we don't want to lose him…" He stepped to a wall map of Bluestem, on the wall behind Stryker's desk, touched street corners. "I figure Stryker and Jensen will be here and here, covering the front and back doors of the newspaper office."

WHEN HE WAS DONE, Carr asked, "So if Todd doesn't do anything, we just go home?"

"No. We'll be giving him a serious push-he won't want Jesse Laymon to talk to me. I think he'll have to do something. If Jesse takes off, and Williamson goes home, or back to his office, or wherever, we'll tag him. Overnight, anyway. And just in case he figures out a way to sneak off, I want Padgett and Brooks to hang at Jesse's overnight." He nodded at the two men: "If nothing happens, I'll join you out there early tomorrow, and I'll ship Jesse back to her hideout while I try to figure something else."

"All seems a little shaky," Brooks said.

"It's a lot shaky," Virgil said. "But to tell you the truth, with what I've got now, and what I'm likely to get, I don't think we've got a conviction. He'll get away with it, unless he kills somebody else, and trips up. We gotta take the shot."

"Not against that," Brooks said. "I'm just sayin'."

"I hear you," Virgil said. "I'm more worried than you are."

"WHAT IF he really didn't do it?" Jensen asked.

Virgil smiled. He'd been waiting for that question. "That's almost as good. If we clear him, I think I can work out who we're really looking at. We've really got quite a bit of detail, once you sift it out," Virgil said.

"What detail?" Stryker asked.

Virgil shrugged. "I got notes. Small stuff. Show it to you later."

THEY WENT OVER the details one more time, but it wasn't rocket science, and they were done by 8:45. They were all a little hot, eager to get going, and by nine, Virgil was alone in his truck, and called Jesse. "You ready to roll?"

"Yup. I'm a little nervous."

"Good. You should be. We've already got the place staked out," Virgil said. "Margo Carr will be outside. She'll be close enough to be there instantly if you scream; and she's armed. I'll be five seconds away, on the corner by Sherwin-Williams. Now: remember about the radio check. You call me on your cell when you're coming up to the exit so we can get Margo moving, and then when you're coming into the Dairy Queen, turn on the radio. I'll make sure you're coming in clear. Don't get out of the truck until I give you the okay."

"Okay. I'll leave here right at eight-thirty."

"Stay in touch," Virgil said. "You've got my cell. Call me for anything."

AT TEN AFTER NINE, Virgil was squatting between two plastic recycling bins and the back wall of Jane's Nails and Extensions, a cell-phone bud in one ear, a cop-radio bud in the other. Stryker called: "All right, I got Williamson. He's at the office. Saw his head in the window, clear as day."

"His house is dark," Jensen said. "I'm moving up behind the Judd building, looking down the alley toward the back."

A minute later: "I'm looking down the alley. His van is there."

Another minute, Stryker: "Got him again. He's working."

STRYKER SAW HIM twice more, the clock creeping around to nine-thirty.

Virgil: "All right, everybody, Jesse is on her way. Margo, are you there?"

"At my house, all set, in my car. I am two minutes away," she said.

"Big Curly?"

"Here."

"Little Curly?"

"Looking at the Diary Queen."

"Stay cool, everybody."

Virgil himself was not that cool. He lay behind the two garbage cans, with the shotgun, watching his truck across the street. Nine thirty-two. Nine thirty-five.

LIKE THIS: he thought the odds that the killer was Williamson were about thirty percent, one in three. If he was, then Williamson would meet Jesse in the Dairy Queen, and Jesse would unload a whole bunch of things that Virgil had told her, about his record, about being Lane, about how he must've known he was Judd's son, just to get there…about talking again with Betsy, to see if she could identify him. If that happened, then Williamson would follow her home and try to kill her, and they'd get him.

But the Curlys had shown themselves capable of some serious shit. Big Curly had been there the night that Maggie Lane died; might have known that she'd been beaten before she died. They'd tampered with a murder scene, for sure. They said that Todd Williamson had fed them Jesse Laymon as a suspect, and Big Curly said that Williamson had gone through the Gleason house, and may have left the Revelation. But all of that was what the Curlys said…

An alternative: one of the Gleasons, knowing about the cover-up surrounding Maggie Lane's death, had gotten religion. Maybe even from Feur. And fearing for their souls, had started talking about coming clean. So the Gleasons had been silenced by someone else involved in the cover-up: Big Curly.

Judd suspected something: so Judd died.

Roman Schmidt began to put things together: and the Schmidts went down.

Thirty percent, Virgil thought.

BUT THE STRYKER FAMILY was deep in this, as well. Had the motive to get rid of the Judds-Judd had killed their father and husband. And when Amy Sweet had told Virgil that she'd mentioned the Judd ethanol plant to her bridge group, the one member of the group whose name Virgil had recognized had been Laura Stryker's. So at least one Stryker had known that Judd was headed back toward ethanol, a scheme that might have looked a lot like the Jerusalem artichoke scam.