"Does it need saving?" Virgil asked.

"Maybe," she said. And, "My name's Joan Carson. Jimmy said you had some nice things to say about my ass."

"Jimmy's job just got in deeper trouble," Virgil said, but she was still smiling and that wasn't bad. "Tell me about that, though. His job."

She shrugged, dug into her salad. "This is his second term. Most sheriffs have to get over the third-election hump. That's just the way it is, I guess. You've pissed off enough people to get fired, if they're not so impressed that they feel obligated to vote for you."

"They're not impressed?"

"They were, until the murders," she said. "Jimmy runs a good office, he's fair with his deputies. Now, he's got these murders and he's not catching who did it."

"Did he tell you that?" Virgil asked.

"Common knowledge," she said. She picked a raw onion ring out of her salad and crunched half of it, and pointed the crescent-moon remainder at Virgil. "Everybody knows everybody, and the deputies talk. Nobody's got any idea who did the shooting."

"Who do you think did it?"

"It's just a goddamn mystery, that's what it is," she said. "I know every single person in this town, and most of the relationships between them, and I can't think of anybody who'd do something like that. Just can't think of anybody. Maybe…" She trailed off.

"Maybe…"

She fluffed her hair, like women do sometimes when they think they're about to say something silly. "This is really unfair. The newspaper editor, Todd Williamson, has only been here for three or four years, so I know him less than I know other people. So maybe, before he came here, there was some knot in his brain that we can't see because we didn't grow up with him."

"That's it?" Virgil asked.

"That's it," she said.

"That's nothing," Virgil said.

"That's why I said it's unfair. But I lie in bed at night, going through everybody in town over the age of ten, figuring out who could have done this. Maybe…"

"What?"

"Could we have some little crazy thrill-killer in the high school? Maybe somebody who had some kind of fantasy of killing somebody, and for some reason picked out the Gleasons? You read about that kind of thing…"

"I hope so," Virgil said. "If it's like that, I'll get him. He'll have told his friends about it, and they'll rat him out."

Virgil's cell phone rang, and he slipped it out of his pocket and she said, "I hate it when that happens during lunch," and Virgil said, "Yeah." The call was coming in from a local number, and he opened the phone and said, "Hello?"

"Virgil, Jim Stryker. You know that Bill Judd had a heart bypass fifteen years ago, and also had some work done on his lumbar spine?"

"Yeah?"

"My crime-scene girl found a coil of stainless-steel wire in the basement of Judd's house, and she swears it's what they used to close up his breastbone after the bypass. And eight inches away, she found a couple of titanium screws and a steel rod that she says came out of Judd's spine. She says there should be X-rays up at the medical center, and she can check, but she thinks that's what she's got. She also thinks she found the back part of a skull, looks like a little saucer, pieces of two kneecaps and maybe some wrist and ankle bones."

"So he's dead," Virgil said.

"I believe so-DNA will tell, if they can get some out of the bone marrow. The arson investigator says that there was an accelerant, probably ten or twenty gallons of gasoline, because he says the fire did a broad lateral flash through the house, instead of burning up," Stryker said. "He means it spread laterally much faster than up, and with all this wood, it should have gone up faster."

"How can he tell?"

"Beats me. That's what he said-so, we've got another murder."

"Huh," Virgil said.

"What's that mean?" Stryker asked.

"You up there? At the Judds'?" Virgil asked.

"I am. I'll be here for a while."

"See you in a bit," Virgil said.

JOAN POINTED her fork at him. "Bill Judd?"

"Yeah." Virgil dabbed his lips with a napkin. "They think they might have found some remains. I gotta go."

"If I was a forensic anthropologist, I'd come up and help," she said. "Unfortunately, I don't know anything about forensics or anthropology and I don't much care for bodies."

"What do you do?" Virgil asked.

"Run the family farm," she said. "Twelve hundred and eighty acres of corn and soybeans north of town."

"That's a mighty big farm for such a pretty little woman," Virgil said.

"Bite me," she said.

"Thank you, ma'am. You want to go into Worthington tonight?" Virgil asked. "Tijuana Jack's ain't too bad."

"Maybe," she said. "Give me your cell number. I have to drive over to Sioux Falls for some parts. If I get back in time…Mexican'd be okay."

VIRGIL, pleased with himself, went back through town, up to Buffalo Ridge, through the park gates, and around the corner of the hill to the Judd house. He was astonished when he saw what was left. In most fires, a corner of a house will burn, and at least a wall or two will survive. Of the Judd mansion, nothing was left but the foundation, cracked and charred, and a pit full of twisted metal, stone, and ash.

Stryker and one of his deputies, an older fat man with blond curly hair, were talking to a third man, who had a reporter's notebook. A man in a suit was peering into the pit, and three people scuffled around the bottom like diggers on an archaeological site.

Virgil walked up, looked in the hole: picked out ductwork and air conditioners, two furnaces, the crumbled remains of what must have been a first-floor fireplace, three hot-water tanks, a couple of sinks, three toilets, a twisted mass of pipes. The diggers in the bottom were working next to the wreck of a wheelchair; the guy in the suit, Virgil realized, was Bill Judd Jr.

VIRGIL WALKED OVER to Stryker: "How'n the hell they find anything in there?"

Stryker said, "This is Todd Williamson, he's editor of the Bluestem Record; and Big Curly Anderson." A warning to watch his mouth.

"I met a Little Curly the other night…" Virgil said, shaking hands with the two men. Big Curly's hands were small and soft, like a woman's. Williamson's, on the other hand, were hard and calloused, as though he ran his own printing press.

"That's my boy," Big Curly said.

Stryker: "To answer your question, it was pretty much luck. They saw the wheelchair down there and started digging around, looking for a body, and they found that coil of surgical wire. Now they're trying to figure out how the wheelchair got on top of all that trash and the ash, and the body was under it. They're starting to think that Judd was in the basement, and the wheelchair was upstairs, on the second or third floor, and dropped down when the fire burned through the floor."

"Coincidence?"

"Seems like. I don't know what else it could be," Stryker said.

"You gonna take this case?" Williamson asked.

"I'm working the Gleason investigation," Virgil said. "Our contact with the press either runs through the local sheriff or the BCA spokesman in St. Paul. I can't talk to you about it."

"That's not the way we do things out here," Williamson said.

"They must've changed then, because I'm from out here," Virgil said. "I played high school baseball against Jimmy here, and kicked his ass three years running."

"You were seven and two, and three of those wins were pure luck," Stryker said. "People still talk about it. Haven't ever seen a run of luck like it, not after all these years."

"Bite me," Virgil said.

"You've been talking to Joan," Stryker said.

VIRGIL TIPPED his head toward the burn pit, and asked, "That's Judd, right?"

Stryker said, "Yup. I gave him a call, he came right up."

Big Curly said, "Probably been down at the bank, reading the old man's will."