THE AGENCY WAS HOUSED on the fifth floor of the Laughton building in Minneapolis, a fashionably international lump of blue glass and steel. Mann introduced him to the board, a group of well-dressed men and women who were snarling at one another around a maple table.

Virgil made a brief presentation of what he'd found, and one of the men blurted out, "I was at a Twins game," and, one by one, without being asked, the other members provided alibis, most of which would be easy to confirm. One guy didn't have one, but he was six-five and his shoes must have been thirteens, Virgil thought. He made a note anyway. If any of them had done it, it was going to take a break from somewhere else, from somebody else, to prove it.

By four o'clock, he was on his way north again.

Kept thinking about what Owen had said: a backwoods gay basher making a point.

Could be, but he doubted it. It usually took something more specific to trigger a murder; not always, but usually. Money, sex, obsession, competition, alcohol… something. Something he was missing.

8

ZOE TULL'S SISTER'S HOUSE was more like a cabin than a real house, and sat on a shallow bay down a dark dirt road on Fifty-Dollar Lake. Zoe'd talked Virgil back to the place by cell phone, and was standing in the yard when he pulled in.

"The crime-scene guy who came to my house couldn't find any fingerprints but he said the door had definitely been forced," she said. And, "Hello."

"Hi. Yeah. I talked to him," Virgil said. "He said your locks wouldn't have kept a small child out."

"That situation will be fixed tomorrow." She wrapped her arms around herself and shivered. "I don't like this. I don't know if it was a coincidence, or if it's because I'm talking to you, or if it's some goof who kills women."

An older woman pushed out of the house: Zoe's sister. She looked a lot like Zoe, slender but more weathered, with cool, distant green eyes and a nose that was a bit too long. She was wearing a plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up over her elbows, and jeans. She looked at Virgil for a moment, nothing shy about it, then looked past him for a minute, and said, "Nice rig."

"Works for me," Virgil said.

"You all best come in before the bugs eat you alive," the sister said.

"My sister, Sig. Signy," Zoe said. And to Signy, "This is Virgil."

SIGNY'S HOUSE SMELLED like pine wood and maybe a hint of bacon and pancakes; had a tiny kitchen, a small living room with a couch and a couple of easy chairs on an oval hooked rug, a woodstove in one corner, and a hallway that apparently led back to a couple of bedrooms. Virgil took one of the chairs and Zoe asked, "So what'd you find out?"

"Not much. Talked to a couple of people who didn't like McDill, but they didn't do it. Found out that Ruth Davies will inherit a hundred thousand dollars, and that she knew that McDill had had at least one affair, so I guess it's possible that she thought that their time was ending. Oh. She has no alibi."

Signy had gone to the kitchen and came back with three bottles, handed one to Virgil. Negra Modelo. Virgil took a swallow and said, "I'm sorry, ma'am. I can't drink when I'm on duty."

"That's a goddamn shame," Signy said. She handed another bottle to Zoe, and had one for herself. "You don't think this Davies woman did it?"

"I didn't say that," Virgil said.

"You sound like it," she said.

"Okay. I don't think she did it."

"Who do you think did?" Signy asked.

"I don't know enough of the players," Virgil said. "I'll be up for a few days, figure that out."

Signy smiled at him and showed a chipped front tooth. "Got an ego on you, I'll say that."

SIGNY'S HUSBAND was in Alaska. "One time he went out for a loaf of bread and wound up in Churchill, on Hudson Bay. This time, it's Alaska."

"Sounds confused," Virgil said.

"He is confused. A nice guy, but confused. I don't believe he'll be back," she said.

"He could come back," Zoe said.

"I don't think so," Signy said. To Virgil. "He keeps moving further north. Last time, he barely made it home. This time, he's over the horizon. I don't think he'll make it at all."

"Life," Virgil said.

"Show Virgil the picture he sent you," Zoe said.

Signy got up, went to a table in the front hall, picked up an envelope, and carried it back to Virgil; Virgil slipped out a photograph and tipped it toward the lamplight to see it better. It showed a thin, dark-haired man standing on the bank of a creek, looking at a bulldozer that had about sunk out of sight in what appeared to be a bog, or maybe quicksand. A chain led down to the dozer from a second bulldozer; the second dozer was apparently trying to pull the first one out of the muck.

"Guess what he got a job driving," Signy said.

"The bulldozer?"

"He has accidents," Zoe said.

Virgil gave the photo back to Signy, who asked, "You want another beer?"

"I shouldn't," Virgil said. She went and got him another one, and said, "I'd give you a sandwich, but I don't have anything in the house. I usually eat out."

"Got a bag of sweet corn in the truck," Virgil said.

Signy's eyes lit up: "I could do some sweet corn. That's just boiling water, right?"

VIRGIL GOT THE CORN and she looked in the bag and said, "Cucumbers. I could put together a salad. I've got some apples and lettuce…" Virgil got the impression that she wasn't big on cooking.

Signy wandered off to the kitchen and Virgil sat down again and said to Zoe, "Tell me all about this band. Tell me about Wendy and Berni and whoever else…"

ZOE TOLD HIM that the band had been around for two or three years, but that Wendy had been something of a Grand Rapids celebrity since middle school. "She's always been the best singer that anybody ever knew. When she was a little kid, she used to sing with a polka band, and even travel around with them. Around the Iron Range, I mean. Not all over."

Wendy and Berni became best friends in middle school, and Berni learned the drums because she wasn't any good at other musical instruments. Together they played in a high school rock band that later became a country band when Wendy decided that she had more of a country voice. She also decided that women got a better break in country music than in rock.

After high school, she worked for a while at a local convenience store, and then for her father, breeding dogs. "Nasty hairy yellow-looking things," Zoe said. "Though I guess they get a lot of money for them. They're some kind of rare dog, or something."

"I wonder if she literally breeds them," Signy said from the kitchen. "She breeds everything else."

"Shut up, Sig," Zoe said.

All the time she was working, Wendy had a band. The band was getting better-they were shedding the old high school part-timers, and were picking up some pros-and Wendy's voice was getting richer. So was her love life.

ZOE SAID, and Signy agreed, between bouts of looking into the corn kettle, that Wendy was a heartless slut who played her lovers off against each other, and sometimes slept with men to demonstrate her independence.

"But she's really talented. You heard her," Zoe said, her face alight. "She's got this magnetism that pulls people in. Even McDill. That's what all the big stars have. You can't figure it out, but you can feel it."

Berni, on the other hand, was a below-average drummer, Zoe said. "She can do it, but she's not so creative. Wendy told me that."

"You think Wendy'll dump her?" Virgil asked.

Signy said, "If Wendy thought Berni could cost her a recording contract, she'd drop her off the bus on the side of the interstate."

WENDY KNEW THAT she had to move-Taylor Swift, Zoe said, was two years younger than Wendy, and was already a huge name with the best-selling album in the U.S.