"Pissed off Jerry," Rudolph said. "He was good friends with Constance."

"Jerry's the sheriff," Sedlacek said. "He was pushing us like dogs."

"Did it look to you like somebody deliberately ambushed her?" Virgil asked. "Did they rob her? Rape her? Anything?"

"Took her purse, so it could have been a robbery-especially outside her restaurant. Wasn't raped or anything. Wasn't beat up. Whoever did it jumped her with the idea of strangling her. Might have figured she was taking the day's receipts home," Sedlacek said.

"But then they'd have to know about her," Virgil said. "They'd probably be local."

"Pretty much," Sedlacek said.

Rudolph added, "The thing about Swanson is, it's this tiny little town halfway between Cedar Rapids and Iowa City and it's got seven businesses-one gas station, one restaurant, Constance's, and five bars. It used to be where the kids went to drink, but we cleaned that up. But still, it's a honky-tonk town, and a lot of folks still go up there for the atmosphere."

"Is that where the Spodee-Odee is?" Virgil asked.

"Naw. That's in Coralville, out on the strip. That's right next door, here."

THEY TALKED for a few more minutes, then they gave Virgil a table and chair, and he spent an hour combing through a thick but nearly information-free file. All of the technical work looked good, but the technicians simply hadn't found anything except one nylon fiber buried in Lifry's neck, and more under a couple of broken fingernails, which suggested that she'd been strangled with a nylon cord.

Which-except for one thing-was like discovering that the killer wore pants. Useless.

When he was done, he carried the file back to Sedlacek's office to ask about that one thing. Sedlacek asked, "Crack the case?"

"I didn't even bend it," Virgil said. "One thing. The cord that Lifry was strangled with, nylon, I guess, but the ME says that it cut way into her neck muscles. You figure it was a guy?"

"Oh, yeah. That oughta be in there somewhere, but that was our operating assumption," Sedlacek said. "A guy with some muscle: she was not only strangled, she actually bled quite a bit."

"Doesn't fit with us," Virgil said. "We found those tracks, women's boot or shoe…"

"You breed some big women up that way."

"But none of the ones I'm looking at could do that," Virgil said. "They're healthy, but I don't see them cutting somebody's head off with a rope."

Sedlacek flipped his hands up. "Can't help you. Anyway, you had anything to eat today? We could get a sandwich and head out to Jud's. He'll be there at one o'clock…"

THEY GOT A BURGER, fries, and a shake at a student bar. Virgil was wearing a Breeders T-shirt under his jacket and a thin blond woman, standing in line for food, leaned toward him and asked, "Are you a musician?"

He grinned at her: "Nope."

"I really admire the Breeders," she said. "Kim Deal is awesome."

"I'd give you the shirt," Virgil said, gesturing across the table at Sedlacek, "but this guy's a cop, and he'd probably bust me for exposure."

"Maybe I could give you a phone number, and you could drop it off," she said. But she was joking, and she twiddled her fingers at him and moved up the line.

"I've been working downtown for ten years and I've never been hit on by a college girl," Sedlacek said, looking after her. "What have you got that I don't?"

"Good looks, personality… cowboy boots."

"Fuck me," Sedlacek said. "I've been trying to get by on intelligence."

"Well, there you go," Virgil said.

THE CORALVILLE STRIP was a fading business/motel district outside Iowa City, motels, service businesses, insurance companies, a few clubs, and the Spodee-Odee, a big log-sided bar with an acre-sized gravel-and-dirt parking lot and a useless hitching post in front of the doors; and a life-size painting of a John Deere tractor splayed across one side wall, juxtaposed against a Sioux Indian on a pinto horse. A tangle of prickly pear cactuses climbed out of two pots on the front porch, and behind one pot was a sign that said, "Pee on these plants, and you will be shot; survivors will be shot again."

Virgil had followed Sedlacek out to the place, and they got out in a swirl of dust, hitched up their pants, and looked around. Another sign, inside the barred front window, said, CLOSED, but the door was open, and in the dim interior, a bartender was doing paperwork. He looked up and said, "We're not open until four," and Sedlacek answered, "Johnson County sheriff. We've got an appointment with Jud."

"He's in the office," the bartender said, pointing with his pen. "Go on back, right there in the corner."

They followed the line of the pen, across a dance floor and past a twenty-foot semicircular stage. Virgil was impressed: he'd been in a lot of country bars, but the Spodee-Odee was maybe the biggest. In the back, down the hall, was an office suite, a secretary behind a big wooden reception desk, and two more women poking at computers behind her. The secretary said, "Deputy Sedlacek?"

JUD WINDROW POPPED OUT of the back office, a tall, thin, dry-faced guy in a Johnny Cash black shirt with mother-of-pearl buttons, jeans, and cowboy boots; brush mustache, nicotine-stained fingers. He said, "Come on back, y'all want a coffee or a beer?"

"Just ate," Sedlacek said, and Windrow said, "How you doing, Will? We don't see you much anymore."

"Ah, you know, got the kids, I'm so damn tired by the time they get to sleep all I want to do is sleep myself."

"Can't go through life that way," Windrow said. "Get a babysitter. Come out and dance. Your old lady would love you for it… You must be Virgil."

They shook hands and all took chairs and Windrow said, "By the way, I invited Prudence Bauer to come down and talk with us."

A woman stepped through the door, probably fifty, Virgil thought, with small prim features, and gray hair swept up on top of her head in an old-fashioned bun: Prudence, all right. She must have been right behind them, in the parking lot.

"And there she is," Windrow said. He stepped over to Bauer and they air-kissed, and Windrow said to Virgil, "This is Connie's sister. She took over Honey's when Constance passed away."

"Was murdered," Bauer said. She had a low, grainy voice, the voice of the third-grade teacher in Virgil's nightmares.

"Sure," Windrow said.

They all sat down again and Virgil asked Windrow, "What was your relationship with Constance?"

He nodded: "We were probably best friends. Wouldn't you say so, Prudie?"

Bauer said, "I believe so."

Windrow added, "We grew up like twins. Born a week apart, next door to each other in Swanson, raised together, went to school together, talked to each other most every day. When she was killed, it broke my goldarned heart."

Virgil knew of such things, and had old friends in Marshall, Minnesota, whom he might see once a year, but were still close, even intimate, and always would be. "Okay. What-if anything-did you guys have to do with a band run by a singer named Wendy Ashbach from up in northern Minnesota? Or with a resort called the Eagle Nest?"

"Nothing," Bauer said. "I knew Connie went to the Eagle Nest, and she told me a little about this Wendy, that she was a wonderful singer, but I never went up there, and never met Wendy."

"I heard about Wendy from Connie," Windrow said, looking at Virgil over a steeple made of his fingers. "She said there was this terrific country act up in Grand Rapids, and thought I might want to bring them down here. I was planning to go up and listen to them, but then Connie got killed, and that broke the connection. I never followed up."

His affable country-western personality had disappeared behind his businessman's face, Virgil thought-not that he'd ever doubted that the businessman was back there. Running a successful bar was not something done by fools.