VIRGIL LED THE WAY out, drove until they were out of sight, then pulled over and the squad pulled over behind him. He walked back and asked, "Either one of you know, or could you find out, where Jan Washington lives?"

"Sure. She's out south of the river…"

Virgil got directions and looked at his watch. Midnight. Well, screw it, if Washington's husband was home, he could get out of bed. He asked the deputies, "What'd you think back there?"

They glanced at each other, then one said, "I got this bad feeling about them."

"So do I-they're all a little too tangled up," the other one said. "I kinda wonder about Wendy and her old man. I wonder if he knocked off a piece of that, like, maybe, years ago, or something."

"Huh," Virgil said.

"On the other hand," said the first guy, who Virgil thought was Dan, "maybe you better take a closer look at Zoe, too. That whole family's always been a little off center. You know their mom was a lesbian? You know, became one?"

"Yeah? So what?" But he didn't say it. He stood up, slapped the door, and said, "You guys take it easy. Find that damn Windrow. Man, I'm gonna be pissed if he's off at one of these resorts…"

"And that could be-there's only about a million of them," Dan said. "But we called in when we got out of there. No sign of him yet."

"The thing that messes me up is that we can't find the car," Virgil said. "I can't figure out why we can't find the car. I mean, even if they snatched him, we ought to be able to find that."

"Out in the bush somewhere," Ben offered.

"Find him," Virgil said, and he headed back to his car.

AND THE THOUGHT:

If somebody were going to snatch Windrow, with his car, and kill him and take the car out in the brush and ditch it… how would the killer get back to his car? It was possible that the killer was willing to walk eight or ten miles in the dark, and had left the car in an all-night parking lot somewhere. Or maybe had ditched it only a couple of miles out, so the walk back would be a half-hour or so. But how would he know that in advance? He had to know where Windrow would be eating, for one thing.

Unless there were two of them.

Like Slibe amp; Son.

And the Iowa cops thought the killer was male…

THE WASHINGTONS LIVED FIVE or six miles out of town, on another country road, but not nearly as isolated as the Ashbach place. There were lights all along the way, and Virgil got glimpses of houses and sheds and cars and mailboxes on posts.

He drove past the Washington place and had to double back, shining his flashlight on the rural mailboxes, before he found it. They lived in a plain white one-floor ranch-style house with a two-car garage and white vinyl siding, with a shed around the back and a flower garden along the driveway. The only light looked like it might be a night-light, but the automatic yard light came on when Virgil drove down the driveway.

The front porch was a simple concrete slab. Virgil rang the doorbell, and a moment later he heard footfalls, and then the porch light flicked on. Washington looked out through the picture window, and came over and unlocked the door and said, "Jan? Is Jan okay…?"

Virgil held up his hands and said, "I'm sorry to scare you, this isn't about Jan. I'm sure she's fine. But we've got a serious problem, and I wanted to ask you a couple of questions."

Washington, in blue pajamas, said, "Sure-c'mon in. What's going on?"

"We're looking for a guy…" Virgil said, and he quickly explained about Windrow. "I got a couple of questions. Have you or your wife had anything to do with Slibe Ashbach, or his son?"

"No. Can't say that we have. He's got that septic service, right? Our septic was done by El Anderson."

"Do you know them? Slibe and his son?"

"Slibe… the older one… I was on a tax adjustment board a couple of years ago, and he came in to ask for an adjustment, I believe. I can't remember what happened, but it wasn't a big deal. It seems like we might have referred it to the assessor for a reassess ment… I'd probably know him to see him. Maybe."

Then: "Okay… do you do your own taxes?"

"What?" Washington sat back.

"Do you do your own taxes? Or do you have somebody do them for you?"

"We have them done by a girl in town," Washington said.

Virgil's heart sank. "And that would be…?"

"Mabel Knox is her name."

"Mabel Knox?" A reprieve.

"Yeah, she works for Zoe Tull," Washington said. "Zoe's got a big tax business downtown."

THE WASHINGTONS KNEW ZOE; and Zoe knew the Washingtons.

Probably meaningless, Virgil thought. But still, the only connection he'd found.

And he should have found it earlier; she should have mentioned it earlier.

Would have, if he hadn't known in his heart that Zoe was innocent…

19

SLIBE ASHBACH SLIPPED OUT the back door of his house, stood in the dark, and listened. If you listened hard enough at night, you could hear a background crackling, as if the leaves of the trees were talking to each other, or the bugs were foot-racing through the long grass…

He heard that, but didn't hear anything human. There was still light from Wendy's trailer; the light, Slibe knew, that pulled in the Deuce, like a moth.

He stepped out in the yard, in near pitch darkness, walking quiet in tennis shoes, along the back of the double-wide, his head below the bottom of the windows. He peeked at the corner and saw the Deuce standing there, on his cinder block, eye at the window. Slibe felt a clutch of anger at the sight of him; took a breath, got a grip, and asked, quietly, "See anything good?"

The Deuce didn't move. There was a circle of light on his eye, coming through the kink in the venetian blind, inside. He said, as quietly as Slibe, "I heard you coming from the time you closed the door. You sounded like an elephant coming through the grass."

Then he stepped down and moved closer to Slibe, eyes in shadow, and asked, "What do you want?"

"We need to talk, right now," Slibe said. "Go on up to the kennel, get out of the mosquitoes."

"Mosquitoes don't bother me none," the Deuce said, and he was telling the truth.

"They bother me. Go to the kennel."

They walked quickly, not shoulder to shoulder, but the Deuce trailing behind, so they moved single file, not talking. The dogs were mostly asleep, though one moaned at them as they walked past and up the stairs.

In the loft, the Deuce dropped onto a kitchen chair. "So talk."

"You saw the cops down there?"

"Yeah. I was sittin' up by the asparagus patch."

"That one guy, the state guy, Flowers, thinks you done it. Killed those people, and now this guy Windrow who was out here this afternoon. They can't find him anywhere, and they think he's dead."

"Didn't do it," the Deuce said.

"Listen, dummy. The cops don't care no more who did it," Slibe said. "They got one woman dead and one woman shot and one guy missing and all they want to do is arrest somebody so they can say it's over with. Flowers asked me where you were, and I told him you'd gone walkabout."

"Need some food, if I'm gonna walkabout," the Deuce said.

"I got food. Get it out of my cupboard. Get out of here."

"I dunno," the Deuce said.

"If you don't, they're gonna slap you in jail, bigger'n shit. I don't know when you'd be gettin' out."

"But I-"

"Listen to me. Didn't you hear what I said? They don't care. They just want to arrest somebody. The sheriff 's got to get himself re-elected. If they find somebody else, that's just fine-then they'll let you out. But if they don't, they'll try to hang it on you."

The Deuce put his head down, like he did when he was turning something over in his mind. After fifteen seconds or so, Slibe said, "I told them you were already gone. I believe if you stay out there for a while, they'll pick on somebody else."