He had the crime-scene guy bag the marijuana, then sat on the bed and looked at the photos. In one, the woman leaned on the front of a seventies or eighties Chevy with a much younger Slibe. They were in the driveway, with the road behind them. No garden, just an empty space. Wendy and the Deuce's mother?

Virgil took them to the end window, for the better light: she was a square-built dishwater blonde, busty, like Wendy, attractive in a country way. Slibe was blond. Virgil had noticed that he was blond ish, behind the bald dome, but his hair was cut so short that it hadn't registered. In this old photo, blond hair covered his ears, as long as Virgil's was. Really blond. Rocker blond…

THE CRIME-SCENE GUY SAID, "Might have something here."

Virgil turned and saw him sitting on the floor next to the hamper, looking at a pair of denim coveralls, looking at the end of one sleeve.

"What?"

"Can't swear to it, but it looks like blood. Significant blood."

"Wouldn't he have seen it?" Virgil asked. He went over and peered at the stain, which was about the size of a half-dollar. The stain didn't appear to soak through; it was superficial.

"He picked it up from the outside, so it's probably not his." The guy held up the coveralls, and the sleeves fell to the side. "See, it's on the bottom of the sleeve… you know, like when you stick your sleeve in jelly, or something."

"Get it back to the lab, right now," Virgil said. This was something. This was good. "We'll eventually need DNA, but what I really need is to get a blood type, like, this afternoon. Gotta try to get Windrow's blood type. Like now…"

"Let's show it to Ron first. He knows blood."

THE CRIME-SCENE GUY bagged the coveralls and they carried them down the stairs and back to the house. Sanders saw them coming, asked, "What?" and Virgil said, "We might have some blood."

Mapes came out to take a look, said, "It's blood," and the word blood stuttered through the group of deputies.

Virgil got Sanders to send the coveralls to Bemidji with one of the deputies, and Virgil told the deputy, "Don't kill anybody, but use your lights and get your ass up there, quick as you can. They'll be expecting you."

"Abso-fucking-lutely," the deputy said.

Virgil called Bemidji on Slibe's landline phone, and told them what he needed, then called Sandy, the researcher, who was still a little stiff, but agreed to find out what Windrow's blood type was.

Wendy came over, attracted by the buzz. "What?" she asked.

Virgil: "Where's your brother?"

22

TWO PEOPLE ARRIVED in the next ten minutes. The first came slouching through the police lines, a redheaded man wearing a rumpled black sport coat over jeans and long sharp-toed black city shoes that he called Jersey Pointers. He and his girlfriend had taught Virgil how to jitterbug-Ruffe Ignace, a reporter for the recently bankrupt Minneapolis Star Tribune.

Virgil waited arms akimbo, and Ignace came up, grinning like the Cheshire Cat, and said, "That fuckin' Flowers. When I saw your happy face, I went ahead and told the cops that I was here to consult with you."

"I oughta throw your ass out," Virgil said.

"That's right. I'm trying to save a bankrupt newspaper and you're piling on," Ignace said. "Thanks a lot, old pal. Forget everything you owe me."

"How you been?" Virgil asked.

"Tired of driving a hundred and fifty miles at the crack of dawn because some asshole twenty-three-year-old editor thinks I should," Ignace said. "I'm writing a crime novel."

"You and every other reporter in the state," Virgil said.

"Ah, they're writing screenplays. I'm writing a novel. I even got an agent." Ignace looked around, at the cops coming and going. "Catch anybody?"

"Just got a break. We're looking at a kid named Slibe Ashbach Junior, also known as the Deuce, son of Slibe Ashbach Senior, who runs this septic construction company, and brother to Wendy Ashbach, a singer in a local country band. We found some blood: it's on its way to Bemidji."

Ignace asked, "Blood from McDill?"

"No. She was killed at long range… This was from yet another guy. We think there may be three connected murders and one non-fatal shooting…" He took a minute to explain; he'd learned that Ignace had an eidetic memory for conversation, and would be able to write it all down later. The memory, Ignace had told him, was good for two or three hours before starting to fade. "Listen, I'm gonna have to introduce you to the sheriff. I don't know if he'll want you in here. Be nice, okay? We're also looking for the father, Slibe Senior. I'm gonna hang around here until he shows up, or until somebody says they've got him in town."

A truck came firing down the road, throwing up a cloud of dust. "Hell, here he comes now."

"But the son is the suspect?"

"Right now. The father was when we came in. Watch this… if the sheriff doesn't kick you out."

The cop at the end of the driveway had stopped Ashbach, and Virgil led Ignace over to Sanders and said, "Bob, I want to introduce you to Ruffe Ignace, he's a crime reporter from the Star Tribune. I let him in, but told him that it'd be your call to let him stay or go."

Sanders nodded at Ignace, didn't offer to shake hands: "If the local paper shows up, I'll have to kick you out, because I'm not letting those guys in. Otherwise, stand around with your hands in your pockets, and I don't care."

"Thanks, Sheriff. I appreciate it," Ignace said. "I'll stay back."

SLIBE'S TRUCK CAME rolling past the cop and into a slot along the garden fence, where it stopped, and Slibe got out, saw Virgil and the sheriff, and headed over, pushing an attitude. A couple of the deputies picked it up and vectored on him, but he slowed down as he came up, and shouted past a deputy, "What the hell is going on here? You're bustin' up my house?"

"We're searching it," Virgil said. "And Wendy's and your son's. Where's the Deuce? You find him?"

"I don't keep track of him," Slibe said. He looked wildly around, and said to Sanders, with a pleading note in his voice, "Don't fuck with my dogs, Sheriff. Don't fuck with my dogs."

Virgil said, "Come over to the house and sit down. I got a question for you."

The sheriff said, "Just to be on the up-and-up, we oughta read him his rights."

ONE OF THE DEPUTIES did that, and Slibe said to Virgil, "I don't want no fuckin' lawyer. And I don't want to be sittin' in my own house with you. Ask what you're gonna ask."

Virgil said, "You've got a Visa card. Let me see it."

Slibe looked at him for a second, then took his wallet out of his back pocket, thumbed through the card slots, found a Visa card, and handed it over. Virgil took the notebook out of his back pocket, looked at it: different number.

"How long you had this card?" Virgil asked.

"Thirty years? I don't know," Slibe said.

"Does the Deuce have one?"

"He don't," Slibe said. "He don't have a bank account. Wendy does."

"I've got a different card number for a Slibe Ashbach."

"But…" His eyes slid away, then came back and he said, "I got a business card. We keep it in the house, you know, for deliveries and such."

Virgil said, "Let's get it."

Slibe had a neat home office in a second bedroom at the back of the house, with a wooden desk. He pulled the left-hand desk drawer completely out, reached inside the drawer slot, and fumbled out four credit cards-a Visa, a Visa check card, a Target, and a Sears. Virgil checked the Visa number, and it matched.

He held it up. "On the morning of the day that Constance Lifry was killed in Swanson, Iowa, this card was used to charge gas in Clear Lake, Iowa, which is three hundred miles south of here. Early the next morning, it was used to charge gas at the same station, which means the driver probably put three hundred miles on his truck between those two gas-ups. Swanson is about a three-hundred-mile round-trip. The next charge was back here."