Judd was characterized as "distraught."
That was not quite the story he'd gotten from Margaret Laymon, who remembered it as a heart attack, but it was close enough.
HE READ FORWARD in the Judd files, but after Linda Judd's death, it appeared to be mostly business news, and then the Jerusalem artichoke scandal.
He went back, looking through the huge collection of clips on Roman Schmidt, who had even more than Judd Sr., and found a few intersections with Russell Gleason. Gleason was occasionally cited as the coroner, apparently alternating with Thomas McNally. That hadn't been uncommon in country towns, Virgil knew, where local doctors took turns doing an unpaid extra duty.
Roman Schmidt and Gleason were cited together in fifteen or twenty highway accidents, an accidental gunshot death during deer season, a man who was killed by a deer, old people found dead at home, several drownings and infant deaths, one "miracle baby," a kid who'd stuck his arm in a corn picker and had bled to death, and several more gruesome farm accidents, including a man who'd been cut in half by an in-gear tractor tire, after the tractor rolled on him.
But Virgil couldn't find Judd's name in any of them.
The Laymon files he'd already seen, but there was nothing to indicate that Margaret Laymon had had a romance with Judd. Garber, the alcoholic schoolteacher, had no file at all; to his surprise, neither did Betsy Carlson, Judd's sister-in-law. Shouldn't there be a story at the time of the sister-in-law's death, since she was the witness? Or maybe, like Williamson had said, they only filed the most important names, and she just wasn't important enough. Have to ask, but it seemed strange.
The Stryker files were large: Mark Stryker's suicide was covered extensively, but most of the story detailed the family history before Mark. Laura Stryker was mentioned as working as an office manager at State Farm. Virgil checked files under "State Farm Insurance," and found that the local agency was owned by Bill Judd Sr.
Huh. Nobody had mentioned that. No way to tell from the clips when she began working there, or when she left…
THE ROOM WAS close and warm, and after a while, Virgil leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes. Let Homer out: worked on a little fiction.
Laura Stryker rolled away from Bill Judd, both covered with a sheen of sweat, gasping from the sex, and dropped her feet to the floor. No doubt about it: she was missing life with Mark. Nice guy, but not what she needed. "I'm going to tell him," she said, pulling up her underpants.
"Aw, don't do that. You know that we're not long for this. We're just fooling around, honey."
"Doesn't necessarily have everything to do with you, Bill. Has to do with me: and I'm telling him…"
Try again.
Mark Stryker, trembling with anger, rigid there in the kitchen, shaking: "I won't put up with it. I put up with shit all of my life, and I won't put up with this. I'll tell the kids, I'll tell your folks, I'll talk to anybody who'll listen. You're not leaving me, you're leaving Bluestem. You won't be able to walk down the street…"
"I wanted to be civilized…"
"Civilized, kiss my ass," Mark Stryker said, his voice rising, shrill. "This is the last time you'll ever see the kids. I'm not letting some whore come around to the farm…"
He turned and went outside, shouted back at her, "I knew what you were doing, whore. I knew…"
Laura, the anger rising in her, with the fear, hadn't thought about the kids; Mark was outside, looking up at the screen over the sink, still there, shouting. The gun was there, in the kitchen drawer, behind the towels, the clip in the next drawer, took only a second to slam the clip into the butt, jack a round into the chamber…the gun right there in her hand, hot, Mark in the yard…
"I killed him…I'm freaking out here, I killed him in the yard."
"Jesus Christ, Laura…"
"You fix this." Not weeping, but out of control. "You tell them it's suicide. I'm not going to lose the kids…"
"Jesus Christ, Laura…"
"You call Russ Gleason…you tell him…I know about his little abortion mill. You tell him that Mark committed suicide…"
Virgil yawned and opened his eyes. Fiction. But a story was going there, beginning to feel like something-at least he was pulling the dead people together.
And then he thought, what if this wasn't about the men? What if it was about the wives? What if Gloria Schmidt and Anna Gleason had been in bed with Judd, and now somebody was killing them, and the shooting of their husbands, through the eyes, was symbolic of some kind of blindness, or a looking-away…
What if Laura Stryker wasn't the perpetrator, but was the next target?
HE SAT in the morgue for two hours, altogether, typing notes into his laptop, thinking. Every few minutes, the outer door would rattle, he'd hear change go into the coin box, and the door would close again. Once, there'd been no change, and he'd been tempted to peek and see who it was, stealing a newspaper; but he stayed with the clips.
When he was finished, he knew a lot more than when he'd started, but nothing that seemed to connect with the murders. Everybody in town may have known that Judd was sleeping with local women, and sometimes in a pile of them, but it never got into the newspaper.
He took ten minutes to get the clips back in their envelopes, close down his computer. He walked back through the newspaper office, picked up the note on the floor, taped it back on the window, and went to his truck.
Laura Stryker.
HE CALLED JOAN: "Did you hear about Roman Schmidt?"
"I did." Her voice was hushed. "Virgil, this is god-awful. Completely aside from the fact that Jim is going to lose his job-it's god-awful all on its own."
"Well, if we catch the guy, Jim could still pull out of it," Virgil said.
"Gotta be soon," she said. "Do you have any ideas?"
"We were talking about going to Sioux Falls with your mom. Think I could take her right now?"
"I'll call her. Do you want me to come?"
He hesitated, then: "If you want."
"I'll call her. I'll get back to you in two minutes."
LAURA WAS happy to go. Virgil drove to Joan's house, rang the doorbell, and she waved him inside: "I just got here, I was out at the farm," she said. "I have to change into something that doesn't smell like dirt. Maybe take a really fast shower. I told Mom we'd be there in twenty minutes."
"Happy to wash your back," Virgil said.
"I need that," she said. "There's always that one spot right in the middle, it's been dirty for eight years now."
"What happened eight years ago?"
"That was the year before I got married," she said.
SHE WENT OFF down the hall to the back bedroom, yelled, "There's Coke in the refrigerator, there's instant coffee, you could make it in the microwave." He stirred around in the kitchen, looking it over, checking the refrigerator. She wasn't a foodie, that was for sure. She had about three knives, and most of the stuff in the refrigerator looked like it had been there for weeks.
A door in back closed: the bathroom? He got a Coke, went into the living room. An open door led into what might have been a small dining room, or television room, now converted to an office, with a desk, computer, and file cabinets. He saw a wall of family photos, stepped into the room and looked at them: found the same thin man in plaid pants in two of them, thought it might be her father.
But she and Jim must take after Laura, because Mark Stryker really was a slight figure, except that he had the same white-blond hair of his son and daughter…
Slid open a drawer in a file cabinet, listening for her, for a footstep, looked at some tabs-business and taxes-and pushed it shut.
Just being snoopy now, he thought. No good could come of it. He eased back into the living room, heard a door open: "Hey. Are you going to wash my back, or what?"