Four sheriff's cars were parked by the burned-out basement, one deputy leaning on his car, talking on his radio, four more deputies standing in the high grass, north of the house, near the crest of the hill. Virgil and Stryker hopped out of the truck and Stryker raised a hand to the deputy at the car, and then they led Gomez and the other agent through the grass up the hill.
"Hell of a thing," Big Curly said, as they came up.
"What happened to him?"
"The crows were here…but it looks like something cracked his skull open. His brains…take a look."
Judd was on his back, wearing a suit and dress shoes. He didn't have sightless eyes staring at the sun, because he no longer had any eyes. Crows. The top of his head was misshapen. Not as though he were shot, but more as though his skull had been crushed. Flattened.
"Piece of rebar over here," one of the deputies said. "We're waiting for Margo to come up, but it's got blood on it, and some hair."
Virgil and Stryker went over and looked: a piece of rusty steel that might have been picked out of the burned house. "That would have done it."
No gunshot wounds. "We know one thing," Little Curly said. "It wasn't suicide."
GOMEZ ASKED, "What do you think? Feur?"
"We need a time of death, but I don't think so. It's my other guy," Virgil said.
Gomez grimaced, did a slow three-sixty, looking at the prairie lands stretched out around him forever, said, "Interesting little culture you got going here."
"Gotta be Feur," Stryker said. "Gleasons, Schmidts, the Judds-it's a Feur cleanup operation. They were gonna get out, they weren't gonna leave anything behind."
"I don't know," Virgil said.
Another deputy's car pulled in below them, and Margo Carr got out, took a gear bag out of the trunk, and trudged up the hill. "Another one," she said, heavily.
"Last one, but maybe one," Virgil said.
"What does that mean?" Stryker asked.
Virgil shrugged.
Down the hill, another truck pulled in, and Todd Williamson got out. The deputy at the truck put out a hand to him, but Williamson jogged straight past him, beat the deputy to the edge of the heavy grass, and pulled away, the deputy still yelling at him.
Big Curly blocked him: "You can't be here."
"Screw that," Williamson said. He poked a finger at Virgil. "If the genius here is right, I'm next of kin. So what happened to my brother?"
VIRGIL HEADED BACK to the motel, with one stop at the accountant's office. Olafson had just gotten up. She raised the shade on her office door, cocked an eyebrow at Virgil, and opened the door.
Virgil stepped inside and asked, "If something happened to Bill Judd Jr., would that change what happens with his father's estate?"
"Is he dead?" she asked.
"Pretty much," Virgil said. He told her about it, and she shook her head and said, "May the Good Lord keep him."
"Estate?"
Olafson made a noise, then said, "I'd have to look up the law, and you might even have to get a special ruling. But you know what? I think it's possible that Jesse Laymon and Todd Williamson, if they can prove a blood connection to Senior, could stand to get a bigger piece of the estate."
The argument would be complicated, she said, and hung on what the IRS would do about Junior's debt, how it would be counted against the estate. "And with this nut cake running around killing everybody, I'm not sure I'd hang around to make the argument."
Virgil thanked her, and continued on to the hotel. Shut down his cell phone, took off his boots, put the chain on the door, stretched out on the bed. There'd been a thread running through this thing, he thought, right up to the firefight at Feur's place. If he could only find one end of it, and pull it…
21
VIRGIL ROLLED OFF THE BED, looked at the clock-he'd been down an hour-brushed his teeth, and stood in the shower. At the end of a case, when the facts were piling up, a nap often worked to clarify his thoughts: instead of being scattered around like crumbs, they tended to clump together.
ABOUT FEUR: Jim Stryker was at least partly correct. When Virgil thought about it, it seemed unlikely that a town the size of Bluestem would be home to two, separate but simultaneous, very large crimes. Yet Feur had denied the connection, even when it wouldn't make any difference to him. Could he have been protecting someone? Seemed unlikely-seemed unlikely that in Bluestem he could have an unknown relationship so close that he would die protecting it; that he would swear on a Bible.
ABOUT THE OTHER SUSPECTS: Stryker, now, or some other cop-the Curlys, or the Merrill guy, or even Jensen or Carr-or one of the Laymons, or Williamson. Did he, Virgil, have a perceptual problem? Did he come to town and view certain people as suspects because those were the only people he saw, or spoke to, or heard about? He'd gotten all over Williamson. Had he been conditioned to do that, because Joan had mentioned Williamson's name the first time he met her? He thought about it and decided: No. That might have been the case, except for the Revelation…
The book of Revelation at the Gleasons', the cigarette butt at the Schmidts', the anonymous note, and the corporate evidence on Judd's secretary's computer, all had pointed him at Feur, or Judd and Feur together. He was being pushed by somebody.
A PASSING THOUGHT: Bill Judd's secretary. Who was she? The evidence for the Judd-Feur connection came right out of her computer. He'd heard her name, but didn't remember it…
MORE IDEAS: Could he clear anyone? If he could clear Stryker or Williamson, or the Curlys, the Laymons, or the Judds, then he'd know something. Other suspects would come into sharper focus. Was Joan a suspect? She'd gotten close to him by noon on his first day in town. How about Jesse Laymon, or her mother, Margaret? How long had they really been waiting for Judd to die?
ALSO: In one way or another, the killer of the Gleasons and the Schmidts, and probably the Judds, had been in Jesse Laymon's closet. Stryker had been there, he thought. Who else? Technically, her mother, but her mother wouldn't be framing Jesse…at least, not for any reason that Virgil knew of. There was the additional problem that the Laymons' house could be entered by any teenager with a stick…
HUH.
VIRGIL GOT his gun, clipped it under his jacket, put on his straw hat, and called Stryker.
"When we were in Judd's office, looking at the secretary's computer…What was her name again?"
"Amy Sweet. You think we ought to talk to her?"
"No need to bother you. I might stop by and have a chat," Virgil said. "Sort of at loose ends, is what I am. Can't get over Junior getting hit like that."
"Yeah. Still think it was Feur…You still think it wasn't?"
"I've moved a few inches in your direction," Virgil said. "But keep your ass down anyway."
A MY SWEET WAS another middle-aged woman, who might have been a rocker at one time, too heavy now, round-shouldered, wrapped in a housecoat with pink curlers in her hair. "I'd be happy to talk to you," she said at the door of her small home, "but I've got to be in Sioux Falls for a job interview at one o'clock."
"Take a couple of minutes," Virgil said.
"What was all the excitement a while ago?" She pushed her face toward him, squinting, nearsighted.
"Uh, there's been another murder."
"Oh, noooo…" She stepped across the room, fumbled around on a TV tray, found steel-rimmed glasses, and put them on. "Who?"
"Bill Judd Jr."
"Oh, noooo." Round, Swedish oooo's.
"Miz Sweet, when we were going through Judd Sr.'s office, we found some invoices on your computer, for chemicals that were apparently used in an ethanol plant out in South Dakota…"
"I heard about it on TV. That was the same one? The one where they were making drugs?"
"Yes, it was," Virgil said.
"Oh, nooo."
The sound was driving him crazy; she sounded like a bad comedian. "Who in town knew about the ethanol plant?"