She turned her face to one side and put a hand to her lips. "Well, the Judds, of course."
"Both of them?" Virgil asked.
"Well…Junior set it up, but Senior knew about it."
He pressed. "Are you sure about that?"
"Well, yes. He signed the checks."
"Did you see him signing the checks?" Virgil asked.
"No, but I saw the checks. It was his signature…"
"Do you remember the bank?"
She shook her head. "No, no, I don't." She frowned. "I'm not even sure that the bank name was on the checks."
"Did you ever talk to Junior about that?"
"No. It wasn't my business," she said. "They wanted to keep it quiet, because, you know, when ethanol started, it sounded a little like the Jerusalem artichoke thing. The Judds were involved in that, of course."
"So how quiet did they keep it?" Virgil asked. "Who else knew? Did you tell anybody?"
He saw it coming, the noooo. "Oh, noooo…Junior told me, don't talk about this, because of my father. So, I didn't."
"Not to anybody?"
Her eyes drifted. She was thinking, which meant that she had. "It's possible…my sister, I might have told. I think there might have been some word around town."
"It's really important that you remember…"
She put her hand to her temple, as though she were going to move a paper clip with telekinesis, and said, "I might have mentioned it at bridge. At our bridge club. That a plant was being built, and some local people were involved."
"All right," Virgil said. "So who was at the bridge club?"
"Well, let me see, there would have been nine or ten of us…"
She listed them; he only recognized one of the names.
WHEN HE WAS DONE with Sweet, he strolled up the hill to the newspaper office. He pushed in, and found Williamson behind the business counter, talking to a woman customer. Williamson looked past the woman and snapped, "What do you want?"
"I have a question, when you're free."
"Wait." Williamson was wearing a T-shirt and had sweat stains under his arms, as though he'd been lifting rocks. "Take just a minute."
The customer was trying to dump her Beanie Baby collection locally-ten years too late, in Virgil's opinion-and wanted the cheapest possible advertisement. She got twenty words for six dollars, looking back and forth between Virgil and Williamson, and after writing a check for the amount, said to Virgil, "I'd love to hear your question."
Virgil looked at her over his sunglasses and grinned: "I'd love to have you, but I'm afraid it's gotta be private, for the moment."
"Shoot." She looked at Williamson, who shrugged, and she said, "Oh, well."
WHEN SHE'D GONE out the door, Williamson said, "I'm working. You can ask me out back."
"You still pissed about the search?"
"Goddamn right. Wouldn't you be?"
Virgil followed him through the shop. Williamson's van was parked in the dirt space behind it, the side doors open. Williamson had been piling bundles of unsold newspapers in the van, and there were still twenty or thirty wrapped bundles inside the shop. Williamson propped the door open, picked up two bundles by the plastic straps, carried them to the van, and asked over his shoulder, "What?"
Virgil grabbed a couple of bundles, carried them out and threw them in the van. "When did you last see Junior?"
"About an hour and a half ago."
"Alive." They were shuttling back and forth with the bundles.
Williamson stopped and cocked his head. "Day before yesterday…let's see. Down at Johnnie's, at lunch."
"Did you hear him next door? Yesterday?" Virgil asked, heaving two more bundles into the van.
"No. He wasn't there. I stopped, I wanted to ask him where I should send the money we've got coming in. His office was locked."
"What time was that?"
"First time, about nine o'clock. Right after I got here. Then, when the shooting started out at Feur's-I heard about it from a cop, and I took off, headed down there, to Feur's, but the cops had all the roads blocked. Before I took off, I ran next door, I was going to tell Bill about it."
"Why?"
Williamson shrugged. "I don't know. Big news. Maybe something to do with his old man."
"All right," Virgil said. He threw two more bundles in the van, leaving three in the shop. "So he wasn't here all day yesterday, and wasn't here last night?"
"Nope. And I was here late."
Virgil nodded. If Judd had disappeared some hours before the fight at Feur's, that meant that both Stryker and Feur, or one of Feur's men, could have killed him.
THEN WILLIAMSON STACKED the three remaining bundles, one on top of the other, and stooped to pick them up. As he did it, his T-shirt sleeve hiked up, exposing a tattoo of a crescent moon. The moon with a slash for an eye, and a pointed nose: a man in the moon. The tattoo was rough, with bleeding edges, dark ink from a ballpoint pen.
Virgil blinked. Another man in the moon.
Sonofabitch.
HE LEFT WILLIAMSON with the van, walked back to his truck, got on the phone to Joan: "What're you doing?" he asked.
"Headed over to Worthington to do some federal bureaucratic bullshit about crop insurance. What about you?"
"I'm headed up to the Cities," Virgil said. "Could be overnight…"
"I'd love to come," she said, "but this appointment in Worthington is not optional, if I want to stay in business. I've got everything in quintuplicate, and they want it today."
"Okay. See you tomorrow, then."
She laughed at the tone: "I'll brace myself."
HE CALLED the Laymons, but nobody answered. Called Stryker, and asked if he had Jesse's cell phone. He got the number and said to Stryker, "I'm running up to the Cities. Back tomorrow."
"Anything good?"
"Just some federal bureaucratic bullshit. How's the election looking?"
"Folks are smiling at me," Stryker said. "I'm golden for at least a week; and as long as you're wrong about Feur. If somebody else gets killed, now that Feur's gone, I'm back in the toilet."
VIRGIL CALLED JESSE. She answered after a couple of rings: "Virgil…"
"Jesse: listen. I'm going to the Cities. It's really important that you and your mom get someplace safe. Don't get alone with any third person, no matter whether you know him or not. Maybe go over to Worthington or Sioux Falls, check into a motel. Just overnight-I should be back tomorrow."
"You think somebody's looking for us?" she asked.
"It's possible. I don't want to take any chances. Get yourself under cover until tomorrow."
"Mom's at work," she said.
"Pick her up," Virgil said. "Keep her away from the house."
"I was planning to go out tonight…"
"Jesse, just for the heck of it…let's say you should stay away from Jim Stryker, too."
"Jim?"
"Just for the heck of it. Until I get back."
HE SWUNG BY the motel, picked up a bag, headed out on the highway. As soon as he was clear of town, he turned on the flashers and dropped the hammer. Got settled online, and called Davenport. He wasn't in the office, but he got him on the cell phone. "Can I borrow Sandy or Jenkins or Shrake for a few hours?"
"Jenkins and Shrake are picking a guy up," Davenport said. "Sandy's working on something, but if it's important…"
"I'm cracking this thing," Virgil said. "I need some names and some record checks."
"She'll call you back."
VIRGIL REMEMBERED Joan's mother, Laura, talking about grandmothers-about how she wanted to be one, about how she wanted to watch her grandchildren grow up, about how she had time to see great-grandchildren.
Laura Stryker wasn't that old-a baby boomer, in fact. A rock 'n' roller. The same age as Williamson's mother. Williamson's mother might have been dead, but it was possible that his natural grandparents were still alive. And grandparents do take an interest; normal ones, anyway.
So there might be, Virgil thought, somebody in the Cities who'd taken a lifelong interest in Todd Williamson…
HAD TO BE Williamson, Virgil thought.
Judd Sr.'s sister-in-law, Betsy Carlson, in wandering in and out of rationality, had mentioned the man in the moon. Virgil had connected that to the man-on-the-moon party at Judd's, but Betsy had been right: she said she'd seen the man in the moon. She'd talked to Williamson at some point, had seen Judd within him, and had seen the tattoo, which brought everything back.