"Why'd you marry him in the first place?" Virgil asked.
"He was good-looking, hard worker, available," she said.
"There are worse things in the world."
"Yeah, but he just didn't flip my switch," she said. She plucked a long grass stem and nibbled on the butt end. "I thought we'd grow into it, but we didn't."
"A lot of women think men are like raw lumber-something that you can build a house out of, with a lot of hard work," Virgil said. "But some guys, you know, they're going to do what they're going to do. Can't work with them. They're not good lumber."
"Is that what happened with your wives?"
"Oh…no. I just married them because they were hot and I was stupid. Actually, all of us were stupid. Didn't know what we were doing. Somebody had to work. Couldn't go dancing all the time…"
THEY WERE STILL talking about it, watching the birds, arguing about whether the thunderheads were coming in or would slide to the south, eating pizza…
And a slice of a woman's laughter slid over the hillside like a butterfly, fragile, attractive, and definitely there.
"Who's that?" Joan asked, sitting up.
Virgil shrugged. "I haven't seen anyone…"
"Somebody in the dell," Joan said. "Come on. Let's sneak up on them."
Virgil thought: Oh, no. Stryker. "Joan, maybe it'd be better, you know, let it go."
"Don't be retarded," she said. "C'mon. We're missing something."
"Joan, I think it might be Jim. And Jesse."
She looked at him for a moment, a wrinkle appearing between her eyes, then, amused, she said, "So what? Let's go, you sissy." And she was off across the hillside, using the scrub brush as cover, moving through the weeds in a crouch, a country-girl sneak. Instead of approaching the dell from the top, she led the way around to the north side, and then got down on her hands and knees as she crawled up to the edge of the bluff, where they could look down into the pool.
When Virgil eased up beside her, she whispered, "Oh, my. I never suspected Jim even knew about that."
Stryker and Jesse were on an air mattress on the same rock where Virgil and Joan had left their clothes and bags. Jesse was naked, on her back, her hands on Stryker's head, which was between her thighs. "That's disgusting," Virgil said. "They're like a couple of animals."
"Shhh, they'll hear you. Did you tell Jim about doing this? Or did he think it up on his own? I'd hate to think you were sharing our little secrets."
"Believe me, I'm not sharing our little secrets," Virgil said.
Joan said, "Whoops, here we go. Main event."
Stryker was moving over Jesse, stopped at her navel, her breasts. Joan pulled at Virgil's belt buckle. "Get your pants off, Virgil. Jeez, come on, hurry up."
"Joan, this is terrible…"
"C'mon…" She was slipping out of her jeans. "This is really good…"
What could a guy do, Virgil wondered, as he slid out of his jeans, but try to be polite?
ON THE WAY HOME, Joan said, "I've known Jim every day of my life-I've got a picture of him holding me, I'm all wrapped in a baby blanket, when I was a newborn. He's always been…guarded. Quiet. Reticent. One of those guys with muscles in his jaws. I couldn't even imagine him letting it out like that."
"He let it out," Virgil agreed. "He's also a smart guy, and sooner or later you could let it slip that we were up there. That could ruin something for them."
She considered that for a second, and then said, "I will never say another word about this to anybody. Including you."
"Are you planning to think about it? When you're in bed with somebody?"
"Think about what?" But he glanced at her a few seconds later, and caught her smiling. She said, "Shut up."
He said, "Incest. That's what it is. One of those Greek things."
VIRGIL HAD MOVED to the second floor of the motel, so he could sleep on the bed. He brought up his laptop and checked the National Weather Service radar out of Sioux Falls. The line of thunderstorms that he and Joan had seen brewing to the southwest was about to roll into Sioux Falls, slow moving at ten miles an hour or so; getting stronger.
No talk of tornadoes, but there was a severe thunderstorm alert for parts of northwest Iowa, southwest Minnesota, and southeastern South Dakota. Could be raining when they got to Feur's. Which might not be bad. Rain and wind would cover movement, and scent: Virgil wasn't worried so much about electronic sensors as dogs…
He hit the lights and climbed in bed, looking for two hours of sleep before he met Stryker. A lot going on. He hadn't fully digested the Feur-Judd involvement, and all its implications. He and Stryker had made some leaps in their assessment. Maybe they'd find out more tonight, and maybe the accountant would have more in the morning…
The killings could easily have been carried out by a crank freak. The shit stirred people's brains around. Take one of those grim, abused country kids you see from time to time, that thousand-yard stare, mix in some nutcake religion, a convict's point of view taken from the Corps, plus a little methamphetamine, and you could grow yourself a genuine monster.
But that photograph of the dead woman, that he'd taken from Schmidt's safe-deposit box…that came from way back, when Feur would have been a kid. What was that all about?
And then, of course, there was Joan's assessment of his, Virgil's, personality…a lot to think about.
AS HE WAS DRIFTING OFF to sleep, his alter ego, Homer, popped up in his mind:
The shooter humped over the hill, moving low through the weeds. A hundred yards down the slope, he could see Homer and Joan in the pool, naked as jaybirds, chasing each other around. He eased down behind a stump to look them over with the scope; variable power, two-to-eight, and he took a minute to crank it all the way up to eight. That narrowed his scope picture, but he could see their faces clearly enough.
He'd become aware that he wasn't quite in the right spot. If he'd come in from the side, if he'd hidden his car in that grove of trees down to the right…
Virgil's unconscious writer hesitated. Why hadn't the shooter parked down there, in that grove?
Then he was asleep.
14
THE ALARM KICKED him out of bed at 12:30. He sat up, yawning, jumped in the shower, brushed his teeth, dug a tab of Modafinil out of his dopp kit, popped it, dressed, and was out in his truck at five to one.
The streets were still dry, but the lightning was close, off to the west, and the moon passed in and out of ragged fingers of cloud.
He was at Stryker's by one o'clock, a cool breeze slipping down the streets, the leaves on the trees beginning to stir. He parked in the street, and saw Stryker moving behind a dark picture window at the front of his house. A moment later, his garage door started up. Virgil got the shotgun and his pistol, a bottle of water, two Snickers bars, a pocket flashlight, his rain suit, and a couple of Ziploc bags full of extra shells.
Stryker backed into the street and Virgil climbed into the passenger seat, and they were halfway up the street before Stryker turned on his headlights and asked, "You bring a rain suit?"
"Yup. You awake?"
"I'm fine." He flicked a finger at the lightning to the west. "Probably won't need the water bottles."
"Looked pretty interesting on the radar," Virgil said. "You know where we're going?"
"Right down to the foot. We'll be walking in from three-quarters of a mile out. Gonna be darker'n a bitch, but we'll be mostly on the road."
"Lightning will help," Virgil said.
"As long as we're not hit." They were clearing the town, the last few lights fading behind them as they took the road north toward the Stryker farm, then turned west toward Feur's. Coming in from the back.