Johnstone lived near the Gleasons' house. Sneaking was easy with the Gleasons, but now, in the changed atmosphere, it might not be so easy. Anybody caught sneaking anywhere in Bluestem would be put under a microscope. And if Moonie were put under a microscope, there wouldn't be a single person in town who could provide an alibi, who would say, 'Yup, we were out together looking at the fire,' or whatever.
If you didn't have an alibi, they'd pick you apart.
Schmidt would be easier in some ways, harder in others. He lived outside of town, for one thing. Make sure the Schmidts were home, pull into the yard, past the yard light, park by the kitchen garden. Take Roman out, then the wife; she was old and slow.
But Roman carried a gun and he was tough, even at his age, and he had to be killed quickly, without suspecting what was coming.
Though it'd be nice to chat with him for a few minutes, when he knew he was dying, when he knew his wife was already dead, to see the hate in his fading eyes.
And then…
IF HE HIT SCHMIDT, then Johnstone, who was already a tough target, would get tougher. Everybody would be on edge. But Johnstone had to go; there were only two weeks left before the moon rolled around again.
THEN IT'D BE possible, bearable, after Johnstone and Schmidt, to lie low for a while, and do the business killings, one at a time…even let some time pass. Maybe come up with something complicated, so they'd seem like accidental deaths.
When all the necessary killings were done, would it be possible to stop? Maybe not: but if it were necessary to feed the hunger, purely for recreational reasons and psychological comfort, that could be done in other places, as time allowed. Minneapolis, Des Moines, Omaha. Kill and go…
HHU.
THE MARIJUANA wasn't helping the thought process, though it was a wonderful thing in its own right: mellowed out the experience, gave life to the stars.
Had to focus. Tactics. Strategy.
Blew a little smoke into the sky and watched the Big Dipper rolling by, watched the lightning bugs blinking out their passions, and Moonie thought, and thought, and finally plucked a flower out of the overgrown jumble of the backyard, and in the shaft of light that came out the bedroom window onto the lawn, plucked the petals one by one, letting God decide.
Johnstone, Flowers, Roman; Johnstone, Flowers, Roman…
The flower had quite a few petals, but offered only one conclusion.
ROMAN SCHMIDT was sound asleep when the car pulled into the driveway, and that popped his eyes open. He was far enough out of town that, late at night, several times a year, somebody would use his driveway to turn around, and go back toward town.
The car headlights would sweep through the house, cutting across the bedroom shades, and that would pop him awake. When he was sheriff, lights like that usually meant somebody bringing bad news, and he'd never gotten over that instantly awake reaction.
But now he was an old man, and sleep didn't come that easy anymore. He treasured what he could get, and it pissed him off when he was unnecessarily poked out of a decent sleep.
Unlike most of the cars that did it, this one didn't turn around. It kept coming, and quickly, and he could tell by the crunch of tires on gravel that it had pulled into the parking place back by the kitchen door. He reached out, touched his clock: 1:30 in the morning.
Who in the hell?
His wife groaned and he said, 'I'll go see,' but she didn't say anything and he suspected she'd never really awakened. He reached into the bottom drawer of his bedside table, groped around, found the.357, held it next to his leg, and walked through the dark out to the back door in his shorts and T-shirt.
Knock at the door. Bad news. Bad news always knocks quietly. He thought of his son in Minneapolis, his daughters in Albert Lea and Santa Fe. God help him, he'd die of a heart attack if he looked out the window and saw a deputy standing there, looking grim. He'd die of a fuckin' heart attack…
Another knock. He snapped on the porch light, took in the familiar face, felt the fluttering of his heart, opened the door and asked, the anxiety riding right to the surface, 'What happened?'
'This,' said Moonie. The gun came up. Schmidt said, 'No,' and Moonie shot him in the heart.
GLORIA SCHMIDT screamed, 'Rome! Rome!' and groped for the bedside light, and found it just in time to see the muzzle of the gun and the face behind it.
'Not you,' she said.
Moonie shot her once in the forehead, and she flopped back on the bed, stone dead.
SCHMIDT WAS FLAT on his back, dead, but he'd still have eyes in the spirit world. Moonie closed the kitchen door to muffle the sound as much as possible, leaned sideways and fired two more shots, through Schmidt's half- open eyes, then opened the kitchen door again, and listened.
Crickets and frogs.
Nothing more. There was time to do this right.
9
VIRGIL LOVED the early-morning hours in the high summer, when there was a cold cut to the morning air, but you could feel the heat coming over the horizon. The perfect time to fish. The perfect time to do anything out-of- doors.
He was up a couple of minutes after five-thirty, peeked out through the curtains across the parking lot, saw the orange upper limb of the sun coming over the horizon. Blue sky. Not a cloud in sight. Excellent.
He sat down, knocked off fifty sit-ups, did fifty push-ups, pulled on a T-shirt and shorts, gym shoes, and headed for the door. Sometimes, in Mankato, he'd plug in an iPod and run to old classic rock, like Aerosmith. The trouble to running with music was, he couldn't think while he was listening to it. Sometimes, that was okay. This morning, he needed to think.
Had things to do, places to go, plans to execute.
Get back to Sioux Falls and see Betsy Carlson at the nursing home. Take along Laura Stryker, Joan's mother, if she'd go…do a sneaky interrogation of the elder Stryker, see what she knew about Judd and his love life. See if she'd talk about her husband's suicide, and the effect it might have had on Jim and Joan.
And that made him feel a little bad, but he was a cop, so not too bad.
HE RAN UP through town, and back and forth along residential streets, until his watch told him it was 6:15, and that he'd run five miles, more or less. He turned back toward the motel, picked up the pace for the last two blocks, and got to the lobby sweating hard.
He had a further list: historical research at the paper; look up the fat woman that Michelle Garber, the drinking schoolteacher, said had been in bed with Judd. Plot some kind of excuse, as rotten and underhanded as it might be, to get Joan back to the family farm, and up in that hayloft. To that end, steal the extra blanket in the Holiday Inn closet, and hope it got all stuck up with hay.
Garber had mentioned the postmaster who'd shared a bed with Judd and the girls, and had made a point: nobody could really come in from the outside and do this. A persistent stranger would be noticed; even a car seen too often. And a man coming back after years away-or a woman coming back, for that matter-would be noticed instantly, and remembered, and commented upon. He might be missing something, but he believed that he was standing within a half mile of the killer…
The shower was perfect. Even the breakfast was good. Might have been the start of a perfect day, if his cell phone hadn't rung at 6:45, with two syrup-drenched link sausages still on the plate.
STRYKER, BREATHING HARD: 'Ah, Jesus Christ, Virgil, we got another one. Two.'
