'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?'
ALMOST STOPPED HIS HEART.
He put the Coke down and headed back down the hall; saw her damp face and hair at the end of it, and then she pulled back inside the bathroom. And by the time he'd gotten to the bathroom, she was back inside the shower.
He opened the shower door, and there she was, her back to him, as well as the third-greatest-he gave her an instant promotion-ass in Minnesota, and maybe on the entire Great Plains. 'Oh, my God,' he said.
'Just the back.'
'Just the back, my sweet…'
'Just the back,' she said. 'You offered, I'm accepting.'
'If you…'
'Don't you get in this shower, Virgil Flowers,' she said. 'You'll get all wet and we have to be at my mom's in fifteen minutes and she'll know that we've been up here fooling around.'
'Gimme the soap and back up,' he said.
He washed her water-slick back, and the third-greatest ass, and then, squatting, her legs, one at a time, working upward, and by the time he was getting done, she was hanging on to the faucet handles, and when he was done, he snatched her out of the shower and turned her around and kissed her and said, 'Fuck your mama.'
'Not my mama,' she said. 'Not my mama.'
THEY WERE twenty minutes late getting to Laura Stryker's, driving over with all the truck windows down. Joan wanted to get the smell of sex off them, she said.
'Not as late as I might have hoped,' Joan said.
'You weren't complaining twelve minutes ago,' Virgil said, 'unless that was your way of screaming for help.'
'Don't be too proud of yourself,' she said. 'I'd been waiting for a long time. Bill Judd Junior could have gotten to me after all that time.'
Virgil leaned close to her: 'The fact of the matter is, you've gotten hold of something far beyond your simple country experience.'
That made her laugh, and she pushed him away and said, 'Next time, though, we're going for the slow hand.'
WHEN THEY GOT out of the truck, Joan said, 'Stay here, but leave the doors open. Mom might smell something if we don't air it out a little more.'
'Jesus, Joanie, you're an adult…'
'It's my mom.'
So he left the doors open and the engine running, and stood out in the sunlight and worked up a little sweat while Joan collected Laura. In two or three minutes they were on the front porch, Laura carefully locking the door behind her.
Laura was a handsome woman for her age, slender as her daughter, with carefully cut and tinted hair. If you were checking out mothers to see what a daughter would look like in twenty-five years, you would have taken the daughter. She got into the backseat, said, 'Pleased to meet you, Virgil,' and Joan hopped into the front passenger seat and said, 'That's the first time I ever saw you lock the front door.'
'Everybody's locking doors now. If Janet came over after dark, and knocked, I might hide out and not answer, not until this killer's caught,' she said.
Joan to Virgil: 'Janet's her best friend,' and to Laura: 'I don't think you have to worry about Janet.'
'The word is, the murdered people probably knew the killer. What do you think, Virgil?'
Virgil nodded. 'I think that's right.'
THEY RAN DOWN to I-90, and up the ramp, heading west, and talked over the murders. Virgil filled them in on the Roman Schmidt killing, the killer's tendency toward display.
'So what are they looking at?' Laura asked. 'They must be looking at something.'
'Gleason was looking at his backyard and up the hill, Schmidt was looking straight down his driveway at the road. Nothing in particular,' Virgil said.
A minute later, Laura asked, 'What direction were they facing? If he was facing down his driveway, Roman was facing east, and if Russell was looking up the hill, he was facing east. Would that be right?'
Virgil thought for a moment, orienting himself, and then said, 'Yeah, that's right.'
'They were killed at night-so maybe toward the sunrise,' Laura said.
Joan asked, 'But what would that tell you? That you're dealing with a religious nut?'
'That Feur person,' Laura said. 'Jesus was resurrected at sunrise. Maybe that has something to do with it. And in the Bible, east is the most important direction.'
Virgil said, 'Huh. Well, Judd was burned to death. What does that mean? Hellfire?'
'We're talking about a crazy person,' Joan said. 'I don't think you're gonna figure out anything from that kind of stuff. He's doing it because he's crazy.'
'Interesting to talk about, though,' Laura said.
They talked about the Laymons. The story was all over town five minutes after the first person picked up a newspaper. 'Margaret Laymon. I didn't know it was Bill that did it, but it doesn't surprise me,' Laura said. 'Margaret was a hell-raiser when she was young. Somebody was going to do it, sooner or later.'
'They didn't have the pill yet?'
'Yes, but…I don't know. Maybe she wanted to have a baby, and wanted Bill to be the daddy. Women get strange, sometimes.'
'You being one, I'll take your word for it,' Virgil said. 'I hadn't noticed, myself.'
