The fire trucks went out there with their sirens screaming, where was Williamson?'
Stryker said, 'I don't know. Maybe…running away from it?'
Virgil nodded: 'He's the guy. Bet you a dollar.'
THEY WERE TALKING to the judge about a search warrant when Sandy called again: 'Lucas screamed at a man at CPS and they won't cough the file without a court order, but the guy confirmed off the record that the kid was Baby Boy Lane.'
'I will kiss you on the lips next time I'm up there,' Virgil said.
'I'll look forward to it,' she said, primly.
THE JUDGE SUGGESTED that there was little evidence to support a search warrant.
Stryker said, 'Randy, goddamnit, don't dog us around with some pissant evidence bullshit. It's about fifty percent that Todd is the killer and he's gonna do it again. I want to get all over him before he has a chance.'
'What if you don't find anything? He's gonna sue your pants off,' the judge said.
'Not my pants, the county's pants,' Stryker said. 'If I don't solve this case pretty damn quick, I'm gonna lose my job anyway, so why should I care? Sign the warrant.'
'Okay, okay, keep your shirt on.'
Outside the judge's office, warrant in hand, Virgil said, 'Your judicial efficiency is a marvel.'
'Out here, you take care of yourself,' Stryker said.
They brought in Larry Jensen, the investigator, and four other deputies. Stryker and two of the deputies took the newspaper office. Virgil, Jensen, and two more deputies headed for Williamson's home. 'Call me every five minutes, tell me what you got,' Stryker said. 'Find a.357.'
'Find a typewriter,' Virgil said.
WILLIAMSON LIVED in a square, flat, single-story white house with a flat-roofed garage set farther back, and a long screen porch on the front, in an old neighborhood on the east side of town. From Williamson's house, Virgil thought, getting to the Gleasons' would have been a snap: Williamson was two blocks from the riverbank.
In the heavy rain the night of the murders, he could have walked over to the bridge across the river, off the far end of the bridge, along the riverbank, and up the slope to Gleason's. After the killings, he could be back home in fifteen minutes. No muss, no fuss, no cars in the night. And that, he thought, was why the killings may have taken place during a thunderstorm. The neighbors wouldn't be out, everybody would have been snuggled up in front of the TV.
Virgil drove over, alone in his truck, because he'd learned that if he went to a crime scene in somebody else's vehicle, he'd need to leave before they did, or after they did. Jensen and the other two cops followed in two sheriff's patrol cars. Virgil stopped in front of the house, and the deputies pulled into the driveway, one car going all the way to the garage, to cover the back door.
They got out, watching the doors, Virgil with a hand on his weapon, Jensen with a hand on his own. The screen door was open and he and Jensen went through, hammered on the front door. No answer. Tried the door: locked.
Jensen said, 'Wait one.' He went out to his car, brought back a long-shaft Maglite, and used the butt end to knock out a pane of glass in the door. Reaching through, he flipped the lock. 'We're in.'
THEY CLEARED the place, making sure that Williamson wasn't inside, then started pulling it apart. The furniture was comfortable, but old, as if it had come from a high-end used-furniture place. There were six rooms, all on the first floor: kitchen, small dining room, living room, good-sized bath, a bedroom used as a home office, and the actual bedroom. Exterior doors leading out through the kitchen to the garage; and out the front.
Virgil took the bedroom, Jensen took the office, one of the other deputies did the kitchen. Virgil opened and emptied all the drawers, worked through the closet, checking all the pockets in all the clothes, checked the walls and baseboards for hidey-holes, plugged a lamp into the outlets to make sure they were real, turned and patted the mattress, lifted and turned the box springs, lifted the braided rug.
The only thing he found of even the remotest interest was a half-dozen vintage Penthouse magazines, featuring well-thumbed hard-core porn, stashed under the corner of the bed, within easy reach.
Jensen was hung up in the office. 'Lot of paper,' he said, looking up from the office chair, his lap full of files. 'So far, nothing about being adopted. Got job stuff; he was in the Army in Iraq in ninety, in supply…No guns at all.'
The cop in the kitchen had come up empty, and had then gone out to the garage, gotten a stepladder, and now had his head poked through a hatch that led into a space under the roof. 'Lots of insulation,' he said. 'Lots of dust. Doesn't look like it's been opened in years…'
Virgil was working through the living room-found another stash of porn, this on video, behind the DVD player-when he heard the deputy outside calling, 'Hey, hey, Todd. Hold it, Todd.'
Virgil drew his pistol, felt Jensen moving in the office, and then Williamson came through the screen door and the front door on the run. Virgil, from the corner of his eye, could see through the porch screen that Williamson's car had been dumped in the street, the door still open.
Williamson's hands were empty but he was screaming and came straight at Virgil, and Virgil pushed the weapon back into the holster and when Williamson kept coming, hands up, he took one wrist and turned him, pushed him, and Jensen was there to push him again, and the other cop came in from the kitchen, and the outside deputy ran in the front door, his pistol drawn, and Virgil turned to Williamson and Virgil was shouting, 'Hands over head, hands on the wall, on the wall.'
Williamson shouted, 'What the fuck are you doing, what the fuck is going on…' but he put his hands on the wall, and Virgil patted him down.
'What the fuck…'
Virgil said, 'You can slow down, or we'll have to put some handcuffs on you. Calm down; you can step away from the wall.'
Williamson's face was dead red, and he was breathing like a man having a heart attack. 'What the hell is going on?'
'We're searching your house. We have a warrant.'
Williamson's mouth worked, but nothing came out for a minute, and then Virgil saw him relax, make the small move that meant that he'd gotten it together. Virgil stepped back. 'You okay?'
Williamson, still angry, but not uncontrolled: 'What…are…you doing?'
'We're looking for anything that might tie you to the murders of the Gleasons, the Schmidts, and Bill Judd.'
'What…what?'
'We know about your adoption,' Virgil said.
'My adoption? My adoption?' His mouth hung open for a moment, then, 'What about my adoption?'
'You were born here in Bluestem when your mother was killed in an automobile accident after a party at Bill Judd's. You're Bill Judd's son.'
Williamson actually staggered back away from Virgil. 'That's not possible. How is that possible? That's horseshit.'
'You didn't know?' Virgil was skeptical.
'No!' Williamson shouted. 'I didn't. I don't believe it. My mother…' He reeled away. 'My mother got pregnant and gave me up for adoption. Didn't want me. That's what my mom told me. My real mom.'
'Your real mom…?'
'My real parents…' Williamson's face had gone from red to white, and now was going red again. 'David and Louise Williamson. Where did you get this bullshit?' He looked around. 'What have you done to my house? What have you done? You motherfuckers are gonna pay for this…'
THEY COOLED HIM OFF and Virgil told him, bluntly: 'We're going through here inch by inch. Frankly, it's not possible that you wound up here by accident.'
'Not by accident. Not by accident,' Williamson said. 'I was working up in Edina, at the suburban papers, and Bill-it was Bill, not me. My editor met Bill at an editor-and-publisher meeting. My guy came back and said Judd had seen some of my stuff, and wondered if I'd be open to working in a small town.'
'So you left Edina and moved to Bluestem?' Virgil's eyebrow went up. 'Not a common thing to do.'
Williamson looked around and said, 'Okay if I sit down?' Virgil nodded, and he dropped onto a couch, and wiped his sweaty forehead on the sleeve of his shirt. 'Look. I was working in the Cities, I was making thirty-eight
