thousand a year, and it wasn't going to get any better. I learned journalism in the Army; I don't have a college degree. The big papers were losing staff, everything was going in the toilet. So Judd says, come on down to Bluestem, I'll pay you forty thousand a year and vouch for you, so you can get a mortgage.'
Williamson looked around the house. 'You know how much this place cost?'
Virgil shook his head, but Jensen said, 'I think it was up for forty-five thousand?'
'They took forty. I'm paying two hundred a month for a pretty decent house. In the Cities, I lived in a slum apartment that cost me eight hundred a month. The job wasn't going to get any better, either, even if the papers survived. Out here…' He shrugged. 'I've got my own house, I'm sort of a big shot…I like the work.'
The anger flooded back: 'So go ahead and search, you fuckers. There's nothing here because I had nothing to do with any murders.' To Jensen: 'You know where I was when the Gleasons were killed? I was at the Firehouse Funder, down at Mitchell's. There were three hundred people there, and I was reporting it, and I gave a talk.' He started shouting again. 'You think about asking me for an alibi?'
'Take it easy…'
Still shouting: 'And that stuff about Bill being my father…I want to see some proof. I want to see some DNA. Hey: you got a warrant? Are you searching the office…'
WILLIAMSON WAS out in the kitchen, getting a cup of coffee, watched by a deputy, when Jensen said to Virgil, 'If that was an act, it was a pretty good act.'
'If he did the murders, he's a psycho,' Virgil said. 'Psychos spend their lives fooling people…You want the dining room? I'll take the garage.'
17
Monday Afternoon CUMULUS CLOUDS WERE thick as cotton balls in a hospital room, some of the bottoms turning blue: more thunderstorms coming in. Stryker was sitting at his desk, fingers knitted behind his ear, heels on the corner of his desk, staring out the window across the parking lot. Virgil sat across from him, saying not much.
Finally Stryker yawned, stretched, dropped his feet to the floor, and said, 'Well, that was your basic cluster- fuck.'
'There's a connection in there. Gotta be,' Virgil said. 'I will bet you one hundred American dollars that he's the guy.'
'It was one dollar this morning.'
'One hundred dollars,' Virgil repeated.
'Straight up? A hundred dollars?'
Virgil thought about it for a moment, then said, 'You'd have to give me two to one.'
Stryker tried to laugh, then shook his head, said, 'Damnit, he's gonna crucify us Thursday morning.'
'Then we need to give him a better story,' Virgil said. 'I'm thinking about calling Pirelli. See what he has to say for himself.'
'You do that, 'Stryker said, standing up. 'I've got to run over to the jail. If I don't see you later, I'll see you tomorrow.'
VIRGIL WANDERED OUT of the office, stopped at the men's room. The second-best place to think, after a shower, was a nice, quiet urinal.
Williamson claimed that Judd found him; that he hadn't found Judd. That had a certain straightforward logic to it that appealed to Stryker. If Williamson was Judd's kid, Judd would have known it. Was it possible that as he'd gotten old, and maybe started to think about what was coming, maybe started to read a little Revelation, that he'd softened up, and gathered his children around him? Was that why his will wasn't in the safe-deposit box? Had he been thinking of changing it? Would that have given Junior reason to get rid of the old man?
On the other hand, Williamson's alibi, that he'd been at the Firehouse Funder, was too convenient for Virgil's taste. The fund-raiser had been held at Mitchell's, the local sports bar. Mitchell's back door emptied into an extra parking lot. From the parking lot to the Gleasons' house was a five-minute jog along the railroad tracks, then across the bridge and up the hill. All suitably dark. And by ten o'clock, the eating had been over for two hours, and the drinking had gotten under way. Would anybody have noticed if Todd Williamson, so evident around the place all evening, had slipped away for twenty-five minutes? Had not gone to the john, but out the back door?
As far as Virgil was concerned, the alibi was far short of watertight.
Stryker disagreed.
Fuck him.
HE WAS WASHING his hands when a deputy stepped in, glanced at the two empty toilet booths, then said, 'I need a word with you, but I don't want it getting out that I talked to you.'
Virgil shrugged: 'Sure, but…'
'But what?' The deputy's name tag said 'Merrill.' He was nervous and blunt. He wore gold-rimmed glasses and a brush mustache.
'But this is a murder case,' Virgil said. 'If you've got something to say, you oughta say it. I can't promise to hold it confidentially.'
Merrill rubbed his nose, looked at the door, and then said, 'I saw you up to the fire at Judd's.'
Virgil nodded: Let the guy talk.
'So…this is probably nothing, and that's why I hate to say anything…but…'
'Say it; I ain't gonna bite,' Virgil said.
'Jesse Laymon was there. Drinking beer, rubberneckin'.'
'Yeah?'
'Well, she's seeing the sheriff, socially, everybody knows that. The thing is, I know her truck, and I didn't see it come in, and I didn't see it go. I never saw her ride off with any of the other people there. I know about everybody in the county, everybody who was up there, and I've been asking around…I can't find anybody who took her, or who brought her in. It was raining like a cow pissing on a flat rock; seems odd to think that she walked in.'
'She had a can of beer in her hand when I saw her,' Virgil said.
'Yup,' Merrill said. 'I assumed that she came up with the folks from the bar. But I can't find anybody she rode with.'
'You sure you'd know her truck?'
'Man, Jesse is…one of the hottest chicks in the county. I know her truck. I wave at her every time I see her.'
Virgil looked at him for a minute, then said, 'Keep your mouth shut on this.'
'You gonna do something about it?'
'I will.'
BUFFALO RIDGE was something like the hill at the Stryker farm, but twenty or fifty times as large, covered with knee-high bluestem grass, outcrops of the red rock, with a spring, a stream, and a lake on the north side, and Judd's house and the Buffalo Jump bluff on the southeast. There were park roads both north and south; the south road came off a state highway and curled around the top of the mound; halfway to the top, Judd's driveway broke off to the east to the homesite, now just a hole in the ground.
Virgil took the drive, parked next to the foundation hole. He got out and looked in. The ash had been worked over with rakes. Looking for a safe, Virgil thought; Junior hoping for a will.
Okay. If he were going to kill a man, and set fire to his house, how would he run? Wouldn't run south, because you'd fall over the bluff and kill yourself. Wouldn't go east, because there was nothing there but a lot of hillside, weeds, and rocks. You could break a leg in the dark.
You could run back down the drive, to the park road, then down the park road to the entrance. Would you get to the entrance before the fire department? Must be a mile or more, and the fire department had a couple of first responders on duty all the time. If you were in a car, or a truck, you could get down there in a minute, but running, even with a small flashlight, would take you eight minutes or so.
Or you could go north, climbing the hill, and then circling around. That would be more dangerous, again risking rocks and holes, but you could take it slow in the rain, and work up behind the rubberneckers…
