“I’ll get it there, one way or another. I’ll talk to Lucas,” she said.
While he was talking with Sandy, Virgil pulled into the courthouse parking lot. When he closed the phone, he went inside, found the district court judge, told him what he needed, then drove out to the Schmidt house.
The day was turning hot, the leaves on the trees turning over, giving them a silvery look in the breeze; and the corn popped and rustled in the fields along the way out.
Schmidt’s body had been removed, but not until after a photographer from the Sioux Falls paper, with a lens two feet long, and a monopod, had skulked into the cornfield across the street, and had taken several shots before he was noticed, and the sight line blocked with a patrol car.
Big Curly wanted to seize the photographer at gunpoint, but Stryker contented himself with having a chat with the editor about good taste and the feelings of relatives, along with possible criminal-trespass charges and a future lack of cooperation if the photos got published.
“A trespass charge wouldn’t hold up in Minnesota,” he told Virgil. “We gotta hope his editors don’t know that.”
“Ah, newspapers don’t print body shots too often,” Virgil said. “I hope.”
GLORIA SCHMIDT’S BODY was still in the bedroom, but it would be moved as soon as the people from the funeral home got back. Processing of the house was still under way: “Probably won’t be done until tomorrow morning,” Stryker said.
“I’m itchy to get in there and look at their paper,” Virgil said.
“We gotta process. I’m trying to stay out of there myself,” Stryker said.
“I know…all right. I’ll go down to the bank and look at records. Did your guys see a bank safe-deposit key in there anywhere?”
“Not me—I can check,” Stryker said. “C’mon around back.”
Virgil followed Stryker around the side of the house and in the back door, into a mudroom. “Probably be in the chest of drawers in the bedroom, or a drawer in the home office,” Virgil said.
Inside, it was cooler, but with the smell of blood and body gases in the air. Stryker stopped at the mudroom door and called, “Hey, Margo.”
“Yeah?” A woman’s voice from the front of the house.
“Have you seen anything that looked like a safe-deposit key?”
“Yeah. You want it?”
“Is it a problem?” Stryker called.
“No problem. Under his socks in the bureau. Doesn’t look like anybody touched it.”
“All right…”
Stryker said to Virgil, “We’ve got media. They’re calling. I’ve set up a press conference for three o’clock in the main courtroom. You gotta be there.”
“I will be.”
A MOMENT LATER, the redheaded crime-scene tech came out, dressed in paper pants and shirt, and handed a blue cardboard envelope to Stryker, who handed it to Virgil, and said, “Let me know if there’s anything.”
“Absolutely,” Virgil said.
BACK IN TOWN, he went to the courthouse, picked up the subpoenas, stopped at one of Bill Judd Jr.’s Subways and got a sandwich for lunch, then continued on to the bank. The manager first opened the Schmidt box, where Virgil found paper—insurance, deeds, wills, old photographs—and no money. He did find a ring made of solid gold, with a small diamond inset, and the name Vera Schmidt engraved inside. Roman Schmidt’s mother?
There were two curiosities.
In a yellow legal envelope he found a photograph of a blond woman, nude, lying faceup on what appeared to be a medical examiner’s table. Half of her face was torn and bloody, her mouth was slightly open, and one side of her body was covered with what appeared to be purple bruising. She was clearly dead. Nothing else: no name, no date.
The other was a mortgage, dated 5-11-70, for the house where the Schmidts had been murdered. The mortgage loan came from Bill Judd Sr., for fifteen years, at four percent interest. The mortgage had a retirement paper clipped to it, paid in full in 1985, right on time.
Virgil wasn’t sure what the mortgage loan rates were in 1970, but four percent seemed low. The payments were listed as $547 a month, and that seemed high for the time. Maybe there was some land attached to the house, Virgil thought; he’d check.
Was the death of the woman somehow involved with the granting of the mortgage? Schmidt would have been in his first few years as sheriff…Had Judd been involved with the death of the woman?
Or Judd Jr.? Virgil didn’t know exactly how old Judd Jr. was, but he appeared to be near sixty. If something related to the photograph happened at the time Judd gave Schmidt the mortgage, that would put Junior in his early twenties, prime woman-killing time. Had to think about it.
He went back to the photograph, and looked at it for a long time. The print had started to fade, but the original was carefully done—professionally done. Would a newspaper back then have the ability to shoot color? Might that provide a date? In the corner of the shot, he saw equipment that he thought might not be medical: it might be embalming equipment, but having never seen any mortuary gear, he wasn’t sure…
The bank had a color Xerox machine. He made two Xeroxes of the photo, rented a new box, got a new key, and locked up everything but the Xeroxes. He’d asked the bank manager if he could use the Xerox privately, without anyone looking over his shoulder; when he was done, and the Schmidt paper was locked up again, the manager asked, “A clue?”
“You wouldn’t believe it if I told you,” Virgil said. “I think we’re finally making some headway.”
The manager was openmouthed: Virgil thought, Spread it around.
NEXT HE WENT to the safe-deposit box where they put the Judd Sr. papers after drilling out the original box. With the banker looking over his shoulder as a witness, he took out the money, removed all the paper, put the money back, and locked the box again. The paper he took to a carrel, where he began working through it. There was nothing at all about the Schmidts or the Gleasons.
In fact, in all the business papers, the only thing that was clear was that Judd Sr. had given his son at least two million dollars over the years—copies of gift tax reports had been carefully clipped together with other tax papers—and had loaned him another million.
The kid was deeply in debt to his old man…but the old man was already dying, so it seemed unlikely that Junior would take the risk of hustling him along, when the estate was about to fall to him anyway.
WHEN VIRGIL had finished with the boxes, the manager moved him to a computer terminal in a vice-president’s office, and signed him onto a bank service that kept computer images of checks. “There are images going back to 1959. The early ones can be a little obscure, because they were on microfilm, and got blown up and computerized later…”
He looked first at Roman Schmidt’s account, and a light went on in his head: from 1970 through 1985, when Schmidt was supposedly paying off a mortgage on his home, he found not a single check that appeared to be a mortgage payment.
That, he thought, was something.
Looking through a half-dozen Judd accounts, he found more than thirty thousand checks, so many that he simply didn’t have time to work through them. But there were no incoming checks for $547 between 1970 and 1985; no sign that Roman Schmidt had ever written a check to Judd. Just as interesting, during the whole period of the Jerusalem artichoke scam, he found little variation in Judd’s income or outgo. There had to be other accounts that he didn’t know about. He’d talk to Sandy, Davenport’s research assistant, and see what she could find in the state’s corporate filings…
AGAIN, the Gleasons were a dry hole.
WHEN VIRGIL WALKED out the door, it was one o’clock in the afternoon, one of the best of the year: very warm, with a touch of breeze, and the smell of August coming up. He got on his cell phone, and called Joanie: “I thought you might be the tiniest bit irritated with me when I dropped you off,” he said. “Were you?”
“Somewhat. But I’m over it,” she said. “I was surprised, more than anyt
hing. After I thought about it, I wasn’t surprised anymore.”
“Mmm. Would you be interested in going out to the farm this evening? Explore the pond and the waterfall?”
“Maybe, if you play your cards right,” she said.
“What cards would those be?”
“Stop at Ernhardt’s and buy us a box lunch and a six-pack. Or box dinner. Picnic. Then I won’t have to cook anything.”
“Deal,” Virgil said. “I’ve got a question. Is there a funeral home in Bluestem?”
“Sure. Johnstone’s. Over on the west side, by the cemetery. Go out on Fifth Street, you’ll run right into it.”
“Do you think they might have records going back to the seventies?”
“Well, Gerald Johnstone’s still alive. He must go back to the fifties. His son, Oliver, runs the place now. But Gerald’s sharp as a tack, he lives up by the Gleasons. About six houses down the way, on the left. Right on the edge of the coulee. Wife’s name is Carol.”
“Hmm.” Virgil thought: Betsy Carlson, the old woman in the nursing home, said that “Jerry” had been there the night of the man in the moon.
“He sure as heck didn’t do it,” Joan said. “He’s sharp, but I doubt that he could pick up a gallon of milk, much less a body.”
“All right…What kind of sandwiches?”
VIRGIL WALKED OVER to Ernhardt’s Café, ordered a box lunch, roast beef sandwiches on sourdough, with mustard and mild onions, a pound-sized carton of blue-cheese potato salad, a six-pack of Amstel, two plastic plates, and two sets of plastic silverware. The woman behind the counter said he could have it in ten minutes, or he could pick it up anytime before six o’clock. He told her he’d be back at five, borrowed her phone book, and looked up Gerald Johnstone’s address.
JOHNSTONE LIVED in a redwood-sided ranch-style house with a walkout basement on the coulee side, a deck looking out at the town, and a three-car garage. A sprinkler system was watering the unnaturally green lawn when Virgil pulled into the drive. He dodged the overlapping wet spots along the drive and the walk to the front door, ducked under a wind chime, and rang the bell.
A moment later, an elderly man, gray-faced and wary, spoke through a screened window to the side of the porch. “Who are you?”
Virgil held up his ID. “Virgil Flowers, Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. Like to talk to you for a couple of minutes, Mr. Johnstone.”
Johnstone unlocked the inner door, pushed open the screen door. He was well into his eighties, Virgil thought, tall, too thin, with shaky hands and blue eyes that seemed to be fading. He was bald on top, with a few strands of silvery white hair combed over the bald spot. “Don’t usually have everything all locked up,” he said. “My wife is pretty nervous about all these killings. Old people like us.”
As he said it, a woman called from the back, “Jerry? Who is it?”
“Police,” he called back.
As Virgil stepped across the threshold, she came out of the back of the house holding a stack of neatly folded towels. She was a pink, round, busy woman, fifteen years younger than her husband. She asked, “Are you the Flowers gentleman?”
“Yes, I am,” he said. “Pleased to meet you.”
THEY TALKED in the living room. The Johnstones didn’t know anything about anything, but they were scared to death and were willing to admit it. “He’s killing my friends, whoever it is,” Johnstone said. “Bill Judd wasn’t much of a friend, especially in later years, but I knew him pretty well. Roman and Gloria and Russell and Anna were my friends. I’m afraid that…you know…he might be coming for us.”
“Any idea why he might be? What he’s doing?” Virgil asked.
“No idea at all. We’ve been wracking our brains,” Johnstone said.
Carol Johnstone said, “In a town like this, everybody has a little spot of trouble with everybody else, sooner or later—we’re all too close together. But you get over it, and you’re friends again. But who could hate this much…” Her voice trailed off. Then, “I’d like to say something, but I wouldn’t like it getting around.”
“Absolutely,” Virgil said.
“George Feur was working on Bill Judd,” Carol Johnstone said. “Talking to him about his soul, trying to get some money out of him—and he did get some money out of him, I think. Feur deals in hate, and the people around him are attracted by it. I think that’s where the problem might be, but why they would kill old people, I don’t know.”
“’Cause they’re nutcases,” Gerald Johnstone said.
Virgil said to Gerald Johnstone, “I’m looking at Reverend Feur. But there’s also a possibility—because the victims are somewhat elderly—that something happened way back when,” Virgil said. “I’d like you to look at a photograph of a body and tell me if it was in your funeral home.”
And to Carol Johnstone: “It’s not a pleasant picture, ma’am…”
“Pictures of bodies never bothered me,” she said. “I worked in the funeral home for thirty years and saw everything you can see.”
Virgil nodded, and took out the color Xerox of the woman on the table. He handed it to Gerald Johnstone, who looked at it with his vague eyes, focused, and then seemed to shudder with recognition.
He said, “That looks like our funeral home. This is a funeral home in the picture, and it looks like our dressing table…but I can’t say that I remember the case. It appears to be an automobile accident, is what I’d say. We had lots of those. Didn’t have full funerals—just dress the body and ship it back to wherever they came from. So…I can’t remember.”
Virgil thought, He’s lying.
Carol was shaking her head: “I’d remember it if I’d seen it, but I never saw it. Where did it come from?”
“I don’t know,” Virgil said. “I was hoping you could tell me.”
She shook her head. “I was there, but I never saw that woman. Must have been a dress-and-ship. Whoever she is, she isn’t local.”
“Okay,” Virgil said. Gerald Johnstone was still peering at the picture, replaying something in his mind, but again he shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he said.
Carol Johnstone, Virgil thought, was telling the truth. Gerald Johnstone was lying through his teeth.
HE PUSHED the old man: “It’s important that we know if it’s your place or not,” he said. “Is it your funeral home?”
“It could be,” Johnstone said. “But the way the picture is…it’s too close up. The table is the same kind we had, a stainless-steel Ferno. We don’t have it anymore.”
Carol Johnstone said, “That is our place, Jerry, before the remodel.” She tapped one corner of the photo, the corner of an odd machine that looked like an oversized blender. “That’s that old Portiboy, remember? I’m sure that’s our place.”
Gerald Johnstone shook his head: “I think it is, but I don’t remember the case. We did hundreds of automobile accidents over the years, and I’m just…too old.”
Still lying, Virgil thought. “When did you do the remodel?” he asked.
“That was 1981 into 1982. All new equipment by ’eighty-two,” Carol Johnstone said. “Whoever that is, had to be killed before that. But the table and the Portiboy go way back. Before our time.”
VIRGIL ASKED, “What about the man in the moon?”
Knew he’d taken a misstep. They were both mystified, and showed it. Carol said, “What?”
“Betsy Carlson said something about the man in the moon. That she’d seen the man in the moon. She seemed to think there might be a connection…”
Carol shook her head, but again, Virgil thought he saw a spark in Gerald’s eye. Virgil said, “She told me, ‘Jerry was there for the man in the moon, Jerry knew about it.’”
Carol was shaking her head, but Gerald’s eyes drifted away as he said, “It’s a complete mystery. What does it mean?”
VIRGIL, LOOKING DIRECTLY at Gerald Johnstone, said, “If you remember anything, you let me know. You called this killer a nutcase, and that’s the exact truth of the matter. Keep your
doors locked—if he thinks you might be involved in whatever is going on, you’re both at some risk.”
Carol Johnstone said suddenly, “This will sound silly…”
“Tell me,” Virgil said.
“The night the Gleasons were killed, we weren’t here. We’re here two hundred fifty nights a year—we have a place in Palm Springs where we go in the winter—but that was one night we weren’t. We were in Minneapolis, visiting our daughter, and seeing a show. When we came back the next day, there were police all over the street…”
“Ah, this is nothing,” Gerald Johnstone said.
“I’d like to hear it anyway,” Virgil said.
Carol nodded: “Anyway, we stopped and found out from one of the deputies what happened, and Larry Jensen came over and interviewed us, but we didn’t have anything to tell him. We were gone. But when we first came in the door, the welcome mat was moved.”
“Oh, Carol,” the old man said, rolling his eyes.
“Well, it was,” she said. “You know how I like everything neat, and it was off to the side of the door. I thought then that somebody moved it. Well, the Gleasons were killed in the middle of the night, and we were back at one o’clock in the afternoon, so…who moved it?”
“You think that whoever killed the Gleasons…?”
She shivered. “They were right there, down the street. We have timers on our lights so it looks like somebody’s home, lights going off and on…Maybe…”
He looked directly at Johnstone: “If you remember anything, you tell me. We don’t want somebody else to die.”
“I’ll think as hard as I can,” he said.
“If it turns out you’re lying to me, you could spend the rest of your life in prison, as an accomplice.”
Carol got hot: “Hey! He’s not lying. We’d do anything to catch this…monster.”
“I’m just saying,” Virgil said.
HE LEFT THEM at that—interesting, that Gerald Johnstone should be lying. He needed to track down the photo, and then he needed to come back and pound on Johnstone.