sitting in her chair, with her Bible, and hurried up the stairs, the hunger upon him.

6

The Floods were unusual, Virgil thought, as he drove away. Reticent. The daughters looked morose, as might be expected, but had never mentioned their father. Neither had Alma Flood or Emmett Einstadt, except in direct discussion. There was no hand-wringing or remembrance or tears: they spoke of him almost as though he were a distant acquaintance.

Einstadt looked like an Old Testament image of Abraham, as he was about to stick the knife in Isaac’s neck. And the way they dressed, all brown, black, and blue—he didn’t know if this was a religious thing, similar to the plain dress of the Amish, or personal preference.

Back at Homestead, Virgil took the exit, looked at his watch: coming up on seven o’clock, not enough time to eat before he had to be at the Tripps’. He stopped at a convenience store, got a bottle of orange juice, a pack of pink Hostess Sno Balls, and a couple of hunting magazines to take back to the motel.

One of the problems with working in a small town was that whenever you went somewhere, you were already there—it was only six or eight or ten minutes from one end to the other, so if you were running early, you stayed early, and if you were running late, there was no way to make it up by speeding or taking shortcuts.

He stopped a block from the Tripps’, parked, ate the Sno Balls and drank the juice, and watched a man walking along the dark street with two Labrador retrievers. The dogs were looking for a comfortable snowbank in which to take a dump; the product of their efforts would sink into the snow, and freeze, and in March, when the snow went away, there it’d be. Sometimes, if your yard was on a popular corner, whole piles of newly thawed dog poop ushered in the spring.

Virgil thought about the unfairness of it, and checked his watch. Still early, but not too; he stuffed the juice bottle and Sno Ball packaging in a trash bag hung from the back of the passenger seat, and went on down the block.

THE TRIPPS HAD GOTTEN dressed up for their visit to the funeral home. George Tripp was wearing a church suit, black wool with a white shirt and black-and-blue tie, and Irma was wearing a black dress with black boots with low heels. They looked simply, ineffably, sad.

George Tripp was standing in front of the picture window again, waiting for him, and opened the door when he came up the walk. “Come in, please,” he said.

Irma Tripp came into the living room, carrying a long coat. She said, “We haven’t gone into his room except once, to make his bed. It’s just . . . too much.”

“Did you figure anything out?” George Tripp asked.

“We did learn one thing—your son did know Kelly Baker,” Virgil said. “We know that for sure. They hung around together the summer before last, but probably stopped seeing each other when the summer ended. We don’t think they were intimate, but, of course, we really don’t know, one way or the other.”

“Crocker killed them both,” George Tripp said. “Or Flood killed the Baker girl, maybe with Crocker. Is that what you think?”

“It’s a possibility,” Virgil said. “But I just talked to Flood’s wife, and they turn it around from that—they think your son killed Baker, and Flood found out something, so Bobby killed him.” They both objected, and Virgil held up his hands: “I’m just sayin’. I will tell you that I’m not buying any theories, yet. But we know that we have at least one killer running around loose, and that’s the thread we’ve got to pull on.”

“You don’t have any idea who he is?” Irma Tripp asked.

“Well, we’re pretty sure it’s not a he. We think it’s a woman,” Virgil said. “Somebody who was intimate with Deputy Crocker. We’re pushing that aspect of it.”

“If you look hard enough, you’ll find out that Bobby comes out okay,” George Tripp said.

“That’s why I want to look at his room,” Virgil said. “Maybe there’s something. Maybe he left a letter or a note or something that would explain this to us.”

Bob Tripp’s bedroom was at the far end of the house, in the front corner. The bed was neatly made—Irma went in and made it after he was killed, as though it were a final favor—but the rest of the room was about