couch.

Should be enough for DNA, he thought, if the lab guys would just give him the time. He peeled the tape off his wrist and stuck it in a Ziploc bag. Might not be an entirely legal search, but he was invited in . . . and once he knew, he could always come back.

Or not.

9

Virgil headed south to Iowa, and called Bell Wood, the agent with the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation: “I’m going down to Estherville,” he said, when Wood came up. “There’re interesting things going on, and I need to talk to John Baker and his family.”

“You won’t get much. They were pretty much mystified—Kelly backed out of their driveway and went on down the road,” Wood said. “We took a look at them, and nothing came up. We interviewed them all separately—John and . . . I can’t remember the wife’s name . . .”

“Luanne.”

“Yeah. John and Luanne, and their kids, and they all had the same story. Not rehearsed, just . . . the same.”

“All right. But I want to ask them about these new killings, see if they knew any of the people involved. . . . Did you guys look into their religion?”

“Not really. I remember they were churchy. Very dark dressers, kids homeschooled, and all that.”

“Huh. Okay—listen, would it be possible to get a highway patrol guy, or maybe an Estherville cop, whichever is better, to ride along with me? Somebody with an Iowa badge?”

“Let me make a call,” Wood said. “I’ll get back to you before you’re there.”

“Thanks.”

“Virgil . . . you’re getting somewhere?”

“Somewhere. But it’s murky. I’ll stay in touch.”

THE HIGHWAY PATROLMAN’S name was Bill Clinton, “but not that Bill Clinton,” he said, as he shook Virgil’s hand. He was a thick-set, shaved-head man of perhaps thirty-five; he had three fleshy wrinkles that rolled down the back of his neck like stair steps. They’d hooked up at a café across the street from the Emmet County Courthouse.

“Hope you’re a Democrat, anyway,” Virgil said. Virgil got a cup of coffee while Clinton finished his lunch.

Clinton shook his head. “Lifelong Republican. My old man is the Republican county chairman down in Sac County. But I didn’t mind—it was kinda fun. I was in the army back then.”

Virgil gave him a quick outline of the investigation, and Clinton whistled and said, “Man, that’s a hell of thing.”

“You heard anything about Kelly Baker since last year?”

“Oh, sure, all kinds of stuff. But it’s all bullshit,” Clinton said. “There was a cop from Des Moines who came up here on his own and was poking around, looking for Satanists. One of the churches here, pretty fundamental, he got the pastor all churned up, but it didn’t come to anything. Nobody believed it.”

“Neither do I,” Virgil said. “I’ve met a couple Satanists. They’re about what you expect—people who never got over Halloween.”

Clinton nodded. “Exactly right. People here are pretty commonsensical. The thing nobody could get around was what actually happened to her. The state ran the investigation, but technically, the Emmet County sheriff was in charge, so they got all the reports. When the autopsy came in, word about it got out in a couple of hours. Whips and multiple partners. People here look at the Internet, just like anybody, but they don’t believe that stuff happens here. Not with little farm girls.”

VIRGIL HAD CALLED ahead to the Bakers’ and had gotten directions on how to get there. Clinton left his patrol car in Estherville, and they rode together out to the Baker place. The Bakers’ house was a low, pale yellow rambler, with a miniature windmill in the front yard and an attached garage. The usual collection of farm sheds and buildings stood behind it, along with an early-twentieth-century brick silo, with no roof. A collection of rusted farm machinery was parked behind the old silo.

As they went up the drive, Virgil asked, “You know anything about these folks?”

“Not a thing. I looked them up after Bell Wood called, and law enforcement doesn’t even know they exist. Not even a traffic ticket.”

JOHN BAKER was Kelly Baker’s uncle. He was a tall, thin man with hollowed cheeks, long, lank black hair and a beard going gray; he wore oversized steel-framed glasses, like aviators, dark trousers, and a dark wool shirt. His wife was more of the same, without the beard, and with smaller glasses, and an ankle-length skirt that looked homemade.

A brilliant crazy quilt, made of postage-stamp-sized snips of cloth, hung from pegs on the front-room