he thought maybe she was lying, because he couldn’t believe she’d do that stuff. But then, a friend of ours from Northwest said the Iowa cops came around and were asking about whether she might have been a prostitute. Or something like that—that was the idea.”

“But she didn’t go to Northwest.”

“No, but she knew kids who did. So they were checking out the guys.”

Wenner didn’t have much more—said he’d be back to Homestead for the funeral, that he’d be a pallbearer. “I knew that guy since first grade. I didn’t care if he was gay, he was a good guy.”

“You didn’t see the violence in him?”

“I didn’t, except on the football field,” Wenner said. “The Flood thing is hard to believe. Maybe he was framed, or something. You think?”

“Not really,” Virgil said. “It’s pretty clear he killed Flood. Listen, if you think of anything else, call me. You can get me through the BCA, or I may see you at the funeral.”

“One more thing,” Wenner said. “Pat Sullivan and Bob were talking quite a bit, and we were all talking at the Dairy Queen a few times, and Kelly was there. If Sullivan ever saw who Kelly was hanging with, another guy . . . that might be the one. If she was really involved in some heavy sex things, maybe she gathered up gay guys to be her friends. You know, people she could trust.”

“Good thought, Jay. Thank you.”

HE CALLED Pat Sullivan. He was told the reporter was in Mankato for a regional flood-preparation meeting and wouldn’t be back until late.

VIRGIL MET Coakley back at her office, where she’d been talking with a couple of deputies. She looked up when he stuck his head in, and she said, “You got something.”

“Maybe. I need all that paper from Iowa, again, and a place to read it.”

She looked at him for a long moment, considering him, and not in a collegial way, Virgil thought, and then she nodded.

And Virgil thought: If what Wenner said was true, and Baker had set Tripp up with a homosexual contact, then there was at least one person out there who might know as much as Baker did—and exactly what kind of activities Baker had been into. But tracking that person down would be a problem, especially if he had to do it without broadcasting the fact that Tripp had been gay.

He would do that—broadcast, sit in the café and tell the patrons about it—if it became necessary, but he hoped it wouldn’t.

Coakley got him the Iowa paper, a spot in an interview room, and a Diet Coke, and he started wading through the paper again, looking for anything that might pinpoint a possible lover.

Two hours: he found nothing.

COAKLEY WAS STARING at a computer, and he asked, “Are you online?”

“Yes. What’s up?” she asked.

“Could we go out to Google Earth and spot the Baker place?” Virgil asked.

“We can.” She hit a few keys, enlarged the screen a couple of times, found the house, lost it, found it again, and enlarged to the maximum. “What do you need?”

“I want to know who lives in the houses closest to them.” Virgil got her to change the scale up and down, to get a map of a couple dozen farmhouses within a couple miles of the Baker place. “Print that,” he said. And, “I wonder who runs the rural route out there?”

“We can find that out,” Coakley said, looking at her watch. “Should still be some carriers around.”

She got on the phone, called the post office, talked to somebody, hung up, and said, “Clare Kreuger’s your girl. She’s not there at the moment, but she’s due back in anytime.”

“Good—now, where’s the post office?”

“Are you going back out there? To the Bakers’?” Coakley asked.

“Yeah. Gonna whisper in the ears of the neighbors . . . after I talk to Clare.”

KREUGER WAS SKEPTICAL: “What you’re saying is, you want to turn their friends against them.”

“No, no. I don’t want friends. I want people who already don’t like them,” Virgil said.

“That just seems rotten,” the carrier said. She was a dusty-looking woman, who looked like she’d spent too much time in the wind. She wore a nylon parka, nylon wind pants, and galoshes. They were standing at the post office loading dock, where Clare had parked.

“It is a little rotten,” Virgil said. “But we have four dead people, and a killer still on the loose. I wouldn’t do it otherwise.”

Kreuger said, “Neither would I. But you got me. Too many dead people.