be very interested in anything about Kelly Baker.”

“Not exactly about her. But I work down at the Wal-Mart. You know where that is?”

“I do.”

“So. I’m the photo technician. I used to run the print-making machine and so on, back when we developed film, and I got to know who was who in the local photography community. One of these church people out there, his name is Karl Rouse, this is back in the film days, he used to buy a load of Polaroid film. I mean, a load. You know what I mean?”

“A lot,” Virgil said. He took a sip of coffee.

“A load. And when people bought that much Polaroid, unless they were a real estate agent or something, I’d get ideas of what they were taking pictures of. You know?”

“Okay,” Virgil said. “You ever see any evidence of that?”

“No, not exactly. But I can tell you, it’s a heck of a lot cheaper to shoot with a film camera and have us develop it. And he did that, too. He was a regular shutterbug, taking church pictures and so on. So I’m asking myself, ‘How come we’re only getting half of his business? The non-Polaroid part?’”

“But no real indication . . .”

“No. I can tell you, when digital came in, he was first in line to buy a photo printer, and he still buys a lot of paper from us. Keeps really busy. Anyhow, I thought you’d like to know that.”

“Well, I’ll keep it in mind,” Virgil said. “But I’ll tell you, there’s no Rouse in this investigation so far.”

Rich was disappointed, but said, “Well, you oughta take a look. I got an instinct for these things, and I think something was going on there.”

Jacoby came back and said, “Hey, Rich. You find a clue?”

“Maybe,” Rich said. He slid out of the booth. “I gotta get going, I’m due at work. But: think about that. I believe it could be important.”

“What was that?” Jacoby asked, when Rich was out the door.

“Nothing much, I’m afraid,” Virgil said. “Another guy trying to help out.”

Jacoby dropped his voice: “Not so much a guy, as the village idiot.”

VIRGIL PICKED COAKLEY up at her house, a pleasant wood-and-brick sixties rambler. She met him at the door, invited him in, led him through a kitchen that smelled like toast and peanut butter and jam, to a tiny office. “I’ve got Harvey Loewe’s house spotted on Google,” she said. She touched the mouse, and a satellite shot popped up on the screen. “He’s on Twentieth Street, way down here in the southwest. Right . . .” She reached out and pushed the scale on the map, then tapped the screen with a fingertip. “Here.”

The picture had been taken in the summer, in a raking, early-morning light, and Loewe’s house, which was white, stood out clearly in the green fields that ran right up to it.

“No yard,” Virgil said. “Not even a front yard. No outbuildings.”

“It’s like with Crocker. It’s an old vacant farmhouse,” she said. “Some of them get burned by the fire department, but some of them aren’t so bad. You can live in them, with a little work, if you’re handy. Most farm kids are.”

“His folks are right around there someplace,” Virgil said. There was nothing exactly across the road, but there were single houses both east and west of Loewe’s, and both were across the road, and appeared to be inhabited. “I’d rather not have them know we’re talking to their kid, you know?”

On the way out, Virgil detailed his talk with Sullivan.

“Do you trust him?” Coakley asked.

“No, not entirely,” Virgil said. “He seems like a good enough guy, but he is a reporter, and they are weasels, just by their nature. Though I don’t know what he’d be hiding from us.”

“Maybe had a sexual relationship with Tripp that he’d rather not talk about,” Coakley suggested. “Talking about it could cause him some trouble. You know, with his boyfriend.”

“That’s possible. But I still don’t see where it’d take us. I think Tripp was the end of a string of information, and Sullivan would be even further out. We need to follow the string into the source, not further out.”

THEY FOUND Loewe taping 3M window-sealing plastic over his kitchen windows. He saw them coming, met them at the door. They told him what they were doing, and a transient little muscle spasm seemed to pass over his face, and the corners of his mouth turned down, but he was polite: “I don’t know how