Virgil said. “Nasty.”

“I heard it from you,” she said.

“But women aren’t supposed to use it,” Virgil said.

“Pig,” she said. “Anyway, it seems to me to be too crazy. We should be able to figure out things here.”

“That Loewe guy,” Virgil said. “We got him scared. He’s been stewing for a while—let’s go back. Right after breakfast. Let on that we know more than we do, see if he’ll cave.”

“That’s a plan,” she said. “We should take Schickel with us, to add to the pressure.”

They finished breakfast and Virgil followed her over to the sheriff’s office, where they picked up Schickel, who rode with Coakley, Virgil leading in his own truck. When they got to Loewe’s place, they knocked for a while, but got no answer.

No sign of a truck: Virgil looked in the garage and found it empty.

“That’s better’n if it’d been here,” Coakley said. “Then I’d have to worry that he was dead in there.”

“Probably just went downtown for something,” Schickel said. “We could go talk to his folks, see when he’s coming back.”

Virgil tracked around to the front porch, nine inches deep in snow, and peered in the front windows. Through the glass, he could see five or six pieces of furniture bagged up with plastic sheeting; he could see just a corner of the kitchen counter, and it was completely bare.

Schickel and Coakley had walked along the driveway so they could see him on the porch, and when Virgil said, “Uh-oh,” Coakley called, “What?”

“I think he’s gone. It looks like he mothballed the house.”

“Oh, boy. He can’t . . . Well, I guess he can.”

“I’m gonna try to look in another window,” Virgil said. He tramped around the house, but the windows were too high. He looked in the garage, found an old wooden stepladder, put it against the kitchen window, and looked through the open blades of the venetian blind. The kitchen was empty—the dinette table cleaned and wrapped in transparent plastic. Schickel had walked away from the house, and walked back and said, “No heat coming out of the chimney.”

“Let’s go talk to his folks,” Coakley said.

“You go ahead and do that,” Virgil said. “I’m going to get my camera and take some shots through the window.”

“What for?” Schickel asked.

Virgil didn’t want to tell the truth—to get you out of the way while I break in—so he said, “Just documenting it. That he ran. Maybe . . . I doubt it, but it might help get a search warrant.”

Schickel shrugged, and Coakley said, “We’ll give you a call when we get out.”

Virgil walked around to her door, as Schickel was getting in the other side, and said, “Rouse.”

She nodded.

Coakley backed in a circle and headed out. Virgil got his Nikon from the truck, just in case, recovered the butter knife from under the front seat, and went to work on the kitchen door. In one minute, he decided that the knife wouldn’t work; the lock was too new, and the door too tight.

He checked for a key above the door frame, found nothing, checked the adjacent window frame, came up empty, went back to the garage, looked for a key hanging from a nail on one of the exposed studs, found nothing there, and then knocked it off the top of the door frame.

The key worked fine, and he was in. He walked through in thirty seconds: Loewe was gone, no doubt about it. No note, nothing to look at, although there was a room full of cardboard boxes, packed with dishes and other household stuff, covered with a sheet of plastic. Nothing perishable.

The refrigerator and stove were unplugged, the microwave was missing, the water was turned off.

Virgil let himself out, put the key back, and walked around to the front porch, with the Nikon, and took a few shots.

When he was done, he sat in the truck, waiting, and daydreamed possible ways to get at the photos at the Rouses’ place. Had to get them. Had to get just the smallest edge, just enough to get in there.

Maybe lie.

COAKLEY CALLED and said, “His folks say he decided to take off for the Cities, check out some job possibilities. They don’t know exactly where he’s staying, and they don’t know when he’ll be back.”

“Is that the truth?”

“I don’t think so. His mother had that ‘I’ve got a secret’ look on her face. She was messing with us. Gene thinks so, too.”

“You want to come up to Sleepy Eye with me?”

“I don’t think so. I’m going