Dark of the Moon (10 page)

T
HE
S
TRYKER FARMSTEAD
was an archaeological dig in waiting: a crumbling homestead, a woodlot full of abandoned farm machinery and a couple of wrecked cars, a windmill without a prop. The farm was built a quarter mile off a gravel road, in a grove of cottonwoods, at the base of a steep hill. Red-rock outcrops stuck out of the hill, while below it, all around the farm buildings, all the way to Bluestem, and really, all the way to Kansas City, was nothing but the darkest of black dirt, a sea of corn, beans, and wheat.

Among the wrecked buildings, the barn was the exception, and was still substantial. “Don’t have animals in it, but we keep it up for the machinery,” Joan said. “One of the neighbors—you can’t see his place, he’s a mile down the way—rents out the loft, sticks his extra hay up there.”

The house, a hundred feet across a muddy parking circle from the barn, was little more than a shed. Originally one of the plain, upright, porchless, clapboard farmhouses built on the plains in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with a coal-and wood-burning furnace and a hand pump in the backyard, it had been converted to a farm office and lounge.

The second level, never fully heated, had been blocked off with insulation and plywood to eliminate heat loss in the winter, Joan said. The utilities had been moved out of the basement to the old back bedroom, and the basement was nothing more than a hole with some rotting shelves holding empty canning jars.

“Probably could get twenty dollars each for those jars, on eBay,” Joan said.

“Why don’t you?”

“I don’t need four hundred dollars.”

T
HE FIRST FLOOR
had a barely functioning kitchen with a countertop hot plate, a microwave, and a sink, with a table and six chairs; an electric pump fed the sink. Two ruined couches occupied the living room, with mud circles on the floor where the farmhands had tracked through. An aging computer sat on a table in the former dining room, with a Hewlett-Packard printer next to it, and a couple of four-drawer file cabinets pushed against the lathe-and-plaster wall.

“After the roads got better, it never made much sense to actually live out here,” Joan said, as she showed him through the place. “Everything had to be brought out, and you were living out here in isolation. Most of the time, if you didn’t have animals, there wasn’t much to do. In the winter you did maintenance, in the summer you’d do some spraying and mowing…but basically, you were watching the corn grow, or the wheat, or the beans. By the time I was a kid, we had all that Star Wars machinery, a farm wife could sit up on a Deere in an air-conditioned cab with a cassette deck and listen to rock ’n’ roll and do the harvest by herself. Ninety percent of it was pushing buttons and pulling levers. No need for a house. I mean, it wasn’t
that
simple…but it almost was.”

“So you moved to town,” Virgil said.

“Well, look around,” she said, waving at the horizon. “If you look right over there, you can see one other house, but nobody lives in it. It’s lonely as hell out here. And Dad killed himself right out back, which still gives me the creeps if I’m out here on a winter night.”

“Nice now, though,” Virgil said. The sun was slanting down toward the horizon, and a few wispy clouds streaked the pale blue sky; there was just enough breeze to stir the leaves on an endless ocean of corn.

“C’mon,” she said. “I’ll show you why the house is so far from the road. We have to hurry, before it gets too dark. Bring your camera.”

V
IRGIL GOT
the Nikon out of the truck, with a long image-stabilized zoom, and tagged along past the end of the barn and the rotten timbers of what might once have been a hog pen, past an old pear tree, and a couple of apples, angling downhill to a creek. A footpath, maintained by feet, led along the banks of the creek up toward the hillside. As they got closer, Virgil could see that the creek came out of a crack in the hill, feeding into a broad, shallow stock tank. Overflow from the tank fed the creek.

“This is about as much water as we ever get,” she said. “We’re a little drier here than farther east. C’mon.”

She led him straight into the crack in the hillside, a narrow, rocky cleft that widened to twenty feet, slightly climbing, with the water pounding downhill. The spray caught him a couple of times, a cooling sprinkle on the face and hands.

“Keep coming…”

A
T THE TOP
of the canyon, two hundred yards into the hillside, was a natural rock pool fifty or sixty feet across, fed from a spring that fell down the back wall of the canyon. A few small trees struggled to stay alive in the thin dirt, and cattails rimmed what must’ve been a muddier flat on the far side. “Cool,” Virgil said.

“Called the Stryker Dell on the geological surveys,” she said. “Us kids used to come up here and swim. It’s good in the evenings, when the sun’s coming down the canyon. It’s a little gloomy in morning, and cold.”

Virgil stepped down to the water, stuck his hand in. Cool, but not frigid, and he said so.

“Because the water’s trickling down that rock in the sunshine,” Joan said. “This spring will go mostly dry in the fall, it’ll just be a stain on the rock. The pond never goes dry, because it’s too deep—twenty feet, right below our feet—but sometimes, no water runs out of it. There used to be a pipe up here, that’d feed the stock tank down below. Anyway, it’s why the farm was here: year-round water without much work, just by siphoning. If it wasn’t for this, my great-grandfather probably would have built out by the road.”

Virgil took a picture of her standing on a rock on the edge of the pond, said, “Must’ve been a great place to come when you were a kid.”

“It was; if only there’d been more people around, it would have been perfect.”

T
HEY SAT
on the rock, in the sunshine, and Virgil showed her how the Nikon worked. A red-winged blackbird showed up and did some stunts on the cattails, and he took a couple of shots. They compared small-town childhoods, and chatted about college years, dope-smoking and rock ’n’ roll, the price of corn-ethanol, about their parents. “My mom lives one street over, and one block down from me,” she said. “By now, she knows about your trying to feel me up last night.”

“Only teenagers get felt up,” Virgil said. “I was expressing a physical affection.”

“Huh.
Seemed
like getting felt up,” she said.

“I’d like to dedicate some time to do it right,” Virgil said. “But this Gleason case, Judd…”

So they talked about the case, and he worked the conversation around: “So your mom and dad were good friends with Judd? You think your mom would know something that went on back then? There’s gotta be something. Who the hell is the man in the moon?”

“Maybe if we took my mom over to see Betsy Carlson, she could find out,” Joan said.

“We could do that,” Virgil said. “Think she’d go along?”

“If they let you back in. They might not be too happy to see you, if you had Betsy all freaked out when you left.” She stood up and brushed off her seat and yawned. “We oughta get back before dark. I’ve got my payroll to put together for tomorrow.”

H
E LEFT HER
at her house, in town, after spending another two minutes on her porch. She offered him a cup of coffee, but he had some online research to do, and she had her payroll. “Will you have time tomorrow night?” Virgil asked. “Maybe we could run up to Marshall, go to a place that has candles and wine.”

“I’d like that.”

“Call your mom,” Virgil said. “Ask if she could run over to Sioux Falls to see Betsy.”

“Yeah.” She looked out at the coming night, the houses with big backyards, a kid’s voice not far away, laughing, and the first of the lightning bugs. “What a great night,” she said. “If it were July in Minnesota all the time, you’d have to put up fences to keep people out.”

V
IRGIL WROTE
a little more fiction that night, and invented characters named Joan and Jim Stryker, and himself, whom he called Homer. Homer was terrifically good-looking, and certainly well hung, which might possibly come up later in the story. He smiled in the glow of the computer screen, thinking about it. Had to be funny, however he put it…

He wrote,

Goddamn laptop keyboard. Kept missing an
i
when he typed
doing
or
going,
which then came out
dong
and
gong
—could be an embarrassing typo if it happened in the wrong place.

He shut it down, went to bed, spent his two minutes thinking about God, and another ten seconds thinking about dongs and gongs, and finding a new keyboard in a small town, and then fell fast asleep.

M
OONIE LAY BACK
with a little weed, in a little weed—out in the backyard—and blew smoke at the sky and watched the Big Dipper rolling around, under the glow of the Milky Way, and considered the question.

T
HE NUMBER
of necessary killings was growing. There was no emotional problem there, but the risk had increased. Moonie recognized risk.

Two of the remaining killings, Jerry Johnstone and Roman Schmidt, were matters of honor, simple as that. They were essential and inescapable and had already been delayed too long. If not done now, the targets might escape forever.

Moonie blew some more smoke at the sky.

Once the honor killings were done, and the reality had soaked in—the completion of his task, the pleasure of the memories—there’d be time to rest. Sleep had never come easily—four good hours were hard to find, and after thirty-plus years of sleep deprivation, Moonie had built up a great crankiness.

Or maybe insanity.

Whatever.

Made no difference.

T
WO MORE KILLINGS
were business necessities. A third, that of Virgil Flowers, might become necessary, because of the way Flowers was deliberately roiling the town. People were closing down, locking doors, talking from behind chains.

Maybe…maybe, Moonie thought, the dope wasn’t helping. The tactics of the killings had been fine, but the strategy now seemed wrong. Judd should have been last. Could have been last. Moonie had killed him simply because the urge had no longer been containable. And because the old man’s brain had been going. No good killing him, if he didn’t know why he was dying.

Not an easy thing to manage, multiple murder.

S
O WHAT
about Flowers?

Flowers would be purely business: he was too competent, a danger.

Flowers also seemed to have a kind of karmic presence: he’d come into Bluestem in the middle of a thunderstorm, had virtually driven into the Judd killing. Then, instead of pushing, probing, demanding, investigating, he’d sort of…bullshitted his way around town, not to put too fine a point on it. Gone around talking to everybody, telling lies, telling stories: had taken even the clerk at the Holiday Inn into his confidence.

And in bullshitting his way around town, he’d caused a disturbance. Waves from the disturbance were washing around the county. Instead of waiting for something official to be done, for cop cars and crime-scene crews, people were asking questions, and some were looking backward…

Too soon for that.

S
O THE QUESTION
Moonie was here to decide, after work, out in the backyard on a blanket with a little help from some friendly smoke and the Milky Way, was whether to kill Flowers now, and then go onto Jerry Johnstone or Roman Schmidt, or do Johnstone and Schmidt, and only do Flowers if it was absolutely necessary.

An attempt on Flowers would be huge. Hard to tell where he’d be at any given moment, which meant that the killing ground couldn’t be scouted ahead of time. You couldn’t simply follow him: if he didn’t see it, somebody else would.

Couldn’t invite him over and do it, somebody would know about the invitation. That was the trouble with a small town like Bluestem: there were eyes and ears everywhere. You couldn’t hang out without people noticing, and worse, knowing who you were, and wondering why you were hanging out. Walk down the street, and you could see the drapes moving, the eyes pressing out of the houses, following behind you; the dogs watching from behind fences, witnessing your intrusion.

There was an old joke about a small town: a real small town meant that you didn’t have to use the turn signals on your car, because anybody behind you already knew where you were going…

F
LOWERS.

Flowers could be taken at the motel. Watch for the light in his room, wait for it to go out, throw some gravel against the sliding glass door, and when he looked out, hit him with a shotgun.

The problem then, would be getting away. Okay—run across the parking lot, behind the Dairy Queen, which would be closed at that time of night, up the alley behind the downtown businesses, out of sight in the dark.

Maybe…there was that one streetlight. Take it out ahead of time with a .22? That could be done. But if anybody saw you, even just a glimpse, there was a chance that they’d recognize the build, the stride, the way of running…People here knew
everything
about you.

Perhaps Flowers could be lured out somewhere: it’d have to be indirect. He’d have to think he was sneaking up on somebody, and then, when he stepped in the trap,
boom.
And then, and then…there’d be a cop frenzy. The BCA would flood the town with investigators.

Have to think about it.

J
OHNSTONE
and Roman were different.

If they weren’t done, Moonie would never get any rest. Their deaths were a basic requirement of life. Johnstone wouldn’t be any harder than it was with Judd: Johnstone was an old man, with an old man’s neck. A rope would be enough to do it. A knife. A hammer. Wouldn’t actually have to shoot out his eyes—a knife would take them out, though he enjoyed the resonance of the gun. Go over to Johnstone’s place after dark, knock quietly on the side door. He’d open it. But would he turn on the porch light first? Maybe unscrew the bulb.

Johnstone lived near the Gleasons’ house. Sneaking was easy with the Gleasons, but now, in the changed atmosphere, it might not be so easy. Anybody caught sneaking anywhere in Bluestem would be put under a microscope. And if Moonie were put under a microscope, there wouldn’t be a single person in town who could provide an alibi, who would say, “Yup, we were out together looking at the fire,” or whatever.

If you didn’t have an alibi, they’d pick you apart.

Schmidt would be easier in some ways, harder in others. He lived outside of town, for one thing. Make sure the Schmidts were home, pull into the yard, past the yard light, park by the kitchen garden. Take Roman out, then the wife; she was old and slow.

But Roman carried a gun and he was tough, even at his age, and he had to be killed quickly, without suspecting what was coming.

Though it’d be nice to chat with him for a few minutes, when he knew he was dying, when he knew his wife was already dead, to see the hate in his fading eyes.

And then…

I
F HE HIT
S
CHMIDT,
then Johnstone, who was already a tough target, would get tougher. Everybody would be on edge. But Johnstone had to go; there were only two weeks left before the moon rolled around again.

T
HEN IT
’
D BE
possible, bearable, after Johnstone and Schmidt, to lie low for a while, and do the business killings, one at a time…even let some time pass. Maybe come up with something complicated, so they’d seem like accidental deaths.

When all the necessary killings were done, would it be possible to stop? Maybe not: but if it were necessary to feed the hunger, purely for recreational reasons and psychological comfort, that could be done in other places, as time allowed. Minneapolis, Des Moines, Omaha. Kill and go…

H
HU.

T
HE MARIJUANA
wasn’t helping the thought process, though it was a wonderful thing in its own right: mellowed out the experience, gave life to the stars.

Had to focus. Tactics. Strategy.

Blew a little smoke into the sky and watched the Big Dipper rolling by, watched the lightning bugs blinking out their passions, and Moonie thought, and thought, and finally plucked a flower out of the overgrown jumble of the backyard, and in the shaft of light that came out the bedroom window onto the lawn, plucked the petals one by one, letting God decide.

Johnstone, Flowers, Roman; Johnstone, Flowers, Roman…

The flower had quite a few petals, but offered only one conclusion.

R
OMAN
S
CHMIDT
was sound asleep when the car pulled into the driveway, and that popped his eyes open. He was far enough out of town that, late at night, several times a year, somebody would use his driveway to turn around, and go back toward town.

The car headlights would sweep through the house, cutting across the bedroom shades, and that would pop him awake. When he was sheriff, lights like that usually meant somebody bringing bad news, and he’d never gotten over that instantly awake reaction.

But now he was an old man, and sleep didn’t come that easy anymore. He treasured what he could get, and it pissed him off when he was unnecessarily poked out of a decent sleep.

Unlike most of the cars that did it, this one didn’t turn around. It kept coming, and quickly, and he could tell by the crunch of tires on gravel that it had pulled into the parking place back by the kitchen door. He reached out, touched his clock: 1:30 in the morning.

Who in the hell?

His wife groaned and he said, “I’ll go see,” but she didn’t say anything and he suspected she’d never really awakened. He reached into the bottom drawer of his bedside table, groped around, found the .357, held it next to his leg, and walked through the dark out to the back door in his shorts and T-shirt.

Knock at the door. Bad news. Bad news always knocks quietly. He thought of his son in Minneapolis, his daughters in Albert Lea and Santa Fe. God help him, he’d die of a heart attack if he looked out the window and saw a deputy standing there, looking grim. He’d die of a fuckin’ heart attack…

Another knock. He snapped on the porch light, took in the familiar face, felt the fluttering of his heart, opened the door and asked, the anxiety riding right to the surface, “What happened?”

“This,” said Moonie. The gun came up. Schmidt said, “No,” and Moonie shot him in the heart.

G
LORIA
S
CHMIDT
screamed, “Rome! Rome!” and groped for the bedside light, and found it just in time to see the muzzle of the gun and the face behind it.

“Not you,” she said.

Moonie shot her once in the forehead, and she flopped back on the bed, stone dead.

S
CHMIDT WAS FLAT
on his back, dead, but he’d still have eyes in the spirit world. Moonie closed the kitchen door to muffle the sound as much as possible, leaned sideways and fired two more shots, through Schmidt’s half-open eyes, then opened the kitchen door again, and listened.

Crickets and frogs.

Nothing more. There was time to do this right.