Dark of the Moon

their souls, had started talking about coming clean. So the Gleasons had been silenced by someone else involved in the cover-up: Big Curly.
    Judd suspected something: so Judd died.
    Roman Schmidt began to put things together: and the Schmidts went down.
    Thirty percent, Virgil thought.
     
    B UT THE S TRYKER FAMILY was deep in this, as well. Had the motive to get rid of the Judds—Judd had killed their father and husband. And when Amy Sweet had told Virgil that she’d mentioned the Judd ethanol plant to her bridge group, the one member of the group whose name Virgil had recognized had been Laura Stryker’s. So at least one Stryker had known that Judd was headed back toward ethanol, a scheme that might have looked a lot like the Jerusalem artichoke scam.
    It was possible, he thought, that the Strykers, one or all of them, would not want Williamson cleared, as Virgil had suggested he might be. And Stryker did have a streak of violence in him, as Jesse had suggested. He’d killed Feur and the man named John without turning a hair. Twenty percent, one or all.
     
    T HERE WAS a possibility, which would never really come clear, if it were true, that George Feur was behind it all, as Jim Stryker believed. Good reason to believe that—Stryker wasn’t a stupid man. Fifteen percent.
     
    M ARGARET L AYMON was another possibility, although he really didn’t think she would have left that pistol in Jesse’s boot. Or, in any case, he couldn’t see why she would do that.
    Then there were a few outliers: Jensen and Margo Carr. Somebody had planted that Revelation, and that Salem cigarette butt, and had known that Carr would pick it up.
    Altogether, another fifteen percent.
     
    F OR A TOTAL OF 110 PERCENT.
     
    V IRGIL NOW HAD them all separated and one of them, maybe, was worried. He’d carefully primed them all with the belief that he had more information, had more ideas about who the killer might be…
    And one of them, he thought, the crazy one, the man in the moon, might well be coming with a gun to erase the Virgil Flowers problem.
    And if nobody did? Well, then, maybe it was Feur.
    Maybe…
     
    V IRGIL LOOKED DOWN at his watch. Nine-forty.
    Had to be Williamson, Virgil thought. He was still in his shop, under surveillance.
    If it was another one of them, he or she would have already made a move. Maybe it was a bust…
    Then Moonie came out of the shadows…

25
    V IRGIL HAD JUST called Stryker: “He moving yet?”
    “Not a thing. Lights are still on.”
    “Have you seen…?”
     
    A T THAT MOMENT, a figure emerged from the hedge at the back of the Sherwin-Williams store, dressed all in black, except for jogging shoes with reflective strips on the back, little white flashes in the night. Hard to see him, though it was a he. Couldn’t be Williamson, because he was still at the paper.
    The killer jogged silently in a combat hunch to the back and then down the side of Virgil’s truck. Virgil half stood as the figure lifted the muzzle of a shotgun as he came up to the truck’s front door, then stepped back and fired a single shot like thunder and lightning in the night, a flash of exploding glass, through the window on the truck, neatly blowing the head off the CPR dummy that sat behind the wheel.
    In the flash, Virgil caught his face.
     
    V IRGIL SHOUTED: “Williamson: lay the gun on the ground.”
    Williamson had never struck Virgil as an athlete, but he spun and pumped and fired and the last words weren’t out of Virgil’s mouth when lightning flashed at him, but going wide, and he went flat and squeezed off a shot from his own shotgun, but Williamson had vanished. Virgil had the impression that his shot had gone in close, but he’d learned early that a shotgun was no sure cure in a gunfight.
    Fuckin’ Williamson!
    He could hear Stryker screaming on the radio: he picked it up and shouted, “Williamson’s out. Williamson’s out. He’s got a shotgun and he ran behind Sherwin-Williams. Kick in the door on his office, make sure he’s not headed back there. He’s got a shotgun and I don’t know what else, he’s shooting, so everybody take it easy. Everybody stay in your cars, let’s see if we can spot him…”
    “You okay, you okay?” Stryker was still screaming.
    “I’m okay, except I’m scared. Everybody stay cool now. Let’s round him up. Margo, are you there? Jensen?”
    Stryker: “How’d he get out, how’d he get out…?”
     
    T HEY CHECKED IN, all cruising.
    Little Curly said,