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When the true-crimers were gone, Lucas and Virgil picked up glasses and carried them to the kitchen. Cornell, who was not in a hurry, followed them and asked, “Are you guys going to sit on your thumbs and wait for the returns to come in?”

“We’ve got a couple of irons in the fire,” Virgil said. “We don’t want to talk about them, no offense.”

“If you’re not going to tell me about them, I want my legal pads back,” Cornell said. “And my pens.”

When Cornell had gone, Lucas asked, “What irons do we have in the fire?”

“The guy who tipped us about Jepson. We need to put up a note and have him call us, and we need to talk to Jepson again, about doctors. We should have done it before now, but we’ve been running around.”

“We really ought to talk to everybody we’ve identified as Doris’s customers and ask about doctors.”

“Of course, we might be a little overfocused on the doctor thing,” Virgil said.

“I know that, but what else have we got? I should talk to Maggie, see if the Minneapolis guys came up with anything.”

“A license plate would be good,” Virgil said.

Lucas frowned: “I don’t think we’ll get one. The way Doris was killed, the way Marcia Wise was killed—fast, efficient, brutal, without a trace of him. The killer is no dummy.”

“You’re right. Think about that while I send a note to Dahlia Blair and have her put up a note to Big Dave.”

—

While Virgil was typing on his iPad, Lucas’s phone rang. He took it out, looked at the screen: “Michelle Cornell.”

“Why is she calling? She’s probably still sitting in your driveway.”

“Maybe I should answer the phone and find out.” He answered and Cornell said, “We have something for you.”

“Yeah?”

“The owner of one of the smaller sites, she wasn’t at the meeting, Phyllis Binley, got a wild call a few minutes ago. She says one of her readers down in Farmington told her that her father recognizes the guy with the Porsche. Phyllis wanted to put in a bid for a piece of the reward.”

“Whoa. That’s serious,” Lucas said. “Who’s the woman who called?”

“I wrote it all down on one of the yellow pads I took back. With one of the pens.”

“Michelle…”

“Her name is Rochelle Green. She lives on Walnut Street in Farmington…Do you have a yellow pad of your own that you can write this down on?”

Lucas took the address down and asked, “Is Rochelle gonna be around?”

“She says so. She says she’s a caregiver for her father,” Cornell said.

“Uh-oh.”

“Yes, I don’t know exactly what that means, but I thought you’d want to check,” Cornell said.

“We do,” Lucas said. “We’ll head down there.”

Off the phone, he asked Virgil, “You know everything south of the Cities. How far is Farmington from here?”

Virgil: “If I’m driving, half hour, maybe a little more.”

“You’re driving.”

—

Lotta corn, and though this was Minnesota, and not Oklahoma, the corn was higher than an elephant’s eye, and the soybeans were looking good, too. Highway 3 down to Farmington rolled through farm country, lined with trees and widely spaced farmhouses usually half-surrounded by unpainted steel silos. A light drizzle was still falling out of the overcast sky; the creeks they crossed were overloaded and some of the fields were decidedly soggy.

“This is wet, but down home at the farm, I mean, I’ve never seen the Minnesota River as high as it is, this time of year,” Virgil said.

“Uh-huh. Tell me some more rural shit, I’m deeply interested.”

“Making conversation,” Virgil said.

More buildings began popping up at the side of the road and Virgil said, “We haven’t had lunch. There’s a Dairy Queen just before we get into town. I could use a chocolate-dipped.”

“You’re driving.”

“Clever. You want a cone, but you don’t want the responsibility for stopping.”

—

They both got hot dogs at the DQ, which they ate immediately, and then vanilla cones, Virgil’s chocolate-dipped, Lucas’s not. They followed Virgil’s navigation app to Spruce Street, and then, because he was licking his cone and not paying attention, past Walnut Street to Locust Street, and then around the block and back to Walnut, where they spotted Green’s house.

While much of the town had older, prewar houses, Walnut was newer, probably fifties or sixties—ranch-styles and split-levels with two-car garages, old enough that many had been re-sided with aluminum or vinyl siding, mostly in tan, gray, beige, brown, or blue. There were sidewalks on both sides of the street, with trees that appeared to be younger than the houses growing from the verge between the sidewalk and the street.

They sat outside the house for another minute, finishing the cones, threw the cone wrappers and napkins on the floor of the back seat. then hurried through the drizzle up to Green’s house and knocked.

Green came to the door and opened it without peeking out. Virgil held up his BCA identification and said, “Miz Green. I’m agent Flowers with the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, and my partner here is U.S. Marshal Lucas Davenport.”

She pushed open the door with a smile and said, “You two are just the berries. My goodness, I didn’t expect to hear back for hours, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if it was days. Come in, come in, Dad is in the porch, where he likes to sit. Can I get you a Dr Pepper or a cup of coffee?”

They declined and followed her through the house, passed a console organ with sheet music, an overstuffed couch facing two La-Z-Boy recliners with a coffee table between them. Pictures on the wall ran to family portraits, yellowed with age, including two young soldiers in what looked like Vietnam-era uniforms.

Green was probably in her late sixties or early seventies, Virgil thought, wearing a blue blouse and lighter-blue slacks, with sandals. Her hair was what might once have been called a beehive, but was lower, and improbably reddish-purple.

She said, “Dad has faded out considerably. He’s ninety-two, and he was sharp as a tack until he was eighty-eight or eighty-nine. Drove himself until he was eighty-five. He was watching TV and saw that picture of the man with the sports car and he said, ‘I know that fella, the one with the car. He’s the one operated on Helen.’ Sometimes, you know, he can still pull himself together, and he was like that for a little while this morning. He’s been sleeping, I don’t know how he is now.”

Virgil caught Lucas’s coat sleeve to slow him down, and asked, “Who’s Helen?”

“Helen was his sister. She died, oh, let me see, eight, no, seven years ago, a year after Ralph. Ralph was her husband. Helen had breast cancer back when she was in her seventies, but they caught it early and she recovered. She died from a stroke. She was a year older than Dad.”

“Do you know who Helen’s doctor was?” Lucas asked.

“No, I don’t. I didn’t know her very well. She never lived here in Farmington when I was a child. And when she got sick, I was living in Fairmont with my husband. We divorced about the time Helen got cancer. I didn’t pay much attention to her problem because Dad said she was going to be okay, and I had those problems of my own.”

“Let’s go talk to your father,” Virgil said.

She didn’t move immediately, but said, “I need to warn you, Dad can be a little stinky. I changed him just a half hour ago, but he doesn’t have control of his bowels and he could let go anytime.”

“That’s fine. Let’s go talk,” Lucas said. “What’s his name?”

“Bradley. Brad. Trimble. Green’s my married name. I remarried after my divorce, my husband’s up north fishing.”

They followed her to an add-on porch at the back of the house, an aluminum-frame structure with windows all around, looking at a backyard with a single tree in it. Trimble was sitting in a third La-Z-Boy, a shabbier one than those in the living room. He was dressed in sweatpants and a blue tee-shirt, the tee-shirt covered by a gray zip-up hoodie.

Trimble didn’t turn his head when they walked in, but stared straight ahead through a window at the tree. Forty-five degrees to his right, a small television sat on a walnut table, tuned to the Weather Channel, which was showing color radar of thunderstorms outside of Dallas.

Green touched her father’s shoulder. He moved his chin toward her and she said, “There are some policemen here to see you. They need to know the name of the man who operated on Helen all those years ago.”

“Helen?”

“Your sister. Helen. You said you saw a picture of a man who operated on Helen.”

He sat unmoving, then twitched: “Operated on who?”

“Your sister.”

He was silent, and Lucas looked at Virgil and shook his head. Green said, “You remember, Dad, you saw his picture on TV today.”

“Don’t remember that,” Trimble said.

“It’s important, Dad, try to remember.”

“I…” And the room was suffused with the odor of flatulence.

Green: “Dad, did you just poop?”

Silence for a few seconds, then a shake of the head. “Didn’t poop. Just gas.” Then he added, “Helen. Medicare saved her ass.”

Virgil looked at Lucas and raised his eyebrows: of course she’d have been on Medicare if she was in her seventies. There’d be a record.

Trimble cranked his head around, looked first at Lucas, then at Virgil, and said to Virgil, “You don’t look like no cop. Hair is too long.”

“I’m scheduled to get it cut, but I’ve been too busy,” Virgil said. “Do you remember the name of Helen’s doctor?”

“I talked to him in the parking lot after the operation on Helen. He had a little car. Two seats. Couldn’t put nothing in it.”

“Do you remember the doctor’s name?” Virgil pressed.

“Of course I do,” Trimble said. He fell silent again, and his chin dipped to his chest.

Lucas: “Do you remember…”

Trimble looked up. “Remember what?”

“The name of Helen’s doctor?”

“I talked to him in the parking lot,” Trimble said.

His chin dipped, and Green said, “Dad?”

Trimble pulled himself up and said, “Carlson. Dr. Carlson. Timothy Carlson. He had a little car, not practical at all. Have to be a dumbshit to ride around in one of those if you didn’t have to.”

“I’d have to agree with that,” Virgil said.

Green: “Did that help?”

“It might. We hope so. Whatever happens, we’re grateful, Miz Green,” Virgil said. He looked down at Trimble, who now seemed fully asleep. “When your father wakes up, tell him he did a very good thing.”

“I will,” she said. Tears gathered in her eyes, and she patted her father on the shoulder.

“We’ll leave you with him,” Lucas said.

—

Outside, in the car, Lucas asked Virgil, “Who has the Bee list? Was that Moss?”

“No, it’s Weitz.”

“Gimme Weitz’s phone number.”

Virgil found the number and Lucas called Weitz. When she answered, he asked, “Is the list alphabetized?”

“Most of it. Down to the Rs.”

“Is there a Timothy Carlson on the list?”

“Let me look.” She went away for a minute, then came back and said, “Yup. Is that a big deal?”

“We don’t know. We’re out of town, headed back. Where are you?”

“We’re at a Motel 6 on I-94, a couple miles from the park.”

“We’ll be there in half an hour or so…maybe a little longer. We’d like you and your people to start searching Carlson. Everything you can find out about him.”

“Is he the one?”

“We’re working on a very shaky tip here. Right now, we want to know as much as we can find out.”

“See you in half an hour, then,” Weitz said.

Ten minutes later, she called back: “We got a quick piece of important information about Timothy Carlson.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes. He’s dead. He died in a fall. Give me a phone number, and I’ll text you the obituary from the Star-Tribune . Like, right now.”

—

“Sonofagun. That doesn’t help,” Virgil said, after they’d rung off.

“Where’s your iPad?”

“Back seat.”

Lucas unbuckled, turned in his seat, groped around, and got the iPad. Virgil gave him a password and by the time he signed on, the obituary had come in. He read through it, as Virgil waited impatiently, saying, “What’s it say, what’s it say?”

“He fell off his roof and killed himself,” Lucas said.

“Fell off his roof? When?”

“Lemme see…Uh, not long ago.” Lucas did some mental calculations and then, “If this is right, about three days after we announced the reward.”

“Man. That gives me a little buzz,” Virgil said. “A suicide?”

“The obituary says he fell while trying to recover a dog’s ball from a roof gutter. I don’t think suicides usually set it up that way.”

“Still, that’s an interesting accident after twenty years of no accidents,” Virgil said.

“It does have the smell of bullshit,” Lucas said. “But where’s the bullshit coming from? We need to find out what happened.”

“Call the ME. Find out if there was an autopsy.”

“I got a dollar says there wasn’t…”

“No bet.”

Lucas called the Ramsey County Medical Examiner, and after he’d identified himself, got switched to an investigator, Darren Trask, who’d handled the Carlson death.

“No autopsy was needed,” the investigator said. “There was a witness who was there at the time he fell. His wife.”

“What happened, exactly?” Lucas asked.

“I went over there, the body was still at the scene, on the patio at the back of the house. One of his dogs—he had two—had rolled two rubber play balls, Chuckit!s, under a balcony railing down a slanting roof into a gutter,” Trask said. “The wife said the gutter had given them problems in the past, clogging up. When it overflowed, it stained the siding on the house, so Carlson wanted to get the balls out, with all the rain we’ve been having. The Chuckit!s came with a plastic throwing arm that has a cup at one end…”

Virgil jumped in: “I have one, I know about Chuckit!s….”

“Who is that?” the investigator asked.

“Virgil Flowers, he’s working with me,” Lucas said.

“Hey, Virgie,” Trask said. “How you doin’?”

“Hey, Darren. So then what happened with Carlson?” Virgil asked.

“Okay, so you know about Chuckit! balls. Anyway, Carlson couldn’t reach the gutter, and instead of getting a ladder or something—this was pretty high up, second story on a big house, a mansion, really— he taped the throwing arm to a mop handle and leaned way over the balcony railing to try to get the ball in the throwing arm’s cup. His wife said he was leaning over the railing, balanced on it, with the mop handle in one hand, and holding on to the railing with his other hand. She said she warned him not to do that, but he did anyway. His hand broke loose and over he went, headfirst. His wife was seriously screwed up about it.”

“Jesus.”

“Yeah. He was killed instantly, his skull was cracked wide open, both arms broken, neck and back broken.”

“Do you have any tissue samples?”

“No, we don’t. No autopsy,” Trask said. “He was brought here, and the ME reviewed my notes and signed off on the death. Body was moved to a funeral home, I think, I wasn’t here for that.”

“Well…okay.”

“Is there a problem?”

“Part of an ongoing investigation,” Lucas said.

“I’ve been reading about you and Virgil…I’ve done a couple of sudden death investigations for Virgie down in Nobles County. Suicides, both of them. So…is this related to the Grandfelt thing?”

“We would have liked to get some DNA from the guy,” Virgil said.

“Trying to match up with the Doris Grandfelt rapist DNA?” Trask asked.

“Exactly.”

“If you’ve got good reason, you could have him exhumed…”

“We will probably try to do that,” Lucas said.

“Hang on one minute,” Trask said. “I’ll be right back.”

He put his phone down, and Lucas and Virgil listened to the silence for fifteen seconds, and Virgil said, “I hope he wasn’t cremated.”

“Even if he was, his house has gotta be full—”

Trask came back. “Okay, bad news. His body was picked up by South Minnesota Cremation Services. He’ll be ash, by now.”

Lucas: “Goddamnit.”

“One other thing,” Trask said. “His wife’s name is Amanda Fisk, and she’s an assistant county attorney here in Ramsey County. A prosecutor. Well known in the business. Maybe if she hadn’t been who she was, the ME might have wanted to take a look at him. But the whole cause-and-effect situation with the Chuckit! balls and the fall was so obvious…”

“All right,” Virgil said. “Listen, thanks, Darren. Take a look at your notes, and if anything occurs to you, give us a ring.”

“Will do.”

—

When they’d rung off, Lucas asked, “Is Trask competent?”

“He’s not the brightest star in the Milky Way. You wouldn’t want him on a really hard call.”

“You’re not filling me with confidence,” Lucas said. “We gotta nail down Carlson. His house has gotta be full of his DNA. Get some of your BCA people over there.”

“We will do that. I worry about the fact that he was killed so soon after the reward was posted,” Virgil said.

“So do I,” Lucas said. “I’m not that impressed by coincidences.”

“His wife was a witness.”

Lucas: “Yup.”

“Let’s talk to her,” Virgil said. “Call the county attorney, get her phone number.”

“I will. If he’s a match for the DNA…”

“What does that even mean?” Virgil asked.

Lucas looked out the passenger window and saw some goats. He said, “Goats.”

“Yeah. We’re in farm country. You can tell by the barns.”

“I don’t know what it means.”

“The barns?”

“No, I don’t know what it’ll mean if there’s a match,” Lucas said. “We’ll have to review the Grandfelt autopsy down to the last atomic particle…not us, but the ME and his pathologists. Was she raped? Give us a percentage call. Seventy-thirty, no rape? Sixty-forty, rape? If she was, then Carlson was the killer and case closed. If she wasn’t…”

“Then what?”

“If she wasn’t raped and we get a DNA match with Carlson, then we’ve maybe—maybe—still got an unidentified killer on the loose.”

“You’re saying maybe because the sex may have been consensual, but then he flipped out and killed her,” Virgil said. “Which would explain a lot, like the tight timeline between the sex and the murder.”

“Yes. Let’s say they had the sex, and then she confessed that she’d slept with somebody else earlier that evening, which we know she did. There’s your motive for the killing. He gets dressed first, he goes to the kitchen and gets a knife, whets it on a brick, and then he does her. But then, damnit, instead of killing her, he kisses her goodnight and somebody else comes in…”

After mulling that over, Virgil said, “You’re telling me that no matter what the ME says, everything’s gonna be up in the air.”

“Yeah.”

“I can buy some of that, but then who killed Marcia Wise?” Virgil asked. “And why? Carlson didn’t, he was dead.”

“Shut up.”

They sat silently, thinking about it. Finally, Virgil said, “A lot of great goat cheese comes from this part of the country.”

“You told me once before about goat cheese,” Lucas said. “Remember what I told you what you could do with your goat cheese?”

“I may have repressed it,” Virgil said.

They had the satellite radio tuned to an Americana station, playing low, and Ray Wylie Hubbard came on, singing “Drunken Poet’s Dream.” Virgil turned up the sound and sang along for a couple of verses in a grainy baritone.

When the song ended, he turned the radio down again, and Lucas said, “Fuck me. I don’t know what we’re doing.”