Dark of the Moon

by John Sandford

  Virgil followed him through the shop. Williamson’s van was parked in the dirt space behind it, the side doors open. Williamson had been piling bundles of unsold newspapers in the van, and there were still twenty or thirty wrapped bundles inside the shop. Williamson propped the door open, picked up two bundles by the plastic straps, carried them to the van, and asked over his shoulder, “What?”

  Virgil grabbed a couple of bundles, carried them out and threw them in the van. “When did you last see Junior?”

  “About an hour and a half ago.”

  “Alive.” They were shuttling back and forth with the bundles.

  Williamson stopped and cocked his head. “Day before yesterday…let’s see. Down at Johnnie’s, at lunch.”

  “Did you hear him next door? Yesterday?” Virgil asked, heaving two more bundles into the van.

  “No. He wasn’t there. I stopped, I wanted to ask him where I should send the money we’ve got coming in. His office was locked.”

  “What time was that?”

  “First time, about nine o’clock. Right after I got here. Then, when the shooting started out at Feur’s—I heard about it from a cop, and I took off, headed down there, to Feur’s, but the cops had all the roads blocked. Before I took off, I ran next door, I was going to tell Bill about it.”

  “Why?”

  Williamson shrugged. “I don’t know. Big news. Maybe something to do with his old man.”

  “All right,” Virgil said. He threw two more bundles in the van, leaving three in the shop. “So he wasn’t here all day yesterday, and wasn’t here last night?”

  “Nope. And I was here late.”

  Virgil nodded. If Judd had disappeared some hours before the fight at Feur’s, that meant that both Stryker and Feur, or one of Feur’s men, could have killed him.

  THEN WILLIAMSON STACKED the three remaining bundles, one on top of the other, and stooped to pick them up. As he did it, his T-shirt sleeve hiked up, exposing a tattoo of a crescent moon. The moon with a slash for an eye, and a pointed nose: a man in the moon. The tattoo was rough, with bleeding edges, dark ink from a ballpoint pen.

  Virgil blinked. Another man in the moon.

  Sonofabitch.

  HE LEFT WILLIAMSON with the van, walked back to his truck, got on the phone to Joan: “What’re you doing?” he asked.

  “Headed over to Worthington to do some federal bureaucratic bullshit about crop insurance. What about you?”

  “I’m headed up to the Cities,” Virgil said. “Could be overnight…”

  “I’d love to come,” she said, “but this appointment in Worthington is not optional, if I want to stay in business. I’ve got everything in quintuplicate, and they want it today.”

  “Okay. See you tomorrow, then.”

  She laughed at the tone: “I’ll brace myself.”

  HE CALLED the Laymons, but nobody answered. Called Stryker, and asked if he had Jesse’s cell phone. He got the number and said to Stryker, “I’m running up to the Cities. Back tomorrow.”

  “Anything good?”

  “Just some federal bureaucratic bullshit. How’s the election looking?”

  “Folks are smiling at me,” Stryker said. “I’m golden for at least a week; and as long as you’re wrong about Feur. If somebody else gets killed, now that Feur’s gone, I’m back in the toilet.”

  VIRGIL CALLED JESSE. She answered after a couple of rings: “Virgil…”

  “Jesse: listen. I’m going to the Cities. It’s really important that you and your mom get someplace safe. Don’t get alone with any third person, no matter whether you know him or not. Maybe go over to Worthington or Sioux Falls, check into a motel. Just overnight—I should be back tomorrow.”

  “You think somebody’s looking for us?” she asked.

  “It’s possible. I don’t want to take any chances. Get yourself under cover until tomorrow.”

  “Mom’s at work,” she said.

  “Pick her up,” Virgil said. “Keep her away from the house.”

  “I was planning to go out tonight…”

  “Jesse, just for the heck of it…let’s say you should stay away from Jim Stryker, too.”

  “Jim?”

  “Just for the heck of it. Until I get back.”

  HE SWUNG BY the motel, picked up a bag, headed out on the highway. As soon as he was clear of town, he turned on the flashers and dropped the hammer. Got settled online, and called Davenport. He wasn’t in the office, but he got him on the cell phone. “Can I borrow Sandy or Jenkins or Shrake for a few hours?”

  “Jenkins and Shrake are picking a guy up,” Davenport said. “Sandy’s working on something, but if it’s important…”

  “I’m cracking this thing,” Virgil said. “I need some names and some record checks.”

  “She’ll call you back.”

  VIRGIL REMEMBERED Joan’s mother, Laura, talking about grandmothers—about how she wanted to be one, about how she wanted to watch her grandchildren grow up, about how she had time to see great-grandchildren.

  Laura Stryker wasn’t that old—a baby boomer, in fact. A rock ’n’ roller. The same age as Williamson’s mother. Williamson’s mother might have been dead, but it was possible that his natural grandparents were still alive. And grandparents do take an interest; normal ones, anyway.

  So there might be, Virgil thought, somebody in the Cities who’d taken a lifelong interest in Todd Williamson…

  HAD TO BE Williamson, Virgil thought.

  Judd Sr.’s sister-in-law, Betsy Carlson, in wandering in and out of rationality, had mentioned the man in the moon. Virgil had connected that to the man-on-the-moon party at Judd’s, but Betsy had been right: she said she’d seen the man in the moon. She’d talked to Williamson at some point, had seen Judd within him, and had seen the tattoo, which brought everything back.

  And Williamson would have no reason to talk to Betsy Carlson, unless he knew that Judd was his father.

  NEW FACT: When he and Stryker checked Williamson’s police record, they’d found nothing at all. But the tattoo on Williamson’s arm hadn’t come from a tattoo parlor. It was a prison tattoo, done with a sewing needle and ballpoint-pen ink. Maybe he’d gotten it on the outside, from somebody who’d been inside, knew how to do it. Maybe he chose a crude tattoo for aesthetic reasons. But Virgil was willing to bet that Williamson had been inside, at least for a while.

  So why didn’t Virgil know that? Why hadn’t a record popped up? He could think of one good reason…

  He looked down at the speedometer: one-oh-one. He called the Highway Patrol in Marshall again, and cleared the way out front. Got off the phone, then got back on when the cell burped.

  Sandy.

  “SANDY: I want you to find Todd Williamson’s adoptive parents. Search every database you can find. Look at their taxes, find out when they stopped paying them, then check all the surrounding states and Florida, California, and Arizona, see if you can find them. Call old neighbors, if you have to.”

  “I can do that,” she said.

  “Then: Check Margaret Lane, died seven-twenty-sixty-nine. See if you can find a birth certificate. Find out if her parents are still alive—this would be Todd Williamson’s grandparents. Then, check the NCIC for a Lane, unknown first name, born seven twenty sixty-nine.”

  “You think he used his mother’s name?” Sandy asked.

  “If he got a birth certificate, he could use it to get a driver’s license, and he could use that to get a Social Security number. He could do the same thing with his adoptive parents’ names, have two perfectly good IDs based on official state documents.”

  “How soon do you need it?”

  “I’m on the way up there, hundred miles an hour,” Virgil said. “Feed it to me as you get it. If you find people, route me to their locations.”

  When he got off, he looked down at the speedometer. Hundred and five. He’d always liked speed—but the truck was squealing like a pig.

  SANDY CALLED BACK as he was making the turn nort
h on I-35. “The NCIC has a William Lane, seven twenty sixty-nine, showing arrests in eighty-seven and twice in eighty-eight, possession of a small amount of cocaine on the first one, and then two assault charges in eighty-eight, apparently a domestic thing. He spent four months in the Hennepin County jail on the second assault…let me look, blah, blah, a Karen Biggs, I’ll see if I can find her…”

  “E-mail it to me…”

  SHE CALLED fifteen minutes later: “I’ve got the Biggs woman, she lives in Cottage Grove now, her name is Johannsen, got a bunch of DWIs. I checked William Lane, he shared an address with Todd Williamson in ’eighty-eight and ’eighty-nine…”

  “Got him,” Virgil said.

  “Yup. Haven’t found his parents yet, they left too long ago,” Sandy said.

  “Keep looking. How about the grandmother?” Virgil asked.

  “Ralph and Helen Lane. Ralph died a long time ago. Helen is still alive, she lives up in Roseville, but I haven’t been able to reach her.”

  “Give me those addresses.” He propped his notebook in the center of the steering wheel, kept one eye half-cocked toward the highway, took the addresses down.

  TEN MINUTES AFTER THAT, Sandy was back. “The Williamsons are in Arizona. I’ve got an address but no phone number. I’ll try to get one.”

  “Good. If you have to, check on neighbors, have them go next door and find out the number.”

  “Okay. I’m looking at license photos on Williamson and Lane and they are indeed the same person, though Lane has some facial hair and an earring,” Sandy said.

  “E-mail them.”

  He got off the phone, stayed on the accelerator, took a call from Davenport as he swung onto I-35E south of the Cities. “I talked to Sandy. She says you’re rolling on this thing.”

  “I think so.”

  “You got anything for a trial?” Davenport asked. “Gotta think about trial.”

  “Not yet. Gonna have to think of something cute, to get that. Right now, I’m trying to nail down the fact that my guy’s a psycho.”

  “All right. Stay in touch.”

  HE CAME OFF I-35E, cut east across the south end of the Cities on I-494, and then south on Highway 61, the same one that Bob Dylan revisited, heading into Cottage Grove. Off at 80th Street, he called Sandy, who got on MapQuest and took him straight in to Johannsen’s place.

  Johannsen’s son came to the door, wearing rapper jeans with the crotch at knee level, and a T-shirt that was four sizes too big; he had a GameBoy in his hand. His eyes were at half-mast, and the odor of marijuana floated out of the house when he opened the door.

  “She’s at work,” he said, sullenly.

  “Where?”

  “Either SuperAmerica or Tom Thumb. She works at both of them,” he said. “I don’t know where she’s working today.”

  KAREN JOHANNSEN was at the SuperAmerica, throwing expired doughnuts in a dumpster. “I have some questions about William Lane, who was convicted of assaulting you,” Virgil said, flashing his ID.

  “Shoot. That was twenty years ago, almost.” She was a short, broad woman with black hair and watery brown eyes, a pushed-in nose, older-looking than her years.

  “I know that,” Virgil said. “What we’re trying to do is, we’re trying get a grip on what kind of a guy he is. The assaults…were they heavy-duty, or just sort of…routine domestic fighting?”

  “He was trying to kill me,” Johannsen said, matter-of-factly. She waved her hand in front of her face, like a fan. They were too close to the dumpster, which smelled of spoiled bananas and meat, and sour milk. “He would have, too, if he’d been stronger. The first time, he was hitting me with a chair, and he couldn’t get a good swing and I was running around, so he never did hit me square. The neighbors called the cops. There was a car in the neighborhood, and they got there in time. But he would have killed me.”

  “What set it off?” Virgil asked.

  “Basically, we were drinking, and started arguing,” she said. “I was working and he wasn’t and I told him he was a worthless piece of shit who couldn’t even pay the rent, and he punched my arm and I hit him with my purse, and knocked him down, and he just went off…completely out of control.”

  “What about the second time?” Virgil asked. “When he went to jail?”

  “That time, he choked the shit out of me,” she said. Her hand went to her neck, as she remembered. “He came home, drunk. I was asleep, he woke me up and wanted, you know, and I didn’t want to. He started screaming at me, and I wised off, and he jumped on me and choked me. He had some friends with him, out in the living room, and they heard the fight…One of his friends pulled me off, and then I wasn’t breathing so good, so the girlfriend of the friend called the cops, and they called an ambulance and they started me breathing again.”

  “That was all for the two of you?”

  “Yeah. When he was in jail, I moved. Changed my address and got an unlisted phone…but I saw him anyway. We had some of the same friends. But we were all done, and he didn’t come around anymore,” Johannsen said. “Good thing, too. He would have killed me, sooner or later.”

  “Did he ever mention his parents?” Virgil asked.

  “Said his mom was killed in a car wreck,” she said. “Didn’t say who his dad was.”

  “What about his adoptive parents…some people named Williamson?”

  She shook her head. “Oh…I thought they were his foster-care people, or something. They adopted him?”

  “Yes. When he was a baby.”

  “Jeez—I didn’t know that,” she said. “That makes it worse.”

  “Worse.”

  “Yeah. I met them two or three times, I guess, going over there with Bill. We used to go over there for beer—he had a key. But. They were like, total assholes.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. Like they believed in slavery,” she said. “They used to tell him about how much he owed them—in money. Bill ran away when he was fourteen; he was living on the street when I met him. He ran away because they wanted him to work in their store all the time. They called it earning his keep, but most kids who are thirteen or fourteen don’t have to work sixty hours a week. That’s what they wanted. No kidding—they were assholes.”

  “Did Bill ever call himself Todd Williamson?”

  She shook her head: “Nope. He was Lane to all of us guys—the people he hung around with.”

  “Good guy, bad guy?” Virgil asked. “I mean, when he was sober?”

  “Not bad, when he was sober,” Johannsen said. She looked at her thumb; it had frosting on it, and she wiped it on the dumpster. “Bad when he was drunk. But that was twenty years ago. He was a teenager. You work in this store, you realize that a lot of teenagers are assholes, and a lot of them change when they get older.”

  “Think Bill would change?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. He was like a dog that you beat for ten years. Not the dog’s fault if he goes crazy.”

  SANDY CALLED. “I got the grandmother. She’s home. I told her to stay there.”

  “Call her back, tell her I’ll be there in half an hour,” Virgil said.

  HE SAID GOOD-BYE to Johannsen and headed north, twenty minutes to an inner-ring suburban neighborhood, green lawns, cracked driveways, older ranch-style and split-level homes, two long-haired teenagers doing intricate and athletic bike tricks.

  Helen Lane, Williamson’s natural grandmother, was alone in her living room, watching television when Virgil pulled into the driveway. She came to the door, kept the screen locked: “I don’t know where Todd is. I don’t want to know. He was in jail for a while. Did he do something else?

  “Did he give you a hard time?” Virgil asked.

  “He’d steal money from me. He’d sneak into the house and steal,” she said.

  “How’d he find out you were his grandmother?” Virgil asked.

  “He was smart. Got his brains from my daughter,” she said. “I guess the Williamsons had a paper, maybe his birth certificate.�
��

  “Did he ever figure out who his real father was?”

  She frowned and said, “None of us knew who it was. I don’t think Maggie knew, for sure. She was running wild.”

  “You never knew?”

  “No…and after she died, there was no way to find out. Sure as heck weren’t no men coming around to ask about it.”

  “And the baby…?”

  “Was adopted. We didn’t have any money, my husband was sick all the time—he was a roofer, he hurt his back,” she said, sorry for herself. “I was working all the time, so, it seemed like the best thing to do was to let the baby go.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. You know, to a good family.”

  22

  VIRGIL GRABBED a McDonald’s meal on the way back to Bluestem, ten minutes off the highway and back on, the car smelling like Quarter Pounders with Cheese and fries, driving into the dying light; thinking, as he drove, that Williamson’s past had not been quite what he’d expected. You could take the mad-dog view of things—that Williamson was nuts, driven that way by parental neglect and, possibly, actual abuse. And that as sorry a tale as that might be, a mad dog is still a mad dog.

  You could just as easily take another view: orphaned kid, abused by adoptive parents, pushed onto the streets when he was still a kid—and somehow, he rights himself, goes in the Army, learns a trade, and becomes a respectable citizen.

  Virgil, who basically had a kindly heart, preferred the second story. But his cop brain said, a mad dog is still a mad dog, even if it’s not the dog’s fault.

  HE WAS in Bluestem a little before eleven o’clock. Larry Jensen’s house was lit up like a Christmas tree, and when he got out of his truck, on the driveway, Virgil could feel an impact through his feet, as though somebody were shooting a big gun in Jensen’s basement, but not quite like a gun.

  He rang the bell, and a moment later, Jensen’s wife came to the door. She was a small woman, sweaty, very pregnant. She turned on the porch light and Virgil felt the impact again, whatever it was. She peered out through the window in the door, then opened it and said, “You’re Virgil.”