"Have you asked her out?"

"Nope," Stryker said.

They both looked after her as she crossed the street and went on down the sidewalk toward Main. Virgil said, "You're divorced, Jimmy. I know you're not hung up on your ex, because she's in Chicago and you hate her. I mean, I hate her, and I only met her once. So here's the woman with the fourth-best ass in the state of Minnesota, right in your hometown, and not a bad set of cupcakes, either, from what I could see…I mean, pardon me for asking, and not that it matters at all, but you're not queer, or something?"

Stryker grinned. "Nope."

The woman tossed her white-blond hair as she stepped up on the far curb, and might have glanced back at them-as all women would, she knew they were talking about her-and then Virgil turned to Stryker, about to continue his analysis of her better points, and noticed that Stryker had precisely the same white-blond hair as the woman; and Stryker had those jade-green eyes.

A thought crossed Virgil's mind.

He said, "That's your sister, isn't it?"

"Yup."

They both looked down the street, but the woman had disappeared behind a hedge, at a crooked place in the sidewalk. Virgil said, "Listen, Jimmy, that whole thing about her ass and all…"

"Never mind about that," Stryker said. "Joanie can take care of herself. You just take care of this cocksucker who's killing my people."

4

AT THE HOLIDAY INN, Virgil spread the Gleason murder files across the bed and the small desk, isolating names and scratching out a time line on a yellow legal pad.

The sheriff himself had served as the case manager, with a deputy named Larry Jensen as lead investigator. A woman named Margo Carr was the crime-scene tech, and a variety of other deputies provided backup. The medical examiner was based in Worthington and covered an eight-county area of southwest Minnesota. The pathology looked competent, but didn't reveal much more than the first cop figured out when he got to the scene: four shots, two dead.