"I'm with the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension," Virgil said. "Is Mr. Owen around?"

"Oh, boy," she said, the smile sliding away. "Is this about Erica?"

"Yup. I'm interviewing people from the agency," Virgil said.

"All of them, or some of them?"

"Several of them, anyway," Virgil said. "I just came from talking to Mark Sexton."

"That little shit," she said. "He probably told you that Ron did it."

"No, he didn't-but…" Virgil scratched at the screen. "I really need to talk to Mr. Owen. You're welcome to listen in, if you want. I'll tell you that Barney Mann says that Mr. Owen had nothing to do with Miss McDill's death."

"He's right-well, I do want to listen in." She pushed through the door and said, "C'mon. He's out in the garden."

OWEN WAS SHUCKING the last of the summer's sweet corn. He was wearing Oshkosh overalls and a T-shirt, a self-conscious hobby farmer. He nodded when Virgil and the woman walked up, and asked, "Police?"

Virgil identified himself, and the woman said, "The Sextons."

"That figures," Owen said. He asked Virgil, "You want some sweet corn? We've got too much for the two of us, and not enough to freeze."

"I'd take a few," Virgil said. The corn smelled sweet and hot in the light breeze playing through the plot; but it was a shade too yellow, and might be a little tough. Good, though. He said, "You know what I'm doing. Were you here in the Cities night before last?"

Owen nodded. "Yeah. I worked until six at the agency, then came home." He named a few people who'd seen him working late. "I wouldn't have killed her anyway. I wouldn't kill anybody, for any reason."

Virgil nodded. "The Sextons said you hunt. Whoever killed Miss McDill was good with a rifle."

"How did it happen, exactly?" Owen asked. Virgil told him, and Owen said, "Sounds local, to me. You can look at all the Google Earth you want, and it won't tell you about wandering around in the North Woods. And one shot, right between the eyes?"

"Yeah."

"The thing about that is, it was either an accident, or maybe there was another shot that you don't know about, and she looked at it, and caught the second one… or the guy's crazy," Owen said, shucking the green leaves off another ear of corn. He exposed a corn worm, cutting down through the kernels, snapped off the worm-eaten end, dropped it, and crushed it with a boot. "Why would you take a high-risk shot like that, when her whole heart-lung area was right there?"

"Don't know," Virgil said. The question hadn't occurred to him. "Maybe she was an amateur, and thought the head was the natural place to aim."

"She?"

"We think the shooter might have been a woman," Virgil said.

"So you really didn't think it was me?" Owen asked.

"Nope. But everybody said you didn't like her, that she might be planning to fire you, so I had to check," he said. He glanced at the woman and said, "I mean, maybe your wife shot her."

The woman said, "I don't even kill mice. I take them outside and let them go."

"And you were here the night before last?"

"I was at work until five, at Highland Junior High," she said. "I'm a teacher. I had after-school volleyball."

Virgil smiled: "I thought it was local, myself…"

To Owen: "If you had to pick out one woman, that you know of, who was most likely to shoot McDill, who'd you say?"

Owen thought for a couple of seconds, scanning Virgil's face, and then said, "Jean."

"Who's Jean?"

"That's me," the woman said. "I really didn't like that bitch."

They talked for a few more minutes: Owen didn't know anybody at the agency, he said, who'd kill McDill.

"It's some backwoods redneck antigay thing," he said. "I'll bet you a hundred bucks that some backwoods guy did it. I was watching a football game once, at Palachek's up in Milaca, and somebody said something about one of the quarterbacks being gay, and this redneck guy said, 'I'd kill a queer,' and he meant it."

"Wonder if he'd think the same about a lesbian?" Virgil asked.

"Why would a lesbian be different?"

"Lesbian's not a threat to a straight guy," Virgil said. "Some straight guys have fantasies about lesbians."

Jean checked him: "Sounds like you have personal experience in that area."

VIRGIL ASKED, "It's been suggested that I might check into the whereabouts of a John Yao. Do you know…?"

"John? John wouldn't hurt a rabid rat. The Sextons suggested him, right? Those fucks…"

VIRGIL LEFT with a brown paper bag full of sweet corn and cucumbers.

Why the head shot? Maybe a personal passion, and the killer wanted to mutilate McDill's face? That happened in male homosexual murders of passion, but he wasn't sure about females. Owen was right, though. The head shot had made the killing harder, and no more certain. Something to think about.

Did he have fantasies about lesbians? He considered the proposition and decided that he did not. He had fantasies about women; he'd never considered the lesbian angle. Maybe he'd give it a try, the next time he needed a fantasy.

VIRGIL LEFT the Owens's place behind, headed back into the core of the Cities. First to McDill's house, then to the board meeting, to see what that might produce. He should put more pressure on Davies, he thought, to see if he could squeeze something out of her; and talk to the crime-scene crew working on McDill's house.

He'd just gotten back inside the I-694 loop when he took a call from the duty officer at BCA headquarters in St. Paul. "You know a woman named Zoe Tull, up in Grand Rapids?"

"Yeah-what happened?"

"I don't know if anything happened. But she called and said she needs to talk to you, and it's urgent. Actually, she said, 'kinda urgent.' "

VIRGIL PUNCHED in Zoe's number and she answered on the second ring, fast for a cell phone. "Virgil?"

"What happened?"

"Somebody was in my house last night, while I was in bed," she said.

"Ah, jeez-why?" He had an image in his mind's eye, a killer at night in a dark house. "Why do you think there was somebody in the house?"

"I couldn't sleep last night. I lay awake forever, thinking about everything," Zoe said. "After that fight, my brain was going around in circles. Then, really late-two o'clock-I thought I heard something. In the kitchen. Or maybe, in the office. So I sat up and I turned on the light, and then I got up, and I couldn't see anything, because it was so dark in the rest of the house, so I yelled, 'Hello, I've got a gun.' After a minute, I didn't hear anything, so I peeked out and I saw the cat in the hallway, and I thought it was the cat, and I walked through the house, and didn't see anybody. Then this morning, the back door was open, maybe a quarter inch. I didn't even see that it was open until I went out. I mean, I reached out to open it, and it opened as soon as I touched it. It won't even close now, because they broke the wood around that hole-thing where the lock goes in."

"The strike plate."

"Whatever. I looked at it, and somebody had pried it. They broke some of the wood around the lock."

"Did you call the cops?" Virgil asked.

"Yes. I told them the whole thing, about how I'd been talking to you, and they said the door definitely had been pried, but they couldn't tell when," she said. "They didn't do anything, though. They said I should get better locks. They said I should tell you."

"Okay. Get better locks. Is there anyplace else you can stay overnight? A motel…"

"I could stay with my sister if I had to," Zoe said. "Her husband is out of town."

"Go to your sister's," Virgil said. "The crime-scene crew is probably still there, so I'll have them look at your back door. Did the cops screw around with it, looking at it?"

"No, no. I don't think they touched it," she said. "They looked at it pretty close, though."

"All right. I'm going to give the crime-scene guys your number, and they'll call you, and talk to you about it," Virgil said. "Don't touch the door again. Go to your sister's until you get the locks changed."