“She already has, on several occasions,” Holland said. He went back to listening on the phone, and a moment later said, “Yeah, I’m here.” He listened some more, and then said, “Thanks, Sara. I’ll call you again when you get off work.”

He hung up, and said, “Barry owns it. Bought it seven years ago, with a fifteen-year mortgage, minimum down payment, but it was cheap. Seller was a guy named Ole Birkstrum, no relation.”

“Well, poop,” Shrake said. “Nurse’s aide, kid already owns the house. Not like she was a walking gold mine, huh?”

“Maybe he hated her,” Jenkins said. “One of those bad mother–son things. He’s a psycho, and he knocks her off.”

Virgil said, “That’s possible, but, like I said, when Zimmer and I talked to him, he’d been crying.”

“Obviously faked,” Shrake said.

Virgil said, “Yeah. What else you got?”

—

Holland said, “Since you’re wondering about inheritances . . . I bet Glen Andorra’s place was worth three or four mil.”

Jenkins and Shrake looked at each other, and Shrake said, “Whoa! There’s a motive.”

“Where’d you get that number?” Virgil asked.

“Pulled it out of my ass,” Holland said. “Except for that shooting range along the creek, he had a nice piece of property. I think he owned a whole section, and he inherited from his parents, so I doubt there’s a mortgage on it. Good land around here sells for seven thousand dollars an acre, give or take. If he’s got six hundred and forty acres, you take out a hundred acres for the range . . . you’ve still got property north of three million. And the range isn’t worthless. Plus, the house and machinery.”

Virgil to Holland: “Somebody said his kid lives in the Cities?”

“Yeah. Zimmer’s talked to him, I think, and most likely he would have talked to the medical examiner and maybe a funeral home.”

“We gotta talk to him,” Jenkins said. “The Cities are two and a half hours from here, he could have gone back and forth easy enough, do these other shootings, take the spotlight off his old man.”

Shrake was tapping on his phone, looked up: “Including the house, and if he’s got average farm machinery, the place isn’t three million, it’s more than four. No tax.”

“Did his kid grow up here?” Virgil asked Holland.

“Yeah, he was here through high school, a couple of years ahead of me,” Holland said. “We both played basketball, but he wasn’t good enough for college ball.”

Virgil said to Jenkins and Shrake, “We need to track him down and push on him. Why don’t you guys figure out where he is right now? He could be down here. Or if he’s back in the Cities, go on back and find him.”

“Good with me,” Jenkins said. To Shrake: “We can get a decent pancake.”