“Sorry about that, Virgil. I doubt that it has anything to do with Van Den Berg getting killed, but it probably kills our case against his brother, too. Ralph can claim he had no idea that the Legos were stolen. Since we’d have to prosecute Larry to nail down what happened with the Legos, where they came from, and he’d have to have a chance to respond, but he can’t now . . . we’re sorta out of luck. What I’m saying is . . .”

“You’re saying Ralph has a motive.”

“Or his wife. Or some associate that we don’t know about.”

Virgil thought about it, then said, “Nope. The two brothers were working on what was, basically, an impulse theft. I doubt there are any associates.”

“I would tend to agree, but, uh, better to bring it up now than to find out later.”

—

An hour later, a line of a dozen deputies was slow-walking the pasture and the roadside, looking for anything that might relate to the murder. Holland had called Skinner, who left school to drive out, and who told Virgil that nobody was going to find anything. “The killer drove him out here, threw him in the pasture, and drove back home. Period. What’s to find?”

“Thanks for that.”

Zimmer came by, said that he’d parked a deputy outside Van Den Berg’s house. “You’ll want to go in there, so I thought it’d be best to keep an eye on the place.”

A deputy gave a loud whistle from the roadside ditch, and they all looked toward him, and he followed with a “come here” gesture. “There goes your genius badge,” Virgil said to Skinner. “He found something.”

The deputy had spotted a scuff mark in the dirt by the fence, and some fuzzy gray threads on one of the fence’s barbs. “If he parked here, crossed the ditch, and went up the hill . . . it’s almost a straight line,” the deputy said. “And we’ve had enough rain that those threads shouldn’t be all puffy like that. Unless you and Holland left them there.”

“No, we crossed the fence down a ways,” Virgil said. “You’ve found something. The guy was probably operating in the dark and got hooked on the fence. Leave it for the crime scene crew. Keep people away from here.”

—

Holland and Skinner left, while Virgil waited for the deputies to finish their search. They did, without finding anything more, and Zimmer left four deputies to keep watch until the crime scene crew arrived from St. Paul. Virgil wanted to check the body for house keys but knew the crew investigators would have a fit if he did, so he drove back to Wheatfield, to Van Den Berg’s house.