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Virgil said. “The car had a dent in the left rear bumper. And you might send a car around to a probable burglary.”
    —
    H E ’ D BEEN TALKING to the 911 operator from Jones’s front lawn. When he got off the phone, he went back inside the house, where he found Yael innocently standing in Jones’s living room, examining a wall of photographs.
    “Did you look around?” he asked.
    “Of course not,” she said. “That would be illegal. I don’t have a search warrant.”
    “Good. If I were to get a search warrant and look around, do you think
I’d
find a body? Or a stele?”
    “No, I don’t think you would,” she said.
    “Then there’s no reason to hurry,” Virgil said.
    “Well, when I came to look at these photos, I noticed a smear of some kind on the floor in the hallway, there.” She pointed at a hallway that probably went back to a bathroom and some bedrooms. “Perhaps you should check it.”
    Virgil went that way. The smear was three feet from the point where the hallway entered the front room and was about the size of Virgil’s index finger.
    “Looks like dried blood,” Virgil said.
    “I couldn’t really tell from this far away,” Yael said.
    “Right,” Virgil said.
    “The police are here,” she said.
    Virgil walked back through the living room and saw two city cops coming up the walk. He stepped out on the porch and said, “Hey, Jimmy. Paula.”
    “Hey, Virg,” Jimmy said. “You got a burglary?”
    “Well, I got a runner, anyway,” Virgil said.
    He told them about chasing the Camry man out of the house, and introduced Yael, and she told them about the search for Elijah Jones. Neither of the cops knew Jones, and Virgil said, “I’m going to walk around for a while, see what the neighbors say.”
    “We’ll take a look around,” said Jimmy. “Paula, get the basement.”
    Yael said, “I should stay here with Paula and Jimmy. I would recognize the stele.”
    Virgil went first to the house on the right, but nobody was home. Then he went back to the old lady’s house. She answered the door and said, “I think he was back last night. He didn’t come over, but I saw lights in the house, late.”
    “You didn’t see him this morning?”
    “No, and I get up early. I went and knocked on his door, but nobody answered, and your note was gone.”
    “But you’re not sure it was Jones himself.”
    “No, I guess not. Could have been Ellen, I suppose.”
    —
    V IRGIL THANKED HER , and walked back to his truck and called Davenport. “This may be a little more complicated than you thought,” he said.
    After a moment of silence, Davenport asked, “Why can’t anything you do be simple? Get the steelee and send Yale home.”
    “Well, I went over to talk to Jones this morning, but he wasn’t there, but a burglar was, and I think there’s blood on the floor.”
    “Ahhhh . . . shit.”
    “Yeah. But it might not be from violence. He’s got cancer, and he’s apparently been leaking a lot of blood.” Virgil told him about the runner, and about the smear, and about how Yael was lying about something, and then he asked, “Do you have any hint what this stele might involve? I mean, it looks like Yael’s not the only one who wants it. And wants it bad enough to break into a house.”
    “No idea,” Davenport said. “But if there’s blood, and a burglary, then put the screws to this chick. We need to know.”
    “I don’t think she’ll tell me,” Virgil said.
    “How about the other people on this dig? They must know something. Couldn’t you call one of them?”
    “I was just about to do that,” Virgil lied. “I’m tracking down some names now. But I wanted to update you on the blood thing.”
    “Okay. Don’t bother to call me unless you’ve got something serious. If this is gonna be another fuckin’ Flowers circus, I don’t want the details.”
    —
    D AVENPORT occasionally had some good ideas, Virgil thought, as he rang off. Like calling people from the dig. It should