Virgil said, “So listen, we…what’s your name?”
Dahlia Blair said, “Bud Light.”
The man said, “Actually, my name is Charles Light.”
“But everybody calls him Bud,” Blair said.
Virgil continued to ignore her. “Okay, Charles, can you show us the exact spot…”
The woman who’d stepped around to the back of the crowd was now twenty-five yards away. She turned, then broke into a trot, heading toward the cars. Nobody noticed for a moment, then another woman shouted, “Jane! Jane! Wait!”
Another woman shouted, “She’s gonna post! Wait, Jane…”
Half of the crowd stampeded after Jane, and Light laughed and said, “They’re gonna have to move fast. Jane can run.”
“How do they post from here?” Virgil asked. “On their phones?”
“Can’t type fast enough on a phone,” Light said. “They’ll all start uploading vid to their iPads while they’re typing up headlines and maybe a short story, then they’ll post through Verizon or AT&T, or whatever they’ve got.”
“But why the rush…who’s gonna look…”
“There’s a website called FirstStabAtIt.com—‘first stab at it dot com’—that’s like a true crime headline site,” Charles explained. “You know, ‘breaking news.’ Whoever gets the first couple of headlines up there gets the clicks.”
“Why aren’t you guys running?” Lucas asked.
“Bud and I are associated with NebraskaTrue,” Blair said. “That’sour website. We’ll have the full first-person report that everybody else will have to copy.”
“Jesus,” Virgil said. They watched more members of the troupe peeling away, headed toward individual vehicles.
“Anyway, you thought that there might be something left behind by the killer?” Virgil asked. “Then, shazam, like magic, you found the knife? That seems…curious.”
“Very curious,” Lucas agreed.
“What? You think I faked it?” Light was outraged, in an introverted way, his face turning pink behind his wire-rimmed glasses.
“Wouldn’t necessarily have to be you,” Lucas said. “Could be anyone looking for clicks. When we say this is a curious discovery, I mean it’s outrageously curious. So curious we’ve never heard anything like it. Ever.”
“Gotta be a first time for everything,” Light ventured.
“No, there doesn’t,” Virgil said.
One of the remaining women, who hadn’t stampeded, said, earnestly, “I’ll tell you something, officers. I’m a longtime treasure hunter. I’ve got my own metal detector in my truck, I just haven’t gotten it out yet. When Bud yelled, I went over to help dig out the knife. The piece of sod where the knife was buried was clean. Untouched. When you’ve got a little experience, you can tell. That knife was there a long time.”
Virgil said, “Okay. So where’s the spot?”
“We were careful about it. Ginny put a shot of red paint exactly one foot from the knife cut, and there’s a yellow pencil pointing at it.” Light pointed at a spot fifteen feet away, and they all looked and saw the pencil. “We moved everybody away so they wouldn’t trample it.”
Lucas said to Virgil, “Better get your crime scene people out here.”
“I’ll call them,” Virgil said. He took out a red-backed Moleskine notebook and a pen and said, “Your name is Charles Light? L-i-g-h-t?”
“That’s correct,” Light said.
One of the non-stampeding women said, “That’s why everybody calls him ‘Bud.’ You know…”
“Yeah, I get it. Bud Light. I can sympathize,” Virgil said.
“I spec’ you can—that whole fuckin’ Flowers thing you got going,” Light said.
