Page 155 of Blue Moon

“Twenty-seven. Time flies when you’re having fun. Now, here’s how this is going to work. If you don’t know any of the answers and you’re upfront about that, you’ll get an extra hour in the yard tomorrow. If you’re able to provide useful information, you’ll get five extra hours outside. But if you tell even a single lie, you get nothing. Understood?”

Ganser shrugged, which Ryder took to mean “yes.”

“Did Anton spend much time at home?”

“Me and the boy, we didn’t really see eye to eye. He stayed away most of the time. Why don’t ya ask Candy where he is?”

“Candy died several years ago. Where did Anton go when he wasn’t at home?”

Ganser stayed silent for a moment, processing. His expression didn’t change. No sadness, no grief. But then again, what did Ryder expect from a man who’d stacked up his victims like firewood and covered them with a tarp?

“The library, mostly, or the park. On the weekends, he mowed people’s lawns. Old ladies, mostly. He said they were better tippers, and they always brought him snacks.”

Was one of those ladies Julia?

“Sounds like a smart kid.”

“Never said he wasn’t. He just had a bad attitude. Thought he was better than everyone else.”

“So he hung out at the library, the park, and old ladies’ houses. Do you remember who he hung out with?”

“Nobody. Boy was a loner. Candy said some kid used to push him around back in Alexandria, so Ant stopped going to school. She was meant to be home-schooling him.” Ganser snorted. “Candy couldn’ta schooled a goldfish.”

“She wasn’t the smartest cookie?”

“Never found out who the boy’s old man was, but he musta took after him and not his momma.”

“So if Candy didn’t teach him, and he didn’t go to school, how did he learn?”

“Outta books. And one of the lawn ladies, she was a teacher or somethin’.”

A spark flared in Ryder’s veins, and from the corner of his eye, he saw Dan’s hands grip her thighs. She thought they had something too. Candice had left Anton behind in Elk River when she returned to Alexandria, and who better to leave him with than a teacher?

“A school teacher? Or a private tutor?”

“Who knows? Candy said she was educatin’ him. She borrowed him books and filled his head with nonsense. History, languages… A man can’t use that to feed his family.”

That was her. That was the woman.

“Do you recall her name?”

Ganser sniffed loudly and wetly, as if he was getting ready to hock a loogie at the glass. “June? Julie? Something with a J.”

Julia.

“A surname?” Ryder asked.

“Who the fuck knows? I spoke to her once, twice maybe. Uptight old woman, looked down her nose at everyone. Guess that’s why her and the boy got along. She needed a man to knock some manners into her.”

Ryder gritted his teeth. Ganser was the one who needed manners knocked into him.

“How about an address?”

A shrug. “A big house by Lake Geneva. Had a three-stall garage in the front yard.”

It wasn’t much, but it was something. Maybe Julia had moved to New York, or maybe she hadn’t. At least they’d narrowed down the location of her old home in Minnesota. Ryder, Dan, and Knox could drive around the area while Mack or Echo searched old property records. If Julia was the woman who’d died a year ago, and if she’d left the property to Hebert, then Luna could be there right now.

They needed to leave.

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