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two: love and money, and of those, I prefer money. Usually the love is an obsessive love, like some creep boyfriend who can't take no for an answer. Money is so straightforward. Somebody has something valuable that somebody else wants to take, and wouldn't mind killing to do it."
    Then she uncrossed her legs and stood up. "But I've never had a homicide that might have something to do with thousand-year-old visitors to Tyler Beach. Look, can you do me a favor?"
    "Sure."
    "You've been here before," she said. "Can you tell me if anything's missing, anything out of the ordinary that we might have overlooked?"
    The inside of my mouth was starting to feel pasty. "I guess that means going into his office."
    Diane came over to me. "You up to it?"
    "Yeah," I said. "I am."
    "Okay," she said. "Let's do it."
    The walk was short but my heart rate went up about ten percent with each step that took me closer to Jon's office. The lights were on and I tried to ignore the desk in the center of the room, which was about as easy as ignoring the proverbial elephant in the living room. Oh, what the hell, Jon would have laughed at seeing how queasy I had become ---“most of history is written in blood and violence, no way to get around it” --- and so I stared at the desk. The bloodstains had turned to a crusty red, and there was spatter on the hood of the nearby lamp. The chair had been moved back, and there was a fresh stain in the leather, and the sadness of it all just struck me there, that poor Jon had soiled himself after being killed, after the sphincter muscles let loose.
    "How do you think it happened?"
    Diane said, "Best guess is that he knew the shooter. His body was found in his chair, his head and shoulders were on the desk. Looked like the shooter got him with two shots to the back of the head. A nine-millimeter round, it looks like. No spent cartridge casings on the floor, so our shooter was careful."
    "And nobody heard the shot?"
    "That's right."
    I found that I was breathing pretty fast, so I forced myself to slow down and then look at the shelves, on both sides of the desk, remembering why Diane had brought me in here. I went up one shelf and down the other, seeing all the old things, all the old things that had been handled and owned by dead people, and I had another flash of realization, that the circle had come right back again. These possessions once owned by people dead and gone were now once again owned by the deceased. I looked to Diane and said, "I'm not a hundred percent positive, but it looks like shere. The coins, the brasswork.... it doesn't look like anything's been taken."
    Diane had been standing there, arms crossed. "True. Everything does look like it hasn't been moved- --- there’s dust in and around the shelves that hasn't been disturbed- --- there's one thing missing from this house."
    Oh, Jon, I thought. Taken away from you so soon.
    "The Viking artifacts," I said. "He told me on the phone message that he was going to put them in a safe place."
    Diane nodded. "Maybe he did, but Lewis, we've gone through everything in this house, in his car, and out in the yard. If the artifacts were here, they're gone."
    "Then the shooter has them," I said.
    "Sounds reasonable, doesn't it?"
    “Yeah," I said.
    As we went back out to the living room, Diane said to me, "Besides the brother, is there anything else you can offer me?"
    I stopped, thinking about just that question, and I said, "No, I can't. His brother has done time, up in Concord. I saw the two of them have a violent disagreement over Jon's artifacts, and his hunt for the Vikings. Besides that... Just find him, Diane, all right? Just find him."
    Then there was a flash of steel behind those calm brown eyes, and I didn't envy the next few weeks of Ray Ericson's life. "You can bet the house on that, Lewis. You surely can."
     
     
    Outside a wind had come up, but at least the rain had stopped. I walked Diane over to her cruiser and I said, "How's Kara?"
    "Kara is