Bad blood

18

They came in a crew-cab pickup, three of them. The first word came from an elderly couple who lived at the end of the block, an excited woman on her cell to Virgil: "Big pickup, not from town, turning the corner like they're lost, looking at house numbers."

Virgil clocked his radio: "Incoming," he said.

"We got them," Dennis Brown said. "The guy in the driver's seat is Emmett Einstadt Junior. They call him 'Junior.' There are two more, I think, but I can't see who they are. Could be one in the back-that'd make four."

The big Chevy crew cab stopped in front of Holley's house, and a minute later three men climbed out, awkwardly, a little stiff from the ride, and regrouped on the sidewalk.

Jenkins hurried across the house and down the stairs into the basement, while Virgil crouched in the front bedroom, looking out through a hole in a venetian blind. Gordon stood behind him, in the doorway, twisting her hands nervously. They had wrapped a woman's bulletproof vest around her, and covered it with a thick quilted housecoat. She still looked a little porky, but with her round face and fleshy hands, not unconvincing.

A radio beeped, and Virgil said, "Yeah?"

"The guy with the black watch cap is Roland Olms, and the third guy-"

"Wally Rooney," Virgil said. Outside, Rooney had pulled off his baseball cap to scrub at his hair, and then replaced it. "Excellent."

He turned and repeated the information to Gordon, and she repeated it, "Cowboy hat is Junior, the other guy is Wally Rooney, and I know Roland…"

She was almost hyperventilating, and Virgil grinned at her and said, "Take it easy. This isn't as hard as it looks, and it's gonna be interesting. They didn't bring their shooter with them, so I don't think we have to worry about that. You just get out there and argue with them."

"They brought this Rooney man you told me about-do you want me to tell them that you think he's messing with Flood's daughters?"

"Keep it in mind, and if it comes up, mention it. Don't force anything," Virgil said. "Okay, they're coming up the walk. When the doorbell rings-"

"Count to five."

"Jenkins is right at the bottom of the basement stairs, I'll be right here… Leave the bedroom door open." He was looking out through the blind. "Okay, they're on the porch. Here we go."

He put the radio to his face and said, "Shrake, as soon as they're inside, and talking, I'll double-click, and you get up by the side door."

"Got that," Shrake said.

The doorbell rang, and Virgil stepped over to the bedroom closet and said, "Break a leg," and stepped inside and plugged in the radio earpiece and turned off the speaker. Gordon was headed toward the door and he said into the radio, "Showtime."

Gordon pulled the inside door open and looked through the storm door. Roland Olms was there, and she looked at him and said, aloud, "Oh, no. Go away."

Olms pulled at the storm door handle, got it open, and said, "We need to talk to you, Birdy."

"I said everything I was going to say. What if the police are watching? Go away, go away," Gordon said.

Olms was just under six feet tall, and thick through the chest. He stepped directly at her and said, at the same time, "We can't do that. We need to talk," and his momentum pushed her back without touching her. She backed into the living room, and Junior Einstadt followed, with Rooney right behind. He pushed the inner door shut with a solid thunk, and they were all standing in a circle.

Roland Olms asked, "You been here the whole time?" and, "You spend all my money?"

"If this Flowers gets on to you, you won't need any money," Gordon said. "He says you all killed some girl and left her body in a cemetery. Some underage girl, and he's like death on that. He says somebody beat her with a whip, and more than once, more than the time she was killed. He says she was gang-raped-"

"Wasn't no rape," Einstadt said. "She was glad to get it any way she could."

"You were there?" Gordon asked, and her hand went to her mouth.

"Didn't say that," Einstadt said. "But it wasn't no rape. She was friendly, and she liked it. She'd get in a pool, and she could get seven or eight of us in one night. More the merrier."

Rooney said, uneasily, "That's not something we ought to talk about."

"Why not?" Einstadt said. "Old Birdy here was the same way, hot to get it on."

"Was not," Gordon said. "That's why I ran away, you sonofabitch."

They were still standing and she began backing away from them.

Olms said, "I oughta take my money's worth right now."

Rooney said, "Shut up, Roll. We're not here to fuck around." He looked at Gordon. "What all did Flowers ask you? We want to know all of it."

"He said that this dead girl got raped by a bunch of you," Gordon said. "He said that you were all church members, and he wanted to know if the church, you know, made little girls do it."

"He mention anybody?" Rooney asked. Gordon's mouth flapped for a moment, as she tried to decide whether to mention Rouse, and it looked to the three men as though she was trying to avoid saying something, and Rooney pressed: "Did he mention me?"

"Well… he sorta wanted to know about you and the Flood girls. The girls were just little bitty kids before, I couldn't even remember them, hardly."

"Sonofabuck," Rooney said to Einstadt. "He knows."

Gordon said, "He was asking about some other people… the Bakers, a boy named Loewe, I think he was that little queer back then-"

"Didn't know you knew him," Olms said.

"I knew who he was; some of the women thought he was queer… and Flowers is telling me all these things. Rouse? Rouse's daughter, riding around with people? Does that mean anything?"

"Ah, shit," Einstadt said. "Who's talking to him?"

"I think he's talked to a lot of neighbors."

"If he's asking about the Rouses, we got a problem," Olms said. "Greta Rouse has been serviced by everybody in the Spirit. If they get hold of them-"

"We gotta get back," Rooney said. "We need a meeting tonight. With everybody. We gotta call Emmett, right now."

Einstadt looked at Gordon for a moment, then said, "We got a friend who's going to stay with you overnight. Just to make sure you don't go talking to cops until we can have our meeting."

"You're not staying here," Gordon said. She had pulled enough out of the three men that she expected Virgil to burst into the living room. She wanted to look back toward the open bedroom door, but didn't.

"We're not. But you remember Kathleen Spooner?" Einstadt asked. "She'll be here in a few minutes. She's gonna stay with you. We don't have time to fuck around, Birdy. So we'll bring Kathleen in, and tomorrow morning, we'll have figured out what we're gonna do, and she'll be gone."

"I'm not-"

"We're not asking," Olms snapped. "We're telling you." And he reached out and slapped her hard, and she staggered and almost fell: still did not look at the bedroom door, although she was now murderously angry, and it showed. Olms smiled at her: "You remember that, don't you?"

"Fuck you," she hissed, but she moved away from him, her shoulders hunched, one hand up to deflect another slap.

Einstadt went to the door and waved at the truck, and Gordon wondered where Virgil was. VIRGIL, in the closet, clicked the radio a couple of times, which meant, "Wait." Gordon had gotten more out of the men than he could have hoped for. But with Spooner-he wanted Spooner, too.

Spooner came across the porch steps and inside. "What?"

"It's worse than we thought," Rooney said. "We need to call a general meeting and get back. You've got to babysit."

Spooner showed her teeth to Gordon: "I can do that. We'll get along fine."

"I don't want you here," Gordon said.

"Tough shit," Spooner said.

Einstadt said to Spooner, "You know what we talked about. The Flowers guy is all over her."

Spooner nodded and said, "Okay."

"We're going," Rooney said, and they tramped out, and as he went through the door, Olms turned and said, "You never were any good."

They were gone, Einstadt pulling the door shut behind him, and still no Virgil.

Gordon faced Spooner and said, "I don't want you here. And to tell you the truth, when those men are gone, I'm going to throw you out of here. You might as well go peacefully… you're just making me madder and madder."

Spooner said, "We're just going to sit down and relax for a while."

"No, we're not. I'm telling you-"

Gordon took a step forward and Spooner lifted a hand out of her jacket pocket and showed her a gun, a compact.45. She said, "You're not telling me anything."

Gordon said, "She's got a gun. She's got a gun."

Spooner, confused, asked, "Who're you talking to?"

From the front bedroom door, Virgil said, "Me. I'm aiming a pistol at your head, Miz Spooner. If you even start to move the gun, I'm going to kill you."

From the kitchen door, Jenkins said, "And if he misses, I won't."

Spooner stood stricken for a minute, then realized, and said, "Oh, my God."

"It's all done," Virgil said. "Stoop down, lay the gun on the floor, and then we need to talk. You've still got a chance."

She put the gun on the floor and stood up, and Virgil and Jenkins moved her to a wall and patted her down, and Jenkins put the cuffs on. Spooner said to Gordon, "Birdy, how could you-"

"Eh, not Birdy," Gordon said, with a smile. "You can refer to me as Louise."

Virgil put his arm around Gordon's shoulder and gave her a squeeze. "You were so good."

Jenkins said, "You were so good you made me laugh."

Shrake came in the side door and asked, "Are we taking them on the highway?"

"We gotta figure that out," Virgil said.

Shrake said to Gordon, "You can work with me anytime. That was prime rib."

Gordon was pleased and flustered, and said, "I missed my calling. I should have been a cop." BROWN AND SCHICKEL came in, and then Holley and his girlfriend, and the BCA agents moved Spooner to a bedroom, sat her on a bed, and read her rights, and then Virgil said, "If you want an attorney, we won't say another word to you until you have one. That's because by the time you get an attorney, everything will have broken open, and you'll have nothing to give us. At this point, I think a jury will listen to those tapes and understand that you were here to kill Birdy-Louise-and they'll convict you of killing Crocker. So if you want a little break, we can tell the prosecutor that you were cooperative, or that you weren't. I have three yes-or-no questions, that's all. Do you understand?"

"I want an attorney," she said.

Virgil said to Shrake, "Move her up to Ramsey County. Murder one, conspiracy to commit murder, conspiracy to commit child abuse, false imprisonment, no bail. Get her a public defender."

Shrake nodded: "Okay. You headed back to Homestead?"

"Yeah." To Jenkins: "You better come with me. We may need the help. We'll be rounding up a lot of people."

"What were the questions?" Spooner asked.

Virgil looked at her, then called to Schickel and Brown, "Could you guys come in here for a minute?"

They came in, and Virgil said, "She asked for an attorney, and we signed off on her. Now she wants to know what my questions were going to be. We want you to witness this: we're offering to take her to Ramsey County jail and get her a public defender. No pressure. I'm going to ask her the questions, and if she answers, you're witnessing that she's answering voluntarily. Okay?"

They nodded, and Brown asked her, "You want to know the questions?"

"I'm not saying I'll answer them," she said.

Virgil asked, "To your knowledge, does Wally Rooney have a sexual relationship with the daughters of Jacob Flood? Edna and Helen?"

She looked away from them, then shook her head and said, "Yes. I think so."

"The daughter of Karl and Greta Rouse. To your knowledge, does she have sexual relationships with the men of the World of Spirit?"

Again, the sour twisting away, the head shake, and, "Yes."

"To your knowledge, do the Bakers, Kelly Baker's parents, know who was with their daughter when she was killed?"

She looked down at the floor now, shook her head a last time, and said, "Yes. But she wasn't murdered, she died. Maybe… too much excitement."

Virgil wanted to punch her, but instead, said to Shrake, "Take her," and to the others, "Let's go, guys." VIRGIL WENT out the door, feeling a cop-like elation: he had them. But even as he went, he thought, Should I be happy that I was right, and that children are being abused? So he said that to Jenkins: "I got this rush, you know, being right about this. Being right about kids getting abused."

"That's not why you got the rush," Jenkins said. "You got the rush because we're going to stop it."

"That's right," Virgil said. "I like your reconceptualization."

"I'm really good at that," Jenkins said. "Let me get some stuff out of Shrake's trunk."

What he got out of Shrake's trunk were a bulletproof vest and two M16s with low-light Red-Dot scopes and ten thirty-round magazines. "I brought one for you, if you want it," he said.

"Might be a little overgunned," Virgil said.

Jenkins said, "I've never been overgunned. I have been under-gunned. After that happened, I reconceptualized." THEY HEADED SOUTH down Highway 56 for I-90; Brown and Schickel would be five minutes behind, Brown saying that he needed to hit the can and then stop in town for a couple of bottles of Pepsi. "All Clay has is Cokes, and I can't stand that shit," he said.

Jenkins drove while Virgil worked his cell phone. He called Coakley and told her about it: described the scene, and what they'd gotten on tape.

"It's everything we need. The thing is, those three guys are headed your way, and they're probably on the phone themselves. They know we're looking at kids, so we gotta nail down the Rouse place right now. Right now. Get your guys, and get out there."

"We're going now, four of us. The warrant's ready, I talked to the judge, clued him in; he'll sign it as soon as you say, 'go.'"

"Go."

Jenkins drove too fast, better than eighty-five: they came over a hill, and a car coming toward them popped up its light bar, and Jenkins said, "Ah, shit, it's the cops."

He braked and moved to the side, and a highway patrol car passed them and swung through a U-turn. Virgil reached over and clicked on his own flashers, front and back, and when the cop stopped behind them, Jenkins started to get out and the patrolman yelled, "Stay in the car, sir."

Virgil was done with Coakley, clicked off, and clicked through on his speed dial to the duty officer at the BCA: "We might want to borrow a highway patrolman for a heavy-duty issue in Homestead," he said. "I'll get you the guy's name in a minute. Can you make the connection?"

"Give me the name," the duty officer said.

The patrolman shined a flashlight in the back window of the truck, saw the two naked M16s on the floor, and Jenkins stuck his hand out the window with his ID and said, "BCA. We're on an emergency run to Homestead."

The cop eased up and took the ID, and Virgil said, "We're calling the patrol headquarters right now. We may need to take you with us."

Now the cop came to the window. "What do you mean, take me with you? I was going home for dinner."

"That may have to wait," Virgil said. "We're on our way to Homestead, and we're gonna need some help."

"Ah, for cripes sakes, what are you guys up to? Driving near ninety miles per in a fifty-five… Are you that fuckin' Flowers?"

Virgil said, "That's me. And hey, give Jenkins a ticket if you want. You can write it up on the way, would be better-but you'll be getting a call."

He got the cop's name, Andersson, with two s's, called it in, and Andersson, who walked back to his own car, got a call, talked for a moment, then walked back. "Well, I guess I'm going with you. If we're going fast-"

At that moment, Brown and Schickel came screaming over the hill, at ninety per. The driver saw their lights and as Andersson shouted, "Holy shit," they swerved to the side of the road a hundred yards ahead. "More of us," Virgil called to him. "Take the lead. We'll be right behind. We're in a hurry. Go. Go."

When they were back on the road, Jenkins said, "Thanks a lot, asshole. You think he's really going to give me a ticket?"

"Depends on how bad he wanted to get home for dinner," Virgil said. "We'll keep him occupied, maybe he'll forget. But nah… he wouldn't do that."

"Had a mean voice," Jenkins said.

Virgil got himself patched through to the highway patrol car and asked Andersson to call in to patrol headquarters and see if they could get more patrolmen to rendezvous at the Warren County sheriff's office.

"What the hell is going on?" Andersson asked.

"We're busting the biggest child sex ring in the history of the state," Virgil said. "You're gonna be a highway patrol folk hero."

Jenkins started to laugh, and Andersson, maybe pissed, but maybe not, took them up close to a hundred and held them there, and they flashed through the night, heading south and then west.