Bad blood

5

Pat Sullivan, the newspaper reporter, covered cops and everything else in town, and had been calling the sheriff's office on a fifteen-minute schedule since the rumors of Crocker's death began to leak out. Coakley called him back, with Virgil sitting next to her desk.

She said, "Pat? Lee Coakley. You called?" She listened for a minute, then said, "Why don't you walk over? We've got a state investigator here and we can fill you in." A few more words from the reporter, and she said, "See you then," and hung up.

To Virgil: "He's on his way."

"Good guy?" Virgil asked.

"Yeah, for a reporter," she said. "He's accurate, usually, but he's ambitious. The editor tells me his friend-his relationship, his guy-lives up in the Cities. He'd like to get up there with the Pioneer Press or the Star Tribune."

"Fat chance," Virgil said. "Those places are bleeding to death. Bet there are a hundred good reporters looking for jobs."

"You know them?"

"A few," Virgil said. "And they talk about it."

"You think they'll be down here? For these murders?"

"May get some TV," Virgil said. "The newspapers, you're more likely to get a call. I mean, they could have a staff meeting in a phone booth."

They sat for a minute, looking past each other, then Coakley asked, "You at the Holiday?"

"Yeah."

They looked past each other some more, until Virgil asked, "You didn't mention to Sullivan that we wanted to talk to him about Tripp."

"I thought I'd leave that to you. Best to ask him first, before we get to Crocker. That way, we're holding the Crocker information over his head. Or, you are. I'm just a humble county sheriff, who has to defer to the state agent, if he decides to screw over the local media." She leaned back in her chair, turned, put her boots up on top of a wastebasket, put her hands behind her head, and stared at the ceiling. She did it in a comfortably coordinated way, which made Virgil think it was her regular thinking posture. "I have two possibilities."

"Only two?"

"No, there are several more, but two I'm thinking about. One: Flood and Crocker were friends, which we know, and that Crocker killed Bobby out of simple revenge. Two: Crocker killed Bobby because he was afraid that when Bobby told us why he killed Flood, that it'd come back on Crocker."

They considered that for a moment, then Virgil said, "Crocker didn't kill Tripp until early morning, almost time for a shift change. I wonder why he waited? I wonder if he needed to talk to somebody about it? Like your other woman. We oughta check the phones here, see if he called anyone during the overnight. And check his cell."

"We can do that," she said. Another moment, and she asked, "You cook? Or you eat out?"

"I'm not much interested in food," Virgil said. "I mostly eat microwave. Healthy Choice, like that. Cereal. Milk. Scrambled eggs."

"My husband used to cook, a lot, when I was married," Coakley said. "I used to work some odd hours. Now, I get home in time to cook, most nights, but can't get it going again. The boys are happy with pizza and burgers and fries, but I feel guilty about it."

"How many kids you got?" Virgil asked.

"Three. Sixteen, fourteen, and twelve," she said. "The twelve was supposed to be a girl. So was the fourteen, for that matter. All I got is a bunch of big lugs. Though I love them to death."

"Sounds like you kept busy for a while. Three kids in four years."

"Yeah, well. Going to Mankato State, got married halfway through my senior year. I was knocked up by Memorial Day," she said.

"What'd your husband do?"

"He's the new car sales manager over at Gable Ford," she said.

"Still see him?" Virgil asked.

"Oh, no. The new wife wouldn't like it, for one thing," Coakley said.

"Oh-oh."

"What can I tell you? He got married three weeks after our divorce was final," she said. "I guess it had been going on for a while. Never saw it coming."

"She have really big breasts?" Virgil asked.

The thin smile again. "Ample. Or ample-and-a-half."

"Give her any speeding tickets?"

"Hadn't thought of it, but now that you mention it, I'll keep it in mind," she said. Her phone rang, and she picked it up, listened, and said, "Send him in."

Pat Sullivan was a short, thin man, of the sort that Virgil thought of as "weedy." He had brown hair, a prominent nose, a brush mustache, and square Teddy Roosevelt teeth. He wore brown boots with studded soles, was carrying a parka and a reporter's notebook.

"Virgil Flowers," he said, when Coakley introduced him. "I've followed your adventures. That shoot-out up in International Falls, with the Vietnamese dragon lady. The one out by Bluestem, with the federal guys."

"They're like bad dreams slowly fading away," Virgil said. He pointed at a chair: "Sit down. We gotta talk. There's more going on than a story."

Sullivan sat down, a skeptical look on his face: "Like what?"

"We have to go off the record for a bit," Virgil said. "That good with you?"

"Depends. We can start that way. If I can't keep it off, I'll tell you," Sullivan said.

"When Bob Tripp was arrested, he wouldn't talk to the sheriff until he talked to you first," Virgil said.

Sullivan's eyebrows went up. "Me?"

"Yes. Are we off the record?"

"Okay. For now."

"We wondered if you knew what he might have wanted to talk about," Virgil said.

"So you didn't ask me to come in as a reporter, but as a possible witness."

Virgil shrugged: "I don't care if you're both. Not a problem for me."

Sullivan said, "I'll have to think about it… but if Bobby wanted to talk, why would he have committed suicide?"

Virgil said, "He didn't. He was murdered. Probably by Jim Crocker."

"Whoa." Sullivan went pale, leaned forward. "This has got to be on the record. Not about Bobby wanting to talk to me, but about Bobby and Crocker."

"We'll come back to it, give you a formal interview, on the record. Let's stay off for now."

Sullivan paused, then nodded.

"Crocker isn't a sure thing, for Bobby's murder," Virgil said. "I can think of scenarios where he didn't do it-but we think he probably did. We may have more definitive answers after the investigation."

Coakley jumped in, pressing the question, "Do you have any idea why Bobby might have wanted to talk to you?"

Sullivan leaned back, looked at Coakley, then Virgil, then back at Coakley. "Lee, I assume you know that I'm gay."

"I knew that," she said, nodding.

"I cover a lot of sports. People around town had heard I was gay, and some of the high school kids knew about it. Maybe most of them. Anyway, I interviewed Bobby a few times, he was a star. Then, one time, he asked me if he could stop by my apartment and chat. I said, 'Sure,'" Sullivan said. "By that time, I had an idea of what was coming. Anyway, he came over, and beat around the bush for a while, then said that he'd heard that I was gay, and that he was worried that he might be, and he just wanted to talk about it."

"Was he?" Coakley asked.

"Oh, sure. As far as I know, he hadn't been sexually involved with anybody-including me, we never were-but he had already gone through most of the self-recognition stuff," Sullivan said. "You know, feeling this strong attraction toward some of his teammates, and he'd fantasize about them, instead of the girls in his class, and all the rest-checking out the scene on the Internet, maybe checking some gay porn."

"Did he ever mention Jacob Flood to you?" Virgil asked.

Sullivan shook his head: "No. When I heard that Bobby was dead, and that he'd been arrested in the Flood case, I was amazed. We talked quite a bit, and he never mentioned Flood's name."

Virgil: "And nothing about Crocker."

"Not a thing. Not even during the election."

"Do you know if Flood or Crocker were active in the local Homestead gay culture? There must be a few more gay people here."

Sullivan nodded. "Quite a few," he said. "Maybe a hundred, or more? But not all of them are active around here, and I've never heard of those two. That doesn't mean much, though-it's not like we all hook up. I know maybe… a dozen gay people here? Something like that."

"Did Bobby ever mention a girl named Kelly Baker?"

Sullivan, who'd been slumping in the chair, straightened, and tipped an index finger at Virgil: "Now her, we did talk about. Is she involved in this deal?"

"Wait," Virgil said. "You say you talked about her. Did he know her?"

"Oh, yeah. He met her at the Dairy Queen. He used to give her a ride home, sometimes. I think he was hoping that he might, you know, get involved with her, find out that he really wasn't gay. It didn't work out that way. I think… I think-he didn't actually tell me-that she picked up on the fact that he was gay. Didn't bother her, and they became friends."

"The Iowa people didn't talk to him? The cops?"

"Not as far as I know. I mean, Bobby and Kelly were a summertime thing, when the Dairy Queen was open. After school started, she was gone, and then, you know, she was killed. He didn't know anything, and they never really had a relationship, so… it just went away, I guess."

"Doesn't help much," Virgil said.

"Let me ask a question," Sullivan said. "Have you actually checked on Flood's sexual orientation?"

"Not yet, but it's on the list," Coakley said. "We know he was married, but we also know that whoever killed Kelly Baker was into some extreme sexual behavior. Homosexuality might fit in there."

"Doesn't seem all that extreme to me," Sullivan said. "Homosexuality."

"You don't know the details," Virgil said. "But here's the thing that hangs me up. Bobby wanted to talk to you. Not his father, or one of his pals. So, I have the feeling that you would already know something about what he wanted to talk about, and that most likely would have to do with sex. You say it's not Crocker, not Flood, so it has to be Kelly Baker. But why would he want to talk to you about Baker?"

"I don't know," Sullivan said. "Maybe because I knew about the situation between them."

"He never said anything to you about Baker being involved in… extreme sexual situations?"

Sullivan let a grin show: "That's the second time you guys have used the phrase… I'm starting to get interested. But no. He never mentioned anything like that."

"Damnit. I was hoping for magic," Virgil said.

"Let's go back on the record, so I can get a few questions in," Sullivan said, flipping open his notebook.

"Talk to Lee," Virgil said. "I've got to make some phone calls before it gets too late."

"I'm going to say that you were called in to work the case," Sullivan said.

"That's fine. Refer to me as the affable, good-looking, outdoorsy blond guy," Virgil said.

"With a serious line of bullshit," Coakley added. VIRGIL CALLED Jacob Flood's home number, got a woman who said she was his daughter, and who said, "Mother's out. She'll be back at supper time."

"Does she have a cell phone?"

"No. I can give her a message."

Virgil identified himself and said that he'd like to come over after supper. He left his cell phone number and asked for a call-back if Alma Flood wouldn't be there.

He called the duty officer in St. Paul, learned that Beatrice Sawyer and Don Baldwin had the crime-scene van and should be at Crocker's place. He called Sawyer, a cheerful middle-aged woman, who, Virgil thought, was sometimes a little too interested in death.

"Got here half an hour ago and had a look, eyeballin' it," Sawyer said. "It's murder, all right. Tell you something else-the sun went down, and it's dark as the inside of a horse's ass out here."

"You're sure?"

"Well, I've never actually been inside a horse's ass."

"About the murder?" Virgil asked.

"We feel that after the slug penetrated his lower jaw, tongue, roof of his mouth, sinus passages, eye socket, brain, and skull, he probably wouldn't have had time to wipe the gun, or any interest in doing so," Sawyer said. "But the gun was wiped. With a cotton blouse, we think. A couple threads got caught in the action. Ergo…"

"All right. So he wasn't alone," Virgil said. "You saw his penis? Exposed?"

"Yes. We believe he was involved in heterosexual activity immediately prior to his demise. Whether he actually ejaculated we won't know until the autopsy is done, but we have no signs of semen on his clothing or the couch."

"There was a suggestion here, by the sheriff, that he may have been involved in oral sex," Virgil said.

"That would be accurate," she said.

Virgil was surprised that she was so positive. "Really?"

"Yes. Because that explains the lipstick on his penis," she said. "That's also why we think it was heterosexual, and a blouse was involved in the gun-wiping. We could be wrong, but we rarely are."

"Bea… you're my huckleberry."

"Yeah, you say that to everybody," she said. "If it was oral sex, we have the possibility of getting some DNA. I won't go into the details of how we plan to collect it."

"Thank you."

"But we will be doing that. I'll tell you, Virgil, there might not be much more. This shag carpet, this fuzzy couch, there was a blanket… it's an old house, and there's a lot of dirt around. The furnace has been blowing dust on everything. It's going to be a chemical mess. Our best hope is the DNA on his penis, and we'll check the fly of his pants."

"We're also looking for a pair of uniform pants, green wool, with blood on them," Virgil said. "Could be a very small amount, but you've got to find them. Check every pair of green wool uniform pants you can find. The blood comes from a ripped fingernail, so there might not be much. We'll need DNA on that, too."

"If it's there, we'll get it," she said.

"Bea…"

"Don't say it," she said. "The huckleberry thing. Once was annoying enough."

On his way back down the hall to Coakley's office, Virgil got a local call, from a number he didn't recognize. He answered, and found Bob Tripp's father on the other end. "I've talked to my wife, and we're going over to the funeral home tonight at seven-thirty. If you wanted to get here at seven twenty-five, we could put you up in Bob's room by yourself. We'd just as soon not be here when you go through it."

"I'll see you then," Virgil said. "Thank you."

Coakley was alone when Virgil got to her office. She had her boots back on the wastebasket, and was staring out her office window. When Virgil stuck his head in, she pointed at a visitor's chair.

"Look a little bummed," Virgil said.

"I am."

"We'll get this cleared up, you'll be the town heroine," Virgil said.

"Three murders," she said. "And probably four. You know the last thing I did before I got elected sheriff? My last investigation? I was looking for some kid who was going around keying trucks."

"Catch him?"

"No, but I know who did it," she said. "I got myself close to the little asshole's father, down at the diner, in the next booth. I was having lunch with the chief, and I said, 'There's gonna be trouble when I catch this kid. He's done fifty thousand dollars' worth of damage, and the insurance companies will be after him or his parents with a chain saw.' That stopped it, you betcha."

"Well, that's good," Virgil said.

"But you never did car-keying investigations," she said. "And I can tell you, you can flat get whiplash from the change in speed, from car-keying to quadruple murder."

"Never did a car-keying investigation, but I once investigated the theft of toddlers' pants," Virgil said. He told her about it, and they exchanged a few more stories, and Virgil told her about the phone calls, and finally she sighed and said, "It's supper time. You should get out to Flood's, and I'm going home to cook some… crap. Macaroni and cheese. I can't stand to think about it."

"So take some time, cook something good. Think about the case while you're doing it. Call me when you think of something."

She poked a finger at him. "And you call me. Tonight. I want to hear about Flood, and about Bob Tripp's room. Tonight."

They walked out to the parking lot together, and then Coakley said, a frown on her face, "By the way, when we were talking to Pat, you said you could think of a few scenarios where Crocker didn't kill Bobby. So what're the scenarios?"

Virgil shrugged. "Crocker is having an affair with a female deputy, who came in to shut up Bobby. She kills him, while Crocker is off someplace, doing something. Gets her pants scratched. But she's worried that Crocker is going to tell somebody that she was there-use her for an alibi, if somebody finds out Bobby was murdered. And maybe she knows enough about autopsies to know that we might find out. So she goes over to Crocker's and kills him to shut him up, before he can tell anyone that she was at the jail."

"Well, goddamnit, Virgil, you're coming back on me again," she said.

"No, I'm not," Virgil said. "I was just thinking of scenarios. Besides…"

"Besides, what?"

"Bobby was a star athlete," Virgil said. "I don't think you're strong enough to keep him pinned long enough to strangle him."

"Ahh… Go away."

"You gonna think about it?" Virgil asked. "The scenario?"

"I'll think about it, but it's bullshit," she said, and Virgil went away. VIRGIL GOT to the Flood house well past dark, but could tell the house was a big one, a cube, white clapboard around the first floor, dark brown shingles around the second floor and the attic level. It sat squarely facing the county highway, on a low rise a hundred yards back, with a shelterbelt of fir trees to the northwest and west, dark against the Milky Way. Five snowmobiles were rolling down the ditch to Virgil's left as he came to the Floods' driveway, and they went bucketing on past into the night.

The yard was illuminated by three lights-one over a side door to the house, a yard light on a pole by the corner of the house, and another on a pole by the barn. The barn and a couple of lower outbuildings, a garage and a machine shed, sat off to the right of the drive, with the glint of a silvery propane tank off to the left. No cars were visible in the yard lights: everything was buttoned up, and dark.

Virgil could see no tracks going to the front porch as he came up the drive; not unusual. The side door would be the main entry. He climbed out of the truck, took a second to look around, and to feel the cold night air on his face, and to look at the stars, then walked to the side door and rang the bell.

He could hear a thumping inside, somebody running. A moment later, the door popped open. Two teenage girls stood looking at him, in the dim light of a small overhead bulb, and he nodded and said, "I'm Virgil Flowers," and one said, "Yes, we were waiting," and the other, "Come in. Wipe your boots."

"I could take the boots off."

"No need. Nobody else does."

The girls appeared to be about twelve and fourteen, junior high school age. They were dressed almost identically, in dark blue jumpers with white blouses and black tights, with black lace-up shoes. They were sallow with winter, with deep shadows under their eyes: their father had been murdered.

Virgil asked, "So, what are your names?"

"I'm Edna," said the older one, and the younger one said, "Helen."

He followed them up four stairs into a kitchen and around a corner and through another door into a living room. One of the girls called ahead, "Mother, Mr. Flowers is here."

Alma Flood was sitting on a couch in a book-lined living room, a reading lamp over her shoulder, a Bible on the arm of her chair. A man, older, big, farm-weathered with a white beard, a big red nose, and small black eyes, sat facing her on a recliner chair. A glassed-in bookcase, built under the stairs going up to the second floor, was full of what looked like fifty-year-old novels, the kind you'd find in a used-book store or an aging North Woods resort.

Alma Flood was square in the body, as the girls would be, with her hair pulled into a bun; she wore a dark brown dress. There was a resemblance between her and the older man, and Virgil thought he might be Alma Flood's father. She said, "Mr. Flowers. You have news?"

"Maybe," Virgil said, smiling. The man gestured at the second recliner in the group of furniture, and Virgil sat down. A comfortable chair, and the house looked prosperous; but no sign of a television set. Virgil said, "You know the sheriff arrested Bob Tripp for Mr. Flood's murder. Bob Tripp was then killed in jail-"

"I thought he committed suicide," the older man said.

Virgil said, in his polite voice, "I'm sorry, who are you?"

"Emmett Einstadt. I'm Alma's father."

"Okay… An autopsy was done on Tripp, and the medical examiner believes that he was murdered."

"That's nonsense," Einstadt snapped. "We were told by the sheriff herself that there was nobody there but Jim Crocker."

Virgil nodded. "That's correct. The autopsy turned up indications that Tripp may have been killed by Crocker."

"Oh, no, that's not possible. Jim Crocker is a righteous man," Alma Flood said.

"When we went to talk to Deputy Crocker this afternoon, we found him dead at his house. He'd also been murdered."

They were astonished. Not faking it at all, as far as Virgil could tell. Alma's hands went to the sides of her head: "Jim Crocker is dead?"

"Somebody shot him," Virgil said. "There are indications that it may have been a woman." VIRGIL GOT ALONG okay with animals-dogs, horses, chickens-but his relationships with them were nothing special. Cats were different. For some reason, which he didn't entirely understand, cats liked him.

He'd come from a cat family, of course, and that might have had something to do with it. They'd supported numerous cats over the years, ranging from the conservative red tabby Luther to the radical black Savonarola, with a dozen in between, all named for religious figures by Virgil's minister father. Now a cat walked into the Floods' living room and sniffed at him, and Virgil reached out a hand.

Alma Flood and Einstadt exchanged exclamations about Crocker-"Can you believe that? How could that happen? What's going on?"-and then Edna Flood said to Virgil, about the cat, "Don't try to pet her. She'll bite your fingers off."

Virgil nodded and pulled his hand back, and he gave them a short summary of the findings at Crocker's place, then asked, "Do you know any reason Jim Crocker would want to… take revenge on Tripp, because of what happened to Mr. Flood?"

"Well, they were friends all their lives," Einstadt said. "If they weren't hanging around here when they were kids, they were hanging around the Crocker place. Started rabbit hunting together when they were ten, when we gave them their first.22s."

"So there might be something," Virgil suggested.

"There might be, but I can't see Jim killing because of that. He'd let the law take its course," Einstadt said. "If justice didn't get done, then he might… well, as a matter of fact, I doubt he'd do anything. He wasn't that kind."

The cat sniffed Virgil's pant leg, then hopped up on the arm of the chair, sniffed his ear, and then crawled up on his shoulders and settled down behind his neck. He could hear her purring.

"That's the darnedest thing I've seen in years," Helen Flood said, as though she were forty.

Virgil reached back and scratched the cat under the ear, and asked, "Did any of you know, or did Mr. Flood know, a girl named Kelly Baker, who was killed a year or so ago down by Estherville? She came from down south of here, a few miles…"

Flood and Einstadt looked at each other, and then both shook their heads. "We know them," Einstadt said. "They belong to the same church we do. But we don't know them well. We're not close. We know about what happened to Kelly Baker, of course. Everybody was talking about it."

Alma Flood asked, "Do you think they are connected? Kelly Baker and what happened to Jacob? That the Tripp boy did it?"

Virgil had been considering the possibility, but hadn't worked through it until Alma's question clocked a new scenario into place: what if Tripp and some other kids had been using Baker, and Flood found out? What if Tripp had confessed to Crocker, and Crocker had killed him because of some relationship between himself and the Baker family? And that the other person involved in the murder of Baker had killed Crocker…

But that didn't work well: Crocker had been involved with a woman. Could there have been some kind of teenage sex ring, that included females, and something went wrong with Kelly Baker? But why wouldn't Crocker simply have alerted the sheriff, rather than murdering Tripp?

There was no logic to it-though that didn't always mean much. But Virgil shook his head at Alma Flood and said, "No, we can't make that work. Although Tripp did know Kelly Baker."

"Then you've got one boy you know for sure is a cold-blooded killer, who killed Jake. And he knew another girl who was killed, somehow. I won't tell you how to do your business, but that looks like a solid connection to me," Einstadt said. "How many murderers do we got in this county, anyway? Looks to me like the Tripp boy and one of his friends might have been up to something here."

Another scenario flashed: suppose Kelly Baker had been gay, and they had a three- or four-way thing going, involving the other woman? Too far-fetched…

"Well, we'll sure look into it," Virgil said. "Like I said, we think Crocker was murdered. We'll know for sure soon enough, and we'll probably get some DNA from the killer." The cat made a snogging sound behind his ear, and he reached back and scratched her again.

They talked for a while longer, but on the central issue-what Jacob Flood might have known, or said, that triggered his murder-they came up empty. "I'd never heard of this Tripp boy before we were told that they arrested him," Alma Flood said.

When they were done, Virgil stood up and said, "I may come back, if I find more questions. I'm not familiar with this corner of the county. But if you talk to your acquaintances around here, you might ask if anybody knows of a connection between Deputy Crocker and Kelly Baker. Or Crocker and Tripp, for that matter."

"We'll do it," Einstadt said. "We're just buckling down for winter, so we'll be coming and going-we'll see a few folks."

Virgil gave them a business card, carefully removed the cat from his shoulders, scratched her head, and put her back on the floor. "I appreciate all your help," he said.

When he was gone, Einstadt looked at Alma Flood and said, "You know who killed Crocker?"

"I was thinking Kathleen."

"I was thinking the same thing," he said. "I'll get Morgan and we'll go have a talk with her."

He stood up and said, "Rooney will be over tomorrow."

Alma Flood whined, "We can get along all right. We don't need Rooney."

"Rooney's a good man and you'll knock some edges off him. The thing about it is, you leave a bunch of women alone in a house like this, you can't tell what they'll get up to. Rooney'll handle that, and take care of the farm, too."

"He's rougher'n a cob," Alma Flood said.

"Like I said: you'll knock some edges off him."

"Be happy if he took a bath," Alma Flood muttered.

"I'll tell him that," Einstadt said. He looked at the two girls, standing in a corner. "You girls get your asses upstairs. I'll be up in a minute."

One of them said, "Yes, Grandpa," the other one said nothing, and they both headed for the stairs.

Einstadt said to his daughter, "When Rooney gets here tomorrow, I want you to make him welcome. I don't want any trouble about this. But-don't tell anyone that he's moving in. That's private business."

He turned away and followed the girls toward the stairs. He hadn't had any sex for two days, and he needed it, and the last time he'd bent Alma over the kitchen table, she'd been dry as a stick.

The girls, though…

He left Alma sitting in her chair, with her Bible, and hurried up the stairs, the hunger upon him.