Bad blood

7

Virgil hadn't known exactly what a surface sealer did, but when he found the small dealership and showroom, he discovered that Son Wood used a variety of paintlike substances to seal concrete or wood floors from whatever might get poured on them-like cow or pig urine, gasoline or oil, or grease.

An auburn-haired woman was sitting behind the reception counter, typing into a computer screen and, when Virgil walked in, took off her reading glasses and asked, "Are you Harvey?"

"Nope. I'm Virgil. Flowers. I'm an agent for the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, looking into your murders. Is Mr. Wood around?"

"Well, yes, he's in the back, talking to Roger. Can I tell him what it's about? Specifically?"

"He was a friend of Jim Crocker's, and we're talking to all of Crocker's friends."

"That was just terrible," she said. "Let me get him."

Wood came out a moment later, followed by the woman. He was a tall man, thin, weathered, with flinty blue eyes and a three-day beard. He was wearing a red flannel shirt and pipe-stem jeans, and cowboy boots. He and Virgil shook hands and Virgil said, "We've been interviewing people around town, and a couple have mentioned that you knew Deputy Crocker. We know that he'd been intimate with a woman shortly before he died, and we'd really like to talk to her. Do you have any ideas?"

"Well, you know, I don't," Wood said. "As a matter of fact, I can tell you right out front that I'm surprised there was a woman with him, because he never seemed that much interested."

"In women?"

"Well, not so much women… as any particular woman." Wood scratched his head, just above his left ear, and said, "I don't know how to put it. He was interested in women, okay? He was married for a while, but I never knew him to date. You see what I'm saying? He didn't seem interested in particular women. He didn't go out with anyone."

"Would there have been any takers?" Virgil asked. "If he started looking?"

"Oh, yeah. There's not a big surplus of women around here, but he had a good job. You know how it is."

Virgil nodded. "So you guys hung out, had a few beers…"

"That was pretty much it. We'd go fishing a couple times a year," Wood said. "We weren't all that close. I'm married and he's single… but, yeah, we go back a way."

"Can you think of anything…?"

"Well, you know he was tight with Jake Flood. They knew each other since they were kids. There must be something in there… something in that whole mess. Jake getting killed, then Jim."

Virgil said, "That's what we think, too. We're looking for the connection."

"Maybe you ought to talk to his ex-wife," Wood suggested. "She's over in Jackson, her name's Kathleen Spooner. Kate. Changed her name back to her maiden name after they broke up."

"Bitter breakup?"

"Well-no. He told me he didn't know what the hell happened. He came home one day, and she said she was moving on, that she'd filed for divorce that day at the courthouse, and did he want pork chops for dinner, or meat loaf?"

The woman chipped in: "I talked to her for a minute, downtown, and she said she just got tired of his act. She said she didn't much want to marry him in the first place, and she'd been right."

"So she just went on down the road," Wood said.

"You know if he went for the meat loaf?" Virgil asked.

"More of a pork chop man," Wood said.

They talked for a few more minutes, but nothing else came up-Wood didn't know Kelly Baker or any of her family. "I know where they're at, but they ran a pretty small grain operation, and that doesn't need my product so much."

"Do you know anything about the religion he belonged to?" Virgil asked.

"Just that it was a little unusual," Wood said. "He didn't talk about it that much, and he didn't go to services much. But some."

"I thought they stayed pretty much to themselves."

"Some of them do, some of them don't so much," Wood said. "I never exactly figured them out, because, to tell the truth, I wasn't much interested. But they're not like the Amish. I've been in some of their houses, and they have TVs and stereos and computers and so on. They're not so much for fancy cars-Fords and Chevys, mostly. But they do buy the Star Wars farm equipment. They got money." VIRGIL GAVE HIM a card, and walked out to the truck. He'd just gotten in and started it when Wood came out of the front of the showroom, jogging toward the truck, his shoulders up against the cold. He pointed at the passenger seat, and Virgil popped the door and Wood climbed in.

"I didn't want to say a couple things in front of Delores, because she's a good bookkeeper, but the woman does tend to run her mouth. This all might be nothing, and I don't want to get good people in trouble, because of a bunch of rumors."

"They won't be in trouble, if they didn't do anything," Virgil said.

Wood shook his head and said, "Okay: Every few years I'm out at the Flood place. They run a hundred head of Charolais up there, grass-fed stuff for the specialty stores, and they've got some winter feeding platforms that I coat… Anyway, I was up there a couple of years ago, and I made some comment to Jim about how religious the Floods were. He was a little loaded and he said, "Yeah, really religious, but that don't keep them from fuckin' like a bunch of goats."

Wood paused, put his hands over the warm air registers on the dashboard, then said, "The thing is, he said it in a way like there was something weird about it. Then he shut up. When I asked him about it the next time I saw him, he said he couldn't remember saying anything like that, but I could see he did. Like he was keeping a secret. He really seemed to want to walk away from what he said."

"So what was weird?"

"Just his… voice. And then his attitude. Not scared, exactly, but like there was some dark secret. About the religion, I think. So-for what it's worth."

"But you really don't know about the religion."

"No, I don't. There are a lot of little different ones scattered around here, mostly, you know, Bible-thumpers of one sort or another. There's quite a few Muslims around now, immigrants, and there's even a rabbi or two over at the slaughterhouse-that's what I understand, anyway." He shook his head again, and added, "Anyway, I thought I should mention it, because it seems odd, and because both Jim and Jake Flood have been murdered."

"Glad you did. If anything else pops into your head, give me a ring. Whoever did all this is dangerous, and we need to get him off the road."

Wood nodded and said, "The other thing that I didn't want Delores to hear, is that Jim was seeing his ex every once in a while. He didn't even want me to know that, I think, but it came out a couple times. They weren't talking about getting back together, but they were… you know, whatever the kids call it: hooking up."

Virgil said, "Thanks for that, too. Stay in touch."

"I'll do that," Wood said, and he popped the door and ran back through the cold to his shop.

Virgil made a note to talk to Crocker's ex-wife as soon as he could, and eased out onto the highway. As soon as he got going, he called Coakley; she had finished talking to the women, was sending them out to Battenberg to knock on doors.

"I'm going out to the Bakers' place. You want to go out in your truck, or you want to ride along with me?" he asked.

"Huh. Why don't I meet you there? I might need my truck later on."

"Tell me how to get there…"

She gave him some simple directions, said, "That's not the shortest way, but it's the easiest, you won't get lost-and it'll let me catch up to you."

"See you there. Before you come out, run Jacob Flood through the NCIC, see if you get a hit."

"Already did that-no hits."

"See you at Bakers'."

The trip out took half an hour, the countryside not quite flat, but rather a series of broken planes, now a frozen wash of gentle blues and grays with the new snow. Virgil had read once that Grandma Moses was a primitive painter because she thought snow was white. The writer said if you really looked at it, snow was hardly ever white. It mostly was a gentler version of the color of the sky-blue, gray, orange in the evenings and mornings, often with purple shadows. When he looked, sure enough, the guy was right, and Grandma Moses had her head up her ass.

On the way over, he called a researcher named Sandy at the BCA and asked her to find Kathleen Spooner, called Kate, formerly called Kathleen Crocker.

"If she's still in Minnesota, I'll get it in a minute or two," she said.

"Text it to me so I'll have a record."

Like most of the farmhouses around, the Baker place sat facing a county highway, a hundred yards back, perched on a rise with a windbreak of box elders and cottonwoods to the northwest. Virgil slowed to check the name on the mailbox and saw Coakley's truck coming up from behind. He waited on the side of the road, and she slowed, and pointed, and he followed her up the freshly plowed driveway to the house. On the way up the drive, his cell phone burped: a text message. He looked at the screen and found an address and a phone number for Kathleen Spooner.

Out of the truck, Coakley said, "I called ahead. They're both here, and waiting. They've got a boy, he's off studying wind power at Minnesota West in Canby."

"Would he be Bobby Tripp's age?"

Her eyes narrowed: "I think… he might be three or four years older. We can ask."

They were walking up to the side door of the farmhouse, and Virgil filled her in on the conversation with Son Wood, and added, "I'll try to find Crocker's ex-wife this afternoon."

"Worth a try," she said. "She's been gone for a while, though. Five or six years, I guess."

"But Wood thinks they may have been back sleeping together," Virgil said. "That's interesting. A familiar female."

"We could use some DNA…"

The Bakers were as different as grapes and gravel; Leonard Baker had yellowish-red hair that flopped over one side of his head, so that if it had been black, it would have looked like Hitler's haircut. He had a pointed chin and a pointed nose, and freckles all over his face and hands.

When he nodded and smiled at them, a formal smile, as they followed him through the door, Virgil saw that he was missing one of his upper eyeteeth; and a moment later, picked up a periodic whistle that came through the empty space when Leonard said a word that began with a "W."

Louise Baker was raven-haired and black-eyed; not pretty, but noticeable. She wore a formless dress, with a tiny red-dotted floral design, that fell to her ankles, and she was not, Virgil thought, wearing anything beneath it. Like, nothing-but what was under there was definitely of an interesting quality.

Leonard Baker said, "If I understand this right, Miz Coakley thinks that our daughter's death might be mixed up with this murder at the elevator? Then we heard that Jim Crocker got killed, and that maybe a woman did it?"

"That's what we think," Virgil agreed.

"But whoever killed my daughter, they were men," Baker said. "That's what the Iowa folks said."

"That's probably right," Virgil said. "But we've discovered that a boy named Bobby Tripp murdered Jacob Flood, and then that Tripp was murdered by Deputy Crocker. And that Bobby Tripp was a friend of your daughter's. A good friend."

Louise was silent but Leonard Baker said, "Well, that's not right. I would have known about something like that."

Coakley said, "Not intimate friends… they didn't have a personal relationship. They were friends. They talked to each other, e-mailed each other."

"I keep a pretty sharp eye on that computer," Baker said. Then, "But I suppose once they learn how to use it… we're not here all the time."

"And there are computers everywhere," Coakley said. "Libraries, schools…"

"We homeschooled," Louise Baker said. Her voice was crinkly, like when a sheet of vellum is crumpled in a hand. "Leonard taught her mathematics and German, and I taught her English and literature, and we both taught her religion."

Virgil caught what seemed to be an irritated look pass from Leonard to his wife when she mentioned religion, and he jumped on it.

"If you don't mind my asking, what religion? I'm a preacher's son," Virgil said.

"We have a personal and private religion," Leonard Baker said. "We really don't talk about it to nonmembers."

"Okay," Virgil said, and then quickly, following up, "Bible-based? Or…"

Leonard Baker nodded: "Yes. We're followers… well, yes. The Bible."

Virgil said, "I haven't had a chance to review all the investigation from Iowa, but I know the outlines of your daughter's case. The Iowa people say that you had no idea of what had happened with Kelly. Have you had any thoughts since that time? Has anything come up?"

The couple looked at each other, then simultaneously shook their heads. "We are mystified. The police said… well, that Kelly was sexually active."

"That was ridiculous," Louise Baker said. "When could she be?"

Coakley: "You let young girls work in town, things happen. They grow up so fast now."

"We didn't even know that she had male friends her own age, like this boy you're talking about," Leonard Baker said. "That she was not a virgin when she was killed-that doesn't seem possible to us. The time factor… when could she have gotten out? She did work, summers, but she was a quiet girl."

"It's a mystery," Louise Baker said, her voice crackling with what might have been stress.

"Do you know somebody named Liberty?" Virgil asked.

The two looked at each other again, and Virgil had a sudden intuition: they knew, and they'd lie about it. They turned back to Virgil and both shook their heads. "No. Nobody named Liberty."

They said they knew who the Floods were, but weren't really acquainted, and they did know Crocker. "He was a righteous man," Louise Baker said. "He patrolled out here, before he was assigned in town, so everybody knew him. I suppose… no offense, Sheriff… I suppose most people out here voted for him."

Leonard Baker nodded: "If he killed the Tripp boy, it was for a reason. The Tripp boy must belong to a gang. If he knew Kelly, then I think you've taken a big step in finding out who killed her."

"Do you think your son might have known Tripp?" Virgil asked.

Leonard Baker shook his head: "I don't think so. He never worked in town. He was homeschooled, too, both of them were. When he graduated, two years ago, he got a job in Blue Earth, so he never was around Homestead. And then he went off to study wind power."

They talked for a while longer, and Louise Baker asked if they should be afraid for their own lives: "There're killers out there, and they've already taken Kelly from us. What if they're crazy people?"

"If you don't know what's going on, then I think you're safe," Virgil answered. "There's a thread that links all this together, and if you're not pulling on the thread, then you should be okay."

Louise shivered: "I'm still scared."

"At times like this, you need to be strong and courageous. Don't be afraid or terrified; we're with you," Virgil said.

They nodded, and Leonard Baker said, "Just… mystified. Mystified."

Back outside, Coakley said, "That wasn't a lot of help. But they're also pointing us back to Tripp. Maybe there's something-"

"They were lying through their fuckin' teeth," Virgil said. "The Bakers know something and they're scared. That probably means they know something about their daughter's death, and they're hiding it."

"What'd they lie about?" Coakley asked. "I missed it."

"Louise said Crocker was a righteous man. Mrs. Flood said the same thing, the same words, but they deny that they know each other. Bullshit. They know each other and they've been talking. And this Bible thing, the righteousness thing. Mrs. Flood had a Bible, and now the Bakers say they belong to a Bible-based religion, and they're pretty serious about telling you that."

"So?"

"So I threw a little Deuteronomy thirty-one:six at them, one of the most famous verses in the Bible. They had no idea," Virgil said. "Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the Lord your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you."

"Well-just because they're Bible-based, doesn't mean they know every word," Coakley said.

"They should know those words," Virgil said. "There's something going on here, out in the countryside, and we don't know what it is, do we, Mrs. Jones?"

"My: from the Holy Bible to Bob Dylan. I'm impressed," she said. "Did you notice that Louise was a little spare on the clothing?"

"I noticed," Virgil said.

"I noticed you noticing," Coakley said.

"She didn't look prim, she didn't look controlled, like a fundamentalist usually does. She looked a little out there, in a morose kind of way," Virgil said. He smiled at Coakley. "There's something going on, and that makes me happy. Second day on the case and we've got something. We need to think about the Bakers and the Floods. About their religion. Something going on, Lee."

"What's next?"

Virgil looked at his watch: he had time. "I've got Kathleen Spooner's address over in Jackson. I'm going to run over and talk to her," he said. "If I have the time, I might check with Junior Baker up in Canby… though that might have to wait. That's a ride."

"I'm going to check back with my girls up in Battenberg," Coakley said. "Stay in touch."