Bad blood

8

Kathleen Spooner had her back to the wall-the front room wall-facing off the three men who'd shown up unannounced as she took her lunch break. Emmett Einstadt, flanked by two younger men, all three farmers, dressed rough in work coats and pants and boots, tracking dirty snow across her floor.

She said, keeping her voice low, controlled, "I don't know what you're talking about, Emmett. I heard Jim was killed, and I felt bad about it for one minute, but I had nothing to do with it."

"You two were going at it, the last pool," Einstadt said. "They says it was a woman who done it, and he wasn't going with nobody else."

"Old times' sake," Spooner said. She was an average-sized woman, a little heavy, but not too, with dark hair and eyes. She wore a University of Minnesota fleece, dark slacks, and a touch of red lipstick. "Besides, everybody else was taken up."

"But we thought about who else it might be, and we can't think of nobody," said Wally Rooney. "The thing we know is, that nobody else knows, is that you're crazier than a bucket of frogs. It didn't bother you one little bit to put a bullet through his head."

"And you got the guns," said Ted Morgan.

"Killed with his own gun, is what I heard. It could have been suicide," Spooner said.

Einstadt glanced at the other two, then said, "You know what? I keep my ear to the ground, and I haven't heard it was his own gun. Nobody told me that. Anybody tell you boys that?"

The other two men shook their heads, and Morgan said, "Nobody told me."

"What I want to know, more than whether you did it, 'cause I know you did, is why you did it. If you tell me that, I'll give you a piece of good advice."

"Not even your advice is free, huh, Emmett?" she asked. And, "You tight sonofabitch."

Einstadt shook a finger at her, but before he could speak, she said, "That Tripp kid found out that Jake was one of the boys who was there when Kelly died. He told Jim that Jake came in with his shirt off, and he saw that Liberty head above his belt buckle, and that Kelly had told him that she was fuckin' some rough guy they called Liberty because of the tattoo. He was going to spill the beans to some newspaper guy. So Jim killed him. But by the time he got home, he was scared to death. He knew all about this crime-scene stuff, and he thought they'd figure it out."

Emmett's face had gone still, and he said, "So… he did right by us. Why'd you kill him?"

"He said if they got him, he wasn't going to prison. He said he knew what happened to cops in prison. He got a little drunk, and he started to cry, and that's what he said. What he meant was, he'd make a deal. He started out right, but then… he would of took us down."

"A deal."

"That's right. I mean, Emmett, I know you've got your theories and all, but the state's got its theories, and if they knew about your little religion, they'd put you under the jail. All of you. All of us. And I think there'd be some who'd talk. Look to Alma: I hear she's got the Bible real bad."

"The Bible is the core…" Einstadt said.

"This is Kate Spooner you're talking to," Spooner said. "You've been talking Bible to me since I was five years old, and your dad before you, and his dad before him, and all you ever hear is Lot and his daughters and Tamar and Judah and Jacob and Leah and Rachel and you don't hear about anything else. I'll tell you what, Emmet, reading the Bible for the fuckin' parts is not really reading the Bible. That's okay with me; but now Alma is reading the other parts."

"I'll take care of Alma," Rooney said.

"Rooney, excuse me, but you couldn't take care of a fuckin' rock," Spooner said. They heard the sound of a car in the parking lot, and Einstadt stepped to the window and looked out. Pizza delivery truck.

"You got a pizza coming?" he asked.

"No," she said, and she took the moment to step up beside him and away from the two other men, to look out the window, and then step quickly past them so she could sit on the far end of the couch. That was a comfort, because her.45 fell under her hand, nestled in the pocket off the end of the couch.

She asked, "So what advice have you got, Emmett?"

Einstadt stared at her, his mouth turned down in a sour line, and he said, "They know a woman did it. They're probably going to get some of this DNA stuff off Jim's body-that's the word in town. They say you were sucking his cock, and they can get the DNA from dried spit. So if it was you, you best stay away from the cops. And after you've kept your head down for a while, you might think of moving someplace else. Like Alaska, or somewhere."

She said, "I'll think about that, Emmett. Now, I've got to eat my lunch, or I'll be no good the rest of the day. So you go along. And you remember, I put my ass on the line for all of us."

"Bullshit. You done it because you wanted to. If it had to be done, there'd be better ways to do it," Einstadt said. "Coulda had him out to the house, taken him out back, and buried the body in the field. Never would have found it in a thousand years."

"That's water down the drain," she said. "I had to do something, and I did it."

Morgan took a step toward her, but spoke to the others: "We oughta get her airtight one more time, then wring her neck."

She lifted her hand from over the arm of the couch, with the.45 in her grip, and laid the hand and gun across her lap. "Time to leave," she said.

A quick relay of glances, and Rooney took a step back. She was crazier than a bucket of frogs. WHEN THEY'D GONE, Spooner put the.45 back in the couch sleeve, looked out to the parking lot, saw them talking and looking up at her apartment window. Cold out: steam coming out of their mouths as they talked, mostly Morgan and Einstadt. Rooney's opinions were given to him by Einstadt, especially since he'd given Rooney Alma and the girls.

Maybe, Spooner thought, she ought to give a gun to Alma. Or the girls. Surprise that old sonofabitch someday. She waited until the men got in their trucks and rolled out of the parking lot, then went and put a Lean Cuisine chicken carbonara in the microwave. While she waited for it to ding, she thought about Morgan and his threat, went and got the small 9mm Taurus pistol from her purse, and put it in the pocket of her fleece.

The microwave dinged, and she took out the plastic tray, ate standing up at the kitchen counter, thought about DNA, thought she should know more about it, and had just tossed the tray into the trash when the doorbell rang.

The doorbell hadn't rung unexpectedly more than three or four times since she'd been in the apartment. She went to the door and looked through the peephole, and saw a tall, blond man, hatless, waiting in the hall. Didn't know him. Wary, she left the chain on the door, opened it, and peeked out.

"Yes?"

Virgil said, "Miz Spooner? I'm Virgil Flowers, with the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. I'm investigating the death of your ex-husband, and some related problems. I'd like to talk to you a minute."

"Oh…" A chill ran up her spine. They were already here. "I've got to get back to work," she said. "I'm due back in ten minutes."

"I could talk to your boss. I'm sure he'd be cooperative…"

She looked at him for another two seconds, then said, "Let me get the chain." She took the chain off, opened the door, and said, "Come in. I really haven't seen Jim in a long time. I heard about it, him being killed, but I just… I mean, I felt a little sad, I guess, we were married for five years, but that's all back then."

And Virgil thought, Interesting. She's lying already.

Virgil stepped inside, looked around. Compact kitchen off to the left, with the smell of pasta still in the air; a small living room straight ahead, down a hall, with another door to the left, presumably to a bedroom. Neat, not expensive. "Okay, well, if we could sit down for five minutes…"

They sat in the living room, Virgil taking the couch as it faced the television, and started with a thirty-second summary of what he thought: that Tripp had killed Flood for reasons unknown, that Crocker had killed Tripp to hide something that Tripp had known-something linked to the killing-and that both killings were somehow linked to the murder of Kelly Baker.

"Do you know if Jim knew any of those people? The Floods, the Bakers, the Tripp family… any of those?"

"He and Jake Flood were old friends since they were kids," she said. "We all came from the same place. And we knew the Bakers, 'cause we were all from the same part of the county, and the same business. Went to church services together."

"You're from the same area? Over around Battenberg?"

"Oh, yeah-my folks have a farm a mile down the road from the Floods. They all go back like to the nineteen hundreds, the families. Came from Germany. So we all know each other." As she was talking, she was trying in her mind to stay out front of the conversation: what he could find out easily, she'd tell him, so she couldn't be caught in a lie.

"When Iowa investigated, I guess they talked to all the folks in the church to see if anybody knew or heard anything?" Virgil asked.

She shook her head: "I don't think the church ever came into it. It's not really a church, you know. There's no church. We'd have services at different people's houses, usually in the barn, unless it's too cold. Sometimes, there'll be a couple different services going on, so we don't all go to the same one. We talk about the Bible, and all of that."

"Huh. Okay." Virgil scratched his head. "I thought Iowa had been all over everything-that they'd have talked to all of the Bakers' friends and neighbors. Anyway, when Kelly Baker was killed, did you have any feeling of what she might have been involved in? Who she might have been hanging with? Was she still going to the religious services, or had she dropped away?"

"I really couldn't tell you. I mean, she was there, but the Bakers are down at the far south end of the county, so we didn't see them every day," Spooner said. "I really don't know. I mean, I guess… they say, the word is, she was sexually active. I was surprised, but I wasn't really close enough to her to have any… instinct… about that. Maybe she was working in town, maybe she got loose somehow. I don't know."

"Were you homeschooled?"

"Oh, yes," she said. "Reading, writing, arithmetic, German. Every year, for thirteen years, five days a week."

"Is that part of the, uh, religion?"

"That's one of the main parts-to keep the kids away from the influences in schools," she said. She glanced at her watch. "I've really got to go."

Virgil asked, "Jim-was he violent with you?"

She shook her head: "No. Jim was boring. That's why I left. He'd get up, eat eggs, go to work, come home, eat dinner, sit on the couch and drink beer, go to bed. Every day. I couldn't see living my whole life like that. This idea that he could have killed the Tripp boy… I mean, that's very strange. I couldn't believe it."

"Do you know if he was dating anyone?"

"I don't know. Really. I haven't seen him in years… All I know is history." She looked at her watch again and said, "Now I've got two minutes to walk two blocks."

"Come on," Virgil said, "I'll give you a ride. Where do you work?"

"At the CVS. I'm the assistant manager, I take care of the non-pharmacy items."

On the way down the hall, zipping their parkas, he said, "I'm interested in the relationship between Jacob Flood and the Bakers. Flood and Baker both being murdered. Were they close?"

"Everybody in the church is fairly close-that's mostly eighty or a hundred families, I guess. But I don't know that the Floods were any closer to the Bakers than anybody else-they're at the other end of the county from each other."

Virgil said, "I chatted with Emmett Einstadt about Jacob Flood, and their relationships with the Bakers, Kelly Baker. He seemed to have about the same feeling as you did-close, but not every day. He was pretty upset about Kelly, you know, in a German way. If you know what I mean… My mother is pure German."

She smiled. "I do know," she said. "Emmett never shows much, but because there aren't so many church members, compared to the big churches, when somebody dies, you feel it. He gave a nice talk at her funeral."

Virgil nodded and said, "That's good. That's good." They were outside, and he pointed her at the truck, and they climbed inside.

"How long has the church been around? Is this a longtime thing, or did you all get converted?"

"Been around since the families came over from the Old Country," Spooner said. "My great-grandfather was in it."

"Most people marry into the church?"

"Oh, yeah. Because we know each other all our lives, and we have all these background things-don't go to regular schools, so we don't have any regular school friends. I always thought I might marry an outsider, if I fell in love, but when it came time to get married, I wound up with Jim. Somebody I'd known all my life."

They pulled into the pharmacy, and Virgil said, "I might come back and talk to you again. I'm puzzled about Jim's part in all of this. Why he might kill somebody like Tripp, and why he'd be so quickly killed in return."

"I don't have the faintest idea," she said. "But if the Tripp boy knew both Kelly and Jacob, and you know he killed one of them…"

"But then why did Jim kill him?"

"That's the mystery," she said. "The only thing I can think of, is that he went a little crazy if the boy told him about killing Jake. Maybe he made a joke out of it, or something. Jim and Jake grew up together-they used to hunt and trap together, when they were kids, wander around the countryside. That's all I can think of."

"But then who'd kill Jim? And why?"

She shrugged. "Don't know. Have you investigated the Tripps?"

"Well, we think the killer was a woman."

"Oh. Well, it wasn't me," she said. "Mrs. Tripp is a woman…"

"You're right. You're right. I'll think about that," Virgil said. He put out his hand and they shook, and she popped the door and climbed out, wiggled her fingers at him as she went through the door.

Virgil sat staring at the door for a minute, running it all through his head.

Einstadt had lied about not knowing the Bakers; he knew them quite well. That seemed critical, somehow. With Crocker being close to Flood, and married to Spooner, the church seemed more and more central to the whole situation. The only person not involved with it was Bobby Tripp.

And he wondered who'd been in Spooner's apartment, not very long before himself, who'd left behind the damp footprints on the carpet, big bootlike footprints. And whether those footprints had anything to do with the fact that the hausfrau-looking Kathleen Spooner had a pistol in her pocket.

And he wondered about the color of the lipstick found on Crocker's penis. Most Minnesota working women didn't use lipstick, during the day, anyway. It was like a Minnesota thing. But Spooner wore it. Could the crime-scene people get enough of it off Crocker to match it to lipstick in Spooner's bathroom or dressing table?

Stuff to think about: and while he was thinking about it, he carefully peeled off his parka and pulled back the sleeve of his shirt. He had a two-inch piece of double-sided carpet tape on his wrist. The sticky side was covered with fuzz, with a few dark hairs, from Kathleen Spooner's couch.

Should be enough for DNA, he thought, if the lab guys would just give him the time. He peeled the tape off his wrist and stuck it in a Ziploc bag. Might not be an entirely legal search, but he was invited in… and once he knew, he could always come back.

Or not.