Rough country

9

BEFORE GOING TO TALK to Slibe Ashbach, Virgil called Zoe again, and she was still at her house. He got directions and went over, and looked at the locks.

"The locks are fine," he said, when he'd looked.

She lived in a modest bungalow, two bedrooms, and one of the bedrooms had an antique folk-art crucifix over the bed, and he wondered about it but didn't ask.

"The doors, on the other hand, are crap," he said. "A child could kick out those bottom panels, and the windowpanes are too big. Somebody with a gun could stick the gun barrel through the glass, knock it out, and unlatch the door. When you get the money, buy new doors."

She was anxious about it, but also an accountant: "There's usually no problem…"

"This is the twenty-first century, the problem's always out there," he said. He put his fists on his hips: "Now, why'd they break in? Why?"

"I still can't figure it out. I keep thinking about it-I can't get away from it," she said. "But I know one thing. I've lived here for thirty years with no problems, and then I hang out with a cop on a murder case for one day, and somebody tries to get in… That doesn't feel like a coincidence."

"No, it doesn't. So think about it," Virgil said. "All the time. Work something out. Call me."

THE ASHBACH PLACE was an early twentieth-century farmhouse eight miles out of town, down a country road that pushed past a couple of lake turnoffs, dropped from blacktop road to gravel, and finally ended at Ashbach's. It could be a hard place to get to in the winter, Virgil thought as he drove in; a place where you'd need snowmobiles.

The two-story farmhouse looked like something from Grant Wood: white, with a picket fence around a neat patch of green lawn, clumps of zinnias and marigolds along the fence, fifty yards off the road. Closer to the road, a brown double-wide trailer sat on concrete blocks that had all been neatly painted gray. Farther back, at the end of the drive, was a newer metal barn, and off to the right of the barn, an open shed, covering two Bobcats-a backhoe and a front-end loader-and a larger Caterpillar shovel. A lowboy was parked beside the shed. Across the drive from the farmhouse, an open half-shed was two-thirds full of split firewood.

The house sat on what Virgil thought was probably twenty acres, with a pine plantation at the far end, and a half-dozen apple trees clustered in a back pasture. At the driveway entrance, a home-painted sign said ASHBACH KENNELS. Under that, an older sign said SLIBE ASHBACH SEPTIC amp; GRADING. And under that, a newer metal sign said NO TRESPASSING.

As he turned in the drive, Virgil noticed that the metal barn had a series of chain-link enclosures protruding from the sides, each with a half-grown yellow dog inside. A neat and expansive vegetable garden ran parallel to the driveway, filled with corn, beans, cabbage, some used-up rows that probably had been greens and radishes, earlier in the year; and a plot of dark green potato plants, enough to feed a family for a long northern winter. The back side of the garden was bordered by a raspberry patch.

A nice place, Virgil thought, if a little low, dark, and isolated.

A man was working next to the firewood shed.

SLIBE ASHBACH WAS FIFTY or fifty-five, weathered, stocky, with a sandy three-day beard and dishwater blond hair worn long from a balding head. He was dressed in a T-shirt, jeans, and muddy camo boots, working over a hydraulic log-splitter, splitting and piling firewood, which he stacked in the shed.

Virgil got out of his truck and walked over. Slibe didn't stop working for a minute, finished off three logs, threw them on the stack of split oak, then cut the motor and looked at Virgil and asked, "You see that no trespassing sign?"

"Yeah, but I ignored it," Virgil said. "I'm with the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, looking into the murder of Erica McDill."

Slibe picked up his chain saw, popped the oil cap, paused, and asked, "What's that got to do with me?"

Virgil said, "I'm talking to everybody associated with Wendy's band. Your daughter had a sexual… interlude… with McDill the night before she was murdered. It turns out that McDill was involving herself in the affairs of the band. Some people don't like that, so it seems that we should check on the band."

He was blabbing on, he realized, and cut it off, and asked, "Where were you when McDill was killed?"

Slibe said, "Well, from what Wendy told me, I guess I was feedin' the dogs, or trainin' them. Or in the house, or somewhere. I was around."

"Anybody else around?" Virgil asked.

"Berni was over in the trailer for a time… The Deuce was around somewhere, probably out in the woods. And somebody might have drove by, but I didn't notice. You could check back down the road. See if anybody saw me."

"Who's the Deuce?"

"Slibe Junior. He's called the Deuce."

At that moment a dark figure, in a long-sleeve blue shirt and jeans and a yellow ball cap, slid from behind the double-wide, looked at them for a moment, then slid back behind it. Big guy.

"Your son wear a yellow hat?" Virgil asked.

Slibe turned and looked at the double-wide, and said, "Yeah. Big kid? He ghosts around here like a… ghost. Spooks me, sometimes. Don't have much to say for himself."

"Huh. Well… you got a rifle?"

Now Slibe showed an improbably white smile-false teeth, Virgil thought-though it was as thin and nasty as a sickle blade. He asked, "You think you could find anybody around here who doesn't? Doesn't have about six?"

"How about a.223?"

"Yes, I do. Hasn't been shot for a while," Slibe said.

"I'd like to take it with me, if I could-I'd give you a receipt for it," Virgil said.

"Get a warrant," Slibe said.

"Well, I'll do that," Virgil said. "But things could get pretty inconvenient for you, to do it that way. But if that's the way you want to go, it's up to you."

Slibe asked, "What's that supposed to mean?"

Virgil shrugged. "If we get a warrant for weapons… they'll take all of them. No skin off our ass. Wind up sending in a crime-scene crew, search everything out here."

"Aw, fuck. The goddamn government." Slibe screwed the oil cap back on the chain saw and said, "All right. In the house."

"Let me get my notebook," Virgil said. "I'll write you out a receipt."

He walked over to the truck, got a notebook, dug his pistol out from under the seat, and clipped it under his jeans in the small of his back. Turning out of the truck, he saw the Deuce slide back behind the double-wide.

He followed Slibe to the house; up close, it looked as neat as it did from the road. The kitchen was like Signy's, small, with a two-chair table, with a dog-fancier newspaper folded on the table. Slibe went to a kitchen drawer, pulled it open, rattled some forks around, came up with a small key, walked down a hall to a closet, and opened it, to reveal a steel gun safe.

He popped the safe, which had at least four rifles and two shot-guns, and, on the top shelf, showed the stock of a large-frame handgun. He pulled out a rifle and handed it to Virgil-a military-look semiautomatic Colt AR-15 Sporter II with open sights. More than enough to take out McDill. He hadn't heard back from Mapes on the extraction marks, but Mapes had thought they were probably from a bolt action, not from a semiauto.

Virgil said, "Thank you," pulled the bolt, sniffed, and smelled the distinctive cut of gun solvent. "I'll get it back to you as soon as I can." He poked back into the safe. "These all Thirties?"

"Except for the.22," Slibe said. "A.308,.30-06, and the.22."

Virgil pulled out the pump.22, checked it, put it back. A long-rifle slug would have killed McDill if it had hit her right, but wouldn't have done the damage.

"I thought she was shot in a swamp," Slibe said.

"She was," Virgil said, turning around to face him.

"But you found a slug? That's why you need the rifle?"

"No slug, but we've got a cartridge. We can do some tests of the shell… and we'll test fire your rifle, and then, if we ever do find a slug, we'll have it." Virgil shrugged. "But what we'll probably do is some metallurgy, check metal remnants in the rifle against the metal frags in McDill's skull."

It was very quiet in the house, and Virgil became aware of a buzzing sound; a bee had gotten in. Slibe was staring at him, then blinked like a gecko and said, "Well, do what you got to do. I'd like the rifle back, soon as you can get it. We might go out to Wyoming and shoot some prairie rats in October. It's something we do."

"Do our best," Virgil said. Coming out the door, he said, "I hear you run a kennel out here."

"Best dogs in Minnesota," Slibe said. "English Creme Golden Retrievers. I'm the biggest breeder in the Upper Midwest; you want one of my dogs, baby-trained, gonna cost you three grand."

Virgil whistled. "You get three grand?"

"And I got a waiting list long as your arm," Slibe said. He pulled a can of Copenhagen out of his jacket pocket, stuck a pinch under his tongue. "Ask anybody."

"What did you think about McDill?"

"Didn't know her. From what Wendy said, she might have had some good ideas. Wendy's pretty anxious to get the show on the road."

"What do you think about that?" Virgil asked.

Slibe poked a finger down toward the kennels. "You see them dogs? They're solid gold. That's where the money is. Aren't nobody in Nashville going to pay any attention to a poor girl from Grand Rapids, Minnesota. Maybe twenty years ago, but not now. She wants to do it, but Wendy's a little crazy. I told her that a hundred times."

"So you think she should stay with dog breeding."

"That's what I think. But kids get crazy ideas. I mean, it's all right here. Everything she needs. I spent my whole life building this place up so she could take it over. And the Deuce, too, but the Deuce ain't got what it takes to run it. She knows that, but all she thinks about is that CMTV shit," Slibe said. "Now-you got the gun. You want anything else? I got some logs to split."

Virgil nodded and headed for his truck, then turned and said, "Wendy's a little better than good. I don't know if she's good enough, but she's better than good."

Something shifted in Slibe's face. "Don't go telling her that. She'll go sliding off to Nashville or L.A. and wind up on the street, selling her ass. She ain't a bad singer, but that's not why she's here."

BY THE TIME VIRGIL got back to town, it was late in the day. He called the Bemidji office and arranged for a guy to pick up Slibe's rifle the next morning, looked at his watch, and headed out to the Eagle Nest, still dragging the boat. Margery Stanhope was sitting in her office, alone, sad, and pensive, as she had been the last time he'd seen her; the murder was working on her. Virgil went in, closed the door, and she looked up as he crossed the office and took one of the visitor chairs.

She glanced at the closed door and asked, apprehensively, "What happened?"

"I have some embarrassing questions to ask, Margery," Virgil said.

Her brow beetled: "What?"

"Is it true that some of your waiter boys provide additional services to the guests?"

She leaned back and said, "Oh. Damnit. Well, I'll tell you what, Virgil, I have heard that, but I do not make any inquiries. What our guests do, as long as they don't do it in the parking lot, is up to them. They are adults."

"Yeah, but Margery… you hire them," Virgil said. "The boys."

"You ever been to a Hooters?" she asked.

"No, I haven't."

"I have. They didn't hire those girls on the basis of their master's theses." She actually smiled. "Have you seen Kevin?"

"No…"

"Nineteen. Sophomore at UMD next year. Half the people in town think Kevin might be gay, because he goes around with these French haircuts. He even gets them done in a ladies' salon down in Grand Rapids. Looks like he came out of one of those science fiction movies. The women up here eat him up like a big ice cream cone. But I don't know anything about it."

"Did McDill sleep with any of the boys?" Virgil asked.

"I have no idea. Well, let me change that. Maybe. From what I understand, she'd do a little bit of everything," Stanhope said.

"I was told that she might like to do a little domination routine with the boys," Virgil said.

Stanhope shrugged. "Don't know."

"Did you ask whether anybody knew about McDill and Wendy?"

"Yes, I did, and I couldn't find anybody who'd admit it; and I get up early, earlier than about anybody, and I never saw Wendy heading out to the parking lot."

"And it doesn't bother you that you're running a high-rent, ecologically sensitive whorehouse?"

"But I'm not," she protested. "I don't get a penny of anything that changes hands. I don't make any arrangements. I simply don't interfere when nature takes its course."

"Although you arrange nature a little bit," Virgil said.

"Hooters," she said. "Look. Are you going to put this in the newspapers? I mean, you'd wind up embarrassing a lot of fairly important people for no good reason, and probably wrecking a pretty good business."

"I'm not interested in doing that, Margery. I leave that to our administrative people, and my boss," Virgil said. "But it's possible, even likely, that all of this sex stuff had something to do with the murder. People get killed for money, sex, and drugs-cocaine and alcohol-and sometimes simply because of craziness. I don't see much money here, and not much in the way of drugs. That leaves sex and craziness."

"The sex here doesn't involve competition… it really doesn't," Stanhope said. "The boys… I don't interfere with the boys, or make any arrangements for them, or anything like that. But everybody knows that the boys are here, and what they might do for you. Word gets around. But there isn't a competition for them-why would you compete, when a couple of hundred dollars would get you what you want?"

"What if you want love?"

She sighed and said, "I've got no answer for that, Virgil. Now, you want to see McDill's friends?"

THE DISCUSSION LEFT a bad taste in Virgil's mouth. Sex was terrific; sex for money, at least in the American culture, was brutally destructive. He didn't care what Stanhope said: it was a whorehouse.

HE MET WITH SEVEN WOMEN in the library; gay or straight, he had no idea. All of them were aware of McDill's sexual orientation, but none of them had seen her with Wendy Ashbach. One woman said that McDill seemed interested in a dock boy named Jared-nobody knew his last name, and Stanhope had gone off on an errand-whom they described as blond and thin and, one woman added, "girly."

When they were done, Virgil took that woman aside and asked, "Did McDill have a sexual relationship with Jared?"

"Maybe. We didn't talk about it, but I'm pretty sure she liked his looks."

"Have you seen him today?"

"No. I haven't seen him for a couple of days, but I haven't been looking," she said.

Virgil found Stanhope and asked, "Who's Jared?"

"Jared? Jared Boehm? He's a dock assistant."

"One of the boys?"

She looked exasperated: "Yeah, I guess."

"Is he working today?" Virgil asked.

"No. He had to take some kind of a test. Over at the university in Duluth. He's trying to get in there. He last worked on Friday."

"I'm gonna need his number."

VIRGIL CALLED JARED BOEHM on his cell phone, got no answer, went back to the motel, got a Coke from the machine in the lobby, and lay on his bed and thought about Slibe and Margery and Jared and the boys.

Just as an everyday, walking-around matter, nothing Slibe said had sounded crazy-if every music wannabe stuck with his old man's business, the world would probably be a better place, Virgil thought. If you didn't mind raising dogs and digging septic systems and splitting wood for winter heat…

Margery. She didn't look like a madam, and he supposed she wasn't, technically; but she did get money from the boys, if only because the boys pulled in the women who wanted a little nocturnal carnality to go with their diurnal snipe hunts.

Jared: the problem was, if Jared was the age Virgil thought he might be, then his "hasty relationships," as somebody had called them, might constitute statutory rape under the laws of Minnesota if the female partner was old enough; or child abuse. If he was getting paid for sex, it was prostitution. If it were any of those things, and there had been an attempt at blackmail, if there had been threats or counterthreats…

He needed to talk to Jared.

And he felt bad about Margery. She was a type he liked: tough old ornery woman yanking a good livelihood out of the North Woods. Who ran a few whores.

He remembered the camera memory card he'd taken from McDill's camera. He'd looked at them on the LCD on the camera, but not closely. Had there been a male face anywhere along the way? He rolled off the bed, got the card, read it into his laptop, started paging through the photos. Not much, women at the Wild Goose, pictures taken out on the lake, some down by the swimming beach… and a young boy on the dock, standing with a couple of women, apparently telling them something about a boat.

He was tall, thin. Girlish? Maybe; but with some thin, hard muscle, like you might see on a cyclist or a runner. He was subtly at the center of the photograph… Jared…

HE WAS STILL THINKING about Jared when the motel phone rang. Almost anyone he wanted to talk to had his cell phone number, so he contemplated it for a moment, then picked it up: "Hello?"

"This is Signy. I'm thinking about ordering out for a pizza, but I'm out of beer. Are you up for an emergency beer run?"

"Sounds fine," Virgil said. "Give me twenty minutes."

He was surprised; but then, on second thought, not totally surprised. He and Signy had shared a little spark. He got up, brushed his teeth and shaved, thought about it for three seconds, then jumped in the shower and scrubbed down with Old Spice body wash.

He went out in the night: still hot. Could be thunderstorms lurking somewhere, but the stars were bright overhead, and he heard no thunder anywhere. Signy had given him a Negra Modelo the night before, so he got a six-pack of the same, already cold. He got lost again, on the way out to Signy's, and she talked him in on the cell phone.

WHEN HIS HEADLIGHTS PLAYED across the front of her house, she was waiting outside the door, looking up at the sky, and she came to meet him. "I just ordered it a minute ago, when you called. I didn't want to get stuck with a whole meat lover's if you had to cancel."

" ' S okay," he said. "Probably ought to put the beer in the fridge."

He followed her inside, took a couple of bottles out of the six-pack, put the rest in the refrigerator, very aware of her moving around him in the narrow space of the kitchen, and she said, "We ought to take these out to the gazebo."

"You got a gazebo?"

"Last thing Joe did before he went to Alaska-built me a gazebo. Never got the screens in, so I had to do that part. C'mon…"

She got a flashlight and led the way out the back door, down a flagstone path, over the lip of the lake bank, and down to the water. The night was dark enough that he couldn't see much but the cone of the light over the path, from the flashlight, and then the greenish timbers of the gazebo. They went inside, and she wedged the door shut, to keep the bugs out. There were two aluminum lawn chairs and two recliners, and she took one of the recliners and Virgil folded into a chair.

"Great night," he said. "Million stars."

"Lot of great nights in August," she said, turning off the flash. The lake was quiet, with still some blue in the west, stars in a thick crescent overhead, and dots of light that were cabin windows on the far shore. Far down to the right, a more golden dot, a weenie-roast fire on a beach. "So what happened with the murder? Did you get anywhere?"

"I don't know. I went around and pissed off a lot of people, hinted that I knew about stuff that I don't know about. See what I could stir up."

"Zoe told me how you massacred the Vietnamese."

"I didn't-"

"Yeah, I know. So does Zoe. She's figured out that talking about it is a way to get on top of you," Signy said. She pulled up her knees, draped her hands over them.

"Fuckin' women," Virgil said.

THEY SAT AND DRANK their beers and Virgil told her about his encounters with Berni and Cat and the others, and with Slibe, and the boy toys. She said, "Slibe. Now there is a wickedly mean guy. Slibe did it."

"You think?"

"He could definitely kill someone," Signy said. She burped. "He's a sociopath. Came up dirt-poor and his old man used to beat him like a cheap carpet. He never saw anything wrong with that, so that's what he did with his wife and son. His wife took off one day, and nobody's heard from her since, but Slibe was pretty hosed. His kid, Junior, is another one to keep your eye on. He might not be violent, but he's not right."

"How about Wendy? Did Slibe abuse her?"

She said, "You know, I don't think so. Wendy is the apple of his eye. Probably the only apple his eye has ever had. Except maybe for his wife."

"Does everybody around here know about the boys going up to the Eagle Nest?"

"I don't know if everybody does," she said, "but I suppose quite a few people do. The word leaks around."

"The sheriff didn't tell me anything about it."

"Well… nobody's going to tell the sheriff. He's really straight," Signy said. "He'd probably think he had to do something about it."

"And you don't think so."

She shrugged. "Hey. It's a little goddamn squirt in the dark. People having a good time, nobody gets hurt. So why would you care?"

"I know most people don't think about young guys this way, but if they were under eighteen, there could be some legal issues with older women. Statutory rape, child abuse…"

She said, "I don't believe the boys would be thinking that way."

"A lot of female hookers think they're in the entertainment industry-you know, like movie stars," Virgil said. "But they're not."

SIGNY GOT ON HER CELL PHONE, pushed a speed-dial button, identified herself, and asked about the pizza, said, "Uh-huh, uh-huh. When do you think, then?" When she hung up, she said, "Jim's on the way. Probably ought to get back."

He trailed her back up to the cabin, and she flopped on the couch and he arranged himself cross-legged on the carpet and asked, "Hear anything more from Joe?"

She laughed and said, "Yes! Today." She jumped up, went out to the kitchen, and came back in a moment with an envelope and took out a picture, laughing as she did it. The picture showed two men, one of them Joe, looking down at a furry black lump; it took Virgil a moment to recognize it as a dead black bear. "He was sleeping in his car and a bear tried to get in with him," Signy said. "This was at a campground by Fairbanks, and he started yelling and the bear started running around knocking everything over and somebody came out and shot it."

Virgil shook his head, feeling bad for the bear, and gave the photo back to her. "I've been to Fairbanks. I was told that in the winter, it's the coldest place on earth."

"Well, Joe hasn't been there for a winter, yet," she said. "He's thinking of going to Anchorage and getting a job on a fishing boat."

A PAIR OF HEADLIGHTS swept the house and she said, "Pizza," and went and got it. They ate it in the living room, sitting close enough that he could feel the warmth from her arm. Virgil asked her about Grand Rapids, and the schools, and her friends, and the Eagle Nest, and the Wild Goose, and Wendy and Berni and Zoe.

About halfway through the pizza, when Virgil was thinking about declining the next piece, she said, "Actually, I have a piece of information for you-I thought of it one second ago. I don't know if it'll mean anything to you, or not. Because, I don't know…"

"I accept all information," Virgil said.

She said, "Erica McDill wasn't the first lesbian who was murdered after messing around with Wendy's band. Or who stayed at the Eagle Nest."

Virgil forgot about the pizza. "What?"