Rough country

13

THE HOSPITAL was a sprawling flat red building south of town; Virgil found a parking space near the emergency room, and jogged across the tarmac and through the door. A nurse spotted him as he came through and he blurted, "Virgil Flowers, Bureau of Criminal Apprehension-I'm here to see Mrs. Washington."

"Have to hurry. She's sort of in and out," the nurse said.

JAN WASHINGTON'S HUSBAND was an overweight balding guy who wore Wal-Mart glasses and a pathetic mask of fear, choked by the violence to his wife. He was sitting in the hospital hallway outside the intensive care unit, in a metal-and-plastic chair, while Sanders squatted beside him, one hand on Washington's shoulder. When Virgil walked up, Sanders stood and said, "Virgil: James Washington, Jan's husband."

Virgil shook Washington's hand and said, "We're sorry about your wife, Mr. Washington. How is she?"

"She's hurt bad; hurt bad," Washington said.

Sanders said, "We've got one of our investigators in there talking with her; she's pretty drowsy."

Virgil said, "I'll step in and listen…" He turned to the door, then stopped and said, "Mapes told me about that.223 shell. How far was the shooter from where Mrs. Washington went down?"

"Two hundred and forty-four yards," Sanders said.

"And she was riding her bike at the time?"

"Yes…"

Jenkins and Shrake had been right, Virgil thought. The shooter was showing off, or proving something… or maybe was just really, really good with a rifle.

INSIDE THE ICU, Washington looked like everybody looked in an ICU: on her back, head propped a little forward, eyes closed, electric monitoring lines running under her hospital gown, drip lines running into her arms, a catheter draining her bladder, the urine collected in a bag visible under the sheet on one side of her bed.

A cop sitting near her head looked up at Virgil, who said, "BCA-Virgil Flowers," and the cop nodded and said, "She comes and goes."

"She have any ideas?"

The cop shook his head. "None. No ideas at all…"

Without opening her eyes, Washington said, in a rusty-sounding voice, "I'm here."

The cop said to Virgil, "I don't have a lot more to ask… if you want to talk to her."

Virgil said, "Mrs. Washington, I'm from the state police. Did the deputy tell you that we think the man who shot you also shot Erica McDill, the woman who was killed at the Eagle Nest?"

No response for a second, then a slight nod, and the slow words, "Yes… I don't know… why."

As far as she knew, she had no connection with Erica McDill-had never even heard the name, she said-and not much with the Eagle Nest, though she did know Margery Stanhope somewhat, through a gardening club. She knew Wendy and other band members by sight, but not really to chat with, and had known Slibe Ashbach and his wife twenty years earlier.

"Were they close-did you have a falling-out, or something?"

"No, no, nothing like that. I worked for the county for a while, in permits, and Maria Ashbach would come in for permits. We weren't friends or anything, we'd just chat when she came in. Then, she ran away, and that's the last I know."

"Mrs. Washington, when you were shot, were you riding fast, or slow?"

"I think… I can't remember right when I was shot, but I think I was riding regular… about twelve miles an hour is my regular."

"Twelve miles an hour. You know that?"

"That's my regular. I have a speedometer on my handlebars."

Twelve miles an hour, two hundred and forty-four yards: heck of a shot. The shooter, Virgil thought, knew his capabilities, went for the bigger target at the longer distance, and pulled it off. There was something here, Virgil knew, but he couldn't pin it down. Something that he knew…

"Mrs. Washington, I have one more question, and you being in your condition, I hate to ask, but I have to…"

She said, "I'm not having an affair. Neither is James."

The cop grinned at Virgil and said, "We covered that territory."

"Okay. I had to ask. Listen, I deal with wounded people, and you're gonna be all right. You'll hurt for a while, but they'll fix you up good as new."

She nodded again, and a few seconds later, drifted off.

OUT IN THE HALL, Virgil spoke to her husband, again with the apology for having to ask. James Washington said, "Hell no, I'm not messing around with anybody. Why does everybody ask that?"

"Because when a married woman gets shot under unusual circumstances, the first guy we look at is the husband, and most of the time, he did it. In this case, we don't think you did-never did-but we have to push a little, we have to let you know that if you were fooling around, you better tell us now, and explain that, because we'd find out sooner or later," Virgil said.

"Did all my fooling around before I married Jan. Nothing since," Washington said.

He had no more idea of where the shot might have come from. They were talking about that when another man, who looked something like Washington, heavy and balding, stuck his head down the hall and said, "James-how's she doing?"

The sheriff said to Virgil, "This is Tom Morris. He's the one who found her and called the ambulance. He saw her just before she was shot."

Morris told his story:

"I was driving up behind her on that stretch along the river, right outside of town, and I stopped to talk for a minute, and then went on my way. I went over this little hill and couldn't see her anymore, but then there's a little bigger hill and when I got to the top, I looked in the mirror and I thought I saw her layin' on the road. She was wearing this white blouse and she looked like she was on the road, so I stopped and looked out the back window, but I was a long way away, and it did look like she was down, so I turned around and went back…"

Virgil dug into the story and between the four of them, and knowing where the shot came from, they worked out a sequence: the shooter was waiting for Washington to get close on her bike, and probably planned to shoot her as she came up to his sniper's nest, or immediately after she'd passed him. But then Morris came along, and he couldn't shoot until Morris was out of sight. Then Morris went over the hill, and he shot Washington and probably ran down to his vehicle, and took off in the other direction, back toward town.

Morris said, "I thought about it, and the guy was taking a hell of a risk. He had to be parked down on that canoe-landing, and then walk up on that hump. He could see a long way to the west, but he couldn't see no more than a half-mile to the east, and if he'd pulled the trigger and then a car had come around the curve to the east, he'd have been screwed. He'd have had to kill that guy, too. If I'd come around the corner one minute later, it'd have been me."

"Not a lot of traffic out there, though," Sanders said.

"No, but there's some," Morris said.

"Could he have been in a boat?" Virgil asked.

The other three men looked at one another, then the sheriff said, "We asked that question, but we don't have an answer. The thing is, if he was in a canoe, the river bends away from the road about right there, going west. It's really more like a big creek than a river right there… but he could have gotten lost pretty quick, and a mile or so upstream, another road comes along on the other side, where he could have left his car. There are places along there, back in the trees where it'd be completely out of sight… It could be done."

"It'd take some serious stones," Morris said. "The problem is, in a canoe, he's moving slow. And if he's seen, he's got no way to run. It'd be a hard fifteen-minute paddle back to his car."

"Or her car," Virgil said.

"Doesn't feel like a woman anymore," Sanders said. "I could go with a woman on the McDill thing, but this doesn't feel like a woman to me."

"The guys in Iowa think their killer is male," Virgil said. He filled in Morris and Washington on the Iowa murder, and warned them that it might not have anything to do with McDill and Jan Washington.

BEFORE LEAVING, Virgil took Sanders off down the hall and asked, "You know a woman named Barbara Carson? Lives here in Grand Rapids?"

"Sure… she's an older lady, she's about six blocks from here. Used to work for the county."

"The woman who got killed down in Iowa called her before she came up here. I need to talk to her, I guess. Tomorrow."

"I'll get you an address."

"How about a kid named Jared Boehm? Works out at the Eagle Nest."

Sanders pulled back a bit. "Jared? Sure. His dad's a manager at the paper plant. Why?"

"I need to talk to him, too," Virgil said.

"About this stuff?"

"Some people think that Erica McDill might have been fond of him," Virgil said.

Sanders stared at him for a minute, then said, "Oh, shit."

"Hey, I don't know if it's serious-I just picked up a rumor, and he hasn't been back to work since the killing," Virgil said.

"I'll run him down tonight," Sanders said. "Call me first thing tomorrow."

"Good kid?" Virgil asked.

"Yeah. You know-he wears shirts like this." Sanders tapped Virgil's Breeders T-shirt. "He's got a funny haircut."

"Girls like him?"

Sanders said, "I never thought about it, but now that I think about it, I expect they do. Good-looking kid."

"There you go," Virgil said. "I'll call you."

VIRGIL WENT BACK to his lonely motel room, thought about Signy, lying unfulfilled in a lonesome bedstead in her rural cracker-box, and himself, lying unfulfilled in his concrete-block motel, and about God, and about how God was probably laughing his ass off. Virgil laughed about it himself for a couple of moments, then thumbed the switch on the motel lamp and went to sleep.

HE'D CRACKED HIS EYES in the morning, had thought about how the pillow smelled funny, and had considered the possibility of getting up, when Sanders called. "Jared Boehm is at home, with his mother, who is an attorney. Susan isn't sure they'll talk to you, but you can go over."

"When they say they're reluctant, does that mean they're reluctant because Jared might have been up to something? Or reluctant because it's a knee-jerk response from Mom?"

"I tend to think knee-jerk. She thinks she's smarter than anyone in Grand Rapids, including her husband and any cops, and she went into full oh-no lawyer mode when I told her you wanted to talk to her son."

"Did you tell her why?" Virgil asked.

"Nope. I said you were talking to everyone who knew McDill."

"Find Little Linda yet?"

There was a moment of silence, then Sanders said, "No."

Virgil laughed, though he knew it was wrong.

VIRGIL GOT THE BOEHMS'ADDRESS and directions on how to get there, and an address for Barbara Carson, cleaned up, got out a Stones shirt from Paris, 1975, his most formal T-shirt, suitable for talking with attorneys, and pulled it on. Gave his boots a quick buff, and headed out: another good day, a good fishing day, just enough wind to keep cool. He was officially on vacation. He had his boat, right down at Zoe's…

The Boehms lived out of town, on Lake Pokegama, in a tree-thick neighborhood of ranch-style houses, long driveways, and boats. Virgil pulled his truck into the Boehms' place, glanced at a beat-up sixties Pontiac sitting on a trailer-he wasn't a gearhead-and knocked on the front door.

Sue Boehm looked like an attorney: dark brown hair, dark brown suit, beige blouse, practical heels, panty hose. A real estate attorney, Virgil thought, as she asked, "Could I see some ID?"

He showed her his identification, and she said, curtly, "Okay," as though she were still suspicious, and, "Come in."

Inside, no sign of Jared. Boehm backed off a few steps and asked, "What's this about?"

"I need to talk to Jared about Erica McDill."

"Is this informational, or do you see him as a suspect?" she asked.

"I'm interviewing a pretty broad group of people," Virgil said. "Is there any reason that I should treat him as a suspect?"

"Of course not," she said. "He's a teenager and a good kid. He graduated from high school near the top of his class."

Virgil spread his hands in a placating gesture: "Then… there should be no problem. But let me ask you, are you a criminal attorney?"

"No. I do mostly property law," Boehm said.

Virgil nodded. "My concern is, if you're not familiar with criminal procedure, you'll unnecessarily block the investigation, when a criminal attorney would recognize the questions as routine. And I have to treat Jared as a potential suspect: read him his rights and so on. I think… if you think an attorney is a necessity, that you'd be better off getting a criminal attorney. I could come back later, if you wish."

"He doesn't need to be defended against a crime," she said. "He needs to be defended against somebody who's trying to pin something on anybody available."

Virgil shook his head: "We really don't try to do that, Mrs. Boehm. A criminal attorney would probably know that. Maybe you should call somebody."

She looked at him for another moment, then said, "In here."

JARED BOEHM WAS A TALL, thin boy-young man-with a fashionably gelled upright haircut that gave him a permanent look of surprise and irony. He was sitting on the living room couch, wearing jeans and a T-shirt that said, "Make tender and awkward sexual advances, not war." He was nervous; over his shoulder, through the window, a Hobie Cat had been dragged onto the lawn, and a run-about was hanging off a wooden dock.

His mother said, "This is Officer Flowers."

Virgil shook hands with him, sat down, said, "Like the shirt," and Boehm nodded and asked, "Want to trade?" and Virgil said, "I'll stick with the Stones, I guess." He opened his notebook and explained about rights, and read the Miranda card to the kid. Boehm nodded that he understood, and Virgil made a note of the time and circumstances, and then asked, "Could you tell me where you were when Miss McDill was killed?"

"He was in Duluth," Susan Boehm said.

Virgil waved her down: "I really have to get this from Jared, okay? Your answers don't work for me."

Jared said, "I was in Duluth. I worked until three, and Erica-Miss McDill-was up at her cabin when I left, and I said good-bye and went home, and got my bag, and started off to Duluth. Driving. I got to the campus about five and checked into the dorm-there was an orientation, and I ate with some other guys in the cafeteria. There was a guy named Rusty Jones who took us around."

"How many people in the group?" Virgil asked.

"Maybe… ten. Or eleven. Something like that."

"Okay. And if I talk to Rusty Jones, he'll tell me that you were there around five o'clock?"

"He should. I was," Jared said.

Virgil doodled, and then asked, "Did you see anybody hanging out with Miss McDill, or did you ever see any kind of conflict, any trouble?"

He said, "No, not really."

"Was she popular in the camp?"

"I guess. She had friends… I never really saw any hassles. I've been thinking about who might have something against her, but all I can think of is that sometimes people disagreed about stuff, you know? One wants to do this, the other wants to do that… But not something that would get anybody shot. I've seen people pissed off, but never like I thought there'd be a fight."

"Okay." Virgil shut his notebook, turned to Susan Boehm, and said, "I'm going to call this fellow Rusty Jones and confirm that Jared was there-but I really don't think Jared would be dumb enough to lie about it…"

"He isn't," she said, still cold, but relaxing.

"… and since we believe it's the work of one person, that would rule Jared out. At this point."

"So are we done?" Jared asked.

"Not quite," Virgil said. "I'd like to talk to you for a minute, privately."

Susan Boehm snapped, "No way."

Virgil said to Jared, "If you're eighteen, you can ask your mom to step away."

"Okay," Susan Boehm said, standing up. "That's enough. Out of the house."

Virgil shook his head. "This is why you should have had a criminal attorney," Virgil told her. "I need to finish my interview with Jared. The law says I can do that. You invited me in. Time is of the essence. I would like to talk to Jared privately. If you both refuse, I'll talk to him with you in the room. It's up to you two."

"About what?" Jared asked.

"I think you might know," Virgil said.

Jared looked at him for a moment, then turned to his mother and said, "I think you better leave."

"No fucking way," she said.

Mother and son dueled for a minute, and Jared caved: "I can't do anything without you getting all over me."

She said, "It's for your own good."

"No, it isn't," he said. "It's because you're a fucking control freak."

She recoiled: "You can't speak to me that way!"

Jared ran his hands through his hair: "Ah, God." Then, to Virgil: "Go ahead."

"You had a sexual relationship with Miss McDill?"

Susan Boehm looked as though Virgil had slapped her. She stared at her son: "What?"

With perhaps a glimmer of satisfaction, Jared said, "Yes."

"Did you… see her often?"

"Twice. She came in on Saturday, and I went over there on Wednesday and Thursday evenings."

"Was anybody else there when you were?" Virgil asked.

"No. Just us."

Susan Boehm's head was going back and forth like a spectator's at a tennis match.

"Did you hear that she'd spent time with anyone else?" Virgil asked.

"I heard that like on Tuesday, she was there with Wendy Ashbach. Tuesday night."

"Who'd you hear it from?"

"I don't know, really. I was working the dock and I heard these two women talking, joking, about Wendy and Erica," Jared said. "I don't even know that Wendy was there, just that they were hanging, you know, but I got the impression that Wendy was there. But I'm not sure about that."

"What's going on here?" Susan Boehm asked her son. "You were dating this woman? Wasn't she a lot older than you?"

Virgil: "Mrs. Boehm-"

"Don't Mrs. Boehm me," she said to Virgil. To her son, "Why would he ask you if there was anybody else there while you were, were…"

Virgil said, "Listen, I don't think we need-"

Jared said, "Because, Mom, she paid me three hundred dollars a time to fuck her."

This time, Susan Boehm went down for the count, standing there, her mouth flapping. Jared said to Virgil, "You knew that, right?"

"Yup. You have to kick any of that back to Margery Stanhope?" Virgil asked.

"No… jeez, she'd kill us if she found out about it."

"Okay… was Miss McDill paying anyone else?"

"I don't think so," Boehm said. "She picked up on me right away, and she was flirting with a couple other women there."

Susan Boehm, still flapping, "Other women?"

"Yeah. She was a bi," Jared said. To Virgil: "I'm telling you the truth. I don't know what happened. I don't have any ideas. I sat around thinking about it, but I couldn't think of anything. If I had, I would have come to talk to you, or somebody. As it was, I decided to keep my mouth shut and see if I could slide through."

"Wasn't going to happen," Virgil said. "People joke about 'the boys.' You were toast."

"Didn't know that," Jared said.

Virgil asked, "Were there any other women interested in you, who might have become jealous when you went with Miss McDill?"

"No… there was a woman the week before, named Karen something or other, but she was gone," Boehm said.

"Okay. Did you see or hear anything about Wendy Ashbach or her band when you were hanging around with Miss McDill?"

Boehm jabbed a finger at Virgil. "Yes. She talked about that. They had a deal. She asked me what I thought about Wendy's band, and I told her I didn't like country music, but that Wendy had a good voice and I thought she could go somewhere. And she told me she was going to take Wendy there. She patted some papers. Like, she had some papers there, and I thought they might be a contract or something, but I didn't ask. But: she was deep with Wendy."

"Have you ever had any kind of relationship with Wendy?"

"No. Nope. If I had a chance, I wouldn't," Boehm said. "You ever seen her brother? The Deuce? There's one scary guy. He's goofy, and he could pull your arms off, and I think he's hot for Wendy. I'd like to know what that's all about…"

"Hot for Wendy. Is this a rumor, or something you know, or what?" Virgil asked.

"Just from school. He dropped out as soon as they'd let him, and they were happy to see him go. Didn't make any difference, he wasn't going to graduate anyway. He was a couple years behind me, so he must be about sixteen? People used to say, you didn't want to mess with Wendy or the Deuce would kill you. They meant it: kill you."

"Tell me one person who said that."

He thought a minute, then grinned and said, "Tommy Parker. He's still here, he works at Parker Brothers motors in the summer, for his dad. He goes to the U. I saw him yesterday. You catch him, ask him what happened when he asked Wendy to go to the prom."

Virgil made a note of the name. "Anything else?"

Jared shook his head. "No. Who are you going to tell about all this?"

Virgil stood and said, "At this point, nobody. I'll tell you, Jared, I'll check your alibi for the time of the murder, but right now, I believe you. And if I were you, I'd keep my mouth shut about your summer job. You really don't want to be in the newspapers."

"So you're not going to do anything?" he asked.

"Not at this point," Virgil said, "I was mostly concerned about whether there might be a sexual conflict involving the boys that led to the murder. You don't seem to think that there was."

"I don't think so," he said. "She showed up, she let me know she was interested, I don't think any of the other guys were cut out, or anything. She didn't seem interested in a three-way… and that was about it."

"Okay. Listen, you take care of yourself," Virgil said. "We don't know what's going on here, but… be cool. Watch TV. Go to Duluth. Don't go wandering around by yourself until we get this guy."

AS VIRGIL WAS LEAVING, he heard Susan Boehm ask, "A three-way?" and he thought to himself, I just said "this guy." That feels right. The killer's a he. So who made the Mephisto prints?

He was getting in his truck when Susan Boehm blew through the front door and shouted, "Wait a minute! Wait!"

He got back out and she steamed up and said, "Something has to be done."

Virgil shrugged. "I don't know exactly what."

"But this is… sexual exploitation. This might be statutory rape."

"It's prostitution, is what it is," Virgil said. "My problem is, I know one boy-your son, and he certainly wouldn't testify against himself-and one patron, Erica McDill, who was murdered. So who do I charge?"

"You mean…?"

"I thought about going after Margery Stanhope, but she denies knowing anything about it, and your son confirms it. I don't necessarily believe Margery-that she doesn't know anything about it-but if everybody agrees she wasn't part of it, what am I going to do? None of the women will testify against themselves, and none of the boys would. All we could do is send in a woman agent, get one of the boys to proposition her and mention a price, and then bust him for prostitution, but… I don't even know if that would work. Or if we could get a conviction."

"So nothing's going to get done," she said.

"If a group of parents had a quiet word with Margery, it might end. Or maybe not. You're talking about a bunch of horny college boys who need the money, and you heard what Jared said: three hundred dollars a time to have sex with her. Who knows? He might make thirty thousand dollars a year, tax free, if he works at it… Of course, he's a prostitute."

She started to blubber and he patted her on the shoulder. "Listen, talk to your husband. Figure something out. Tell me what you want to do, if anything, and I'll try to help out. But I'm not sure this is a problem the law is very well equipped to deal with."

Still blubbering, she headed back toward the house.

VIRGIL BACKED HIS TRUCK out of the driveway and thought, The killer's male. What's this about the Deuce?

He thought about the Deuce, but then switched back to Susan Boehm, and for a moment felt very, very sorry for her, and for her son; not bad people, probably. And he hadn't been exactly diplomatic about it: Of course, he's a prostitute…

He drove to Barbara Carson's, suffering from the knowledge that he'd been an asshole. Maybe, he thought, looking for an excuse, the realization of assholedom was the beginning of wisdom.

But probably not.