Rough country

16

THERE WAS A LOT to think about, and Virgil worked at it hard, all morning; and in the early afternoon, found a place with a SANDWICHES sign in the window, facing the water, and an ancient Pabst sign hanging below it, and a dock. He'd put in for forty-five minutes or so, got a Coke and a hamburger, read a two-day-old Herald-Review at the bar, and talked to the bartender, who thought the killings were the work of a nut from the Twin Cities.

"Take my word for it-I'm very rarely wrong about these things," the bartender said.

His name was Bob, and Bob had no reason to think what he did, except that, in his opinion, the Twin Cities were chock-full o' nuts. He also had, Virgil thought, a variety of bad opinions on sports, women, beer, fishing, and Sebring convertibles.

"The thing is," Bob said, laying his fat forearms on the bar, "that place is known for having lesbians going through there. I bet it's all tied up with a Twin Cities lesbian thing, whachacallum-covens?"

"I believe that's an assemblage of thirteen witches," Virgil said.

"Same difference," Bob said. He pulled a toothpick out of his mouth and closely examined the chewed end. "Maybe it's some kind of sacrifice thing."

VIRGIL WAS BACK on the water before two, working down the waterline opposite the Eagle Nest. At three, he took a call from Shrake: "We shook her up and I can tell you two things: she had an alibi for the Washington shooting-she was at the funeral home, making funeral arrangements. And, she took three paintings away for safekeeping, and she will now be bringing them back. She claims that McDill gave them to her as gifts, but she's got no proof of that."

Virgil was no longer interested, but he asked, "How much were they worth?"

"Hard to tell, but McDill paid around ninety thousand for one of them, and thirteen thousand or so for the other two," Shrake said.

"So they were worth stealing."

"Hard to tell. I asked a pal who runs an art gallery, and he says they're worth what somebody will pay you for them. The big painting, which is like a lot of color splotches, was done by a woman from Washington, D.C., who hung out with some abstract big shots in the fifties, but wasn't a big shot herself. Maybe she will be someday, and the picture will be worth a lot more. Maybe everybody will forget her, and then it'll be worth nothing."

"Wait, wait, wait, back up there," Virgil said. "You've got a pal who runs an art gallery?"

"Fuck you. Anyway, that's what we got," Shrake said. "If Davies is involved, she's pulling strings, but she's not pulling the trigger. She was down here when Washington was shot."

"Thank you. That helps," Virgil said.

And he thought, Slibe.

AND HE ALSO THOUGHT,I've got nothing to take to trial.

HE HAD SOME PIECES of forensic evidence: two rifle shells, and a shoe impression. The shoe impression was worse than useless, since it pointed at a female killer. If the shooter had an accomplice, then it might work into something… The rifle shells were better: if he could find the rifle, he'd have something. And the rifle could have DNA, fingerprints, a history.

But if Slibe was the shooter, the best thing he could have done, at this point, was to have thrown the rifle in a lake somewhere. If he'd done that, and lain low, and kept his mouth shut, Virgil couldn't get at him.

HE FISHED FOR ANOTHER ten minutes, coming up to the launch ramp, put the rod down, kicked back in the captain's chair, and called Sig. "You want to get something to eat?"

"I'd do anything to avoid my cooking," she said. "Was that you that turned around in my driveway last night?"

"Yeah. Quilting bee. I forgot," he said.

"I'm not quilting anything tonight," she said. "A steak and a bottle of wine could get you somewhere."

"Seven o'clock?"

"See you then."

AND HE CALLED SANDERS, who was back in Bigfork. "Could you have one of your deputies go around and pick up Berni Kelly? She's the drummer with Wendy Ashbach's band. I want to talk to her, but I want her treated like a suspect. No handcuffs, but put her in the back of a squad car. Make it feel bad. Sit her down in a hallway outside an interview room and let her stew. She's probably down at that Schoolhouse place, the music studio. If she's not there, try out at Slibe Ashbach's place."

"You think she did it?"

"I don't think anything in particular, except that the scope of suspects seems to be narrowing," Virgil said. "The one that bothers me, though, is Washington. Have you guys got even a hint of anything?"

"Nope. One of my investigators drove over to Duluth to talk to her again, and she says she's mystified. She just can't think of anything. She's no help."

"That happened when I was down in Iowa. I'd told some people where I was going-I'm wondering if she was shot at random, to take the attention away from Iowa, from Lifry. From the band and the Eagle Nest?"

"Hate to think that. Hate to think that we got somebody that crazy. But I guess we do," Sanders said.

"Know how you feel. Listen, get Berni Kelly, call me when you got her. I'm heading back to town now."

"Where you at?"

"Been out investigating," Virgil said.

VIRGIL PUT THE BOAT back on the trailer and hauled it to Zoe's driveway, unhooked it, and dropped the tongue on the ground. Knocked on the door, but Zoe was still at work. Drove over to her office, was told that she'd be with a client for another fifteen minutes or so. Went down the street to an ice cream parlor, with a pistachio cone in mind, checked his gut to see if he was picking up any flab, decided he hadn't, and ordered a hot fudge sundae instead.

A couple had come in the door behind him, had gotten cones after trying three different samples, and had left, and the wide-eyed girl behind the counter asked, "Are you that state policeman?"

"Yes, I am."

"You think you'll catch him, whoever did it?" she asked. She was self-consciously wiping down the countertop, working to keep the questions casual.

"Count on it," Virgil said. "We made a lot of progress today. I figure we ought to have him in another day or two. Three at the outside."

"Really?"

"Really."

She looked at him, doubtfully, he thought, and then asked, as Zoe had, "Why are you telling me this?"

Virgil shrugged. "Why not? You're a taxpaying citizen. Your money is paying for this investigation, and I'm keeping you up-to-date."

"Can I tell my mom? She's pretty worried, and if she knows you're going to catch him, she won't worry so much."

"Sure, go ahead," Virgil said.

She looked at his shirt: "Why does your shirt say Gourds? Do you grow gourds?"

VIRGIL, REELING FROM HIS EXPOSURE to the ignorance of the young people of Grand Rapids-she didn't know the Gourds? The world's best (and only) country cover of Snoop Dogg's "Gin and Juice"? What kind of education were they getting, anyway?-walked back to Zoe's and was sent down to her office.

Zoe said, "I'm going out to Wendy's in a couple minutes. She wants me to look at the contract with the guy from Iowa."

"I've seen his place-it looks pretty substantial to me," Virgil said, pulling a chair out. "He had pictures of the bands in his office. Big-time stuff."

She said, snippy, "So what've you been up to? Harassing innocent females?"

Virgil thought about Davies and said, "Well-yes." He told her about eliminating Davies, and that he hadn't really thought that the mousy stay-at-home would have done it anyway.

"But you still suspect me. At least, one percent, you do," Zoe said.

"Nope. I decided I like you too much to consider you a suspect," Virgil said.

She shook her head. "You know, if you were an accountant… never mind."

"Say it."

"People would run all over you," she said. "You can't do somebody's books, and tell them that they're okay, because you like them. Things have to be right. They have to be logical."

"Maybe. Now, tell me who you think did it," Virgil said. "It's got to be somebody no more than two degrees from Wendy."

She looked at him, then at a wall calendar, then at a picture of a herd of white horses running across a pasture, then back to him, and said, "Slibe."

"I don't have a single damn thing that points at him." Not quite true: he had the prairie dog comment.

"Let me tell you about Slibe," Zoe said. "He had this wife, whose name was Maria Osterhus, and they had Wendy and the Deuce, and he had this business that was doing okay, S amp;M Septic amp; Grading, and then… she fell in love with this other guy. She took off. Didn't want the business, didn't want the kids, she wanted Hector what's-his-name. He quit his job and they took off, one night, and went to Arizona, and haven't been back since. She ditched them, and Wendy and the Deuce were brought up by Slibe. Slibe really loved Maria, and that got transferred over to Wendy…"

"How do you know all this stuff? How old were you when it happened? Ten?"

"I got it from Wendy. We were together for a while. It was the big thing in her life."

"Slibe never…"

"No, no, no… they didn't. At least Wendy said they didn't," Zoe said. "I asked, too. But: I don't think he wants her to leave him. I think he wants to keep her. I think Slibe believes he owns her. Like he owned Maria. She's his."

"He seems to be pretty cool about the fact that she's a lesbian," Virgil said.

"Well-he's got the man attitude. If she was hooked up with a guy, that guy would own her. The ownership would go from Slibe to the guy. He doesn't want that. Lesbians, in his eyes, it's just chicks being chicks. But a guy…"

Virgil said, "Huh."

"What's that mean?"

His phone rang, and he fished it out of his pocket and looked at it-the sheriff 's department-said, "Virgil," and Sanders said, "They got her, and she's madder'n a hornet."

"You don't sound too worried."

"Naw, if anything goes wrong, I plan to blame it on you," Sanders said.

"Good plan," Virgil said. "I'll go on over there."

He stood up, and Zoe asked, "Is there any possibility you'll be seeing my sister tonight?"

Sig must have talked, Virgil thought: "I might drop by, have a beer."

"Yeah, have a beer. She went to shave her legs," Zoe said.

"Well, shoot. I was gonna offer to do it for her," Virgil said.

Zoe laughed and then said, "Slibe."

BERNI KELLY WAS EXACTLY as mad as a hornet. She was sitting in an orange plastic chair looking at a guy behind a desk reading a newspaper. Virgil came up from slightly behind her and thought he could hear her buzzing; and she was-she was doing an angry hum, like his first ex-wife used to do.

He put an offensive smile on his face and said, "Berni! Thanks for dropping by."

She turned in the plastic chair and said, "You motherfucker," and came up out of the chair and Virgil thought she might be going for his eyes. The cop behind the desk felt it, too, and stood up, but Virgil put his hands up and said, "Whoa, whoa. Just want to talk."

She started to cry, and he saw that she'd already been crying, and that her eyeliner had started to run. "I think Wendy's gonna kick me out of the band."

"Really?"

"Aw, that guy who came up here with you, Jud, he's telling her that she needs a better drummer."

"You talked to Jud about it?"

"No, he told her, and she's telling me. They say they haven't made a decision, but they've made a decision… and then you go and get that fuckin' deputy to drag me outa there."

"Still got a mouth on you," the cop said.

She turned around and said, "Shut up, Carl," and to Virgil, "Carl's wanted to fuck me since he was in the ninth grade and I was in the fifth. Isn't that right, Carl?"

Carl said to Virgil, "You want to take her in the interview room? I don't want to put up with her anymore." And to Berni, "Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things, are worthy of death."

"Oh, yeah, I heard you got born again," she said. "Which you needed, since they fucked up the first time."

Virgil edged her toward the interview room. "C'mon, let's go talk," he said, and to Carl, who'd pissed him off, "The soul of Jonathan was bound to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul."

"That didn't mean they were queer," Carl called after them, as they went into the interview room. He sounded anxious about it.

Berni asked, "What was that all about?"

"I'm a preacher's kid," Virgil said. "I know all that stuff, for and against."

"Was David queer?"

Virgil said, "Who knows? Donatello apparently thought so."

"Don who?"

VIRGIL SAT HER DOWN on the opposite side of the conference table and said, "Berni, we've been through all the evidence, the sheriff and I, and it's pretty obvious that you're involved in these killings somehow."

She started to protest but he held up his hands. "Hear me out. First of all, we've had two band-related killings, plus a third shooting, which was done with the same rifle that killed McDill. You have no real alibis. So we started putting together a case, including the tracks back into the sniper's nest, which were left by a woman-"

"I didn't do it," she groaned. "I never went back there."

"Look: we can make our case, and what we're really looking at now is state of mind. If you feel that you were… upset… that could always be worked into a pretty good defense. If you were emotionally unstable because of McDill's relationship with Wendy-"

"I didn't know about that," she said.

"We've got the tracks," Virgil said.

"Not mine. "

"But everybody else has an alibi," Virgil said. "And you gotta admit, these killings are tied to the band."

"McDill's woman, down in the Cities…"

"Has an absolute watertight alibi," Virgil said. "Look, I don't know how familiar you are with the legal system. If you cooperate, this will count toward some leniency, if that's the way the court wants to go. You don't have any prior record-"

"But I didn't do it."

"Well…" Virgil threw his hands up; he was helpless, apologetic. Getting to the point. "We believe you're involved. I mean, you say you didn't do it, but if you didn't, who did?"

She looked sideways, and then said, "Oh, God, I was hoping you'd catch him yourself. Wendy's gonna kill me."

"If it wasn't you… I mean, if you know something, you better speak up. He seems to be shutting down everybody who knows something," Virgil said.

She looked up: "You think?"

"I don't think anybody's safe," Virgil said. "This person is unbalanced. He, or she, needs help. If you did it, that's the way we'd go: get you some help."

"I didn't…" She turned away and began humming again, thinking, and then said, "I don't know. I don't know a single thing about it, but I think you need to look at the Deuce."

"The Deuce? Not Slibe?"

"Slibe… I don't know. I do know that the Deuce has this sex thing going for Wendy, and always has. Ever since they were little. If you get Wendy off by herself, she'll tell you that. Deuce would never want her to go away. Never."

"Is the Deuce sexually active?"

"Oh, hell yes, all the time. With himself. Him and his little Hormel."

"I meant, does he have a girlfriend?" Virgil asked.

"As far as I know, he's a virgin," she said. "If he's not, he paid for it. But he's… really… different. He watches you, all the time. Pretends like he isn't, but you can see that his eyes are on you."

"Maybe he's interested in you, not in Wendy," Virgil suggested.

"I think he's all slobbery interested in sex," she said. "I mean, God, he's seventeen, you know he wants it-but Wendy's the center of the universe."

"Huh."

"What does that mean?" she asked.

"Wendy seems to be the center of a lot of universes," Virgil said.

"Yeah. Including her own," Berni said.

Virgil tried to look like he was thinking it over. Then he said, "I don't know, Berni. I admit we haven't been looking at the Deuce. I don't know what his alibi is, but you have to admit that there's good reason to think you might be involved."

He continued to push her around, coming back for more about Wendy, Slibe, and the Deuce, whenever she gave him the opening. Cranking her up.

Setting her up.

She'd talk to Wendy, Wendy would talk to everybody…

And the killer would hear; and might do something.

HE LET HER GO at five o'clock, told her to stay around town.

Back at the motel, he took a short nap, showered, shaved again, put on a fresh T-shirt, jeans, and a sport coat. For the T-shirt, he was torn between two of his newest, a Blood Red Shoes and an Appleseed Cast, and went with the Appleseed after deciding that in the circumstances, Blood Red Shoes might be in poor taste.

Sig was ready when he got there; came skipping out the door, wearing a cotton dress, kissed him in the driveway, slipped a couple fingers under his belt as she did it, then said, "Steak! Burnt!"

"Where're we going?"

"The Duck Inn. Back downtown. They are so cool that they've got little individual packets of sesame crackers on every table."

Virgil laughed: "Can't pass on that."

SIG TURNED OUT to be pretty funny, when he actually talked to her. She knew almost everybody in town, and their foibles; and she told him about finding out that Zoe had been experiment ing with a female friend of hers. "I was absolutely not shocked. For me, you know, if they don't got that thang, it doesn't make any sense. But I found out that Zoe liked women, it seemed perfectly normal."

Sig and Virgil had overlapped at the University of Minnesota, and, they thought, might have even had a common acquaintance, a woman who was methodically working her way through every art form known to mankind. Having demonstrated little ability in painting, sculpture, ceramics, architecture, botanical drawing, music, and dance-she'd played the classical guitar, badly, and the dance instructor had suggested that her true metier might involve a pole-she'd moved on to creative writing, where Virgil thought he'd met her.

"Can't remember a single thing she wrote, though," he said.

"I can remember one piece of art," Sig said. "She had a boyfriend who hunted, and she did an engraving of a skinned rabbit. Scared the shit out of everybody who saw it."

"Maybe it was good, then? If it had that effect?"

"No… it didn't look like a skinned rabbit, but you could tell it was, you know, an animal that something bad happened to," Signy said. "But it looked like a mutant. A mutant that had been beaten with a hammer or something… But you know, maybe you're right. I can't think of any other art that I remember that well, for that long. Maybe it was good. But she quit, anyway."

THE DUCK INN was a fake log cabin with a neon duck sign with flapping red-blue-green wings and a gravel parking lot planted with sickly pines. Going in the door, they met Jud Windrow, coming out.

"Hey, Virgil," Windrow said, taking a long look at Signy. "You going up to the Wild Goose tonight?"

"Probably have to pass. I have a forensics conference tonight," Virgil said. "The case, you know."

"Yeah, well, I'm heading over there now. We had a meeting out at their trailer-home, and Wendy's gonna sign up."

"You fix the drummer thing?" Virgil asked.

"Yeah, I think. Berni told us about talking to you this afternoon. She was pretty upset."

"People are dead," Virgil said.

"I hear you, brother." Windrow looked Sig over again and said to Virgil, "Don't do anything Willie wouldn't."

"I'll keep that in mind, partner," Virgil said.

Windrow laughed: "Yeah, partner. Well: better get my young ass over there."

SIG WAS MILDLY INSULTED by the exchange and, when they got inside, asked, "What was that about?"

Virgil told her about Windrow, and she said, "He was pretty… presumptuous."

Virgil leaned across the table and said, "You don't know how good-looking you are. The guys in this place have their tongues hanging out. That's what he was reacting to."

She said, "Well…"

They got on famously. She ate a burnt steak with mashed potatoes and drank two-thirds of a bottle of Santa Barbara Pinot Grigio and told him the joke about the minister checking in at the motel ("I certainly hope the pornography channel in my room is disabled"-"No, it's just regular pornography, you sick fuck") and he told her about how his aunt Laurie on his mother's side ran away with a minister, and how his father tormented his mother for a week by suggesting he might preach on the topic.

An hour and a half slipped away, and when they finished, she insisted on a walk through the downtown, so she could show him around. They looked in at a couple of bars, and she said hello to a couple of people, and a half-hour later, back at the truck, she asked, "Have you got your cell phone?"

"Sure-you need to make a call?"

"No. But this time, leave it in the truck, huh?"

"Yes!" He took the cell phone out of his pocket and put it in the cup holder. "You are a woman of great practicality."

"Damn right," she said.

BACK AT HER HOUSE, she popped a Norah Jones album in her Wave CD/radio and went off to the bathroom, and when she came back out Virgil put a hand on her hip and said, "Dance," and they danced around the room to "Come Away with Me," "One Flight Down," and "The Nearness of You," and she said, "Oh, God, Virgil," and licked his earlobe, and he pushed her against a handy wall…

Headlights swept through the front windows, the automatic yard light came on, and Virgil moaned, "No!"

Sig pushed free and went to the window and peered out through a curtain and said, "It's Zoe. She knew you were coming over. We'll tell her it's inconvenient. She'll take off."

Virgil wrapped her up from behind and said, "Honest to God, and not to be crude about it, but if I don't get you on the bed tonight, something could break. I mean, something might fall off."

Sig reached back and squeezed his thigh: "We'll just get rid of her."

Zoe knocked.