“You cover the school board, right? What I need to find is, the weakest person on the board,” Virgil said. “I suspect the whole bunch of them are running a huge embezzlement scheme. I’ve got some details, but I need somebody to talk to me. I thought you might have some ideas about who the weak sister might be. I need to squeeze him, or her. I’ve already talked to the attorney general’s office about an immunity deal, but I have to find somebody who’d cave.”
Laughton rubbed his chin. “I’ve known a lot of the school people most of my life. . . . I can’t really see the whole bunch of them being involved in a big embezzlement. Most of them aren’t smart enough, for one thing. For another thing, they’re mostly pretty honest folks. I mean, I could see some of the professionals, the hired people, dipping into the cash if they saw the chance, but even then, it wouldn’t be huge.”
“Well, it is huge, take my word for it,” Virgil said. “I think Conley was killed to cover it up, and then Zorn was killed to pull us away from the real reason Conley was shot.”
Laughton shook his head. “Jeez, Virgil, I hope you’ve got something substantial to back that up. It just doesn’t sound like us. Not in Trippton.”
Virgil, who’d taken the chair, now stood up. “I do have something substantial. My problem is, I don’t understand all of it. A bunch of numbers. But I’ll figure it out.”
“Let me know when you do,” Laughton said. “Sounds like a hell of a story . . . if there’s any truth to it.”
“You’ll be the first to know,” Virgil said.
—
HE LEFT, satisfied that the cat was now among the pigeons, if it hadn’t been earlier, and drove north to La Crescent, across the bridge to La Crosse, Wisconsin, and pulled into the Holiday Inn in time for lunch.
Inside, he found two large men eating pizza. Virgil nudged the marginally smaller one and said, “Move over, Shrake.”
Shrake’s partner, Jenkins, said, “This is really inconvenient. We’re shutting down one of the biggest cases in recent history, involving two thousand elderly people who were swindled of their life savings, and we get shifted down the river to fix that fuckin’ Flowers’s problems with a bunch of rednecks.”
“Got some nice golf courses in La Crosse,” Virgil said. Jenkins’s eyes shifted away, and Virgil asked, “You didn’t bring your clubs, by any chance?”
Shrake said, “Maybe.”
“Probably never get a chance to use them,” Jenkins said.
They both brightened up when Virgil told them what he wanted. “So basically, a body-guarding job,” Jenkins said. “Early in the morning, late in the afternoon.”
“Right.”
“Which, by pure mathematics,” Jenkins said, “would leave the midday wide open for other pursuits.”
“It would.”
“We can do that,” Jenkins said. “Probably have to buy some specialty clothing on the government dime, but we can do that, too. Have some wood-fired pizza.”
—
VIRGIL TOLD THEM about the situation, and they agreed to meet him at Johnson’s cabin at five o’clock. When they finished the pizza, Virgil headed back down the highway to Trippton, and on the way, took a call from Johnson.
“Where you at?”
“Up north, probably twenty minutes out, heading that way,” Virgil said.
“Okay, twenty minutes from now, stop back and talk to Jamie Nelson again. I asked around, and one of the dog guys knows her. He called her up and vouched for you, and she says she’ll talk to you. But she’s scared. I got her phone number—call her and tell her when you get there. She wants to get you out of sight real quick.”
“I understand her being scared. Thank you, Johnson. I’ll be there in twenty.”
—
VIRGIL WENT INTO TOWN on the backstreets, circling around to come up to Nelson’s house from the side. When he’d parked, he called, and she said, “I’ll be waiting at the door. Get in here quick. I can’t talk long, I got to get to work.”
Virgil did as he was told, crossing her side lawn, up the steps and inside, in less than half a minute. She shook her head and said, “I oughta have my goddamned head examined, after what happened to Clancy. I knew that had something to do with the schools. Probably that goddamned Kerns.”
“A couple of people have mentioned his name,” Virgil said, “He must be . . . out there.”
“He is. He’s gun crazy. He’d like shooting somebody. He likes roughing up the kids. Be surprised if he hadn’t already shot somebody somewhere, just to see what it felt like.”
She sat at her kitchen table, and Virgil took the second chair and crossed his legs, facing her across the checked oilcloth. “How’re they stealing the diesel money?”
“Ah, jeez. Listen, I’m not a hundred percent on this. But I’m ninety-five percent. What I do is, I take my bus out in the morning, and the fuel tank is good for three days, and I refill it. So I know exactly how much fuel I’m using, which is about twenty-eight gallons, give or take. What I did was—”
“Hold on,” Virgil said. “Where’d you get filled up?”
“At the school’s motor pool. They have two pumps there, and buy in bulk. What I did was, last winter I was in the office out there while Dick, he’s the supervisor, Dick Brown, was out. He was filling out the usage reports, and I saw that my bus was down for thirty-three gallons. Well, we have a bunch of drivers, you know, and there isn’t a lot to talk about, and we see each other filling up, and we know about how much diesel we use. So I looked at some more slips, and every one was over. My friend Cory uses about thirty gallons every three days, and his slip was down for thirty-five. He was bumping it up five gallons per bus. You take forty-four buses, that’s a good chunk of change.”
“You told Clancy about all of this.”
“What I did was, I waited until Dick was out again, and I xeroxed a bunch of the usage slips, and then I watched people filling up, and wrote the actual amount on the slips and gave them to him.”
“Wouldn’t the amounts change from day to day?”
“No. Oh, they might change a little from season to season, but not from day to day. That’s because it’s the same people, driving the same bus, exactly the same routes, every day. Never goes more than a gallon, one way or the other. Every one of the slips jacks up the usage.”
“How do you know Dick isn’t just taking the money?”
“Oh, I don’t doubt old Dicky gets paid to do it, but I don’t know by who. Because, see, he just runs the garage and makes out the slips. He never touches the money. There are only two ways Dick could get paid. The wholesaler delivers us short, and Dick overstates the use, and the wholesaler pays him. Or Dick overstates the use, but only orders from the wholesaler when the tank gets empty, and Dick collects from the school. Either way would work, but I think it’s from the school.”
“Did anybody ever ask about it?”
“Davey Page did—and that’s why I think it came out of the school, because Kerns—”
“The school’s hired gun . . .”
“Because Kerns came around and whispered in Davey’s ear, and Davey came to me that night and said, ‘We don’t talk about this anymore.’ He was scared. He said, ‘You want to keep your job, you stop snooping, and keep your mouth shut.’ I need the job. I don’t have this job, I don’t eat.”
“Your job is okay,” Virgil said. “Your job isn’t going anywhere.”
“That’s fine, but I just as soon you don’t tell anybody about me until they’re all in jail. Especially Kerns.”
“I’ll see to it,” Virgil said. “Now, tell me about these usage slips. What do they look like? Where does Dick keep them? And tell me about Dick. . . .”
—
SHE TOLD HIM about Dick, and then she added, “Something else. I really, really shouldn’t tell you about this . . . but you seem like a good guy. I mean,
for a policeman.” She put a twist on the word “seem,” a little extra skepticism.
“I try to be a good guy,” Virgil said, as earnestly as he could manage.
“The dog boys said you seemed okay. I’ll tell you this last thing, and you can see where it gets you. The school janitor’s name is Will Bacon. I suspect he lives at the school. I suspect he was probably there last night when the fire started.”
“What do you mean, he lives at the school? You mean, he lives at the school? Secretly?”
“That’s what I think. He’s supposed to come to work around two in the afternoon, and leave around ten o’clock at night,” she said. “But I’ve seen him there before the school opens—and I once thought I saw him there at midnight, when I got back from a basketball trip. I know where he used to live, but he doesn’t live there anymore. Usually, in a town this size, you know where everybody lives, everybody that you know. I don’t know anybody who knows where Will lives.”
“How would I find him, if he never goes out?”
“You’re the cop. Shouldn’t you be able to figure that out?”
—
VIRGIL DROVE TO the high school, parked in the student lot, next to a fire-engine-red Toyota van. The van was fire-engine red because it belonged to the Trippton fire department, and the parking lot entrance to the school was standing open.
Virgil went inside, heard people talking, and followed the noise to the burned-out district offices. Henry Hetfield was there, talking to three people in civilian clothes, and two uniformed firemen, and a deputy sheriff that Virgil didn’t recognize. They all turned when Virgil walked in, and Hetfield said, “Agent Flowers . . .”
Virgil said, “Hello,” and, “Wanted to check to see if there’s any new information.”
“Pretty much what we thought this morning,” Hetfield said. He added, “People, this is Agent Virgil Flowers from the BCA. He’s investigating the murders of Clancy Conley and that Mr. Zorn, apparently because of some drug tie-in. . . . Agent Flowers, this is Bob Owens and Jennifer Barns and Jennifer Houser, three of our school board members.”
Virgil said, “Actually, I think Zorn was killed to create an apparent tie between him and Conley that didn’t really exist. After we busted those meth cookers up there, everybody in town knew we were looking at Zorn.”
“If Clancy wasn’t killed because of drugs, why . . . what happened to him?” one of the Jennifers asked.
“Don’t know yet, but I’m beginning to assemble some pieces,” Virgil said. “When I get enough, I’ll stick them together and call the attorney general’s office. I think this fire could be part of the puzzle.”
“This fire?” Hetfield’s hand went to his throat. “How could this fire be involved?”
“Part of what I’m working on,” Virgil said. “I see the school’s mostly empty—I’d like to walk around it for a while, get a sense of it.”
“I could show you around . . .” Hetfield began.
“No, that’s okay. I’ll just walk around on my own. You’ve got more important business here, I’m sure.”
He left them looking at each other, and wandered away, hands in his pockets, peering into classrooms and checking open lockers.
—
THE HIGH SCHOOL WAS three stories high, built around an open square. Originally the square must have been designed as a park-like area for sitting or eating lunch. Now it was filled in with a one-story later addition that housed the district offices. The offices had a series of pyramid-shaped skylights of hazy glass. The fire had broken all of the skylights at the back of the addition.
Starting from the first floor, Virgil walked most of the way around the square, to get a sense of the building, then took a set of wide steps to the second floor and walked around that, and looked out some windows into the square, and down to the district offices. He could see a guy in yellow fireman’s gear through one of the broken skylights, but couldn’t tell what he was doing.
The second floor showed a lot of soot and smelled of smoke: somebody was going to make a lot of money on the cleanup.
At the next set of stairways, he could hear a hammer working on the third floor, so he went up, and found Will Bacon working in a smoke-stained hallway. He was using a hammer and chisel to knock broken glass and old hard putty out of a big window, one of a line of windows that looked out over the roof of the district offices. A half dozen of them were broken or cracked, apparently from the heat of the fire. Bacon was tall and too thin, but with the hard thinness of a man who worked with heavy tools, and had spent his life lifting and carrying. Virgil thought he was probably in his fifties, his close-cropped hair going gray.
He saw Virgil coming and asked, “You lost?”
“Not if you’re Will Bacon.”
“That’s me. Who are you?”
Virgil identified himself, and asked, “Were you here last night when the fire started?”
Bacon answered with a question, frowning as he did so. The frown was supposed to look bewildered or surprised, but it came out looking guilty. “Here? Why would I be here?”
“Because you live here?”
“You think I live here?”
“Mr. Bacon, I don’t care if you live here,” Virgil said. “And I won’t tell anyone, unless I absolutely have to. Did you see anybody here? Do you know anything about the fire?”
Bacon looked up and down the hall. “Where is everybody?”
“They’re all down in the offices.”
Bacon looked at Virgil for a moment, then said, “You better come along.”
Virgil nodded, and Bacon led the way halfway around the top square to a maintenance room stocked with custodial supplies. At the back of the room, half concealed behind a row of metal HVAC pipes, was a narrow door. Bacon kept his keys on a belt-mounted ring, and used one of them to open the door. Behind the door was a set of stairs.
“Careful. They’re steep.”
Virgil followed him up, his nose almost at the level of Bacon’s heels. At the top he found himself in a low attic-like storage room probably fifty yards long and thirty feet wide, with a low ceiling, of maybe six and a half feet. A few dozen cardboard cartons were stacked along the outside walls, some with notations: World History Texts, Hyram Algebra, and so on. The floor, walls, and boxes were covered with dust. A narrow strip of cheap carpet ran to the end of the room.
Bacon said, “Don’t step on the wooden part of the floor—it’s almost impossible to get that dust right. Stay on the rug.”
The rug ended at another pile of cardboard cartons that had “Band Uniforms, 1985” scribbled on them. In the same line, against the end wall, were boxes that said: “Football equipment, 1988,” and at the far end of the interior wall, five large moving boxes that said: “Algebra, 1962, 1968, 1974.” One of the boxes was broken, and old algebra books were spilling out.
Bacon picked up three of the band-uniform boxes, one at a time, set them aside to reveal another narrow door. He pushed it open, flicked on a light switch, and said, “Come on in.”
Behind the door was a small, tidy one-room apartment—an easy chair with a reading lamp, a television with a cable connection, and a line of bookcases that separated the sitting area from a tiny kitchen. The kitchen had a dining table that might serve two in a pinch, with a wooden chair. A compact refrigerator sat under a food-prep bench, which held a microwave oven and a toaster. A six-drawer bureau divided the kitchen from the sleeping area, which held a single bed, another lamp, a nightstand, and another wooden chair. A variety of jackets and overalls hung from hooks along the inside wall, along with a mop, broom, and dustpan.
One round decorative window looked out over the town.
“No plumbing. If you don’t rat me out, I think I can get some in next year,” Bacon said. He picked up the dining chair and offered it to Virgil, and took a seat himself in the easy chair. “So—the fire.”
Virgil sat down. “Yeah. The fire.”
Bacon sat, gathering his thoughts, and then said, “Okay. See, what happened is that in 2007, I had this little house, wasn’t worth much, but it was okay. I started this business, a side business, doing handyman work. I needed a truck, and I spent too much on it, and tools, and I spent too much on them. I got loans for it all, secured by the house. Then the economy went in the ditch, and nobody was hiring handymen, and I couldn’t make the payments. They said I could keep the house or the truck, and I needed the truck, so they took the house. Sonsofbitches.”
“Doesn’t sound right,” Virgil said.
“Wasn’t right. Did get some good tools out of it, though. Anyway, the school pay is . . . bad. They pay me twenty-two thousand, eight hundred and eighty dollars a year, but there just aren’t any other jobs around. Jobs I could do, anyway. Walmart pays even less, I’m too old to work the tows. I tried renting a room for a while, but that was a crappy way to live. Then I thought about this place. Put down the carpet, so I could walk back here without disturbing the dust, snuck in lumber for the walls, built the room, brought the pieces of furniture in one at a time, in the truck . . . and here I am.”
“Not a bad place,” Virgil said. “I could live here . . . if I had to.”
“Just fine, for me,” Bacon said, looking around the room. “Anyway, here’s what I do. I do my job, and more than my job. If something in the school needs fixing, I fix it. In return, I eat out of the cafeteria. Plenty of food, nobody notices one more mouth. There’s a janitor’s room in the basement with a shower, so I can shower and shave down there. Plus, I can put away money for my retirement—out of the twenty-two thousand, last year I put away more than nineteen, ’cause I really don’t make enough to pay any taxes. And I’ve been living here so long, I know every creak in the building, especially at night. I heard a creak last night. Four in the morning. I knew somebody was inside, but I was a little scared, you know? If it was somebody with a gun . . . I don’t have a gun.”
“Gotcha,” Virgil said.
“I snuck down there, being real careful. When I figured out that somebody was in the district offices, and the lights were still out, I let myself in a room down there, Mrs. Duncan’s social studies room, so I could duck out of sight if I had to. I was in there when I started to smell the gasoline—I don’t have a cell phone, but there’s a wired phone down in the basement, in my room down there, and I was going to sneak down there and call nine-one-one, when . . . This is strange . . .”
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