She shook her head: “Not an attractive man, no. The other deputies . . . no.”
“Of course, even if Crocker was getting oral sex, we don’t know it was a woman.”
“You think . . . ?”
“What I think is, the sex with Baker was so crazy that they probably do a little of everything. Just for the excitement.”
“That’s a point,” she said. And, “You know what? We need to talk to Bob Tripp’s folks, like right now.”
“And a newspaper reporter,” Virgil added. “And Flood’s wife.”
SHE WENT to make phone calls, and Virgil kicked back and thought about Bob Tripp. And he thought, Why did he wait this long?
If Baker had told Tripp that she was being sexually abused, and he killed Flood out of a misplaced sense of justice, why did he wait more than a year? One possibility was that Tripp had been afraid to do it, and that suddenly having access to Flood at the grain elevator had triggered him. Maybe that was why he wanted to talk to the reporter—he’d confided in the reporter, in an effort to get something done, and the reporter hadn’t been able to help.
Virgil preferred a second possibility: that Tripp had only recently learned something that triggered the murder of Flood. If that was true, then there was a way into the case, a source of information, if he could find it. If Tripp had learned something, then Virgil could find it.
Coakley came back and said, “We’re in luck. Everybody’s around. We’ll do the Tripps first, and then run over to the Dispatch . The reporter’s name is Pat Sullivan. Sully. I hate to say it, but he’s usually pretty accurate. Flood’s wife works in Jackson, but her father says she’s due home at six o’clock.”
THE TRIPPS, George and Irma, lived in a fifties ranch-style single-story house, yellow, with a two-car garage at one end, arborvitae poking out of the snow along the driveway and under the picture window. George Tripp was standing behind the picture window, with his hands in his pockets, when they pulled into the driveway.
“The big issue here,” Coakley said on the way over, “is that we haven’t released Bobby’s body yet, and they are getting pretty upset about it. They want to have a funeral, get him in the ground.”
“When are you going to release him?” Virgil asked.
“Ike Patras says he doesn’t think he can get anything more off the body, so I’m going to okay the release tomorrow morning. I’ll tell George as soon as we’re in the house. Maybe that’ll loosen them up a little.”
“You said you guys were friends.”
“Friendly. Not friends,” Coakley said. “We didn’t see each other socially or anything, but we’d stop to talk on the sidewalk. They’ve been pretty unhappy with me since Bobby’s arrest, and then his death—like I betrayed them.”
GEORGE TRIPP WAITED until they were halfway up the walk before he left the window and opened the front door. He said, “Sheriff,” with a nod, and a cold chill in his voice; he backed away from the door, his hands back in his pockets. Not going to shake with the law. Irma Tripp came out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dish towel. The house was neatly kept, with family photos in frames, and wildlife art on the walls; it smelled of chili and wood cleaner. Virgil thought the Tripps were probably in their middle forties, Irma a bit younger than her husband.
Coakley said, “We have some news for you, George, Irma. We’ll release Bobby tomorrow morning, so you can get on with a service.”
“’ Bout time,” George Tripp said. He was looking at Virgil. “Who would this be?”
“Virgil Flowers, he’s an agent with the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension,” Coakley said. “He works the southern part of the state.”
Irma said, “I thought we were all done with investigation.”
Virgil shook his head. “No, no. We do have some more news for you. Could we sit down? We really do need to talk.”
They sat in a conversation group, a couch on one side of a wood-and-glass coffee table, two overstuffed chairs on the other side. Virgil leaned forward and said, “I really want to express my sympathy over the death of your son. It’s an awful thing.”
“How would you know?” Irma asked.
“Because I see a lot of awful things, and I’m pretty much like you folks. I grew up in Marshall, and my father is a minister. When a kid died, half the time the service would be in our church, and I’d know him. Know the family. I’ve been through it a lot.”
Irma nodded: “He was the best thing we had. He was our only child.”
Virgil glanced at Coakley, who nodded at him, and Virgil turned back to the Tripps. “We need to tell you that we no longer think that your son committed suicide. We’ve developed evidence that he may have been murdered by Jim Crocker, the sheriff’s deputy who was on duty that night.”
George Tripp lurched off the couch, to his feet, and said, “I knew it. I knew it,” and Irma began to weep. George Tripp said, “Where is he? Crocker?”
Coakley said, “He’s dead, George. We went to his house with a search warrant, and found him dead. He also looks like a suicide, but agent Flowers and I both believe that he was also murdered.”
“What the hell is going on?” George Tripp demanded. His wife was twisting the dish towel into a rope; but Virgil’s statement had stopped the weeping.
“We don’t know yet, George, but . . . uh . . .”
“Things are getting very strange, and very complicated,” Virgil said. “We need to ask you something: do you know whether or not Bobby was acquainted with, or dating, a young woman, a girl from the west end of the county, named Kelly Baker?”
Irma: “Baker? Wasn’t that the girl who was murdered?”
“Yes. Last year, down by Estherville,” Coakley said.
“You can’t think that Bobby had anything to do with that,” George Tripp said, anger threading back into his voice.
“No, no, we don’t,” Virgil said. “But we’re wondering if Jacob Flood might have.”
The Tripps stared at him for a moment, then Irma Tripp rocked back on the couch and said, “Ohhh. Oh, no. You think Bobby found out about . . . Ohhh.”
“Did they know each other?”
The two looked at each other, and then George Tripp said, “Our son, you know, never really had much to do with girls, yet. He was shy. But there was something going on a year ago. We don’t know with who, because he wouldn’t talk about it.”
“He didn’t take anybody to the junior prom,” Irma Tripp said. “We kept trying to get him to take Nancy Anderson, she’s really a nice girl, and we’d hoped . . . Do you think he was seeing this other girl? Kelly?”
“She lived out in the countryside,” Virgil said.
“He was always borrowing the car, soon as he got his license,” George Tripp said. “That wouldn’t have been a problem.”
“She worked at the Dairy Queen here in Homestead, during the summers,” Coakley said.
“There you go,” George Tripp said. “The Dairy Queen’s a regular meeting place for the kids. He would have been down there most every day, at one time or another.”
“So there’s a possibility he could have known her, but you don’t know that specifically,” Virgil said.
Irma’s head bobbed. “That would be it. But now that you bring it up, I think he must have known her. He was so strange last fall. He grew up a cheerful, outgoing kid . . .”
“Got a football scholarship, over in your hometown,” George Tripp said to Virgil.
“I heard that,” Virgil said.
“. . . but last fall, he was so gloomy,” Irma continued. “We thought maybe the football team, it didn’t do as well as people hoped. We thought he was down about that. But if . . .”
“We would like to look through his private things . . . anything would help,” Coakley said.
“What would you look for?” Irma asked.
“Any indication that he had prior contact with Flood, with Baker, with Crocker, any notes or letters . . .”
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said, turning to
her husband.
“Probably the best thing would be to have agent Flowers look,” George Tripp said. He said to Coakley, “I know you were doing your duty, Lee, but I gotta say . . . if you hadn’t taken him . . . if your men were up to standard . . . he’d still be alive. I think I’d prefer it if you didn’t come back here. Not unless you have to.”
Coakley bobbed her head and said, “I know what you’re saying, George, and I’m so sorry. But Virgil would do a fine job, as good as anybody in the state. He’s one of their top men.”
“So let’s do that,” George Tripp said. “Not right now. Irma and I have to . . . do things. If we get our boy back tomorrow . . .”
“There’s a time problem,” Virgil said. “How about if I give you my cell number, and you call me when you’re okay with it. Tonight or tomorrow. There is the time thing. We’ve got at least one murderer running loose, and probably more.”
George Tripp nodded. “We can do that.”
5
Pat Sullivan, the newspaper reporter, covered cops and everything else in town, and had been calling the sheriff’s office on a fifteen-minute schedule since the rumors of Crocker’s death began to leak out. Coakley called him back, with Virgil sitting next to her desk.
She said, “Pat? Lee Coakley. You called?” She listened for a minute, then said, “Why don’t you walk over? We’ve got a state investigator here and we can fill you in.” A few more words from the reporter, and she said, “See you then,” and hung up.
To Virgil: “He’s on his way.”
“Good guy?” Virgil asked.
“Yeah, for a reporter,” she said. “He’s accurate, usually, but he’s ambitious. The editor tells me his friend—his relationship, his guy—lives up in the Cities. He’d like to get up there with the Pioneer Press or the Star Tribune.”
“Fat chance,” Virgil said. “Those places are bleeding to death. Bet there are a hundred good reporters looking for jobs.”
“You know them?”
“A few,” Virgil said. “And they talk about it.”
“You think they’ll be down here? For these murders?”
“May get some TV,” Virgil said. “The newspapers, you’re more likely to get a call. I mean, they could have a staff meeting in a phone booth.”
They sat for a minute, looking past each other, then Coakley asked, “You at the Holiday?”
“Yeah.”
They looked past each other some more, until Virgil asked, “You didn’t mention to Sullivan that we wanted to talk to him about Tripp.”
“I thought I’d leave that to you. Best to ask him first, before we get to Crocker. That way, we’re holding the Crocker information over his head. Or, you are. I’m just a humble county sheriff, who has to defer to the state agent, if he decides to screw over the local media.” She leaned back in her chair, turned, put her boots up on top of a wastebasket, put her hands behind her head, and stared at the ceiling. She did it in a comfortably coordinated way, which made Virgil think it was her regular thinking posture. “I have two possibilities.”
“Only two?”
“No, there are several more, but two I’m thinking about. One: Flood and Crocker were friends, which we know, and that Crocker killed Bobby out of simple revenge. Two: Crocker killed Bobby because he was afraid that when Bobby told us why he killed Flood, that it’d come back on Crocker.”
They considered that for a moment, then Virgil said, “Crocker didn’t kill Tripp until early morning, almost time for a shift change. I wonder why he waited? I wonder if he needed to talk to somebody about it? Like your other woman. We oughta check the phones here, see if he called anyone during the overnight. And check his cell.”
“We can do that,” she said. Another moment, and she asked, “You cook? Or you eat out?”
“I’m not much interested in food,” Virgil said. “I mostly eat microwave. Healthy Choice, like that. Cereal. Milk. Scrambled eggs.”
“My husband used to cook, a lot, when I was married,” Coakley said. “I used to work some odd hours. Now, I get home in time to cook, most nights, but can’t get it going again. The boys are happy with pizza and burgers and fries, but I feel guilty about it.”
“How many kids you got?” Virgil asked.
“Three. Sixteen, fourteen, and twelve,” she said. “The twelve was supposed to be a girl. So was the fourteen, for that matter. All I got is a bunch of big lugs. Though I love them to death.”
“Sounds like you kept busy for a while. Three kids in four years.”
“Yeah, well. Going to Mankato State, got married halfway through my senior year. I was knocked up by Memorial Day,” she said.
“What’d your husband do?”
“He’s the new car sales manager over at Gable Ford,” she said.
“Still see him?” Virgil asked.
“Oh, no. The new wife wouldn’t like it, for one thing,” Coakley said.
“Oh-oh.”
“What can I tell you? He got married three weeks after our divorce was final,” she said. “I guess it had been going on for a while. Never saw it coming.”
“She have really big breasts?” Virgil asked.
The thin smile again. “Ample. Or ample-and-a-half.”
“Give her any speeding tickets?”
“Hadn’t thought of it, but now that you mention it, I’ll keep it in mind,” she said. Her phone rang, and she picked it up, listened, and said, “Send him in.”
PAT SULLIVAN was a short, thin man, of the sort that Virgil thought of as “weedy.” He had brown hair, a prominent nose, a brush mustache, and square Teddy Roosevelt teeth. He wore brown boots with studded soles, was carrying a parka and a reporter’s notebook.
“Virgil Flowers,” he said, when Coakley introduced him. “I’ve followed your adventures. That shoot-out up in International Falls, with the Vietnamese dragon lady. The one out by Bluestem, with the federal guys.”
“They’re like bad dreams slowly fading away,” Virgil said. He pointed at a chair: “Sit down. We gotta talk. There’s more going on than a story.”
Sullivan sat down, a skeptical look on his face: “Like what?”
“We have to go off the record for a bit,” Virgil said. “That good with you?”
“Depends. We can start that way. If I can’t keep it off, I’ll tell you,” Sullivan said.
“When Bob Tripp was arrested, he wouldn’t talk to the sheriff until he talked to you first,” Virgil said.
Sullivan’s eyebrows went up. “Me?”
“Yes. Are we off the record?”
“Okay. For now.”
“We wondered if you knew what he might have wanted to talk about,” Virgil said.
“So you didn’t ask me to come in as a reporter, but as a possible witness.”
Virgil shrugged: “I don’t care if you’re both. Not a problem for me.”
Sullivan said, “I’ll have to think about it . . . but if Bobby wanted to talk, why would he have committed suicide?”
Virgil said, “He didn’t. He was murdered. Probably by Jim Crocker.”
“Whoa.” Sullivan went pale, leaned forward. “This has got to be on the record. Not about Bobby wanting to talk to me, but about Bobby and Crocker.”
“We’ll come back to it, give you a formal interview, on the record. Let’s stay off for now.”
Sullivan paused, then nodded.
“Crocker isn’t a sure thing, for Bobby’s murder,” Virgil said. “I can think of scenarios where he didn’t do it—but we think he probably did. We may have more definitive answers after the investigation.”
Coakley jumped in, pressing the question, “Do you have any idea why Bobby might have wanted to talk to you?”
Sullivan leaned back, looked at Coakley, then Virgil, then back at Coakley. “Lee, I assume you know that I’m gay.”
“I knew that,” she said, nodding.
“I cover a lot of sports. People around town had heard I was gay, and some of the high school kids knew about it. Maybe most o
f them. Anyway, I interviewed Bobby a few times, he was a star. Then, one time, he asked me if he could stop by my apartment and chat. I said, ‘Sure,’” Sullivan said. “By that time, I had an idea of what was coming. Anyway, he came over, and beat around the bush for a while, then said that he’d heard that I was gay, and that he was worried that he might be, and he just wanted to talk about it.”
“Was he?” Coakley asked.
“Oh, sure. As far as I know, he hadn’t been sexually involved with anybody—including me, we never were—but he had already gone through most of the self-recognition stuff,” Sullivan said. “You know, feeling this strong attraction toward some of his teammates, and he’d fantasize about them, instead of the girls in his class, and all the rest—checking out the scene on the Internet, maybe checking some gay porn.”
“Did he ever mention Jacob Flood to you?” Virgil asked.
Sullivan shook his head: “No. When I heard that Bobby was dead, and that he’d been arrested in the Flood case, I was amazed. We talked quite a bit, and he never mentioned Flood’s name.”
Virgil: “And nothing about Crocker.”
“Not a thing. Not even during the election.”
“Do you know if Flood or Crocker were active in the local Homestead gay culture? There must be a few more gay people here.”
Sullivan nodded. “Quite a few,” he said. “Maybe a hundred, or more? But not all of them are active around here, and I’ve never heard of those two. That doesn’t mean much, though—it’s not like we all hook up. I know maybe . . . a dozen gay people here? Something like that.”
“Did Bobby ever mention a girl named Kelly Baker?”
Sullivan, who’d been slumping in the chair, straightened, and tipped an index finger at Virgil: “Now her, we did talk about. Is she involved in this deal?”
“Wait,” Virgil said. “You say you talked about her. Did he know her?”
“Oh, yeah. He met her at the Dairy Queen. He used to give her a ride home, sometimes. I think he was hoping that he might, you know, get involved with her, find out that he really wasn’t gay. It didn’t work out that way. I think . . . I think—he didn’t actually tell me—that she picked up on the fact that he was gay. Didn’t bother her, and they became friends.”
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