Rough Country

by John Sandford

  Maybe something good would happen; there was time before the snow started.

  And they were talking about him.

  7

  SUNDAY MORNING, getting up.

  Virgil could always wring a few more hours out of a night if he had to. With four hours in bed, he could make it through the next day, and since most investigations happened during the daylight hours, when other people were available for interviews, the night was available for travel and introspection; and retrospection, as far as that went.

  Virgil left the Wild Goose a little after ten o’clock at night, pulled into his garage in Mankato a few minutes before three o’clock in the morning. He set his alarm for eight, thought about God for a few minutes, and what place McDill’s death might have in His Great Scheme—nothing much, he decided—and went to sleep.

  The next morning, he was up before the alarm, threw his clothes in the washing machine, opened the mail, wrote some checks for the bills, moved his clothes to the dryer, and went out to drop the mail, to get breakfast at a Caribou Coffee, to return the rented truck to Avis, and to catch a cab back.

  He got a Star Tribune outside the coffee shop. The McDill story was on the front page, above the fold, with a two-column headline and a photograph. Nothing on the murder, except that it happened, and a few details. The rest was biography and expressions of shock from parents, friends, and business and political associates.

  He had his clothes folded and put away, his working clothes packed, and was on the road in his own truck, pulling his own boat, by nine-thirty. He had taken down Barney Mann’s cell phone number the day before, and on the way out of town, headed toward the Cities, rang it. Mann answered on the third ring and Virgil asked, “Had your meeting yet?”

  “It’s at one o’clock,” Mann said. He sounded tired. “I’m just getting up and I’m hungover. . . . Are you coming to the meeting?”

  “I don’t know—am I invited?”

  “I couldn’t speak for the board, but I can tell you, the meeting’s in the agency’s main presentation room,” Mann said. “I can tell them that you invited yourself.”

  “Give me the address—I’ll see you there. I’d like to get that address and phone number for Mark and Abby Sexton.”

  Mann chuckled: “Boy, I’ll bet they’ll be happy to hear from you. ‘Tell me, Mr. and Mrs. Sexton, was there anything about Mrs. Sexton’s venture into muff-diving that might have elicited this response?’ Like one of those intellectual BBC cop shows, huh?”

  “You got the number?” Virgil asked.

  “Getting my book now,” Mann said. “You know what? You gotta loosen up. You strike me as tense.”

  Virgil called the Sexton number as he was coming into the Cities. Abby Sexton answered the phone and said, “We read about it at breakfast. This is awful. But why would you want to talk to us?”

  “I’m filling in as much background on Miss McDill as I can. I understand the two of you had a relationship that ended badly.”

  “Oh, God, are people still talking about that? Well, come on ahead . . .”

  The Sextons lived in a big brown-shingled bungalow on a narrow lot, with a garage in back accessed from an alley, in the St. Anthony neighborhood, a nicer residential area of old homes north and east of the Minneapolis downtown. The porch had a swing; a strip garden in front of the porch was divided between flowers on one side, and vegetables on the other, including eggplant. Virgil hated eggplant, even chicken-fried eggplant, and took this as a sign of the Sextons’ decadence.

  He clumped up the stairs to the front door and rang the doorbell. Abby Sexton’s blue eyes popped up behind the cut-glass diamond in the door, and she pulled it open and asked, “Virgil?”

  She was a dishwater blonde, slender and athletic and pretty, wearing a white long-sleeved blouse with the sleeves pushed up, khaki capri pants, and sandals. Her husband came up behind her as she invited Virgil in: he was a dishwater blond, slender, athletic, and pretty, wearing a blue shirt that vibrated with his blue eyes, and khaki surfer shorts and sandals. He was eating an apple and shook hands with his free hand, and said, “Come on in—should we have our lawyer here?”

  Virgil said, “This is more of an interview than an interrogation. I can’t tell you not to get a lawyer, so . . .”

  “We’ll trust you, at least for now,” Abby said with a toothy smile. “I might have to run and get the baby now and again. He’s in his pen right now, not making a peep.”

  They arranged themselves in the front room, Pottery Barn couches and overstuffed chairs with a scattering of antiques and new Stickley-style oak tables and bookcases. Abby Sexton put a plastic box on the table and said, “It’s an intercom, so we can hear if the baby cries.”

  Virgil didn’t quite know how to open the conversation, with Mark Sexton sitting there, and said, “I don’t know exactly how to get into this . . . ?”

  “If you’re worried about Mark, he knows all about it. He knew about it at the time,” Abby Sexton said.

  Mark Sexton nodded; he didn’t seem put off.

  “All right,” Virgil said. He still felt uncomfortable—this wasn’t exactly a country-western scenario. “I’ve interviewed a number of people, and it’s been suggested that the murder may have originated here in the Cities. That Miss McDill was about to get full control of the agency, and that she planned to fire a number of people. I’ve been told that Mark might have been one of them, not because of job performance but as revenge for . . . the unpleasantness at the end of your relationship.”

  “We didn’t know that she’d gotten control of the agency,” Mark Sexton said. “I read that in the paper this morning, and called up some other people. One guy had heard rumors, but most of us were clueless. I don’t think I would have been fired anyway, because I’m pretty on top of the job. But who knows?”

  “Who heard the rumors?” Virgil asked.

  The two glanced at each other, then Mark shrugged and said, “Barney Mann. He’s the creative director for the agency. He’s sort of the information central.”

  “What was Mr. Mann’s attitude toward Miss McDill?” Virgil asked.

  “They got along,” Mark Sexton said. “Barney’s really good at what he does. So was Erica, in a way. She wasn’t any threat to him.”

  “Like Hitler,” Abby Sexton said. “Good at what she does, if you don’t mind working with a Nazi.”

  “But you had a relationship with her,” Virgil said.

  “That was sex,” Abby Sexton said. “Even a Nazi can be good in bed.” Mark Sexton smiled indulgently at his wife. Like Ward Cleaver finding out that June had just dropped an oatmeal cookie on the good carpet, Virgil thought.

  He said, “Huh.” Virgil didn’t like either one of them, and struggled to hide it. “When you and Miss McDill broke up, was there any kind of an aftermath? Did she come around to see you? Were there any threats? Or scenes?”

  “Phone calls. But it was typical breaking-up kind of stuff,” Abby Sexton said, wrinkling her nose. “The problem was, she didn’t want to share. I mean, she wanted to stay with Ruth while we went out—you know about Ruth?—but she didn’t want me with Mark. But I like men and told her I was going to stay with Mark. So then I suggested that we share Mark, that we three get together. But she wasn’t into that. She’d be happy enough to share a man, but not an employee, if you can believe that.”

  “Huh. So she wasn’t strictly gay?”

  “Not strictly—technically a bi, I guess, like Mark and me,” she said.

  He digested that for a moment, then smiled at them, apologetically, and asked, “Where were you the evening before last? Here in the Cities?”

  “We got a babysitter, Sandra Oduchenko, who lives down the street, and she came at seven o’clock, and we went out clubbing with some friends,” Abby Sexton said. “We are completely alibied, up to our necks. That’s why we didn’t call a lawyer. Do you want everybody’s names?”

  Virgil took the names down, and then asked, “Who do you think did it?”
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br />   Abby Sexton rolled her eyes up and took a deep breath. Her husband deferred to her, and she said, “We definitely think it’s possible that it was somebody with the agency. If we had to take a guess—you’re not going to tell anybody that we said this, right?—we’d say Ronald Owen.”

  Ronald Owen, she said, was in his late fifties and for the past five or ten years, had slipped from being one of the top account managers to being something less than that: the guy who got small stuff, and who no longer did much with it.

  “He burned out,” Mark Sexton chipped in. “But he’s got kids and alimony and a second wife and he can’t afford to quit. The other thing is, he’s one of those veteran guys you see around—he was in Vietnam toward the end of the war, and all of that. He’s bitter about the way everything turned out. He’s also got good sources, so I suspect he knew about McDill taking over. And he hunts. Every year. People kid him about it, but he goes off and shoots antelope in Montana, and deer in Wisconsin. He’s really into guns. He’s always talking about how the rest of us don’t know about real life. He says we get life from Whole Foods. He calls us Whole Foodies.”

  They had another suggestion, a John Yao, “An Asian, who’s always creeping around. He runs some Asian business accounts, local stuff, Hmong businesses. He’s another gun guy. I get a really bad feeling from him,” Mark said. They had nothing specific about Yao—no suggestion that he was about to get fired, except that his accounts were “ratshit stuff. Small, insignificant. McDill might have decided to get rid of them.”

  VIRGIL BROUGHT THE TALK BACK to the Sexton-McDill relationship. “From what you knew of her, was she sexually predatory? When she was with you, was she drifting away from Ruth, and looking for another long-term relationship? Or was she really going out on the town?”

  “Mmm. She definitely didn’t like me leaving—but I think her relationship with Ruth was about done. And I knew that our relationship wouldn’t have lasted, and she was smart enough to know that, too.”

  “Might there have been another relationship after you? Somebody that Ruth didn’t know about?”

  She shook her head: “I don’t know. I’d tell you, but I don’t know.”

  “If she did,” Mark said, “it wasn’t with anyone associated with the agency. Word would have gotten around—there are no secrets in that place.”

  VIRGIL ASKED a few more questions, but basically had written them off as suspects: their alibis would be too easy to check, so he doubted that they’d be lying. He ran out of follow-up questions, asked them for any last thoughts, and stood up.

  As he did, the baby started crying, its voice squeaking out through the intercom.

  “You’re up,” Abby Sexton said to her husband, and he hurried off. “We try to split the baby chores exactly fifty-fifty,” she said.

  She trailed Virgil to the door, and as he went out, he said, “Listen, thank you for your help, and I may get back to you.”

  She stepped a foot too close and put a hand on his triceps and said, “Do you do any clubbing? Here in the Cities? I notice you’re not wearing a wedding ring.”

  “I’m, uh, mostly down south of the Cities,” Virgil said, edging away.

  “Well, give us a call if you’re in town,” she said. “We enjoy creative relationships.”

  He bobbed his head and hastened away. Creative relationships, my ass. He really didn’t like them—and he really didn’t think they were involved in the murder of Erica McDill.

  Ruth Davies? That was a more interesting proposition. . . .

  Virgil glanced back. Abby Sexton was still on her porch, and she waved.

  He waved back, and was gone; and thought to himself, as he turned the corner, Do not imagine Mark Sexton naked in bed.

  NOON. He called Mann from his truck and asked, “How long is that meeting going to last?”

  “I don’t know, but it’ll be a while. People are freaking out. Everybody’ll want to talk for eight minutes, so that’ll be an hour and a half of bullshit before we get to the hard stuff.”

  “Do you have a number and address for a Ronald Owen?” Virgil asked.

  “Sure. What does Ron have to do with this?”

  “Don’t know. I want to ask him,” Virgil said.

  “That fuckin’ Sexton pointed you at him,” Mann said. Not a question. “That little weasel. Listen, I’ll vouch for Ron, if that means anything.”

  “What about John Yao?”

  “Jesus. Pointed you right at the two non-yuppie fucks in the office,” Mann said.

  “Would McDill have fired them?”

  After a minute of silence, Mann said, “Ron, probably. She didn’t like him and he didn’t like her back. John Yao, probably not. He’s got good connections in the Asian community here, and they do a surprising amount of business with us in one way or another.”

  “Mark Sexton said that his accounts didn’t amount to anything,” Virgil said.

  “That’s because Mark’s a dumbass,” Mann said. “None of John’s accounts are huge and they don’t do TV or glamour stuff—it’s all business-to-business work—but taken all together, they bring a nice lump of change.”

  “So Yao was safe, but Owen, probably not,” Virgil said.

  “Yes. And Erica and John get along,” Mann said. “Don’t know why—chemistry or something. They got along.”

  “What’s Owen’s address?” Virgil asked.

  “I feel like a rat giving you all of this,” Mann said.

  “I’d get it anyway,” Virgil said. “If Owen didn’t do it, might as well clear him out.”

  OWEN LIVED TWENTY MILES northeast of Minneapolis, in rural Grant Township. Virgil headed that way, got a buzz on his cell phone, looked at it: Davenport.

  “Yeah?”

  “You still in Grand Rapids?”

  “No. I’m in North St. Paul, headed out toward Mahtomedi, talking to a guy who didn’t like McDill.” Virgil filled him in on what he’d learned, and what he planned to do the rest of the morning, before heading north again.

  “Stacy and her crew started processing McDill’s house last night,” Davenport said. “They should be out there for the rest of the day. Her father’s there, you might want to check in.”

  “That’s in Edina, right?” He’d written McDill’s address in his notebook; either Edina or Eagan.

  “Yes. Her girlfriend got back last night and made a fuss, but that’s straightened out now,” Davenport said. “What’s the story on the girlfriend?”

  “Still thinking about her,” Virgil said.

  “Okay. Stay in touch.”

  OWEN’ S HOUSE SAT at the crest of a hill. A fifties-era ranch-style, the house had a later wing stuck on one end, with a garage and a shop building in back, on what Virgil thought might be ten acres. At the top of the gravel driveway, Virgil saw a man in jeans and a T-shirt watching him from the edge of a stand of sweet corn in a sprawling hillside garden. Owen, he thought.

  He parked beside a Chevy pickup, got out, looked around—the whole country smelled like fresh-cut hay and dry gravel—then walked up to the front door. The inner door was open, and he knocked on the screen door. He could hear music playing inside, but couldn’t identify it. A fiftyish brown-haired woman came to the door, wiping her hands on a towel, and peered through the screen. She smiled and asked, “Can I help you?”

  “I’m with the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension,” Virgil said. “Is Mr. Owen around?”

  “Oh, boy,” she said, the smile sliding away. “Is this about Erica?”

  “Yup. I’m interviewing people from the agency,” Virgil said.

  “All of them, or some of them?”

  “Several of them, anyway,” Virgil said. “I just came from talking to Mark Sexton.”

  “That little shit,” she said. “He probably told you that Ron did it.”

  “No, he didn’t—but . . .” Virgil scratched at the screen. “I really need to talk to Mr. Owen. You’re welcome to listen in, if you want. I’ll tell you that Barney Mann says that Mr. O
wen had nothing to do with Miss McDill’s death.”

  “He’s right—well, I do want to listen in.” She pushed through the door and said, “C’mon. He’s out in the garden.”

  OWEN WAS SHUCKING the last of the summer’s sweet corn. He was wearing Oshkosh overalls and a T-shirt, a self-conscious hobby farmer. He nodded when Virgil and the woman walked up, and asked, “Police?”

  Virgil identified himself, and the woman said, “The Sextons.”

  “That figures,” Owen said. He asked Virgil, “You want some sweet corn? We’ve got too much for the two of us, and not enough to freeze.”

  “I’d take a few,” Virgil said. The corn smelled sweet and hot in the light breeze playing through the plot; but it was a shade too yellow, and might be a little tough. Good, though. He said, “You know what I’m doing. Were you here in the Cities night before last?”

  Owen nodded. “Yeah. I worked until six at the agency, then came home.” He named a few people who’d seen him working late. “I wouldn’t have killed her anyway. I wouldn’t kill anybody, for any reason.”

  Virgil nodded. “The Sextons said you hunt. Whoever killed Miss McDill was good with a rifle.”

  “How did it happen, exactly?” Owen asked. Virgil told him, and Owen said, “Sounds local, to me. You can look at all the Google Earth you want, and it won’t tell you about wandering around in the North Woods. And one shot, right between the eyes?”

  “Yeah.”

  “The thing about that is, it was either an accident, or maybe there was another shot that you don’t know about, and she looked at it, and caught the second one . . . or the guy’s crazy,” Owen said, shucking the green leaves off another ear of corn. He exposed a corn worm, cutting down through the kernels, snapped off the worm-eaten end, dropped it, and crushed it with a boot. “Why would you take a high-risk shot like that, when her whole heart-lung area was right there?”