Virgil looked at the statue drawing, then the calendar with the horse, went back to the computer, typed "Mustangs"-the Southwest Minnesota State Mustangs, where Tripp would have gone to college-and the computer bit: he was in.
"Excellent," he said to himself, as the Mac started to load.
He found 776 incoming e-mail messages and 538 outgoing. He clicked on the "From" queue to alphabetize the incoming messages, and found twenty-two from KBaker.
Nothing from a Crocker or a Flood.
With the sense that he was on to something, he began paging through the KBaker mail, noting the dates. The e-mail began in June of the summer before last, and rather than ending at the end of the summer, continued through the autumn, with the final KBaker note coming two days before Baker was killed.
As he went through the mail, his sense of anticipation dwindled: the exchanges were letters between teenagers, about when Baker would be in town, about who was dating whom, about summer jobs, about football. Baker was apparently religious: she mentioned a couple of times that she couldn't come to town because she had to go to church that night: the nights included Tuesday and Friday.
Three interesting notes from Baker.
The first: "Definite stud muffin."
The second: "I wish I could go with you. If I was in high school, it'd almost be like I was normal. You're about the only outside person that I know, who knows how lonely this can be."
The third: "Can't: Got Liberty."
The third note was the last e-mail from Baker, the one just before she was killed. He looked for antecedents to the two notes, either from Baker or Tripp, and found nothing. They were like remnants of oral conversations.
The e-mail, as a whole, had a curious flatness to it: no flirtation, nothing in the least controversial. Something, he thought, was missing-and he suspected that Tripp had cleaned it up. The "definite stud muffin" message struck Virgil as a reply to something-and possibly a hint that Baker knew that Tripp was gay, and was commenting on some previous e-mail about somebody Tripp was attracted to.
"Can't: Got Liberty." There was that paper in the backpack with the Statue of Liberty drawing on it. A connection? But to what? Or who? Was the capitalized word "Liberty" a proper noun, a specific person or place?
Could the computer guys recover the deleted mail? Have to try.
He looked through all the rest of the mail, scanning quickly, and most of it was the same as the mail to and from Kelly: meet me there, let's do this or that, going up to the MOA with my folks. MOA was Mall of America, in the Twin Cities.
Huh.
He went to Safari, the browser, and clicked on "History," and came up empty-not a single entry. He checked the settings and found that Tripp had set the browser to erase his website visits on a daily basis.
He went to the "Security" icon, clicked on it, and found that the computer was set to accept cookies from the sites Tripp visited. He clicked on "Show Cookies" and came up with a list that ran into the hundreds of items. Scanning down the list, he found a lot of what appeared to be sports sites and, from the names, what appeared to be gay porno sites.
All right, he knew that.
A thought popped into his head. What if Flood had somehow discovered that Tripp was gay, had ridiculed him, or challenged him-or even solicited him-and Tripp had lashed out purely in anger, with no other connection to anything?
No: Tripp had taken the T-ball bat from home. He'd gone to work prepared to kill Flood.
Besides, there were too many dead people for something that simple.
And where in the hell did a woman fit in, a killer?
Virgil continued working the room, no longer expecting to find much: Tripp had been covering himself.
The Tripps were back in a little under an hour, and Virgil was done with the room, sitting on the bed, looking around, wondering what he'd missed. He heard them come in, sighed, stood up, picked up the cell phone and the computer, and walked down the hall to meet them.
"Find anything?" George Tripp asked.
"I don't know-I will have to take the computer. Your son was e-mailing back and forth with Kelly Baker, right up until the time she was killed. They were pretty friendly…"
"You figured out the password?"
"Mustangs," Virgil said, and George Tripp showed the tiniest of smiles.
"How friendly were they?" Irma asked. She asked in a way, Virgil thought, that solicited a response that Bobby Tripp and Kelly Baker were in bed together. Because, Virgil realized, Irma knew or suspected that her son was gay.
"Friendly. I can't say more than that, but there's no feel of… violence in it," Virgil said. "Of potential violence. At this point, I really don't believe your son was involved in hurting her."
"Of course he wasn't," George Tripp said. "It was that goddamn Flood, or Crocker, or both of them."
"I'm going to look into that," Virgil said.
He asked them to go through the contact list on Tripp's phone; standing together, they did that, and identified each of the people on the list, including Sullivan, who, they said, had interviewed their son a half-dozen times.
"Everybody knew Bobby was going to be a college star. He could've gone to the Gophers, but they wanted to make a corner-back out of him and he didn't want that," George said. Wistful, now, with a glint of tears in his eyes: "He was going to be something."
On his way to the motel, Virgil threw the joints out the window-they were biodegradable-and crumbled the Ziploc bag into the trash. No need for Tripp's parents to know about that.
He called Coakley from the motel, told her about the search, about the relationship with Baker, and about the "Liberty" note.
"Good: sounds like you're getting somewhere," she said. "I set up meetings with both of the female deputies for tomorrow morning. You're not invited. I've been thinking about them since I left the office, and I already know they're not involved. I'll push them anyway, which means my popularity is going to take a hit, but I'll do it."
"You've got four years-I think pushing them now will be pretty small potatoes when you break these murders," Virgil said.
"When I get done, to show that I trust them, I'm sending all of them out to the countryside around Battenberg, to talk to folks," Coakley said. "The community out there is so sparse that somebody must know who Crocker was sleeping with-people know each other's cars, and even if it was just seeing a car parked in his driveway, somebody knows."
"Okay. I want to talk to Kelly Baker's parents. There's something going on there."
"See you tomorrow," she said. HE MADE a late check with Bea Sawyer: "We got the pants," she said. "We can see a snag and what could be blood, and from what you said, I believe it is. So does Don. There's enough blood for a DNA check, so we'll be able to nail that down for you."
"Excellent. When will you be done?" Virgil asked.
"We've already shipped the body up to Ike in Mankato," Sawyer said. "We're going through the house now, but we're about to quit. We'll be back tomorrow."
"You at the Holiday?"
"Nah, we're staying at a little ma-and-pa place in Battenberg. Pretty handy," she said.
"All right. I'll see you out there tomorrow. Try not to destroy any evidence."
He called Coakley back: "Got a piece of information for you: the crime-scene guys have a pair of uniform pants at Crocker's, with a snag and a smear of blood. Probably Tripp's, I expect."
"Good. That really does take my other people out of it," she said.
"Pretty much," Virgil agreed.
Two inches of snow fell overnight, kicked out of an Alberta Clipper that swung down through the state and just as quickly departed. Virgil could hear the winds coming up as he went to bed, and then the muffling effect of the snow.
He thought about God for a while, and the early and traumatic end of expectations: Bobby Tripp "would have been something," his father said, and those expectations were now gone and might never have existed.
And he thought about the commonality of comfort
, stretching back over the centuries and millennia, a guy lying alone in a warm space, listening to a clipper just outside the cave, igloo, hut, teepee, motel, whatever, a long thread reaching all the way back to the apes.
Then he went to sleep.
In the morning, he'd just gotten out of the shower when his cell phone rang, and Coakley said, "Why don't we hook up at the Yellow Dog? Get some pancakes."
"Half an hour," Virgil said.
He got dressed, checked e-mail, packed up his computer, and put on his parka. The clipper had slipped away, and the day would be sunny but cold: he brushed the light, fluffy snow off the truck and, by the time he was done, could feel the sharp near-zero temps on his cheekbones.
He pulled into the cafe just as Coakley did, and she asked, as she got out of her truck, "Any more ideas?"
"I think you had the best one-go out to Battenberg and stir around, see what happens."
They went inside, got a booth, peeled off their parkas. Coakley was wearing a plaid wool shirt over a black turtleneck, with just a hint of lipstick. They discovered a common interest in blueberry pancakes and link sausages, and after they ordered, she said, "Kelly Baker-it has to be local. I mean, local-local. Here, not Estherville, not Iowa."
"Close to here," Virgil agreed. "The killers weren't travelers."
The pancakes arrived with the cafe owner, who introduced himself as Bill Jacoby, and asked if there was anything new in the case. "Maybe," Virgil said. "We think whoever killed Deputy Crocker was a woman, and we're looking around for whoever may have had an ongoing sexual relationship with him."
"He was killed by somebody he was sleeping with?"
"We think so," Virgil said. There were a couple of dozen people in the cafe, and the nearby tables had gone quiet. "We're kind of looking around for someone who knows who that might be."
"Well, I don't," Jacoby said. "Be an interesting thing to know, though."
"And something else," Virgil said. "You know that Kelly Baker girl who was killed down by Estherville a year ago? We think that murder is tied into the new ones."
"Really," Jacoby said. "Man, that's freaky. That's a lot of dead people."
"Sure is. We're looking for all the connections we can find," Virgil said.
A grizzled, rancher-looking guy in the booth behind Coakley said, "You know, you should talk to Son Wood. He used to hang around with Crocker, some, and they go back a ways. He might know who Crocker was going with."
Virgil leaned sideways so he could see the guy past Coakley: "Son Wood. S-O-N? Where's he at?"
"He's got Son Wood's Surface Sealers out on 15 South," the rancher-guy said.
Coakley said, with a little razor in her voice, "Virgil, eat your pancakes. They're getting cold."
Virgil said, "Hey. I'm just trying to be a friendly guy."
"Come in anytime for a cup of coffee," Jacoby said. "We don't have doughnuts, but we got twelve kinds of pie."
"I'll do that," Virgil said.
When Jacoby had gone, Coakley leaned into the table and said, "What? You're a talk-show host?"
He said, "What good does it do to keep the information private? The killers know everything we do. Why shouldn't the taxpayers know it?"
She said, "Well." Thought about it, then said, "It doesn't seem law enforcement-like."
"That's a problem for law enforcement," Virgil said. "You can get a lot more done if you ask around, and spread the joy."
"I'm still a little annoyed," she said. "Sitting here in a cafe, blabbing to every Tom, Dick, and Harry."
"Your eyes sparkle when you're annoyed," he said, giving her his second-best cowboy grin. His first-best grin was so powerful that he reserved it for places where the woman had her back against something, for support; like a mattress.
"For God's sakes, Virgil, try to keep your mind on what you're doing…"
"Slender, yet firm body," Virgil said, wiggling his eyebrows at her.
She showed some teeth. "I'm gonna stick this pancake up your nose, in about one minute."
"All right. All right," he said, holding up his hands, palms out. "I'll suppress my feelings, if you say so. You're the sheriff."
"I'm going to talk to the girls, then send them out to Battenberg. I'll go with them. I've got John Kraus talking to that list of kids on Bobby's phone. What are you doing?"
"Well, I developed one solid lead since last night," Virgil said.
"Really?" Her eyebrows popped up.
"Yes. There's a guy named Son Wood on Highway 15 South who hung out with Crocker, and who might know what women he was hanging with. I'm gonna talk to him."
"Virgil…"
"Then, I'm going to go talk to Kelly Baker's parents."
"Good. That's a plan. Maybe I'll meet you there-I've never talked to them, myself."
They finished their pancakes under the eyes of the cafe patrons, Virgil telling her about the strangeness of the Floods, and about this and that. Coakley looked at her watch and took a last hit of her coffee and said, "Call me."
She left, and Virgil watched her go. Slender, yet firm body. And she gave him a hard time, but she sort of liked it. It was, Virgil thought, drifting toward the philosophical, a truism that no woman was really upset when somebody suggested she was attractive.
Jacoby came over with a carafe: "More coffee?"
"Thanks, Bill-maybe a half cup."
"Anything more that Lee didn't want us to know?" Jacoby asked as he poured.
"Well, not really, not much that wasn't in the paper this morning. We know the Tripp boy killed Flood, and now we know that Deputy Crocker killed Tripp. We've got that nailed down with DNA, and I expect we'll get some DNA off Crocker's body, from the woman, so if we can find her, we'll nail that down, too."
"DNA from the woman-what, like a hair? Blood?"
"Saliva traces," Virgil said.
Jacoby leaned forward and dropped his voice. "Saliva? How'd you know where to look?"
"Crocker was… his dick was sticking out," Virgil said, pitching his voice down below Jacoby's.
"You mean…?"
"I do."
"Oh, jeez. Maybe I ought to try to find her before you do," Jacoby said.
"Think about it, Bill. What happened to Crocker."
Jacoby scratched once, in the general area of his groin, and muttered, "Might be worth it. I'm so goddamn horny the crack of dawn ain't safe."
7
Virgil hadn't known exactly what a surface sealer did, but when he found the small dealership and showroom, he discovered that Son Wood used a variety of paintlike substances to seal concrete or wood floors from whatever might get poured on them-like cow or pig urine, gasoline or oil, or grease.
An auburn-haired woman was sitting behind the reception counter, typing into a computer screen and, when Virgil walked in, took off her reading glasses and asked, "Are you Harvey?"
"Nope. I'm Virgil. Flowers. I'm an agent for the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, looking into your murders. Is Mr. Wood around?"
"Well, yes, he's in the back, talking to Roger. Can I tell him what it's about? Specifically?"
"He was a friend of Jim Crocker's, and we're talking to all of Crocker's friends."
"That was just terrible," she said. "Let me get him."
Wood came out a moment later, followed by the woman. He was a tall man, thin, weathered, with flinty blue eyes and a three-day beard. He was wearing a red flannel shirt and pipe-stem jeans, and cowboy boots. He and Virgil shook hands and Virgil said, "We've been interviewing people around town, and a couple have mentioned that you knew Deputy Crocker. We know that he'd been intimate with a woman shortly before he died, and we'd really like to talk to her. Do you have any ideas?"
"Well, you know, I don't," Wood said. "As a matter of fact, I can tell you right out front that I'm surprised there was a woman with him, because he never seemed that much interested."
"In women?"
"Well, not so much women… as any particular woman." Wood scratched his head, just abov
e his left ear, and said, "I don't know how to put it. He was interested in women, okay? He was married for a while, but I never knew him to date. You see what I'm saying? He didn't seem interested in particular women. He didn't go out with anyone."
"Would there have been any takers?" Virgil asked. "If he started looking?"
"Oh, yeah. There's not a big surplus of women around here, but he had a good job. You know how it is."
Virgil nodded. "So you guys hung out, had a few beers…"
"That was pretty much it. We'd go fishing a couple times a year," Wood said. "We weren't all that close. I'm married and he's single… but, yeah, we go back a way."
"Can you think of anything…?"
"Well, you know he was tight with Jake Flood. They knew each other since they were kids. There must be something in there… something in that whole mess. Jake getting killed, then Jim."
Virgil said, "That's what we think, too. We're looking for the connection."
"Maybe you ought to talk to his ex-wife," Wood suggested. "She's over in Jackson, her name's Kathleen Spooner. Kate. Changed her name back to her maiden name after they broke up."
"Bitter breakup?"
"Well-no. He told me he didn't know what the hell happened. He came home one day, and she said she was moving on, that she'd filed for divorce that day at the courthouse, and did he want pork chops for dinner, or meat loaf?"
The woman chipped in: "I talked to her for a minute, downtown, and she said she just got tired of his act. She said she didn't much want to marry him in the first place, and she'd been right."
"So she just went on down the road," Wood said.
"You know if he went for the meat loaf?" Virgil asked.
"More of a pork chop man," Wood said.
They talked for a few more minutes, but nothing else came up-Wood didn't know Kelly Baker or any of her family. "I know where they're at, but they ran a pretty small grain operation, and that doesn't need my product so much."
"Do you know anything about the religion he belonged to?" Virgil asked.
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