The street leading up to the crime scene was closed off by cop cars. Virgil parked, put on a baseball cap, because it was chilly, and climbed out of the truck. He was in what he thought must be the workingman’s corner of town-small white prewar clapboard houses, some of them crumbling badly, most of them with small front porches, most with one-car garages converted to rooms, with larger, newer, metal-sided garages in back. The neighbors were out sitting on the porches, wrapped in blankets or wearing their winter coats, watching. Some had brought out aluminum lawn furniture, including one recliner.
The cops had set up work lights to illuminate the house, and Virgil could see a half dozen people walking the lawn, like soldiers policing up cigarette butts. Looking for evidence, he thought. A young deputy walked toward him, thumbs hooked on a duty belt, and as Virgil came up, he called, “This is off-limits. . who are you?”
“Virgil Flowers. I’m with the BCA.”
The cop looked him over: Virgil hadn’t changed clothes and was still in the jean jacket, open over the band T-shirt, jeans, and the cowboy boots. “You got any ID?”
Virgil had seen the sheriff, Lewis Duke, come out on the porch of the death house, and he said, “Sure,” and waved his arms in the air and shouted at the sheriff, “Hey, Lewis-it’s me, Virgil.”
The cop turned and saw the sheriff, an annoyed look crossing his face, wave Virgil over. The cop said, “So you’re a wiseass.”
Virgil said, “Maybe.”
“Don’t much care for wiseasses in Bare County,” the deputy said, as Virgil walked past him.
Virgil said, “Like I could really give a shit.” He himself didn’t much care for officious pricks.
Lewis Duke was a short, barrel-chested man who looked like he spent his spare time doing bench presses. He had a square, dry prairie face, thinning sandy hair, a short nose under glassy blue eyes, and a brush-cut mustache. He wore the same uniform his men did, but with five stars on the collar, and a Glock in a military-style thigh-mounted holster. He nodded at Virgil and said, “Agent Flowers.”
Virgil said, “Sheriff. I’ve been told you’ve got a bad one. Actually, I’ve heard you had two bad ones.”
“That’s correct,” Duke said. “The first one was worse-they were good folks. This whole family was white trash, but still, pretty gol-darned unpleasant.”
“Let’s take a look,” Virgil said.
“This way.”
Virgil followed Duke inside, along a path through the narrow living room demarked by two lines of blue masking tape. Duke said, “We put down the tape to keep people from wandering off into other parts of the house. We cleared it, of course, but nobody’s been in the rest of the house since then. We’re hoping your crime-scene specialists can pick up some DNA.”
“Smart,” Virgil said. Never hurt to flatter a sheriff, for those who needed it. The inside of the house was a reflection of the outside: poorly kept except for a gigantic LG television that sat against the only wall big enough to take it, with a couple of green La-Z-Boy imitations facing it. A green plastic bowl sat between the chairs, as though it might have contained popcorn; the house didn’t smell like popcorn, but like years of bacon grease and nicotine.
Duke led the way to the kitchen. A fat man in a white T-shirt lay on the kitchen floor, looking up at the ceiling-eyes wide open-with a big bloody splotch in the center of his chest. A broken coffee cup lay on the floor beside him, with a damp brown splatter stain on the floor that probably had been coffee, but might have been something like apple cider. A woman lay in a doorway leading through what looked like a mudroom. She may have been running for the back door, but had been shot before she got there. She was facedown.
“Who found them?” Virgil asked.
“Neighbor lady. She’d been trying to talk to Miz Welsh all day, about changing shifts at the nursing home,” Duke said. “She walked over and knocked on the back door, about the fifth time she’d done it, and then peeked inside and saw Miz Welsh layin’ on the floor. She called us.”
“I’ll need to talk to her,” Virgil said.
“Sure. But she doesn’t have much to say.”
Virgil squatted next to each body, one at a time, and looked at them closely. The woman gave him nothing, but the man’s dark pants showed a flash of white against the floor. Virgil got his nose right down on the kitchen linoleum and saw that it was an inside-out back pocket. When he stood up, he found Duke and a deputy staring at him, as if he was about to pull a rabbit out of a hat.
“Have your guys figured out when this might have happened?” Virgil asked.
Duke said, “Well, George, there, was seen walking out of the Surprise market between nine and ten o’clock last night. Uh, Friday night. We haven’t been able to find anybody who saw him today. I mean, Saturday.”
“You know what he bought at the Surprise?”
Duke looked at the deputy, who said, “Well, no, I guess we didn’t ask that.”
The deputy was wearing plastic evidence gloves and Virgil asked, “You got any more of those? The gloves?”
“Yeah. . don’t you?”
“In my truck. I’d rather not go back, if you’ve got some handy,” Virgil said. Another prick; it always had something to do with the training.
The deputy glanced at Duke, who nodded, and the deputy said, “Two seconds.” He left, and Duke said to Virgil, “Haven’t seen much of you.”
“I’ve been busy back east. Besides, do you really want to see the likes of me?”
“Maybe not,” Duke conceded. “Not when it’s on this kind of business.”
They looked at the bodies for a few seconds, then the deputy was back and handed Virgil a pair of yellow plastic gloves. Virgil pulled them on, and stepped over to the kitchen sink and pulled open the cupboard beneath it. A trash can was there, and he pulled it partway out, found a plastic grocery bag near the bottom of the can, under a bunch of empty beer cans. He opened the bag, found a receipt from the Surprise with a time stamp that said 8:45 PM. It also said that $10.25 had been charged on a Visa card with a number ending in 4508 for a twelve-pack of Miller High Life.
“He bought the beer at eight forty-five,” Virgil said. He tipped the trash can back and forth a few times, digging around, found five Millers, plus three empty Bud Lights.
“Huh,” he said. He stood up, stepped to the refrigerator and pulled open the door, expecting to see the rest of the Millers. No beer. He said to Duke, “No beer.”
Duke asked, “What does that mean?”
“I don’t know. Maybe the killers took it with them.” He looked around for a few more seconds, then peeled off the gloves and said, “So, you said this family was trashy?”
“That’s what I’ve been told. Darrell here covers this area.”
Darrell, the deputy with the evidence gloves, said, “George never managed to hold a job for long. I guess Ann was down at the nursing home for quite some time now. George has anger issues, argues with the neighbors, doesn’t keep the place up. That sort of thing. You think that’s important?”
“What about kids, or in-laws?”
“Got a daughter, named Rebecca, she’s up in the Cities, as far as anyone knows. That’s the last we heard. Haven’t tried to get in touch with her yet, but we’re looking around for a contact.”
“Mmmm.” Virgil took another quick look around, then said, “I’ll tell you, Lewis, it feels like a domestic to me. This George guy bought a bunch of beer Friday night, and he and the old lady-or somebody-drank five cans of it, and maybe three more Buds. He’s wearing a T-shirt, and it’s been pretty cold out. He shaves, because I can see a little shaving nick under his ear, healing up, day or two old, but he’s not shaven here. Ann is wearing slippers. That all makes me think they’d been up late drinking Friday night, probably watching TV, got up Saturday morning and hadn’t been up long. They were killed early in the morning, while they were having coffee, before George had a chance to shave or Ann got completely dressed. No sign of a break-in, or anything. And if you
were a robber, would you pick this place?”
Duke looked around and shook his head. “I guess not.”
“Whoever did it, took George’s wallet, I think. We’ll have the crime-scene guys check around for Ann’s purse, but I’ll bet it’s either gone, or the money’s gone. It looks to me like somebody came here, somebody they knew, but who might have been unwelcome. They have an argument, and boom. Whoever it was needed money, because they took the time to rob the bodies, even though they couldn’t have had much cash-I mean, George charged a twelve-pack on his Visa card.”
“So. . an argument about money, with somebody that they knew,” Duke said.
“Feels that way to me,” Virgil said. “Somebody who might have expected to get some money. I think we’ve got to take a real quick look at this daughter. . though, mmm, I’m not sure a daughter would have brought a gun in, to kill her parents. That doesn’t feel quite right.”
“We’ve got the names of a couple of her friends. We can find out where she is,” the deputy said.
“If she’s in the Cities, I’ll have somebody run over and talk to her,” Virgil said. “At the same time, we need to look at other possibilities. Friends, other relatives. People George has been hanging out with.”
“We can do that,” Duke said.
“I talked to the neighbors,” Darrell said. “I don’t think he had much in the way of friends. I can check out Ann, down at the nursing home.”
“Not much more we can do tonight, though,” Virgil said to Duke. “I’ll want to talk to the woman who found them. Have some of your people close the place up until Crime Scene gets here. They’re on the way, should be here in a couple of hours.”
Duke nodded and said, “I’ll take you over to the neighbor lady’s. The one who found them.”
The neighbor lady was named Margery Garfield, and she didn’t know anything. She’d wanted to talk to Ann Welsh about trading shifts at the nursing home the next Monday night, so she could go to parent-teacher night at the school, and had been trying to find Welsh all day. “I seen their car was still in the garage, but I never did see them. I was knocking on the front door, and I felt something funny might be going on, so I went around to the back, and peeked through the glass, and I could see Ann on the floor. I didn’t know it was a body, at first, but then, my eyes got adjusted, and I was pretty sure it was a body, so I ran back home and called the sheriff.”
“You didn’t touch anything?” Virgil asked.
She shook her head. “I never went inside. I did put my hand on the window glass, trying to see in better.”
He talked to her a few more minutes, and finally ran out of ground; and she asked, “I suppose Crime Scene will be coming around?”
“Pretty soon,” Virgil said.
“They oughta be able to figure it out,” she said.
Virgil and Duke said good-bye, and they went outside and Duke asked, “You get annoyed by that? The Crime Scene thing?”
“No. People watch TV. No way to stop that,” Virgil said.
“It’d get under my skin, after a while,” Duke said. “So, you’re going to stick around?”
Virgil nodded. “Sure. I’ll run over to the Ramada in Marshall. I’ll call back to the Cities tomorrow morning and see if I can get somebody to look for the daughter. I’ll give you my cell phone number, if you come up with anything overnight. Main thing is, we get the scene processed. But we won’t get much going at four o’clock on Sunday morning.”
Duke said: “Okay. I’m heading home. I’ll have my men seal up this place. I’ll be going to church in the morning, and I’ll be back here right after.”
“I’m planning to do that myself,” Virgil said. “The worship service starts at eight o’clock. I’ll be out here by nine-thirty or so.”
Duke tipped his head: “Little surprised to hear you’re churchgoing, Virgil, but I certainly approve. I’ll see you at nine-thirty, unless something breaks.”
3
Virgil checked into the Ramada across the street from Southwest Minnesota State University at a little after four o’clock in the morning, set the alarm for six-thirty, and was asleep as soon as he lay down. He’d slept on the plane from Miami to Minneapolis Saturday morning, had taken a nap after he got home on Saturday afternoon, and was still young enough that he could deal with a day on two hours of sleep.
Although, when the alarm woke him up in what seemed like an instant after he went to sleep, he would, he expected, be fairly cranky by early afternoon.
He sat on the bed for a minute, getting oriented, then picked up his cell phone and punched the menu item for “home.” His mother never slept past six o’clock on any one day in her life, and at that moment, he thought, would be looking into the kitchen cupboard and calculating how many pancakes to make that morning.
She answered immediately, an edge of horror in her voice. “Virgil: What happened?”
“Nothing happened, Ma, except some people got killed over in Shinder and I’m looking at them. Right now, I’m here in town, at the Ramada, and I thought I’d run over and get some pancakes if it’s not too much goddamn trouble to expect that from your mother.”
She was delighted: “Get over here, Virgil. Your father’s already up and raving in the study.”
“I gotta take a shower. I’ll see you in a half hour.”
RAVING IN THE STUDY-the old man was practicing his sermon. Feeling more awake, Virgil cleaned up and got dressed, and headed into a sunshiny morning that felt like it might even get warm later in the day. It didn’t, but it felt that way.
Virgil’s father was the lead pastor of the largest Lutheran congregation in Marshall, a town with several species of Lutheran. Virgil had grown up in a redbrick house across the street from the church, and had gone to church services every Sunday and Wednesday of his life, until he went to the University of Minnesota. He’d since given up churchgoing, but not some fundamental belief in the Great Architect.
When Virgil pulled into the driveway, he was ambushed by his father, who’d been waiting by the back door, and who said, “I’ve been thinking a lot about the relationship between the Israelis and the Palestinians. . ”
His father was a tall man, also slender, like Virgil, with graying hair and round steel-rimmed spectacles. He’d played basketball at Luther College, down in Iowa, before going to the seminary. He clutched in one hand the printout of his sermon; he’d been a popular man all of his life, and a kind of sneaky kingmaker in local politics.
Virgil said, “Uh-oh.”
“I immediately thought of Genesis 16:11 and 12, ‘You shall name him Ishmael. .’”
Virgil continued it: “‘. . for the Lord has heard of your misery. He will be a wild donkey of a man; his hand will be against everyone and everyone’s hand against him. And he will live in hostility toward all his brothers.’”
His father blinked and said, “I knew if I beat it into your head long enough, it’d stick.”
Virgil said, “Where’s Mom?. . And yeah, some of it did stick.”
His father said, “In the kitchen. You know Ishmael is considered the father of the Arabs.”
“I know that you’ll be up to your holy ass in alligators if you go telling people that the Arabs deserve what they’re getting because the Bible says so,” Virgil said.
His father followed him into the kitchen, saying, “That wouldn’t be the point, not at all. I’d never say that.”
They sat in the kitchen and ate pancakes and his father raved and his mother chipped in with news of various high school friends, and they both behaved as though they hadn’t seen him for years, when, in fact, he’d been there only a month earlier.
His mother inquired about any new wives, a friendly jab, and he denied any new close acquaintances, and his father said, “But you have to admit, it is passing strange that something that was written three thousand years ago seems to have such a relevance for today’s world.”
Watching them bustle around each other in the tight little kitchen, si
xtyish and very comfortable, Virgil remembered the time when he was seventeen and the folks had a little dinner party, three other couples plus Virgil. One of the couples was Darrin and Marcia Wanger. Darrin was president of a local bank, a tall, broad-shouldered man with an engaging smile. Virgil remembered how he had caught his mother and Darrin Wanger touching each other with their eyes, and how he thought then, My God, they’re sleeping together.
Old times in the rectory. . And who knows, maybe he was wrong.
But even thinking about it now, he thought not. His mother said, “You put so little syrup on those pancakes that it got sucked right down inside. Take some more syrup.”
Then it was the best part of an hour in church, Virgil sitting in the back; but twenty people, mostly older, stopped to say hello to him, and touch him on the shoulder. Good folks. His father did his rave, and it all seemed well-reasoned and kind.
At nine o’clock, he was on his way back to Shinder. Duke was just coming into town and Virgil turned in behind him and followed him down to the Welsh house. They got out of their trucks at the same time, and Duke nodded at Virgil and asked, “How was church?”
“Fine. My old man did his sermon from Genesis 11 and 12, and moved on to the Palestinians and the Israelis. . ” Virgil gave him a one-minute version, and Duke, though an asshole, proved a good listener, and when Virgil finished, he said, “Sounds like your father is a smart man.”
“He is,” Virgil said. The crime-scene van was parked in the swale in front of the Welsh house, and Virgil asked, “You know what time they got here?”
“About three hours ago. . around six o’clock,” Duke said.
He and Virgil went inside, where Beatrice Sawyer was working over George Welsh’s body. Sawyer was a middle-aged woman, more cheerful than she should be, given her job, and a little too heavy. She had bureaucrat-cut blond hair, went without makeup, and was wearing a lime-colored sweatshirt and blue jeans and boots. She saw Virgil and said, “Well, this one’s dead.”
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