Shepard sniffed and said, “I can hold together.”
“Well, you look like shit,” Virgil said. He handed over a couple more towels. “Stop for a minute and press these on your eyeballs, and while you’re doing that, stop crying. Let’s get this over.”
Shepard pressed the wads of paper into his eye sockets, and when he took the towels away, he asked, “You think I’ll really get back?”
“Look. You’re a smart guy,” Virgil said. “You’ll move to some place like Tucson, where they just really won’t give a shit about your problem here, and you’ll get a job. I’d bet you in three years you’re making twice as much as a schoolteacher in Butternut Falls. I mean, that’s what people make now-twice as much as teachers.”
“Ah, man,” Shepard said. But he didn’t start crying again, and they walked back. “All my students are going to find out. I keep talking to them about good citizenship and all that… and look what I did. Now I’m going to drag everybody else down with me, just to save my ass. I’m such a fuck-up. I mean, even if I get another job, I can’t stay here-I have to leave home. Leave my daughter, go someplace strange. I like it here.”
Virgil asked, “Is this Burt guy an old friend?”
“No. I don’t know him that well. I don’t much like him, though.” Then, thinking about what he was going to do, he said, “I’m such an asshole. I don’t like him, but I don’t like… dragging him down.”
He’d calmed down by the time Virgil got him back to the county attorney’s office, and they talked about his meeting with Block. “Don’t lead him. Just refer to stuff that you’ve done,” Virgil said. “You want to be a little shaky, a little remorseful. Tell him that sad story about Jeanne leaving you. He’ll believe that. He’ll try to pull you together, and when he does that, he’ll give himself up.”
They wired him up, and tested him for sound, and headed downtown, Virgil, the tech, Good Thunder, and Wills in one truck, with the sound equipment, Shepard on his own, in his Chevy.
Shepard was to meet Burt Block in Block’s office-Block ran a temp service and employment agency in downtown Butternut. The tech, whose name was Jack Thompson, said, on the way over, “Wish we had a little more time to set this up. Be nice to have some video.”
“I thought you hid cameras inside of briefcases and like that,” Virgil said.
“Not so much. Tape recorders, we do.”
“Yeah, I used one of those, once,” Virgil said.
“Cameras would have been nice,” Good Thunder said. “Juries like to see faces. I just hope the audio works through brick walls, or whatever.”
“It’ll be fine. This is state-of-the-art stuff,” Thompson said. “Long as he doesn’t fall in the lake.”
Virgil told him about the recorder at the bottom of the Butternut, and Thompson said, “If he didn’t punch a hole in the hard drive, you’re good.”
“Hope so,” Virgil said.
The wire they’d put on Shepard was strictly one-way-they had no way to communicate with Shepard, except by cell phone. As Shepard pulled into a diagonal parking space in front of Block’s office, Thompson started the recorder. Shepard sat in his car for a full minute-they could hear him breathing-then slowly got out. “I’m such an asshole,” he muttered.
“C’mon, c’mon, move,” Wills said, impatiently, from the backseat.
Shepard looked across the street at Virgil’s truck, then turned, reluctantly, and said, “I’m going in,” and went inside.
Inside, he said hello to a woman, who said, “Hi, Pat. Burt’s in the back, go on in.”
DIALOGUE:
Block: “Hey, Pat. What’s up?”
Shepard: “Hey, Burt. Man… I gotta sit down. I’m really screwed up here, man. My wife bailed out on me last night. She found out I… I’ve been fooling around. She’s so pissed, she knows about the PyeMart deal, she knows about the money.”
Block: “Whoa, whoa, whoa… She knows about me? She knows about all of us?”
“Got him,” Wills said, gleefully.
Thompson said, “Shhh.”
Shepard: “She doesn’t know exactly about you or Arnold, but she knows about Geraldine.”
Block: “But she doesn’t know about me?”
Shepard: “She knows… you know… but I never said your name or anything. But she knows.”
Block: “Ah, man, you gotta shut that bitch up. If she talks, we’re toast.”
Shepard: “I can’t shut her up. She left me. She took what was left of the money, and she knows where it came from, so… maybe we’re all right, but I don’t know. I was thinkin’… I was lookin’ for a way out.”
Block: “Like what?”
Shepard: “If we got to… maybe we could buy her off? I mean, she’s gonna need money. I only got twenty-five, I figured you guys got a lot more, you could help out-”
Block: “Whoa, whoa, whoa, that’s my money. We all got exactly the same. You’re gonna have to find some other way to shut her up.”
Shepard’s voice broke: “I wish I’d never seen any of you. Geraldine said it was no problem, but now, oh my God…” He began blubbering.
Block: “Jesus, man up, Pat. If we just find a way to shut her up. .. Maybe we go back to the PyeMart guy, tell them that we’ve got a problem, need to smooth it out.”
Shepard: “That might work. Maybe. You think Geraldine only got twenty-five? I figured that you guys all did a lot better than that.”
Block: “I don’t know about Geraldine, but Arnold and I only got twenty-five. I mean, that’s all there was. Maybe Geraldine clipped a little off our shares, she’s crookeder than a bucket of cottonmouths. …”
They went on that way for a while, then Shepard asked, “So what do you think I oughta do? Talk to Geraldine? See if she’ll talk to PyeMart? I’m not that tight with her.”
Block: “I’ll talk to her. But I’ll tell you what. We’d all be better off if, you know, if Jeanne just went away.”
There was a moment of silence in Block’s office, but in the truck, Good Thunder blurted, “I don’t believe he said that.”
Shepard: “What? Went away?”
Block: “You, know, if she had some kind of accident. Then you wouldn’t be getting a divorce, you wouldn’t have this threat hanging over you.”
Shepard: “Okay, that’s fucking ridiculous.”
Block: “I’m just sayin’.”
Shepard: “I’m getting out of here. Nothing better happen to Jeanne. If it does…”
Block: “What? You’re gonna talk to the cops? You’re in just as deep as we are, you silly shit. Anyway, think about what I said. I’ll talk to Geraldine, and we’ll figure something out. Maybe if the PyeMart guy gets worried, we could sting him for a little more. Tell him we need a hundred to shut up your old lady, give her twenty, keep the rest. You know, we should have thought of this before.”
Shepard: “I’m outa here.”
Block: “Hey, Pat. Have a good day. Keep your fuckin’ mouth shut.”
Good Thunder said, “He is so implicated. We could talk conspiracy to commit murder.”
Wills nodded: “We will. The thing is, if we agree to drop that charge, but leave jail time up in the air for the bribe… we could flip him, too, and get him talking to Geraldine. Man. We are looking. .. What’s that asshole doing?”
“He’s talking to himself,” Thompson said.
Shepard was standing outside Block’s office, looking through the window into the office, making an incoherent growling sound, like a nervous collie. Every once in a while, a word would pop out, but it didn’t sound good.
Virgil said, “I’m gonna go reel him in,” and he popped his truck door.
Good Thunder said, “Wait. He’s moving.”
Virgil stopped and looked over at Shepard. Shepard walked around to the back of his car, looked across the street at them, and lifted a hand.
“Got a flat tire?” Thompson suggested, as Shepard rummaged around in the trunk of his car.
“I don’t…” Virgi
l began.
Then Shepard straightened, and in his hand he was holding a largeframe chrome revolver. A Smith, Virgil thought, vaguely, as Good Thunder said, “Oh, no,” and Wills said, “Holy shit,” and Thompson said, “Uh-oh, got a gun, Virgil?”
Virgil thought about his gun in the lockbox, turned to say something about it to Good Thunder, who was essentially sitting on it, but Good Thunder, still looking through the windshield said, “He’s gonna…”
Virgil looked back in time to see Shepard turn the gun toward his own chest, and pull the trigger.
And Shepard went down.
18
Virgil got to him first.
Shepard was lying flat on his back, his eyes open and focused, and he was making the growling sound, his breaths short and harsh. His arms lay down his sides, and the gun was a few inches from his right hand. Virgil pushed it out of reach, heard Good Thunder shouting into a cell phone, calling for an ambulance. People were shouting on the street around him, and Wills was telling them to stand back, as Virgil pulled open Shepard’s shirt, saw the wound just to the right of his breastbone, a small hole through which bright red, frothy blood was seeping.
Virgil looked around, for something soft and plastic, didn’t see anything, shouted at Wills, “Keep them away,” jogged back to his truck, got a trash bag out of a seat-back pocket, ran back to Shepard. Good Thunder was kneeling over him, saying, “Ambulance on the way, Pat. Ambulance is coming…” Virgil elbowed her aside, ripped a square of plastic out of the bag, and slapped it across the bullet hole and pressed it down.
The audio gear had been tucked under Shepard’s belt line, and Virgil pulled it loose, and then ripped off the tape that held the microphone to his chest.
Shepard made another growling, coughing sound, and the first of the deputies arrived. Wills organized them to push back the rubberneckers. The ambulance was there a minute later, probably five or six minutes after the shooting, which was great time; the paramedics put oxygen on Shepard, moved him onto a gurney, and they were gone.
Virgil walked back to his truck and gave the audio gear to Thompson, got some Handi Wipes and washed the blood off his hands as he went back across the street. Good Thunder asked, “What do you think?”
Virgil shook his head. “Hard to tell with a gunshot. Depends on what it hit. If it hit a major artery, he’ll die, and in the middle of your chest, that’s easy to do. If he didn’t, he could be walking around tomorrow. Bullet didn’t go through…”
He went to the pistol and knelt next to it: the frame was big, longbarreled, a Smith amp; Wesson, as he’d thought, but in. 22 caliber. A practice gun for the bigger calibers.
“I’ll let the deputies pick that up,” he said, getting to his feet. “It’s a. 22. He’d have to be fairly unlucky to die.”
“I wonder if he wanted to?” Good Thunder said. “You’d think he would have shot himself in the head.”
“I’m not a shrink, but a shrink once told me that suicidal people will sometimes try to kill themselves in a way which isn’t disfiguring,” Virgil said. “They want to look good.”
Wills, the County attorney, was walking around in circles, talking into a cell phone. When he got off he came over and said, “I want to take Block as soon as we can get him alone. People are going to be talking about this all over town. We need to bust him, get him to the courthouse, get him with an attorney, and make a deal about Geraldine and the guy from PyeMart.”
Good Thunder nodded. “I agree.”
“I’ll leave you guys to that,” Virgil said. “That’s attorney stuff.”
Virgil was bummed: they’d taken an obviously distraught man, who’d said several times that his life was over, and they’d pushed him too hard.
Virgil hauled the others back to the courthouse, where they had a quick conference with Ahlquist, who agreed to send a couple of deputies to pick up Block. “He was looking out his office window, and saw me, so he might have figured out that something’s going on,” Wills said. “When the docs find that wire on Shepard, the word’s going to get out even faster.”
“Nah, I took it off him,” Virgil said. “But people were all over the place, some of them saw me take it off. I think we have to assume that Block will know something’s up.”
“Might make him more interested in a deal,” Wills said. He said to the sheriff, “Earl, you gotta move now.”
Ahlquist left to get the deputies moving, and Wills said, “Wasn’t that just the damnedest thing? Damnedest thing I ever saw.”
Virgil had thought Wills was a jerk; and he might still be, but at the moment, he was pretty human, and he’d been cool enough at the scene of the shooting. People, Virgil thought, were hardly ever just one thing: only a jerk, only a good guy.
As she left, Good Thunder asked Virgil what he was going to do.
“I’ve got to talk to Sarah Erikson-that’s the main thing,” he said. “There are a couple of questions we need answered in a hurry.”
When Ahlquist came back, Virgil told him that he needed to talk to Sarah Erikson: “When are we going to do that?”
“We left it indefinite,” he said.
“Do you know where she is?” Virgil asked.
“Last I heard, she was at her house. Want me to check?”
“If you could.”
Ahlquist called one of the deputies still at the bombed house, who said that Sarah Erikson was in the house, along with her mother, a brother, and a couple of friends. Virgil said good-bye to Ahlquist, asked him to call when Block had been busted.
“No point in calling you,” Ahlquist said. “Unless he ran for it, it’s any minute.”
A deputy came in, looking for Ahlquist, and said, “Hey, Sheriff, Randy called from the hospital, they’re taking Shepard into the operating room, but the docs say he’s likely to make it.”
Virgil left for Erikson’s, and on the way, took a call from Willard Pye.
“There’s a rumor going around that you’re investigating my bidness,” Pye said.
“Can’t talk about rumors,” Virgil said. “So, how’re you doing, otherwise?”
“Cut the crap, Virgil,” Pye said. “You think something was going on between my boy and this fella that shot himself?”
“Can’t talk about stuff like that, Willard. I’m here basically to catch the bomber,” Virgil said. “That’s my number one priority, and I’m on the way to talk to Erikson’s wife, right now.”
“I’ll take your evasions as a ‘yes,’ you are investigating PyeMart. Goddamnit, Virgil, we’re clean as a spinster’s skirt on this thing. I just talked to my boy who handled this whole issue-”
“Willard, I can’t talk,” Virgil said. “It’s not proper, and anyway, I gotta go. I’m coming up on Erikson’s.” He clicked off.
Word, he thought, was getting around. If Block didn’t crumble, they could have a problem getting to the mayor and Arnold Martin on Shepard’s testimony alone. And if the mayor didn’t crumble, they’d never get to the PyeMart expediter.
Virgil got on the phone to Ahlquist: “Could you get one of your smartest guys and put him in his private car and have him tag Willard Pye around? I’d be interested if he gets together with Geraldine Gore.”
“I can do that,” Ahlquist said. “I’ll call Pye and give him some bullshit, find out where he’s at.”
“Thanks. Talk to you later, Earl.”
The FEDs were taking the Erikson house apart. Virgil stopped to talk with Barlow, who said that things were just about where they were at when Virgil left. Barlow asked, “Were you around when this Shepard guy shot himself?”
“Across the street,” Virgil said. “Everybody in town knows about it, huh?”
“Well, I know about it, and nobody talks to me, much,” Barlow said.
Sarah Erikson was a brown-haired woman with a long nose and deep brown, almost black eyes, rimmed with red, where she’d been crying; she was dressed in a beige blouse and dark brown slacks and practical shoes, and sat alone in an easy chair, with h
er brother, her mother, and three female friends arrayed on the couch and a couple of chairs brought from the kitchen.
Her brother, whose name was Ron Mueller, told Virgil that his sister wasn’t in very good shape to talk to the police.
“I know that, but I need to talk to her anyway. There are some seriously urgent questions that just won’t wait.”
“We already told the police and the sheriff how ridiculous this whole idea is, that Henry is the bomber. He’s a good guy, he’s always around home, he doesn’t go sneaking off-”
“He’s got that workshop, and there was a half-made bomb,” Virgil said.
“The bomber planted it,” Mueller said. “Plain as the nose on your face.”
“I’m wiling to buy that-that’s why I need to talk to Sarah,” Virgil said. “Because if he’s innocent, there are a whole bunch of other questions that come up, and we need to get them answered. So: I need to talk to her. Now.”
“Be right back,” Mueller said.
Virgil was just inside the door; Mueller went over to Sarah and spoke to her quietly, and nodded, and she nodded, and Mueller turned back to Virgil and waved him over. One of the women got up and gave Virgil her chair and said, “I’ll get another one.”
Virgil sat and said, “Mrs. Erikson, I know you’re not in good shape to answer questions, but I do need some answers. You say your husband isn’t the bomber? Okay-but then, who is? You know him, whether you know it or not.”
That got her attention. She’d looked hazy-eyed when he sat down, but now her gaze sharpened up and she frowned.
“What?”
“If your husband is innocent, then the bomb was planted on him. It had to be planted by somebody who knew your husband had a workshop, knew which vehicle was his, knew he could get into your garage-or did you leave the door open last night? Could it have been random, the first open garage the guy saw?”
“No, no, the garage wasn’t open last night. Henry had a lot of tools, he kept the door down.”
“Then how’d the bomber get in?”
Erikson stared at him for a second, then looked over her shoulder, toward the kitchen, and said, “Well, uh, the garage door was down, but we mostly don’t lock the access door on the side. That’s behind the fence and so it’s open, most of the time.”
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