When he finished with the Cheevers, Virgil went out and stood on her porch for a minute and scratched his head. What he really needed to do, he thought, was think. And maybe take a couple of non-blood-thinning painkillers for his nose. Instead, he headed for Long’s greenhouse.
—
Long was a tall, sober man with an engaging smile, but a smile with some distance to it, as though he did it only professionally, which he did. His hand was narrow, bony, and cold, as Virgil imagined an undertaker’s might be.
“I never really had much to do with Gina, not even back in high school,” Long said. “Can’t really tell you why. We didn’t click, I guess. Our politics are different enough that we spent a lot of time being polite to each other. She’s given money to my opponent in every single election.”
“Because she didn’t like you?”
“No, because Washington made her into a Democrat and I’m a Republican, and never the twain shall cross. She was one of Mr. Obama’s few advocates in Trippton.”
After leaving Hemming’s house on Thursday night, Long said he had been working alone at his greenhouse office on issues for the State House of Representatives, which had already convened, although it was temporarily in adjournment. He offered Virgil a raft of emails with time and date stamps on them, indicating that they’d been sent Thursday night between nine o’clock and eleven o’clock, when he’d gone home.
Virgil didn’t know whether or not the time and date stamps on the emails could have been faked. He suspected that a hacker could do it, and Long had that semi-geek attitude and appearance suggesting a familiarity with technology. He’d seen the same geekiness in men who had a problem relating to women. Long wasn’t married, but, as Rhodes had said, neither was he gay. He simply seemed to have one passion and that was politics.
Although he was considered a serious political power in the Republican Party, he didn’t make any effort to impress his authority on Virgil; he was polite, and spoke in complete, well-parsed sentences.
Before Virgil left him, Long said, “I watched you when you were investigating the school board. I found that . . . interesting. Do you think you’ll find Gina’s killer?”
“Yeah, I do,” Virgil said. “I think he or she will be somebody who was either there that night or somebody who’s attached to the people who were there. Who do you think did it?”
Long thought about the question, then said, “I don’t know. I’ve thought about it, but I haven’t come to any conclusion. And I agree with you: it was somebody who was there that night or somebody attached to them. Somebody who knew about the meeting and wanted to speak with Gina. Most likely . . . not an accident, but unintentional. There have been some rumors about the possibility that a vagrant riverman did it, somebody off a barge, but I don’t believe it. No, Gina was killed by somebody who knew her and probably was welcome in her house.”
—
When he left Long, Virgil continued down the street to the offices of Trippton Medical and Surgical, where he caught Ryan Harney as he finished with a patient. There were two more patients waiting, but Harney’s nurse told Harney that Virgil was in the office and Harney had him shown in.
“I don’t have a lot of time, I’ve got people waiting, but you sort of caught me between anuses.”
“Won’t take much of your time,” Virgil said. “I’m here about Gina Hemming . . .”
“I don’t know who killed Gina. Or why they would. I don’t even suspect anyone. If I suspect anything, it’s that somebody snuck in a back door to rob her, maybe some guy off the river, and picked up something handy and hit her with it.”
“Didn’t find that, whatever it was,” Virgil said. “What exactly is your relationship with Gina anyway?”
Harney shrugged. “I don’t have one. We went to high school together; we both belong to Trippton National, we’re somewhat friendly; but she’s a pretty woman, and I’m married. So there’s that. I have a checking account at Second National, but my savings and investments are through the Edward Jones office.”
“Essentially, no regular contact except out at the club? You guys play golf or tennis, or something?”
“I’m golf. I’ve never seen her on the course. I think she might be tennis, but I don’t pay too much attention to those people. Gina and I don’t . . . didn’t . . . hang out with the same people at the club. We’re friendly, but we’re not close.”
“You think that’s how other people in town would characterize your relationship?” Virgil asked.
“Sure. Talk to people at the club, if you want. Tell them I sent you up,” Harney said.
“Did you finance your business through the bank?”
“No, never did. Our partnership borrowed money for the building here—we own it—from a specialist medical financing company twelve years ago. We’ve never needed additional financing. And we’ve got the medical care business here sewn up. There are five partners, we’re all on staff at the clinic when we’re needed there, and there are three more docs down there who aren’t partners. But it’s all . . . sewn up.”
Virgil nodded. “After you left Thursday night?”
“Went home. Our office hours start at eight, I get up at six to exercise, catch the morning news, get cleaned up, help get the kids ready for school. I was one of the first people out of there. I’ll tell you, Virgil, the meeting was really boring—I wouldn’t have gone if I didn’t think I had to. And I’ll tell you this: there was no tension there, at the meeting. Nothing that I could see. Nothing at all.”
Virgil could tell when he wasn’t making headway, so after a bit more talk, he let Harney get back to his work. As he was leaving, Harney said, “Get up here on my table. I want to look at your nose.”
“I got a doc down at the clinic,” Virgil said.
“Let me look.”
Virgil let him look, and when he was done, Harney said, “You live in the Cities?”
“No, over in Mankato.”
“There’s a Mayo branch there. Get one of their ENTs to take a look. There’s still quite a bit of swelling, but I don’t like the way the end of the septum looks right now. You might need a little more work there.”
“Well . . . okay. If they do something, it’ll hurt, won’t it?”
“Oh, yeah.”
—
Virgil called Johnson, who was nearly unintelligible with one of his sawmills working in the background, but managed to get Clarice’s phone number. Clarice worked in the office, and when she came up, Virgil said, “If I wanted to buy some whips and chains, maybe a couple of vibrators and so on, could I do that in Trippton?”
“Nope. Not as far as I know. Why would anybody do that?”
“Because maybe they wanted to get vibrated?”
“Hang on one second, Virgil . . .” Virgil hung on for ten seconds, then Clarice came back and said, “I put ‘sex toys’ in the search field at Amazon. They sent me to their ‘Sexual Wellness’ category, where they list entire departments: Condoms and Lubes, Performance Enhancers, Bondage Gear, Sex Toys, Exotic Apparel, Novelties, Men’s Toys, Sex Furniture, and Sensual Delights. Those are all departments. I am clicking on ‘Sex Toys’ . . . and the first two entries are the ‘Utimi Upgraded Silicone Ten-speed G Spot and Clitoris Vibrating Vibrator,’ which is right next to the ‘Utimi Ten-speed Silicone USB-charging Vibrating Anal Butt Plug Prostate Vibrator.’”
Virgil said, “You didn’t make that up?”
“No, I didn’t. By the way, they’re all eligible for Amazon Prime.”
“That’s a relief. I’d hate to wait for three days,” Virgil said. Getting no response, he said, “You’re telling me that a sex toys store in Trippton would be superfluous.”
“That’s my belief, yes,” Clarice said. “If you bought something here, everybody in town would know in eight seconds. If you buy from Amazon, maybe it’s an electric toothbrush or a rubber dog
bone, and it comes in a brown box.”
“I’m sorry to have bothered you, Clarice,” Virgil said.
“And I’m sorry if I embarrassed you, Virgil,” Clarice said.
Virgil hung up. Anal butt plug and prostate vibrator? What the hell was happening in the world? Somebody with a man bun and a skateboard in Portland, Oregon, might be able to explain how it was all very natural and healthy, but he wouldn’t find that guy in Trippton.
—
He called Johnson again and Johnson shouted over the whine of the circular saw, “She help you out?”
Virgil said, “Yeah. I need your expertise on the Hemming murder. You got someplace close that we can talk?”
“How about the Cheese-It? I could get a sandwich, and you could get a Diet Coke. I could be there in twenty minutes.”
“See you there.”
—
The Cheese-It was one of the lesser restaurants in a town full of them—lesser restaurants, that is. Virgil had once ordered a BLT at the Cheese-It and they’d forgotten to put the “B” in between the two pieces of soggy white bread. Johnson alleged he’d once sent an open-face roast beef sandwich back to the kitchen because it moved. On the other hand, there was nothing wrong with their Diet Cokes.
He got a Coke, and a table, and Johnson arrived a few minutes later, ordered a grilled cheese sandwich and a Sunkist Orange Soda, dropped into the chair opposite Virgil, and asked, “What’s up?”
Virgil said, “It’s Thursday night and it’s snowing, and you’ve killed Gina Hemming, maybe more by accident than by plan, and you decide to get rid of the body to delay the discovery of her death. Maybe to obscure the exact time of death . . . Maybe hoping nobody will ever find the body.”
“You dump her in the river,” Johnson said.
“Right. How do you do that in the first week of January with the river locked up tight? Who could carry her down to the effluent outflow at the sewer plant? It’s too far, and she was too heavy. The snow was really coming down, but there were also people working at the sewage plant—you, or your truck, could be seen.”
“I could have carried her,” Johnson said.
“Not many guys with your kind of strength,” Virgil said. “If you killed her and wanted to throw her in the river, would it even have occurred to you to park down there at the plant and walk a half mile with a body on your back and throw it in . . . and not expect somebody to see either you or your truck?”
Johnson shook his head. “No. It wouldn’t occur to me. It could be the guy wasn’t half bright and so he did it and got lucky. It was snowing like hell, so from his point of view, that might have been a good thing. If he thought somebody might have been coming, he could have stepped a few feet off the trail and not be seen . . .”
“True,” Virgil said.
Johnson scratched his neck and said, “I don’t believe it. He’s kinda frantic, he’s kinda panicked, he wants to get rid of her, he thinks of the river. Why? He could haul her up in the woods and stick her in a snowdrift and nobody would find her until the end of March.”
“You ask the right question: why?” Virgil said.
Johnson slapped the tabletop and said, “Because he knew the river. It was the first thing that popped into his head.”
“Why would he think that? The river’s locked up.”
“Because he’s a river rat. Because he’s got an ice-fishing shack out there, and a ten-inch auger. Cuts a couple three holes, hooks them up with a chisel, shoves her under. Like a hole you cut when you’re pike fishing. Hopes she doesn’t show up until spring, down in Dubuque. Or maybe never.”
“If you did that, somebody might still be able to see that big hole, right?” Virgil asked. “If somebody looked? Like us?”
“If I were doing it, I’d cut nice clean holes, the smallest that would take the body. I’d shove her as far down as I could, so the body wouldn’t get stuck under the ice right away. You could do that with the ice chipper, do it right, not afraid to get your arm wet, you could get her eight feet down. I’d let the holes freeze over. The river water wouldn’t come right to the top of the ice, so you’d have to pour more water in after the first freeze. Scuff some broken ice over it, drill another hole or two . . .”
“Probably still see where it was,” Virgil said.
“Not after you scuffed it up a little, packed some snow on it, got some fish blood on it. Drag some fishing stools over it . . .”
Virgil thought about it for a couple minutes, then asked, “You still got those sleds?”
“Absolutely. When do you want to go?” Johnson asked.
“This afternoon? I’m gonna have to get some warmer gear on. How many shacks out there?”
“Maybe fifty, in two groups, and a few scattered,” Johnson said. “Some of them will be locked up. Most of them not. Won’t be too many people out there in the afternoon—things don’t really get going until after dark.”
“Let’s do what we can. I gotta think if the guy’s a river rat, and if he has a shack, he’d have used his own place . . .”
“Meet you at the cabin,” Johnson said. “Hot dog. This is gonna be fun. I’ll bring my .45.”
“Johnson . . .”
“Fuck you, I’m bringing it. I got a concealed carry permit now.”
“That’s . . . really good,” Virgil said.
“I thought so,” Johnson said. “Gives me a certain status.”
—
They rendezvoused at the cabin, Johnson trailering in two Polaris snowmobiles. Virgil, now dressed in his camo deer-hunting suit with ski gloves and a hood, let Johnson unload them. Johnson handed him a helmet, said, “All gassed and ready to go. Follow me out, but try not to run over my ass.”
“I’ll do that,” Virgil said. His suit’s hood wouldn’t fit over the helmet, so he pulled the helmet on and yanked the drawstrings of the hood tight around his neck, making a seal around the bottom of the helmet. As he settled onto the sled, which was already turning over, he hooked the kill switch cord to his suit belt. Johnson lurched down the bank and onto the frozen river, made a wide left turn, and leaned on the throttle.
Virgil followed, and they settled into a steady sixty miles an hour over the relatively smooth, snow-covered ice. The sky was a brilliant pale blue to the east, over Wisconsin, with a sullen gray cloud bank moving in over the bluffs above Trippton, to the west. A good day to ride, but maybe not a good night.
A mile north, they turned out onto the main river, where the ride got rougher, with windrows of snow like soft speed bumps running perpendicular to their tracks. Virgil opened up the machine a bit more, pulled even with Johnson, a hundred feet to one side, as they headed toward a cluster of ice shacks three or four miles downriver.
Though the day was still bitterly cold, he was comfortable enough with the heated handles and the windproof suit; the ride was exhilarating, and he could have done a few more miles, almost regretting it when Johnson swung into a circle that would slow them into the first fishing village.
And it was a village, maybe like something that would have been built on the frontier a hundred and fifty years earlier. There were several shacks that were built as mock upscale houses, with porticos and pillars; a few like tiny barns, a couple with quarter moons like outhouses; one painted to resemble a brick house, another a bar, and a dozen that were unpainted plywood boxes. There were several tents. There was also an ordinary travel trailer with a couple of tubes extending down from its floor to surround the ice holes beneath; it had a TV antenna on the roof. As they came in, two snowmobiles headed downriver, away from them, and they could see a third one coming out from the direction of the Trippton marina.
Johnson steered them to a shack built to look like a log cabin, with smoke coming out of a narrow tin smokestack, and dismounted and killed the engine. Virgil got off his snowmobile, and Johnson said, “We get out of here early enou
gh, we ought to make a run up the river. For the ride.”
“Good with me,” Virgil said.
As they walked toward the shack, Virgil noticed a small person—couldn’t tell if it was a man or woman—walking toward a semitransparent plastic tent. The person glanced at them once, and again, and again, and disappeared inside the tent, though Virgil could see the body shape moving around behind the plastic sheeting.
Johnson said, “Hey.”
Virgil turned back and found he’d left Johnson behind at the door of the log cabin. “Sorry. Got distracted,” he said, as he crunched back across the ice. “Who’s this?”
“Rick Thomas,” Johnson said, as he led the way to the cabin door. “He’s the mayor of the ice town, and he’s usually around. He sleeps out here, half the time.”
He pounded on the door, and a man shouted, “Who’s there?”
“Johnson Johnson,” Johnson shouted back.
“Go away. I’m getting laid.”
“With whose dick?” Johnson shouted. “Yours ain’t worked since the Carter administration.”
The door popped open, and a man, who looked like a skeletal Santa Claus, peered out at them and asked Virgil, “What’s that on your face?”
“A squid,” Virgil said.
“Huh. Some kind of religious thing, then?”
—
The cabin was snug, warm, and comfortable, with four holes in the floor and four chairs facing one another, two by two, either side of the holes. A single bunk bed, an easy chair, a shelf of books and magazines, and an electric stove and heater made up the rest of the place. A rack of storage batteries occupied the back wall, fed by a diesel generator that sat outside. The place smelled of fish, both raw and cooked.
“I hope you got that generator isolated or you’re gonna gas yourself to death out here, Rick,” Johnson said.
“I’m all caulked and sealed. I worry about it since what happened to Jerry,” Thomas said. “I got a new CO detector on the wall, too.”
Johnson said to Virgil, “Jerry got all fucked up on fumes. Damn near died. He has one of the better spots out here, too. If he’d croaked, there would have been a hell of a fight over his spot.”
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