The Mayo docs said when he came out of anesthesia, he wouldn’t respond even to medical questions and had begun weeping.
He would get better, but it was gonna hurt and it would take a while.
—
Virgil got back to Johnson’s cabin after midnight and found Johnson and Clarice waiting.
“Heard all about it,” Johnson said. “How come you didn’t shoot him in the heart?”
“I didn’t have a lot of time to perfect my aim,” Virgil said. “Or even get my gun out of my pocket. I ruined a perfectly good parka.”
Clarice said she’d have been happy to patch it for him, but she didn’t know how to sew. “Maybe Frankie does.”
“I don’t think she does, either,” Virgil said.
Every time he stuck his hand in his parka pocket, he pushed his finger through the bullet hole and looked down to see the finger wiggling at him. He couldn’t seem to help himself, and the hole was slowly getting larger. Even when he resolved not to put his hand in his pocket, he did it anyway. He took the coat off and hung it on a peg by the door.
Johnson asked, “Are the cops going to investigate you tonight?”
“Not any more,” Virgil said. “Why?”
“Because we’ve got an excellent bottle of wine, a 2014 Christopher Creek Pinot Noir, which I could have one glass of, and you and Clarice could finish, but I don’t want to do that if somebody’s coming over to test your alcohol content,” Johnson said.
“What, you guys are wine freaks now?”
“Johnson is. Turns out the only wine he likes is expensive,” Clarice said. “I’m good with any old sangria, as long as it’s got ice cubes in it.”
Johnson broke out the wine, and Clarice got giggly, and Virgil got as mellow as he could get a few hours after shooting somebody in the gut, and they traded theories about David Birkmann and what love could do to you.
“I’m not sure it was love,” Clarice said, as she drank down her second glass of wine. “Maybe he just wanted her, you know, trying to get some status in the old hometown after all those years of being Bug Boy. What sparked him off was, she told him he couldn’t have her. That he was Bug Boy and that he was going to stay that way forever.”
“Dave did tell me he didn’t know much about sex,” Virgil said. “I’m not ready for a psychiatric analysis of David Birkmann vis-à-vis Gina Hemming, but I’d really like to know about him killing Margot Moore. He was friends with her . . . sort of. They used to talk over at the donut shop, I know that.”
“Yes, that was . . . weird. Awful,” Clarice said.
“What I think is, Dave got used to killing stuff over the years,” Johnson said. “Bugs, coons, rats . . . whatever. You do it long enough, and casually enough, snuffing them out without thinking, that’d make it easier to kill a human being.”
Virgil: “You really think so?”
“I do,” Johnson said. “Not if a guy goes out and knocks over a deer or two during hunting season—I know a lot of hunters who jump through their asses telling themselves that it’s all right, it’s the way of the world and all that, and they feel kinda bad about the dead animal. But I think if you kill things every day, day in and day out, for years . . . you get some calluses.”
—
When the wine, Johnson, and Clarice were gone, Virgil called Frankie and told her all about it and that he felt bad about it. She might have had a callus or two herself, Virgil thought as they talked. She had a harsh, clear view of justice, and she wanted it done. “Virgil, wake up: maybe the guy started as an accidental killer, but he wound up as an assassin, with a silenced pistol, killing a woman who’d never done anything to him. And if you hadn’t shot him, he’d have shot you and Peters, and there would have been two more people murdered and he’d still be on the loose,” she said. “Besides, he’s not even dead. If it’d been me, I might have put a couple more bullets in him.”
Virgil said, “Pweters.”
“What?”
“His name is Pweters, not Peters.”
“Probably a misspelling on his birth certificate,” Frankie said. “Nobody is named Pweters. God, I wish I could get my hands on you right now.”
“I wish you could, too,” Virgil said. “But it’s going to be another day or two.”
“Maybe I should drive over,” Frankie said.
“Nah. You don’t take your chick to the gig,” Virgil said. “I’m gonna be stir-fried in bureaucracy and I’m gonna be in a bad mood. Couple of days, sweetie.”
—
The shooting team, two senior BCA agents, showed up the next morning. Virgil knew both of them and thought they were capable investigators. They interviewed Virgil and Pweters separately, recorded everything, then walked Virgil through the investigation that led up to the shooting.
When it was all done, one of the agents, whose name was Russell Roy, told Virgil that they would take his Glock back to BCA headquarters for a test firing to harvest slugs for comparison with the one that had buried itself in the wall behind Birkmann and would return the gun to him the following week. “You’re temporarily suspended, with pay. Don’t tell anyone I told you this, but you’re not going to have a problem as far as we’re concerned. Good investigation and the shooting was fully justified. Jeff Purdy agrees.”
“Thank you,” Virgil said.
Roy glanced around—they were in Birkmann’s house, where the crime scene crew was at work—and said quietly, “Jon Duncan says he’s arranged for you to be suspended for three weeks, with pay . . . if you get my meaning.”
“Excellent,” Virgil said.
“One more thing,” Roy said, again the lowered voice. “Jon said that since you’re suspended . . . you’re done with the Barbie-O investigation.”
“Aw . . . man. Yes. Yes.”
—
Virgil told the reporter/editor/publisher of the Republican-River that he couldn’t comment on a continuing investigation, but neither Purdy nor Pweters had a problem with talking.
Purdy said, “We’ve worked hard to train our men to be the best law enforcement officers in the region,” thus taking credit for the overall quality of the work, “and I feel Deputy Pweters certainly met our standards,” thus subtly suggesting other well-trained Buchanan County deputies under Purdy’s command would have done at least as well, and that while Pweters met the standards, he possibly hadn’t exceeded them.
Pweters said, “I can’t talk too much about it, but I have to say I’ve never encountered a situation quite as desperate as what I faced with Agent Flowers at David Birkmann’s house. We were seconds from being murdered ourselves, and if Birkmann had been a tiny bit quicker with his .357 Magnum, the outcome might have been a tragedy rather than a victory for Buchanan County law enforcement,” meaning him.
His statement somewhat obscured the question of exactly who shot Birkmann, and the first couple of paragraphs of the Republican-River’s story reported that Birkmann had been shot in a confrontation with Deputy Luke Pweters and BCA Agent Virgil Flowers, further obscuring the issue. The Republican-River’s reporter/editor/publisher clearly understood Flowers wouldn’t be buttering their toast after the next election, but Pweters might be.
—
Margaret Griffin was told by her employers that they were satisfied with Jesse McGovern’s statement to a Minnesota state law enforcement officer—Virgil—that they wouldn’t manufacture any more dolls, and she was recalled to Los Angeles.
She tracked down Virgil the day after the shooting and said, “Congratulations. Sounded like a regular old Trippton rodeo. I’m glad you weren’t hurt.”
“So am I,” Virgil said. “This is an unusual town.”
Griffin had white patches on her forehead, nose, and cheek where she’d been burned by the hot pizza. “You okay on the shooting?”
“Looks like,” Virgil said. “Are you headed home?”
“You take it easy, Margaret,” Virgil said.
“I will. Hello, Santa Monica.” She pronounced it Son-ta Mo-NEE-ka.
Later that afternoon, on her way up to Minneapolis–St. Paul International, Griffin hit a patch of black ice with the Prius’s slick hard tires and skidded off the road backward into a shallow ditch north of Rochester. She wasn’t hurt, but the car had to be towed, and statements made to Avis, and all the flights the next day were full. She wound up staying two extra days in Minneapolis, with temperatures in the minus teens.
Virgil didn’t laugh when he heard about it, but he may have smiled.
—
Fred Fitzgerald was told by a county judge to keep his nose clean after the county attorney announced that Fitzgerald would not be prosecuted on the gross misdemeanor of interfering with a body because the information he voluntarily gave to authorities was instrumental in solving the murders of Gina Hemming and Margot Moore.
He walked.
—
Elroy and Lucy Cheever got their loan from the Second National Bank of Trippton and bought the Ford dealership. By the end of the year, they’d driven the Dodge dealership out of business. The bank itself was sold a few months later to Wells Fargo, and Marvin Hiners stayed on as the manager of the local branch.
—
Rob Knox, as it turned out, had a greasy thumb: over the next year, he added fried chicken, open-face roast beef sandwiches, and Jell-O with carrot shreds to the menu of Le Cheval Bleu, and the restaurant began to prosper. Mac and cheese with truffles . . . mashed potatoes with brown mushroom gravy aux chanterelles . . .
Justin decided that he wasn’t female but was gay, and their relationship continued.
—
Virgil planned to leave town the third day after the shooting. The night before, he had dinner with Clarice and Johnson Johnson at the steak house. Johnson was unusually subdued, and finally Virgil asked Clarice, “What’s wrong with Johnson?”
She lifted her hands above her head and waggled them and said, “He just . . . he just can’t leave well enough alone. It’s like that goddamn airplane . . .”
“It’s purely a business deal,” Johnson said.
“It’s morally reprehensible, in my opinion.” Clarice said to Virgil. “Although I’ll probably still sleep with him, if only to give my horses a barn to live in.”
“Tell me,” Virgil said.
Johnson had been making inquiries, having noticed that Margot Moore had no living relatives to sue Birkmann for her murder. “I talked to Hemming’s sister . . . she’s not going to sue, either. She said all she wants is to be done with it all. So Birkmann’s got some assets . . .”
“How does this affect you?”
“Dave’s gonna need some money for his defense,” Johnson said. “His extermination techs are already talking about getting together to buy the business from him.”
Clarice rolled her eyes, turned to Virgil, and said, “Johnson thinks he can pick up the Dunkin’ Donuts franchise. Cheap.”
Virgil pointed his fork at Johnson and said, “Johnson, you don’t know a fuckin’ thing about running a donut shop.”
“Neither did Dave,” Johnson said. “All the employees transferred over to Dave from his wife’s lover. They’d be transferred over to me—everybody needs jobs. I’m thinking, ‘Donut King of Trippton, Minnesota.’”
Virgil said, “Hail to the chief.”
The deal closed in May. Johnson FedExed a dozen Bavarian Kremes to Virgil, and they were only a little squashed when they got to the farm.
—
Virgil left on the third day after the shooting. He stopped at a Kwik Trip in La Crescent to get cheese-and-peanut-butter crackers and a Diet Coke and was backing away from the cooler when he bumped into a woman coming down the aisle behind him.
He said, “Excuse me,” and noticed the gold-flecked green eyes, and the woman smiled at him and said, “That’s okay.”
The voice sounded familiar. He took another look at the auburn hair and the freckles and the foxy face, now some fifteen years older than when he saw it in the yearbook: “Jesse?”
“Do I know you?” she asked, turning back to him. She was nearly as tall as he was.
“We’ve spoken.”
She took only a second. “Virgil?”
Virgil nodded. “I hope you’re not going ahead with the i-Phone-eeeO. I don’t want to come down here again.”
“You couldn’t catch me this time . . . unless you’re doing it now.”
Virgil put up both hands. “No. Nope. No way. I’m going home, and Margaret S. Griffin should be back in L.A. by now. The thing is, if you go with the iPhone-eeeO, Apple will probably put out a hit on you. Those guys won’t be messing around with some low-rent PI with court papers. They’ll send out some guys with thick necks and they’ll cut your head off, and I’ll be down here on another murder.”
“How long do you think those two guys would last in Trippton? With my girls?”
“Okay . . . you got me. But I’m begging you, wait until I’m on vacation or something.”
She laughed, a happy sound, then cut it off and said in a hushed voice, “David Birkmann? I can’t believe it. It’s like saying a duck did it.”
“He has . . . issues,” Virgil said. “The whole thing would be a tragedy, if it weren’t basically so slipshod and stupid.”
They walked up to the counter together and checked out, McGovern with a Ding Dong and a Pepsi, Virgil with a Diet Coke and his crackers.
In the parking lot, she said, “I’d give you my new phone number and tell you to call me up the next time you’re in town, except you’d use the number to trace my call.”
“Well . . .”
His parka was open, and she caught the placket of his shirt with a forefinger, gave it a tug. “You take it easy, cowboy.”
“You, too,” Virgil said. Being the enlightened, feminist that he was, he would have denied checking out her ass as she climbed in the truck, but he did and found it seriously acceptable. When she backed out, he read off her truck license plate and wrote it down when he got in his rented 4Runner. Not as good as a phone number but useful nevertheless.
—
Frankie, of course, freaked out when she saw him. “What happened to you? You didn’t tell me . . .”
“Got beat up by some women; they moved around some cartilage,” Virgil said. “I’m basically okay. I know I look a little funny.”
The dog was bouncing his forepaws off Virgil’s chest, and Virgil gave him a thorough scratch, and Frankie pointed Virgil at a chair and said, “Tell me every bit of it. From the time you left on Sunday.”
He did, and at the end she said, “You were crazy to go in that house without your gun in your hand. I don’t care if you had it in your pocket. You knew he was a psycho.”
“A mistake,” Virgil admitted. “Though if we’d gone in with guns, he might have lawyered up, and we wouldn’t have gotten our voice recordings.”
“All right. Does your busted nose hurt so much that you’re off kissing for a while?”
“I don’t believe so,” Virgil said.
—
So then they did all the things you do when you get home from a trip, all the dirty clothes wadded up and tossed in the washing machine, the bag put away. Virgil told Frankie about his three-week suspension, with pay, and she suggested that they take a trip somewhere.
“We could run back over to Trippton,” he said. “Ice fishing, snowmobile riding, we could shop for sex toys in Bernie’s Books . . .”
“I’m thinking Phoenix or Los Angeles. Someplace warm and dry.”
“We’ll talk about
it . . .” he said. “Hell, let’s do it. We’ll call for tickets tonight.”
At three-thirty, just before dark, Virgil walked Honus through some of the neighboring streets. When he was sure that nobody was looking, he let Honus take an oversized dump on the lawn of a guy neither of them particularly liked. Virgil kicked some snow over it, and the two of them went on their way. A fine Minnesota tradition, he thought. There’d be layers of well-preserved dog poop in the guy’s yard come spring, and he’d be rolling along with his lawn mower and SKAT! Dog shit everywhere.
Honus looked up at him, and they both laughed at the thought.
—
That night, he and Frankie fooled around again, then read in bed, Honus curled up between their feet. They slept in the next morning, Virgil finally crawling out at nine o’clock, Frankie rolling over for another five minutes.
He was shaving when she came in, stared in the mirror for a minute, said to herself, “Hello, gorgeous. You seem to look better every day. How do you keep it up?”
“Gotta be the great sex,” Virgil said.
She said, “Huh,” opened the medicine cabinet, and fished out her birth control pills.
Virgil said, “Give me those.” He took them from her fingers, dropped them in the wastebasket, and continued shaving.
She blinked a few times and said, “No way.”
“Way,” Virgil said.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
John Sandford is the pseudonym for the Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist John Camp. He is the author of twenty-seven Prey novels, most recently Golden Prey; ten Virgil Flowers novels, most recently Escape Clause; and six other books, including three young adult novels, written with Michele Cook. He lives in New Mexico.
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