Rough country vf-3

by John Sandford

  THE AGENCY WAS HOUSED on the fifth floor of the Laughton building in Minneapolis, a fashionably international lump of blue glass and steel. Mann introduced him to the board, a group of well-dressed men and women who were snarling at one another around a maple table.

  Virgil made a brief presentation of what he'd found, and one of the men blurted out, "I was at a Twins game," and, one by one, without being asked, the other members provided alibis, most of which would be easy to confirm. One guy didn't have one, but he was six-five and his shoes must have been thirteens, Virgil thought. He made a note anyway. If any of them had done it, it was going to take a break from somewhere else, from somebody else, to prove it.

  By four o'clock, he was on his way north again.

  Kept thinking about what Owen had said: a backwoods gay basher making a point.

  Could be, but he doubted it. It usually took something more specific to trigger a murder; not always, but usually. Money, sex, obsession, competition, alcohol… something. Something he was missing.

  8

  ZOE TULL'S SISTER'S HOUSE was more like a cabin than a real house, and sat on a shallow bay down a dark dirt road on Fifty-Dollar Lake. Zoe'd talked Virgil back to the place by cell phone, and was standing in the yard when he pulled in.

  "The crime-scene guy who came to my house couldn't find any fingerprints but he said the door had definitely been forced," she said. And, "Hello."

  "Hi. Yeah. I talked to him," Virgil said. "He said your locks wouldn't have kept a small child out."

  "That situation will be fixed tomorrow." She wrapped her arms around herself and shivered. "I don't like this. I don't know if it was a coincidence, or if it's because I'm talking to you, or if it's some goof who kills women."

  An older woman pushed out of the house: Zoe's sister. She looked a lot like Zoe, slender but more weathered, with cool, distant green eyes and a nose that was a bit too long. She was wearing a plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up over her elbows, and jeans. She looked at Virgil for a moment, nothing shy about it, then looked past him for a minute, and said, "Nice rig."

  "Works for me," Virgil said.

  "You all best come in before the bugs eat you alive," the sister said.

  "My sister, Sig. Signy," Zoe said. And to Signy, "This is Virgil."

  SIGNY'S HOUSE SMELLED like pine wood and maybe a hint of bacon and pancakes; had a tiny kitchen, a small living room with a couch and a couple of easy chairs on an oval hooked rug, a woodstove in one corner, and a hallway that apparently led back to a couple of bedrooms. Virgil took one of the chairs and Zoe asked, "So what'd you find out?"

  "Not much. Talked to a couple of people who didn't like McDill, but they didn't do it. Found out that Ruth Davies will inherit a hundred thousand dollars, and that she knew that McDill had had at least one affair, so I guess it's possible that she thought that their time was ending. Oh. She has no alibi."

  Signy had gone to the kitchen and came back with three bottles, handed one to Virgil. Negra Modelo. Virgil took a swallow and said, "I'm sorry, ma'am. I can't drink when I'm on duty."

  "That's a goddamn shame," Signy said. She handed another bottle to Zoe, and had one for herself. "You don't think this Davies woman did it?"

  "I didn't say that," Virgil said.

  "You sound like it," she said.

  "Okay. I don't think she did it."

  "Who do you think did?" Signy asked.

  "I don't know enough of the players," Virgil said. "I'll be up for a few days, figure that out."

  Signy smiled at him and showed a chipped front tooth. "Got an ego on you, I'll say that."

  SIGNY'S HUSBAND was in Alaska. "One time he went out for a loaf of bread and wound up in Churchill, on Hudson Bay. This time, it's Alaska."

  "Sounds confused," Virgil said.

  "He is confused. A nice guy, but confused. I don't believe he'll be back," she said.

  "He could come back," Zoe said.

  "I don't think so," Signy said. To Virgil. "He keeps moving further north. Last time, he barely made it home. This time, he's over the horizon. I don't think he'll make it at all."

  "Life," Virgil said.

  "Show Virgil the picture he sent you," Zoe said.

  Signy got up, went to a table in the front hall, picked up an envelope, and carried it back to Virgil; Virgil slipped out a photograph and tipped it toward the lamplight to see it better. It showed a thin, dark-haired man standing on the bank of a creek, looking at a bulldozer that had about sunk out of sight in what appeared to be a bog, or maybe quicksand. A chain led down to the dozer from a second bulldozer; the second dozer was apparently trying to pull the first one out of the muck.

  "Guess what he got a job driving," Signy said.

  "The bulldozer?"

  "He has accidents," Zoe said.

  Virgil gave the photo back to Signy, who asked, "You want another beer?"

  "I shouldn't," Virgil said. She went and got him another one, and said, "I'd give you a sandwich, but I don't have anything in the house. I usually eat out."

  "Got a bag of sweet corn in the truck," Virgil said.

  Signy's eyes lit up: "I could do some sweet corn. That's just boiling water, right?"

  VIRGIL GOT THE CORN and she looked in the bag and said, "Cucumbers. I could put together a salad. I've got some apples and lettuce…" Virgil got the impression that she wasn't big on cooking.

  Signy wandered off to the kitchen and Virgil sat down again and said to Zoe, "Tell me all about this band. Tell me about Wendy and Berni and whoever else…"

  ZOE TOLD HIM that the band had been around for two or three years, but that Wendy had been something of a Grand Rapids celebrity since middle school. "She's always been the best singer that anybody ever knew. When she was a little kid, she used to sing with a polka band, and even travel around with them. Around the Iron Range, I mean. Not all over."

  Wendy and Berni became best friends in middle school, and Berni learned the drums because she wasn't any good at other musical instruments. Together they played in a high school rock band that later became a country band when Wendy decided that she had more of a country voice. She also decided that women got a better break in country music than in rock.

  After high school, she worked for a while at a local convenience store, and then for her father, breeding dogs. "Nasty hairy yellow-looking things," Zoe said. "Though I guess they get a lot of money for them. They're some kind of rare dog, or something."

  "I wonder if she literally breeds them," Signy said from the kitchen. "She breeds everything else."

  "Shut up, Sig," Zoe said.

  All the time she was working, Wendy had a band. The band was getting better-they were shedding the old high school part-timers, and were picking up some pros-and Wendy's voice was getting richer. So was her love life.

  ZOE SAID, and Signy agreed, between bouts of looking into the corn kettle, that Wendy was a heartless slut who played her lovers off against each other, and sometimes slept with men to demonstrate her independence.

  "But she's really talented. You heard her," Zoe said, her face alight. "She's got this magnetism that pulls people in. Even McDill. That's what all the big stars have. You can't figure it out, but you can feel it."

  Berni, on the other hand, was a below-average drummer, Zoe said. "She can do it, but she's not so creative. Wendy told me that."

  "You think Wendy'll dump her?" Virgil asked.

  Signy said, "If Wendy thought Berni could cost her a recording contract, she'd drop her off the bus on the side of the interstate."

  WENDY KNEW THAT she had to move-Taylor Swift, Zoe said, was two years younger than Wendy, and was already a huge name with the best-selling album in the U.S.

  "But you know what? Taylor Swift is like Grace Slick. You know who Grace Slick was?"

  "Jefferson Starship?" Virgil ventured.

  "Yeah, and another band, Jefferson Airplane, before that. Everybody thought that she was going to be the queen of rock and roll. Then along came Janis Joplin,
and Janis Joplin was the queen of rock and roll. Wendy is Janis Joplin. But she's got to make a move. She knows it. Time is pressing on her."

  WENDY AND BERNI LIVED together in a double-wide out at Wendy's father's place, Zoe said. Berni and Wendy's father were tight.

  "I think he's the one that got Wendy back with Berni, instead of with me," Zoe said.

  "Are you still in love?" Signy asked.

  "Well, what do you think?"

  Signy said to her sister, "I think it might be a lack of other opportunity. If you were down in the Cities, with lots of other women, you'd be fine. But up here, what're you going to do? Go out with Sandy Ericson? I mean, Wendy's what you got."

  Zoe faked a shiver and said to Virgil, "Sandy goes about two-twenty in her boxer shorts."

  "And it ain't muscle," Signy said. To her sister: "You know why Wendy was plucking your magic twanger? Because you're an accountant, and she thought she might learn something about handling money. That's why."

  "Sig-shut up," Zoe said.

  VIRGIL ASKED, "If Berni thought Wendy was going to dump her because of McDill, would Berni have shot McDill?"

  Signy and Zoe looked at each other, and then simultaneously shrugged. Zoe said, "I don't know if Berni knows anything about guns. I could ask."

  "Don't do that. You already had one nut creeping around your house." Signy said, then, "Water's boiling. I'm gonna drop that corn in there for one minute and then we're gonna eat, so you might as well come now."

  AS THEY STOOD UP, Virgil said to Zoe, "I can't think why somebody would break into your house, that would be connected with this killing. Can you?"

  She shook her head. "No."

  "On the other hand, we have a violent crime, and you know all the main local people around the dead woman, and you've been seen hanging out with me, and somebody breaks into your house. Is this the first time you've had a break-in?"

  "Oh, yeah-I mean, we had some kids who were breaking into houses in my neighborhood, a couple of years ago, stealing stuff to buy drugs, but they caught them right away."

  "There are burglaries," Signy said. "It's not like this place is totally crime-free."

  "But the time link makes it interesting," Virgil said. "She's been up around the crime scene, she's seen with me, and we get the break-in."

  "On some of the crime shows, you get people who don't know what they know, and that's why they're in danger," Zoe said. "You think that's like me? I don't know what I know?"

  Virgil grinned at her and said, "Crime shows and mystery novels are totally different things than real life, you know? What I'm thinking is, you had somebody come in there, planning to threaten you, or even hurt you, or to find out what you were saying to me, or to find out what you knew, and he came in with a pipe or just his fists, and this voice says, 'I've got a gun,' and he says, 'Fuck it,' and takes off."

  "Or she," Zoe said.

  "Or she. And if you knew something, I think you'd know it. Wouldn't you?"

  Signy said, "Well, we had that secretary of defense, who was always talking about known unknowns, and unknown unknowns, and all that-maybe Zoe could have an unknown known."

  Virgil looked at her for a second, then said, "Two beers might have been one too many. I didn't understand a thing you said."

  SIGNY HAD a tiny kitchen table, and three mismatched chairs. As they sat around, working on the mediocre salad and terrific sweet corn with real butter, Virgil asked Signy what she did, and she said, "I've got a quilt store in Grand Rapids."

  "Ah. That's pretty cool. I like quilts," Virgil said. "My mom makes them and I've got three of them."

  "Damn near can't make a living at it," Signy said. "You can get so close… but then you always need an extra fifty dollars for something. You'll think everything's working this week, and then you tear up a tire or something."

  Zoe said, "Signy went to the U in Minneapolis. In art."

  Virgil reevaluated, and so obviously that Signy said, "What? You thought I was a hillbilly woman, right?"

  "Nah. I come from a small town myself," he said.

  "It's Joe that's dragging you down," Zoe said to Signy. "You oughta get a divorce. Like, next week."

  "Divorces cost money and he's not bothering me, so… when I get the money," Signy said.

  "I don't even know why you married him; he's such a loser," Zoe said.

  "Well," Signy said, and she picked up one of the corn cobs on her plate and held it erect, contemplated it with slightly crossed eyes. About ten inches long, Virgil thought. "I don't honestly know why," she said after a minute.

  Zoe fell into a coughing fit, and Virgil asked, "Can you breathe?" and she patted herself on the chest and said, "I inhaled a corn."

  "'Zat what it was," Virgil said. And he asked her, "Are you staying here?"

  "Until the locks are on," Zoe said. "The lock guy is coming tomorrow morning."

  "What're you going to do tomorrow?" Signy asked Virgil.

  "Push on people," Virgil said. "I'm going to run around and push on people."

  "I'd like to see that," she said; her head was tilted, and she stroked her cheek with the fingers of one hand. "I really would like to see you work."

  VIRGIL CRASHED at a chain motel on Highway 169 South, the kind where they don't bother with drywall, but simply paint the concrete blocks a dusty shade of yellow; but offered double-length parking for customers pulling boats. When he checked in, the desk clerk asked him how long he'd be there, and he said, "Three or four days."

  Before he went to sleep, in the time he usually thought about God, he thought about Wendy. One problem with looking at a talent in isolation, he thought, was that it was almost impossible to judge exactly how good they were.

  Wendy was as good as anyone he'd heard in a small bar in Minnesota-but on the other hand, those bands were in small bars in Minnesota, and that was the problem. Put Wendy up against Emmylou Harris, and she might sound like Raleigh the Talking Bulldog.

  Of course, that didn't mean so much if the people around her were convinced that they stood at the edge of a gold mine; on the one hand, you had life in Grand Rapids; in the other one, the possibility of Nashville and Hollywood and… whatever.

  Then he thought about God and, after a while, went to sleep.

  IN THE MORNING he put on a fresh, but vintage, Nine Inch Nails T-shirt, took five of the eight remaining free miniature Danishes in the complimentary breakfast, and two cups of coffee, and ran out to the Eagle Nest. Another good day, sun creeping up into the sky, almost no wind. He wondered if Johnson was fishing, or if he'd given it up and gone home.

  That God-blessed Davenport.

  The problem with Davenport, Virgil thought, was that he tended to think in very straight lines. Brutally straight. We have a murder in Grand Rapids, the victim's prominent, the BCA agent with the highest clearance rate in the agency happens to be on a lake nearby, so what do you do? Send in Flowers.

  Was there anything creative in that? Was there a break for a new guy, somebody who could use the experience? Did it take into account the agent's emotional state, or need for respite?

  Virgil thought not.

  Just drop in that fuckin' Flowers, and forget it. Let him sink or swim.

  MARGERY STANHOPE was leaning against a railing, looking out over Stone Lake, when Virgil came up beside her. "Still bummed?"

  "I can't shake it," she said.

  Virgil looked out over the lake and said, "Well… another month, and you can take the winter off."

  She sighed and asked, "What are you up to?"

  "I'd like to talk to people who are still here who knew McDill. I need some names."

  "You want to talk one at a time, or all together?"

  "Both," Virgil said. "I'd like to have the whole group in, and then, when we're done, I'll ask if anybody has anything they'd like to follow up with me, privately. Give them my cell number to call."

  "A bunch of them went on a bear-spotting trip to Steven's Island. They'll be back for lunch. How about right aft
er lunch?"

  Virgil patted the rail. "See you then," he said.

  HE CALLED ZOE. "Get your locks?"

  "The guy's here now. He'll be done in an hour," she said.

  "Where'd I find Wendy and Berni and the rest of them?" Virgil asked.

  "Probably down at the Schoolhouse. They've rented it for the month; they're working on a record."

  THE SCHOOLHOUSE was east of town, and had once been a one-room schoolhouse. A red-brick cube with a chimney at one end and a door and bell tower-no bell-at the other, it was surrounded by a gravel parking lot with a half-dozen SUVs scattered around in no particular pattern. When Virgil got out of his truck, he could see through a glass-brick wall the flailing arms of a drummer, but he could hear not a sound. He climbed the steps, went through the front doors, found himself in an entry room facing a skinny, nervous blond woman who was sitting on a desk, reading what looked like a manuscript, but turned out to be a musical score, and chewing gum in rhythm with the faintly audible bass.

  Virgil said, "I'm looking for Wendy Ashbach."

  The woman chewed and asked, "Who're you?"

  "The cops," Virgil said.

  He must've said it in a cop-like way, because she nodded and said, "Virgil. I heard about you. You were at the fight last night."

  "Yeah…"

  "They're laying down the basic tracks for 'Lover Do,' and they'll be greatly pissed if you mess it up."

  "I don't want to mess anything up, but I need to talk to Wendy and maybe Berni and anybody else who might have something to chip in," Virgil said.

  "Okay. You ever been in a recording studio?"

  "Nope."

  "Follow me in, and sit on the couch against the back wall," she said. "You don't have to be real quiet, but be a little quiet. They're working."

  The control room was probably twenty feet long and fifteen feet deep, with a long window facing a room full of women musicians-a bass guitar, a lead, keyboards, a violinist, all wearing headphones, playing a fairly simple song. On the other side of the musicians' room was another, smaller room, also with a window, and Berni was inside, pounding on her drums.