Merrill and Little Curly glanced at each other, then they both looked at Virgil and shook their heads: "Nope."
"That's what we needed," Virgil said. "Thank you much."
When they were gone, Stryker, who was looking at the list, said, "First thing tomorrow. I'll have these guys run down by ten o'clock."
AT THE MOTEL, Virgil got a beer, carried it up to his room, broke out the laptop, looked at the motley, disconnected collection of paragraphs about Homer and his investigation of the Bluestem murders.
Sat down and wrote,
With the.357 in his hand, Homer rocked back on his heels, and wondered whether somebody was trying to frame Jesse; was trying to screw the investigation; was trying to provide contrary evidence for a later trial; or if Jesse might actually have something to do with the murders.
Whichever it was, somebody had deliberately fed Merrill into the investigation-which was why Homer asked Bill Judd Jr. about the lawn-mowing service. The hole in the ground that used to be Judd's place held no gas-fired engines, as far as Homer could see. No lawn mowers or snowblowers or utility carts. So if Jesse hadn't gone up there with her truck…how'd she gotten the gas up there, the gas that was used as the accelerant? Maybe she'd run up a mile-long hill in a thunderstorm with fifty or sixty pounds of gasoline, and carried the empty cans out the same way?
Bullshit, Homer thought. Somebody was setting her up, trying to push Homer into searching her house, where the gun was planted in the second-most-obvious place. Be interesting to see if the.357 was actually the murder weapon…
He knew at least one possible suspect who had access to Jesse's bedroom, but it was so obvious that it couldn't be right; couldn't be Stryker. Couldn't be.
Virgil yawned and closed down the laptop.
Who'd fed Merrill to him?
Have to ask.
18
VIRGIL AWOKE to a tapping on the motel-room door. Light was pushing through the drapes, so it had to be morning. He crawled across the bed and looked at the clock: seven A.M. Another knock, more insistent this time.
"Hang on," he called. He got his pistol, checked it, stepped over to the door, not crossing in front of it, reached across, and rattled the chain.
No gunshots. "Who is it?"
"Joan," Her voice quiet.
Virgil popped the chain, opened the door, standing there in his shorts and gun. "What's going on?"
She was dressed in worn jeans and a T-shirt, and had a bandana wrapped around her head, covering her hair. "I was headed out to the farm, I saw Jim on the street, he says you're thinking Jesse. I'd like to hear about it."
"Come on in," Virgil said. She stepped inside and he closed the door and put the gun away, and said, "I might be onto something, but this goddamned town, I'm not telling anybody." He grinned at her, trying to soften it, make it a little jokey.
"Including me." She crossed her arms. Always a bad sign with a woman, Virgil thought. "That'll be a first," she said, "Virgil Flowers keeping his mouth shut."
Virgil said, "I'm gonna shave. You can watch." She trailed him to the bathroom, and Virgil splashed water on his face, and said, "When you come into a small town like this, on a dead case, you have to do something to get things moving again. I talk. It works."
She was skepticaclass="underline" "You mean, you're a naturally reticent, quiet, bashful, introverted sort of guy, who'd never say anything about anybody, and it's all been a technique to mess with us Bluestemmers?"
Virgil was smearing shaving gel on his face. He stopped under his nose, looked at her in the mirror: "First time I ever heard 'reticent' or 'Bluestemmer' in a spoken sentence."
"So. Are you just fuckin' with me?"
"Joanie, you are a great woman and that's the truth," Virgil said, "but we've got at least five dead people and one psycho. I came here to get him. That's what I'm going to do."
She showed a smile. "So it's not Jesse. You said 'get him.'"
He rinsed the razor under the faucet and said, "That first night we went out, I mentioned that you were smarter than I thought. You just wormed an objective personal pronoun out of me…Want to wash my back?"
WHEN JOAN had gone, Virgil went online, checked his mail. Sandy, Davenport's researcher, had shipped him what she could find on Williamson, and it was all fairly routine. No arrests, three speeding tickets over two decades, three years in the Army, including Iraq in '90. Never married. Adoptive parents not listed in Minnesota directories, hadn't filed income taxes with Minnesota in at least ten years.
He didn't bother checking Jesse: he had Jesse's story.
Judd: he spent an hour crawling through the paper he had on Judd. The accountant, Olafson, had done the numbers, but he was hoping for a name, an event, an association…
And did no better than he had with Jesse.
He thought about the.357. Wondered how long he should wait. Sooner or later, he thought, there was a good chance that somebody would suggest searching Jesse's house. He wanted to see where the suggestion came from, but didn't want to wait too long.
VIRGIL CAUGHT STRYKER at ten o'clock, as he was talking to a slightly hungover carpenter with a bandage on his nail hand. The carpenter said that he'd ridden up to the fire with a friend named Dick Quinn. Stryker skated around a direct question of whether the carpenter knew how Jesse Laymon got there, but instead showed him a list of the names he had, and checked off who rode with whom, and who drove.
The carpenter had seen Jesse, but didn't know how she got there. When they walked back out to Stryker's truck, Virgil asked, "Anybody see her truck? Or give her a ride?"
Stryker said, "One guy saw her and thought her truck was at the end of the line. But nobody was looking at trucks, they were looking at the fire."
"Want to know what I would do?" Virgil asked.
Stryker shook his head: "After yesterday, I'm not sure."
"I'd have one of your deputies watch Williamson, get one to track Bill Judd, and one to watch Jesse. If two of them look like they're about to collide…"
"If I stake them out, everybody in the county will know in fifteen minutes," Stryker said. "Including them."
"Better than piling up more dead people," Virgil said.
"Virgil…let me finish this. I only have to find a couple more people. Then we'll talk about a stakeout. Now-what're you doing today?"
"Maybe push Williamson," Virgil said. "Maybe push Jesse. Maybe talk to Judd some more. Somewhere in that triangle, there's an answer."
"You do that, and I'll nail down this list. Then let's talk."
VIRGIL HAD JUST GOTTEN in his truck when his phone rang. He opened it: Pirelli.
"We're getting together at the Holiday Inn, in Worthington," Pirelli said. "There's a rumor going around that we're about to raid the meatpacking plant, looking for illegals. If you and Stryker want in, you need to be here."
"When are you moving?" Virgil tapped his horn at Stryker, who looked back. Virgil waved him over.
"Around noon," Pirelli said. "Feur is on his way back to his farm from Omaha. We've got a guy just loaded fifty gallons of gas into the back of his truck, up at the ethanol plant. He should be getting to the farm a little after Feur, unless one of them stops along the way."
Virgil rolled down his truck window, put his finger over the mouthpiece, and said to Stryker, "Pirelli."
Pirelli was saying, "…you need to get briefed, if you want to be in on it."
"We'll be there by eleven," Virgil said. "You need more troops?"
"No. And we want to keep this off the air. We don't want any curious deputies sticking their noses in. We don't need strange guys with guns."
"Give us an hour," Virgil said. He closed the phone.
Stryker: "Today?"
"We're leaving right now for Worthington," Virgil said. "Pirelli wants to keep it off the air. You ought to check out, make up some kind of excuse, and we're rolling."