Williamson had one question for Virgiclass="underline" "Is this the end of the murder epidemic in Bluestem? Were the Gleasons, the Schmidts, Bill Judd Sr., were they all killed by Feur and his men? And what was the connection?"
"I'd like to answer that question, but I can't, because I don't know the answer," Virgil said. "As far as I'm concerned, the investigation continues."
Davenport called on Virgil's cell as he was shouldering his way out of the press conference: "You did good," Davenport said. "Now-when are you going to collect the nut job?"
JESSE AND JOAN were waiting on the sidewalk outside, along with Laura Stryker and a dozen people from the town. Joan said, "What the heck were you guys doing out there?"
Stryker snapped at her: "Our job. I'm the sheriff of this county. They didn't hire me to catch a bunch of dogs."
There was a murmur of approval from the crowd, and Joan said, fists on her hips, "So now there are dead people everywhere and you've got blood all over you…"
Jesse was as angry as Joan, and it occurred to Virgil that they'd make good sisters-in-law. Virgil said, "I've got to go," and he walked past them out to his truck, did a U-turn, and drove over to the hospital. A couple of sheriff's cars were still parked outside the emergency entrance, cops on the lookout for any further trouble. Inside, Pirelli was out of it, sound asleep, one arm and shoulder encased in fiberglass, one leg bandaged and elevated.
A DEA guy in the hall said, "Virgil," and Virgil asked, "How are they?"
"Hangin' in there. I think…Doug made it this far, I think he's going to hold on."
"Prayin' for them," Virgil said, though he wasn't, because he didn't think prayer would help. He went back to the motel.
JOAN WAS COMING down the hall from the direction of his room, saw him, and asked, "Are you pissed at me?"
"Mildly," he said. "I don't need to take any shit about what happened today. Either to Jim or me or even the dead guys. It just happened-it's nobody's fault but Feur's, and he paid for it."
"We were scared," she said.
"That's okay. I don't want to hear about it. Tomorrow, you can tell me all about being scared."
She touched his hair, with the matted blood. "I could wash your hair out for you. That's going to hurt."
"You could do that," he said.
THEY SNUGGLED UP on the bed, no sex, just snuggling, Virgil full of Aleve, his hair wet, and she said, "In the press conference, when you said you didn't know if the killing was all done…what you meant was, it isn't."
"I don't think so. In fact…"
"What?"
"We're looking for Bill Judd Junior. Got watches out for him, but he seems to be gone. The thing is, I think he might be dead."
She rolled up on her elbow. "You still think Williamson?"
"The Williamson thing freaks me out. When we braced him…I sort of bought it. He seemed as freaked out as I was, when I figured it out. He was screaming at us."
"So…?"
"So I don't know. If you pointed a gun at my head and told me to spit out a name, I'd spit out his. You think a guy, he's in the Cities, he's a newspaperman, wouldn't he know who his real mother was? Just do a search? He says he didn't, he didn't care who she was. And I guess even if he did, he wouldn't necessarily know that Judd was his father."
"If he'd ever gone for a birth certificate, to get a passport or something…"
Virgil rolled over on his back, felt the skin pulling around the cuts on his scalp and face. "I got to think about him…What was he talking to Jesse about? I saw you guys together in the back of the room."
"Well, he started out by shaking her hand, saying 'long-lost sister,' and then he started pushing her around. Where was she last week? When did she really find out she was Judd's daughter? Where was her mother?"
"Like he thought she might be involved?"
"He was unpleasant," Joan said, "But he's never been a real pleasant man."
"I keep trying to think, who else?"
SLEEP PULLED HIM UNDER. He woke up at two o'clock, and Joan was gone. Went to the bathroom, and then back to the bed, went under again, thinking…Who else? Nobody had said a thing about the.357…
Of course, Jesse wouldn't; but he didn't think that Jesse was the killer, because that would be aesthetically incongruent. She was just too good-looking.
He smiled, and mentally wrote his little story, in which the best-looking woman would never be the guilty one:
Homer shook his head. The shoot-out with Feur, the death of Feur, had blocked up a lot of potential information.
Brilliant, though, the way Stryker had picked up that seam in the hillside. Homer would never have seen it. And thank God for Stryker's reflexes: he cut Feur down before he had a chance to open up on Homer himself.
Mmmm…
Anyway:
ARCHDUKE FRANZ FERDINAND of Austria got his ass shot in Sarajevo in 1914, touching off World War I. His wife was killed at the same time. A little less than ninety years later, a bunch of guys in Scotland formed a band called Franz Ferdinand, which was why Virgil was pulling a Franz Ferdinand T-shirt over his head the next morning at seven o'clock.
Find out what happened to the DEA guys. He stopped at a gas station across the street from the motel and bought a MoonPie and a Coke: sugar, fat, and caffeine, the breakfast of champions.
Pirelli was awake in a standard room, Gomez asleep on a couch under a window. Virgil asked, "How're you doing?"
Pirelli said, "I'm hurting. Ah, God."
"How're your guys?"
"Both still alive." Pirelli reached out his good hand, and knocked on the wood-grained plastic of the bedside table. "I think, I hope…"
"What about Harmon?"
"I talked to his wife last night," Pirelli said. "She's coming out today."
"I don't want to be there," Virgil said.
"Neither do I."
They both looked into a corner for a moment, and then Virgil asked, "Was it worth it? If you'd had a good idea somebody was going to be killed…?"
"Fuck no, it wasn't worth it." Pirelli shook his head. "Don't tell anybody I said that. If I'd known what was going to happen, I'd have set up five hundred yards away and hosed down Franks and his trucks and the house and killed the whole bunch of them. But I didn't know."
"So what's next? For you?"
Pirelli shrugged: "Media, today. Docs say I'm gonna be out of work for six months or so. Then back to Chicago. Try to figure out why we're all of a sudden rolling in heroin down in Gary…same ol' same ol'."
"Nobody's pissed at you?"
Pirelli shook his head. "DEA guys get killed. It's not like the FBI."
STRYKER CAME IN. "Morning, bright eyes," he said to Pirelli. Gomez sat up on the couch, shaking his head, smacking his lips. Stryker said, "Talked to the doc one minute ago: things aren't looking too bad, but they're gonna move you all to Rochester today. Mayo."
"I don't think I need the Mayo…" Pirelli started.
"They say you're gonna need some reconstruction on that shoulder," Stryker said. "A couple of pins. Might as well get the best."
THEY TALKED FOR A WHILE. A DEA team was flying in from Washington to reconstruct the fight, and the house, and do an after-action report. The South Dakota ethanol plant had been taken down without a fight; most of the plant was legit. The lab was not: it was a clean, efficient, meth production line. There was a national stop-and-hold on Bill Judd Jr.
They were talking about that when Stryker took a call, listened for a minute, then said, "Five minutes."
And to Pirelli, Gomez, and Virgiclass="underline" "Bill Judd. He's dead. Up at his old man's place."
STRYKER AND VIRGIL went together in a county truck. Gomez and another agent followed in one of the blacked-out DEA trucks, out to the main drag, out of town and up the hill to the Buffalo Ridge park entrance, through the park gate, and up the driveway to Judd's.