"He's a good guy, Jim is. And I don't think you'd be bored." Virgil gave her a small smile. "You might be a little too busy for the first, oh, ten years or so, to think much about his music."
"Huh." The dog came up and sat on the porch step and Jesse scratched him on the top of the head, between the floppy ears. "Maybe I'll give him a try. Or maybe not, now that I'm a rich woman."
"You ain't rich yet, honey," Virgil said. "Even if you do get rich, it'll be a while before it happens. Might as well fill up the space with Jimmy. You could find out something good."
"I already know something bad, though," she said.
"Yeah?"
"One time, this was five or six years ago, before he was sheriff, he was a deputy. There was a fight down at Bad Boy's, and he came to break it up. One of the guys in the fight gave him a shove, a little punch, maybe, and Jim…I mean, he just beat the hell out of this guy. I mean, beat the hell out of him. Cuffed him, dragged him out to the patrol wagon, banged his head off the ground, banged his head into the car. He was way, way rough."
"Two things," Virgil said, not smiling. "Cops hate to get hit, especially in a crowd of drunks. You can get mobbed if you don't move fast. You get punched, you take the guy down, put him on the floor, put your hand on your gun butt, look at faces in the crowd like you're looking for somebody to shoot. Face them down, right then. Sober them up."
"Still…what was the second thing? You said there were two."
"Maybe he was showing off for somebody in the crowd," Virgil said. "Some guys think the tough stuff impresses women. Hope it does."
She nodded. "I've seen that. Just didn't think about it with Jim." Thought about it a second, then said, "It did make me a little hot."
VIRGIL GOT Judd Jr.'s office on the phone as he drove back to I-90, and the woman who answered said Judd was just going out the door and she'd try to catch him. Judd came up a minute later: "What?"
"You have an aunt in a nursing home in Sioux Falls," Virgil said. "I'm out that way, I thought I'd stop and see her. Could you tell me which one it is?"
"Why do you want to see her?" Judd asked.
"Well, we've had three murders. All three people were elderly, and I'm starting to wonder if maybe the cause isn't back years ago," Virgil said. "So, I'm talking to people who knew your father and the Gleasons back when."
Judd seemed to think a minute, and then said, grudgingly, "That's an idea. It's the Grunewald rest home. It's actually north of Sioux Falls, north of I-90…"
Virgil memorized the instructions and when he'd gotten off the phone, decided the news of Jesse Laymon's claim hadn't yet gotten to Judd. He'd been entirely too calm and matter-of-fact. He wondered if Williamson, working on borrowed time, now, was planning to break it on him like a rotten egg. Let him wander around, unknowing, until somebody said, "Uh, Bill…"
THE GRUNEWALD REST HOME sat on one of two nearly identical hills a mile north of I-90, ten miles west of the Minnesota line, with a county highway running through the groove between the two hills. Both hills were nicely wooded, with broad lawns beneath the trees. The one on the right showed the Grunewald, a wide brick box, three stories tall, with white trim. The one on the left showed neat rows of white stone; a cemetery.
Nice, Virgil thought. The Grunewald residents could look out the windows every day and see their future. Virgil pulled into a visitor's slot in front of the home, and walked inside.
The Grunewald was run like a hospital or a hotel, with a front reception desk and lobby with soft chairs. A tiny gift niche was built to one side of the reception desk, and was stocked with candy, soft drinks, women's and family magazines, and ice cream. A tall black woman in Somali dress was working behind the desk.
She nodded at Virgil and he took out his ID, showed it to her, and asked to see Betsy Carlson. The woman's eyebrows went up, and she said, "She doesn't have many visitors…You'll have to ask Dr. Burke."
Burke was a busy bald man in a corner office down the hall from the desk. He listened to Virgil's story and then shrugged, and said, "Sure. Go ahead."
"What kind of shape is she in?"
"She is…damaged. Hard to tell why. Could be genetics, bad wiring, or she might have taken some drugs and had a bad reaction, or even environmental poisoning. She grew up on a farm. Lots of bad chemicals on a farm when she grew up-they used to spray DDT around like it was rainwater. So, it's hard to know. She's not crazy, she just goes away. Her memories are screwed up, but she has a lot of them. She's never been active and she's gotten less active, so her legs don't work very well anymore…So. She is what she is."
On that note, Burke called back to the Somali woman at the front desk, told her to get somebody to escort Virgil into the home, smiled, and wished Virgil good luck.
Virgil's escort was a middle-aged but still apple-cheeked nurse carrying a plastic garbage bag full of something Virgil didn't ask about. They went through a set of locked doors and Virgil asked, "Everybody's locked in?"
"No. We have a locked area for Alzheimer's victims, because they tend to wander and the younger ones can be pretty aggressive. But those doors"-she jabbed a thumb back over her shoulder, at the doors they'd just come through-"they're only locked one-way, to keep people out. Years ago, before we started locking the doors, we had a very nice man as a visitor. He'd visit every couple of days. It turns out he was molesting some of our residents."
"Nice guy."
"When we started to suspect something was going on, we set up some video cameras and caught him at it." She smiled cheerfully at Virgil. "A couple of our Alzheimer's orderlies escorted him to the lobby so the police could pick him up. He resisted on the way, tried to fight, and was somewhat beaten up before they got him to the lobby. He won't come back here, even when he gets out of prison."
"Hate it when they resist," Virgil said.
"It's a bad idea," she agreed.
THE NURSE SPOTTED Betsy Carlson in a chair facing a television that was showing a man chopping up onions and cabbage with the world's sharpest knives, guaranteed not to get dull. "There she is," the nurse said. She put a hand on Virgil's sleeve and said, "She can be a little difficult, so it's best to be sweet with her. If you push too hard, she gets stubborn."
"Dr. Burke said her memory is messed up."
"Yes, but the memories that go back…those generally tend to be better. She can't remember what day it is, but she can tell you what she was doing in 1962. And she likes telling you. Another thing, though, is that she sometimes gets…she has…hallucinations. She sees bugs in her food."
"And there aren't any?"
"Please. Not only bugs, she sees people. She sees people's faces in the knots in wood. We're scared to death that someday she's going to see the Virgin Mary in a rust stain and we'll wind up with ten thousand pilgrims on the lawn." She paused, and then said, "She'll be happy to see you-but she'll forget your name all the time, and ask for it."
BETSY CARLSON was tucked into her chair with an afghan. She was the ruin of a beautiful woman, with high cheekbones, an elegant, oval face, and what must have been fine, delicate skin, now furrowed with thousands of tiny wrinkles. Her hair was cut short, and her hazel eyes were glassy and placid. She smiled reflexively when Virgil pulled up next to her.
The nurse said, "Betsy, you have a visitor."
She stared at Virgil for a moment, uncomprehending, then frowned, and asked, "Who are you?"
"Virgil Flowers. I'm a police officer from Minnesota."
"I haven't done anything," she said. "I've been here."