“I’ll talk to him,” Virgil said.
“I already did,” Mattsson said. “I don’t know if it did any good.”
“Rolf has been known to engage in criminal behavior of a minor sort,” Virgil said to Mattsson. “Sometimes, with his mother. If I have to, I’ll bust his ass on suspicion of something and stick him in the county jail until we get this figured out.”
“Oh, don’t do that,” Frankie said. “With his priors…”
“We’d let him go for lack of evidence,” Virgil said. “It’s better than having him find the guys who did this and then spending thirty years in Stillwater for killing them.”
She stared at him for a moment, then said, “You know, there’s a little too much testosterone floating in the fishbowl. First you and then Rolf, and if Tall Bear was in town, he’d probably scalp them.” Tall Bear was her half-Sioux second son, who was on a towboat somewhere down the Mississippi.
“I’ll talk to him, too, if he comes back,” Virgil said.
–
Sparkle and Father Bill hadn’t said much, and Sparkle stood and said, “Come on, Bill, we ought to get some sleep while we can. Gotta be up early tomorrow.”
“What’s tomorrow?” Virgil asked.
“More interviews,” Sparkle said. “I’m almost done. I’d like to get inside the factory, but that’s not going to happen. Not unless I find a way to sneak in.”
“I wouldn’t allow that,” Bill said. “I’d tie you up and lock you in the trunk of the car if you tried.”
“Too much testosterone,” Frankie said again, and the other two women nodded.
When Father Bill and Sparkle had gone, Mattsson told Virgil that she hadn’t gotten anything solid on the men who’d attacked Frankie, but she had the names of a few possibilities.
“I leaned on Lucas for his asshole database and he gave me two names down here. I talked to them and they pointed me at a half-dozen guys who might do that sort of thing. I’ll be rounding them up tomorrow. If I find somebody who won’t show me his lower left arm, I’ll be going for a warrant.”
“Good,” Virgil said.
–
Mattsson left to get some sleep and Virgil asked Frankie what they’d all been talking about when he arrived. “Everybody looked pretty involved.”
“Well, you know Sparkle,” Frankie said. “She recognized Cat’s name and that whole case. Sparkle and Father Bill-they’re, I don’t know, effective bullshitters when it comes to psychology. They got her talking about it and it all kinda came out. Bizarre doesn’t even cover it; it was like a war crime, what that man did to her. Then Father Bill started doing therapy…”
“Oh, boy. I hope she doesn’t regret that. Or worse, start flashing back,” Virgil said.
“She already has flashbacks. She said so.”
“How about you?” Virgil asked. “How’s your head, aside from the concussion?”
They talked for a while, about the attack and what it meant. “The cops told the paper, and a couple of reporters tried to call, but the hospital pushed them off,” she said.
“Yeah, that’s gonna happen,” Virgil said. “Do what you want-talk or not.”
“I’ll think about it,” she said.
–
Virgil’s phone rang and he glanced at the screen: BCA.
“Yeah?”
“Virgil, a guy called here and he wants to talk to you about that house up in Frogtown. He says it’s urgent.”
Virgil took the number and called it; finished his beer while the phone was ringing. The man who answered said his name was Joe Werner. “I work at the zoo. I wasn’t at your meeting, but I heard about it. I might have something you should know, but I don’t want it to get out that I told you.”
“If I can keep it to myself, I will,” Virgil said.
“Okay. It might not be anything…”
“I’d like to hear it.”
“I saw that TV thing about the house, where you went looking for the tigers, where they delivered the dryers, where that Simoniz guy lived,” Werner said. “There’s a guy here at the zoo, works here, named Barry King. He lives on the next block down from that house.”
“Huh. Interesting. What are you thinking?” Virgil asked.
“Well, uh, I really don’t want it to get out that I told you this, but Barry’s basically a jerk and he’s always got money problems. If you told me that you’d arrested Barry for stealing the tigers, I’d have said, ‘Yeah, I can see that.’ Anyway, I was thinking, if somebody asked Barry where you could get those dryers delivered… and if he knew a cheap place for rent…”
“Got it,” Virgil said. “You keep quiet about this, okay? I’ll be on it first thing in the morning. Thank you.”
–
Got the tigers?” Frankie asked.
“Not yet, but I might have a tail,” Virgil said.
His tip to Daisy Jones could have a nice payoff, he thought, and as far as Jones knew, she’d still owe him. A twofer.
18
Virgil left a phone message for Jenkins and Shrake and suggested that they meet at the BCA building at eight o’clock the next morning for another trip over to Frogtown. Jenkins was still up and sent a text back, saying that Virgil wouldn’t make it to the BCA at eight o’clock unless he got up at five o’clock in the morning-“No fast way to get across the south end of the Cities at that time in the morning.”
Virgil thought it over, agreed, and changed the meeting time. “Nine o’clock or as soon after that as I can get there.”
–
Virgil made it to the BCA at ten after nine. He’d stopped at the Mayo before heading north again, but Frankie was asleep and he left her that way. Shrake, looking fresh and smelling of French cologne, said he and Jenkins hadn’t gone out the night before because the trip to the possible tiger den “broke our focus. You want to nail yourself a cougar, you can’t be thinking about tigers.”
They drove in Virgil’s 4Runner to the same neighborhood they’d been in the night before, the two thugs giving Virgil a hard time about his vintage black “Hole” T-shirt.
“I reject your ignorant criticism,” Virgil said. “Courtney Love had a terrific voice and a good band behind her.”
“Wasn’t that hard to look at, either,” Jenkins conceded. “That doesn’t mean your shirt isn’t ridiculous. For one thing, it’s a size too small.”
The conversation continued, but they got to the target house about two hours too late. When they arrived, a St. Paul cop car was parked in the street in front of the house. “I’m suffering from a sudden lack of confidence in our mission,” Jenkins said.
“Ah, man. Let’s go see what’s going on,” Virgil said.
–
A St. Paul police sergeant named Random Powers came out the door as they walked up to the house. Powers knew Jenkins and Shrake and said he’d just taken a missing persons report from the girlfriend of a man who’d disappeared that morning, two hours earlier.
“Is his name Barry King?” Virgil asked.
“Yeah. You know where he is?”
“No, I don’t,” Virgil said. “Goddamnit.”
Virgil told Powers about the BCA investigation and the cop said, “Go talk to Gloria. Be my guest. And… try to look in her eyes.”
Virgil, Shrake, and Jenkins found Gloria Ortiz sitting on the living room sofa, drinking a glass of green stuff. Ortiz was a pretty, brown-eyed woman with blond streaks in her dark hair and a gold crucifix dangling down her intriguing cleavage. She identified herself as Barry King’s live-in fiancée.
“I don’t know what happened. He got up, he said he was going out to run. He was wearing his running shorts and shoes and a T-shirt, and he went off. Then he didn’t come back. He’s supposed to be at work-when he didn’t come back, I got worried and called the police and asked if a runner had been hit by a car or anything.”
Powers, who’d followed them inside, said, “We got nothing like that.”
Shrake asked Ortiz, “You guys been getting along? Any chance he, you know… might be looking for a better opportunity?”