Davenport answered on the second ring. “You know what time it is here?”
“ Washington? Should be just after one o’clock,” Virgil said. “You’re always up late-what’s the big deal?”
“Nothing, I guess.”
“You know the band Hole?” Virgil asked.
“Sure. Courtney Love. Pretty hot, twenty years ago.”
“Thought you’d know,” Virgil said.
Davenport said, “So-who’s dead?”
“Bunton called me,” Virgil said. “He and a former St. Paul cop named John Wigge apparently got together at a rest stop off I-35. He says some guy, who he describes as a motherfucker and an asshole, shot and killed Wigge and another guy, whose name he doesn’t know. I’m on my way; we got the Patrol on the way.”
“Where’s Bunton?”
“He says he’s gonna dig a hole in Wisconsin,” Virgil said.
“Gotta dig him out.”
“Thanks for the tip.”
“You know Wigge?” Davenport asked.
“Yeah. Not well. He’d retired when I made detective. I ran into him a few times at crime scenes,” Virgil said.
“I heard that Wigge might take a dollar or two,” Davenport said.
“I heard that. Bad guy. That was my feeling. Made a lot of cases, though,” Virgil said.
“He went to a security service…”
“Paladin,” Virgil said.
“That’s the one,” Davenport said. “Armed-response guys, celebrity bodyguards. You know who Ralph Warren is?”
“The money guy? The real estate guy?”
“Yes. He owns Paladin. The word was, when Warren was building that shopping center/condo complex on the river, the lowlife was screwing up the ambience. So Warren sent in some of his security people to clean the place up, and Wigge covered for him. He got the job at Paladin as a payoff.”
“Huh. I was probably still in Kosovo when that happened. How far did Wigge let it go? I mean, beating people up? Running them off? More than that?”
“Don’t know. A couple of mean old street guys just… went away. What you heard was, they were screwin’ with Warren, hanging out on the corner with ‘Work for Food’ signs. Wanted to be paid to stay away. Then they went away. Supposedly, if you ask Wigge about these old guys, he’ll tell you they went to Santa Monica.”
“Wonder if Utecht and Sanderson and Bunton were involved with Warren?” Virgil asked.
“A good detective would find that out,” Davenport said.
“A good detective would call up Sandy and tell her to do the research,” Virgil said.
“He would,” Davenport agreed. They both thought about that, then Davenport said, “Listen, try to be a little careful about this. Warren ’s been throwing a lot of money at the Republicans, helping out with the convention. He hurried up a big block of condos at Riverside. He’s providing them free for delegates. He’s pretty political. I’m not telling you to back off, but be polite.”
“I’ll be good,” Virgil said. Far up ahead, he could see flashing cop-lights. “Talk to you tomorrow.”
“Hey-Virgil?”
“Yeah?”
“You’re not pulling a boat, are you?”
“No. I’m not,” Virgil said. “Swear to God.”
“Good. Stay out of the fuckin’ boat and on the case,” Davenport said. “If there are really two guys down, and one of them is an ex-cop, you’ll start taking some heat.”
“Talk to you,” Virgil said.
THE REST STOP ran a half mile or so parallel to the highway. A patrolman was parked at the entrance, half blocking the “cars” lane, waving cars into the “trucks” lane. He waved Virgil through, and Virgil went on down to the parking lot. A Chisago County sheriff’s car was parked by the main rest stop pavilion, and four more cars, two patrol and two sheriff’s, were parked at the far end of the lot, engines running, headlights aimed back into the woods along the edge of the rest area. The cop at the pavilion pointed Virgil toward the end, where Bunton had said the bodies would be.
Virgil parked, got a flashlight from his equipment bin, and hopped out. A highway patrol sergeant hustled toward him, carrying another oversized flashlight.
“Flowers?”
“Yeah. Two down?”
“One, at least. It’s complicated. I’m Dave Marshall. Come on. I’ve got your crime-scene guys on the way, this belongs to the BCA.”
“Did you find them, or had they already been found?”
“We found him, after your call.” He gestured back up at the rest stop. “We’ve moved all the traffic into the truck lane, we’re still letting people pee, but nobody comes into this area. I’ve got a guy back in the woods on the north side, keeping an eye on that.”
THE BODY WAS that of a large man, lying on his back, in the trees, arms outspread. He had high, thick cheekbones and a linebacker’s neck: a guy in good shape, carrying no fat, somewhere between thirty and forty. His pant legs had been pulled up when he went down, and his thick, hairy legs stuck down into incongruous red-striped white athletic socks. His mouth was open: no lemon.
“There’s a Beretta, there, off the trail,” Marshall said, turning the flashlight on it.
Virgil spotted it, nodded. “I’m gonna need to pick it up,” he said. “You got any gloves in your car?”
“Yeah. You want them now?”
“You said there was some confusion. Tell me about the confusion.” Marshall nodded. “Look-this guy was probably shot right here.” He pointed down to the flagstone path. “You can see blood on the stones, where he bled out, and then he was dragged back into the brush. See the scrapes? See the heel marks? And there’s more of a blood trail…” His flashlight spotted the blackish stripes of blood on the leaves of the trailside weeds.
“Now, look over here…” He led the way thirty feet down the path. “Another patch of blood. Not as big as the first one, but significant. We thought maybe that the dead guy had been shot once and ran, but there’s no blood on the path between here and there, and this puddle… patch, whatever… seems like it might have taken a few minutes to accumulate. Also…” He pointed the light back off the trail. “We have a second pistol, a Glock.”
He continued, pointing the flashlight back into the brush: “Now, we’ve got a little track between here and the parking lot. Like somebody was trying to stay under cover. And we have more traces of blood…”
“Maybe there was a shoot-out and the shooter was hit.”
“Possible,” Marshall said, “but the word we got from you, from your source, was that there was one shooter and two victims. What it looks like, to me, is that the one guy got killed. The other guy was wounded, and the shooter carried his ass over to the parking lot. He took his gun with him. There’s another drop of blood on the sidewalk.”
Marshall took him through the brush, spotting the blood trail. They carefully stayed off the trail itself so crime scene could work it, and at the parking lot, Virgil looked both ways and then at Marshall and said, “I’m buying your story.”
“We put out word to local hospitals, for a guy with any kind of a wound where it’s not clear where it came from…”
VIRGIL WENT BACK to look at the body, and Marshall went out to his car to get some gloves. When he came back, he said, “Your crime-scene guys might get pissed if you mess with the pistol.”
Virgil said, “That’s why they pay me the big bucks. To put up with crime scene.”
He pulled the gloves on, knelt next to the Beretta, studied it for a moment, then gently lifted it, popped the magazine. Pressed down on the top round: the magazine was light one round. He worked the action and a round popped out of the chamber.
Sniffed the barrel, and smelled oil.
Okay. The dead man hadn’t fired a shot, unless he’d reloaded after he was dead. Virgil slipped the magazine back in the butt of the pistol, replaced the pistol as he’d found it, and put the ejected round on top of it.