“Pictures,” Virgil said.
Knox nodded. “I had this Instamatic. Like this little Kodak pocket camera. I was wearing fatigue pants, and, shit, I had this bad feeling that I could get blamed, that we could all get blamed, and Warren was banging her like mad and Sanderson was yelling at him and he wouldn’t stop, and Sanderson ran away and I took a shot of Warren banging this chick, and then I took off, but I took a shot of the kids, and the old man, and then I went running out of there. I was thinking if they tried to blame all of us we could use the pictures as evidence against Warren, who did the whole thing.”
“But nothing ever happened?” Virgil asked.
“Nah. We didn’t really understand it all at the time, but that whole country was going crazy. People were stealing everything that wasn’t nailed down, people were trying to get out, they were stealing boats and robbing stores for money, it was crazy. Chester, when he found out about the killing, he freaked out. He said we had to get the fuck out of there and keep our mouths shut. That’s what we did. We all got jammed in that van and we took off for the airport, and we camped out there for four days before I could get out, but some of the guys-Warren, I think, and maybe Sanderson-went with the boat.”
“Ray said he saw Sanderson back at home just a couple months later, so he didn’t go with the boat.”
“Well, shit, they just took them to Indonesia,” Knox said. “That’s only, like, three or four days away.”
“I don’t know anything about that part of the world,” Virgil said.
They all sat there, staring at the lake, then Virgil said, “I’ll see what I can do about the photos. About attributing them to Ray. But… I don’t know. I’m gonna have to have them, and if we have to argue about it in court, Warren ’s gonna know where they’re coming from anyway.”
Knox bit his lip and then said, “What if I tell the guys from Chicago to put a bullet in your head and walk away?”
“I’m heavily armed,” Virgil said.
“That won’t work, then,” Knox said. He dipped into his jacket pocket and handed Virgil an envelope. “What I did was, I scanned the negatives and then I printed them out. I really don’t have the negs with me-if you can get him with these, I’ll bring the negs around as the final nail in the coffin. But I’m not giving them up. They might be the only thing between me and Ralph. As long as he doesn’t know where the negs are…”
“When Wigge was killed, his fingers were cut off. He was tortured,” Virgil said. “If Warren was his good buddy, why’d he do that?”
Knox said, “Because he’s nuts.”
“But that’s worse than nuts-it’s unnecessary. The pro they brought in, he might be willing to kill some people, but he’s not gonna risk his neck so somebody can get his rocks off slicing a guy up.”
Knox rocked back and forth on the bench for a moment, then said, “After Sanderson got killed, I sent Warren copies of the pictures. Didn’t say who had them, I just said, ‘Back off or the police get the pictures.’”
“Ah, man. He’s been looking for the pictures,” Virgil said.
“That’s what I think.” Knox turned his head to Virgil. “I’ll tell you what, Mr. Pogues-Boy, I don’t think you’re gonna get him. He’s too well-connected. It was all too long ago. I don’t even know who could prosecute it as a crime. The Vietnamese? You think he’d get a fair trial? I don’t think anybody would send him back there… I mean, I just think… I think he got away with it.”
“Then why all the killing?”
“Well-they couldn’t hang him for it, but if these pictures got out, that’d be the end of him, businesswise. Look at those little kids he gunned down. Look at him fuckin’ the dead woman. Nobody would touch him. He’d be like Hitler.”
Virgil made Knox walk through it again, then said, “You think you’re okay where you’re at? For the duration?”
“Couldn’t find me in a million years,” Knox said.
WHEN THEY were gone, Virgil called Davenport.
“I got a killer,” he said. “Might not be able to get him, because it was all so far away and long ago, but I’ve got pictures of the crime in progress.”
“Anybody I know?” Davenport asked.
“Yeah.”
Long moment of silence, and then Davenport said, “Virgil, goddamnit…”
“Ralph Warren,” Virgil said.
Longer moment. Then: “I gotta see the pictures. How fast can you get back?”
“I’m heading out now,” Virgil said. “I’ll be back by dinnertime.”
“Then come to dinner at my place. Six o’clock,” Davenport said.
“See you then.”
VIRGIL GOT his gear out of the cabin, threw it in the truck, and went to get a beer to drink as he headed south. The fisherwoman was putting the little girl in a new Mercedes station wagon, and she nodded at Virgil and asked, “Was that some kind of meet?”
“What?”
“Well, they told me in the bar that you’re a state investigator, and a writer, but you were up here on that awful murder, and all of you guys were wearing black sport coats like you’re covering up guns, and I could tell that those other guys were hoodlums of some kind.” The woman had a small handhold on his heart, and it was getting stronger. The way she could roll that fly line out there…
“A meet. That’s what it was, I guess,” Virgil said. “I’d be happy if you kept it under your hat.”
“Mmm. I’ll do that. Virgil Flowers? Is that right?”
“Yes, ma’am.” She had little flecks of gold in her eyes.
“Are you armed right now?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Virgil said.
“Huh. Well, my name is Loren Conrad.”
“Pleased to meet you, ma’am.”
She walked around the car and stopped before opening the door. And the little girl, maybe ten, was looking at Virgil out through the glass of the passenger-side window, solemn, as if something sad were about to happen. “Maybe if you come up again, during the week, we could go fishing.”
17
VIRGIL THOUGHT about the woman and daughter as he drove back. Had Mom been hitting on him, just the lightest, mildest of hits? What was the sadness in the small girl’s eyes? Had she seen other men spoken to when Dad wasn’t there?
The whole thing seemed less like an invitation to romance than an invitation to a story of some kind. Not journalism, a short story. Something Jim Harrison might write.
Virgil had had an interest in short stories when he was in college, but journalism seemed more immediate, something with its claws in the real world. The older he got, though, the wider he found the separation between reported facts, on one hand, and the truth of the matter on the other hand. Life and facts were so complicated that you never got more than a piece of them. Short stories, though, and novels, maybe, had at least a shot at the truth.
He was so preoccupied by the idea that he almost ran over a mink that crawled out of a ditch, poised for a dash across the road. He dodged at the last minute, wincing for the crunch as the animal went under the tire, felt nothing, looked in the wing mirror and saw it scurry across the tarmac, unhurt.
A small blessing.
THE WORLD was little more than a month past the summer solstice, so the sun was still high in the sky when he got off I-94 and turned south on Cretin Avenue in St. Paul, past the golf course with all the rich guys with their short pants and stogies, and farther south, hooked west on Randolph, then over to Davenport’s house on Mississippi River Boulevard.
He parked on the street so he wouldn’t block the three cars already in the driveway, and as soon as he stepped out, smelled the barbecue, heard the people talking in the back. He walked around the garage and pushed through the back gate, and Weather, Davenport ’s wife, spotted him and called, “Virgil Flowers!”