VIRGIL ASKED, "It's been suggested that I might check into the whereabouts of a John Yao. Do you know…?"
"John? John wouldn't hurt a rabid rat. The Sextons suggested him, right? Those fucks…"
VIRGIL LEFT with a brown paper bag full of sweet corn and cucumbers.
Why the head shot? Maybe a personal passion, and the killer wanted to mutilate McDill's face? That happened in male homosexual murders of passion, but he wasn't sure about females. Owen was right, though. The head shot had made the killing harder, and no more certain. Something to think about.
Did he have fantasies about lesbians? He considered the proposition and decided that he did not. He had fantasies about women; he'd never considered the lesbian angle. Maybe he'd give it a try, the next time he needed a fantasy.
VIRGIL LEFT the Owens's place behind, headed back into the core of the Cities. First to McDill's house, then to the board meeting, to see what that might produce. He should put more pressure on Davies, he thought, to see if he could squeeze something out of her; and talk to the crime-scene crew working on McDill's house.
He'd just gotten back inside the I-694 loop when he took a call from the duty officer at BCA headquarters in St. Paul. "You know a woman named Zoe Tull, up in Grand Rapids?"
"Yeah-what happened?"
"I don't know if anything happened. But she called and said she needs to talk to you, and it's urgent. Actually, she said, 'kinda urgent.' "
VIRGIL PUNCHED in Zoe's number and she answered on the second ring, fast for a cell phone. "Virgil?"
"What happened?"
"Somebody was in my house last night, while I was in bed," she said.
"Ah, jeez-why?" He had an image in his mind's eye, a killer at night in a dark house. "Why do you think there was somebody in the house?"
"I couldn't sleep last night. I lay awake forever, thinking about everything," Zoe said. "After that fight, my brain was going around in circles. Then, really late-two o'clock-I thought I heard something. In the kitchen. Or maybe, in the office. So I sat up and I turned on the light, and then I got up, and I couldn't see anything, because it was so dark in the rest of the house, so I yelled, 'Hello, I've got a gun.' After a minute, I didn't hear anything, so I peeked out and I saw the cat in the hallway, and I thought it was the cat, and I walked through the house, and didn't see anybody. Then this morning, the back door was open, maybe a quarter inch. I didn't even see that it was open until I went out. I mean, I reached out to open it, and it opened as soon as I touched it. It won't even close now, because they broke the wood around that hole-thing where the lock goes in."
"The strike plate."
"Whatever. I looked at it, and somebody had pried it. They broke some of the wood around the lock."
"Did you call the cops?" Virgil asked.
"Yes. I told them the whole thing, about how I'd been talking to you, and they said the door definitely had been pried, but they couldn't tell when," she said. "They didn't do anything, though. They said I should get better locks. They said I should tell you."
"Okay. Get better locks. Is there anyplace else you can stay overnight? A motel…"
"I could stay with my sister if I had to," Zoe said. "Her husband is out of town."
"Go to your sister's," Virgil said. "The crime-scene crew is probably still there, so I'll have them look at your back door. Did the cops screw around with it, looking at it?"
"No, no. I don't think they touched it," she said. "They looked at it pretty close, though."
"All right. I'm going to give the crime-scene guys your number, and they'll call you, and talk to you about it," Virgil said. "Don't touch the door again. Go to your sister's until you get the locks changed."
"Okay."
"What kind of gun do you have?" Virgil asked.
"I don't have a gun. I've got a baseball bat. Also, I've got one of those Wave radios and a CD of a Doberman barking," she said. "But I forgot about the bat and the CD last night. I'm such a twit."
"Get the locks. Go to your sister's. I'm coming back up this afternoon. I'll call you when I get there," Virgil said.
HE CALLED MAPES, with the crime-scene crew, and had them send a guy to Zoe's. Called Zoe back and told him the guy was coming. Next he checked with the medical examiner: "We got all the usual stuff, Virgil, and I can tell you she wasn't drunk or doped up, to any significant extent. There's a messy entry wound in her forehead, which I guess you saw…"
"Yeah…"
"I'm calling that a.223. Won't know for sure unless you find a slug, but we can see the rim of the impact hole, and judging from the damage it did, it sure looks like a high-powered.22 of some kind-.223 would be the best bet, could be an old.222. I don't think it's one of the small hyperspeed ones… I'm going with.223."
"Thank you."
Independent confirmation. The.223 was one of the more popular shooter's guns in the state, the same caliber used in current military assault rifles, low recoil, relatively cheap ammo, very accurate in the right gun. All he had to do was find the gun; preferably with attached fingerprints and a map of the murder scene.
And he thought: If the killer had broken into Zoe's house, then the killer was local, from Grand Rapids; she would have to have been hooked into a local gossip network to know that Zoe had been talking to Virgil.
ERICA MCDILL HAD LIVED in an area of million-dollar homes with quiet suburban streets, big yards, tall trees, and swimming pool fences in the backyards, where the backyards were visible. McDill's home was a low, flat-roofed midcentury place, showing steel beams and glass, ugly, but probably architecturally significant, Virgil thought. The driveway wound around back and ended at a four-car garage. A guy named Lane, from the crime-scene crew, let him in: the house had been professionally decorated, from the carpets to the ceiling paint.
Ruth Davies was there with McDill's father, sitting on the floor in the living room, surrounded by twenty square feet of paper.
He took Davies first, and got nothing. She simply dithered, until it began to drive him crazy, and eventually she went into the kitchen and began baking something with peanut butter.
McDill's father, Oren McDill, looking down at all the paper that summed his daughter's life, was distraught, depressed, shaken. He was a tall, thin man with a gray buzz cut, simple gold-rimmed glasses, wearing a T-shirt and jeans. He said that McDill did have a will, and that he was the executor. "I'll get you a copy as soon as I can get to my safe-deposit box," he said. He gestured at all the paper. "It wasn't supposed to end like this. She was supposed to do this for me."
McDill's mother lived in Arizona with a second husband, and she and her daughter were not close, McDill said. "It goes back to the divorce. We got divorced when Erica was in high school, and she couldn't believe that her mother would dump both of us. Mae wanted her freedom. Didn't want a husband-at the time, anyway-didn't want a kid. She told us that. Erica never got over it."
"I don't want to…" Virgil looked around; they were sitting in a four-seasons porch, alone, but he could hear Davies babbling on somewhere. "Look, I don't want to be an asshole, is what I don't want to be. But I have to ask: If you've looked at the will… would Erica's mother be in line to inherit anything?"
McDill shook his head. "Not a penny."
"Huh. How about Ruth?"
"Ruth will get a hundred thousand," McDill said.
"That's not bad… she thought she'd get nothing," Virgil said.
McDill frowned at that: "I think she knew. I think she knew the terms. Did you ask her?"
"I did, but maybe I wasn't clear," Virgil said.
"It's been in the will for three years," McDill said. "Erica had a new will made when she took over as CEO, and got a kick in salary. Hard to believe that they didn't talk about it at all."
THE CRIME-SCENE CREW, led by Stacy Lowe, had almost finished processing the house-looking at phone records, calendars, computers, and anything unexpected that might point to a killer.