Leonard Baker said, “If I understand this right, Miz Coakley thinks that our daughter’s death might be mixed up with this murder at the elevator? Then we heard that Jim Crocker got killed, and that maybe a woman did it?”
“That’s what we think,” Virgil agreed.
“But whoever killed my daughter, they were men,” Baker said. “That’s what the Iowa folks said.”
“That’s probably right,” Virgil said. “But we’ve discovered that a boy named Bobby Tripp murdered Jacob Flood, and then that Tripp was murdered by Deputy Crocker. And that Bobby Tripp was a friend of your daughter’s. A good friend.”
Louise was silent but Leonard Baker said, “Well, that’s not right. I would have known about something like that.”
Coakley said, “Not intimate friends . . . they didn’t have a personal relationship. They were friends. They talked to each other, e-mailed each other.”
“I keep a pretty sharp eye on that computer,” Baker said. Then, “But I suppose once they learn how to use it . . . we’re not here all the time.”
“And there are computers everywhere,” Coakley said. “Libraries, schools . . .”
“We homeschooled,” Louise Baker said. Her voice was crinkly, like when a sheet of vellum is crumpled in a hand. “Leonard taught her mathematics and German, and I taught her English and literature, and we both taught her religion.”
Virgil caught what seemed to be an irritated look pass from Leonard to his wife when she mentioned religion, and he jumped on it.
“If you don’t mind my asking, what religion? I’m a preacher’s son,” Virgil said.
“We have a personal and private religion,” Leonard Baker said. “We really don’t talk about it to nonmembers.”
“Okay,” Virgil said, and then quickly, following up, “Bible-based? Or . . .”
Leonard Baker nodded: “Yes. We’re followers . . . well, yes. The Bible.”
Virgil said, “I haven’t had a chance to review all the investigation from Iowa, but I know the outlines of your daughter’s case. The Iowa people say that you had no idea of what had happened with Kelly. Have you had any thoughts since that time? Has anything come up?”
The couple looked at each other, then simultaneously shook their heads. “We are mystified. The police said . . . well, that Kelly was sexually active.”
“That was ridiculous,” Louise Baker said. “When could she be?”
Coakley: “You let young girls work in town, things happen. They grow up so fast now.”
“We didn’t even know that she had male friends her own age, like this boy you’re talking about,” Leonard Baker said. “That she was not a virgin when she was killed—that doesn’t seem possible to us. The time factor . . . when could she have gotten out? She did work, summers, but she was a quiet girl.”
“It’s a mystery,” Louise Baker said, her voice crackling with what might have been stress.
“Do you know somebody named Liberty?” Virgil asked.
The two looked at each other again, and Virgil had a sudden intuition: they knew, and they’d lie about it. They turned back to Virgil and both shook their heads. “No. Nobody named Liberty.”
They said they knew who the Floods were, but weren’t really acquainted, and they did know Crocker. “He was a righteous man,” Louise Baker said. “He patrolled out here, before he was assigned in town, so everybody knew him. I suppose . . . no offense, Sheriff . . . I suppose most people out here voted for him.”
Leonard Baker nodded: “If he killed the Tripp boy, it was for a reason. The Tripp boy must belong to a gang. If he knew Kelly, then I think you’ve taken a big step in finding out who killed her.”
“Do you think your son might have known Tripp?” Virgil asked.
Leonard Baker shook his head: “I don’t think so. He never worked in town. He was homeschooled, too, both of them were. When he graduated, two years ago, he got a job in Blue Earth, so he never was around Homestead. And then he went off to study wind power.”
They talked for a while longer, and Louise Baker asked if they should be afraid for their own lives: “There’re killers out there, and they’ve already taken Kelly from us. What if they’re crazy people?”
“If you don’t know what’s going on, then I think you’re safe,” Virgil answered. “There’s a thread that links all this together, and if you’re not pulling on the thread, then you should be okay.”
Louise shivered: “I’m still scared.”
“At times like this, you need to be strong and courageous. Don’t be afraid or terrified; we’re with you,” Virgil said.
They nodded, and Leonard Baker said, “Just . . . mystified. Mystified.”
BACK OUTSIDE, Coakley said, “That wasn’t a lot of help. But they’re also pointing us back to Tripp. Maybe there’s something—”
“They were lying through their fuckin’ teeth,” Virgil said. “The Bakers know something and they’re scared. That probably means they know something about their daughter’s death, and they’re hiding it.”
“What’d they lie about?” Coakley asked. “I missed it.”
“Louise said Crocker was a righteous man. Mrs. Flood said the same thing, the same words, but they deny that they know each other. Bullshit. They know each other and they’ve been talking. And this Bible thing, the righteousness thing. Mrs. Flood had a Bible, and now the Bakers say they belong to a Bible-based religion, and they’re pretty serious about telling you that.”
“So?”
“So I threw a little Deuteronomy thirty-one:six at them, one of the most famous verses in the Bible. They had no idea,” Virgil said. “Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the Lord your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you.”
“Well—just because they’re Bible-based, doesn’t mean they know every word,” Coakley said.
“They should know those words,” Virgil said. “There’s something going on here, out in the countryside, and we don’t know what it is, do we, Mrs. Jones?”
“My: from the Holy Bible to Bob Dylan. I’m impressed,” she said. “Did you notice that Louise was a little spare on the clothing?”
“I noticed,” Virgil said.
“I noticed you noticing,” Coakley said.
“She didn’t look prim, she didn’t look controlled, like a fundamentalist usually does. She looked a little out there, in a morose kind of way,” Virgil said. He smiled at Coakley. “There’s something going on, and that makes me happy. Second day on the case and we’ve got something. We need to think about the Bakers and the Floods. About their religion. Something going on, Lee.”
“What’s next?”
Virgil looked at his watch: he had time. “I’ve got Kathleen Spooner’s address over in Jackson. I’m going to run over and talk to her,” he said. “If I have the time, I might check with Junior Baker up in Canby . . . though that might have to wait. That’s a ride.”
“I’m going to check back with my girls up in Battenberg,” Coakley said. “Stay in touch.”
8
Kathleen Spooner had her back to the wall—the front room wall—facing off the three men who’d shown up unannounced as she took her lunch break. Emmett Einstadt, flanked by two younger men, all three farmers, dressed rough in work coats and pants and boots, tracking dirty snow across her floor.
She said, keeping her voice low, controlled, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Emmett. I heard Jim was killed, and I felt bad about it for one minute, but I had nothing to do with it.”
“You two were going at it, the last pool,” Einstadt said. “They says it was a woman who done it, and he wasn’t going with nobody else.”
“Old times’ sake,” Spooner said. She was an average-sized woman, a little heavy, but not too, with dark hair and eyes. She wore a University of Minnesota fleece, dark slacks, and a touch of red lipstick. “Besides, everybody else was taken up.”
“But we thought about who else it might be, and we can
’t think of nobody,” said Wally Rooney. “The thing we know is, that nobody else knows, is that you’re crazier than a bucket of frogs. It didn’t bother you one little bit to put a bullet through his head.”
“And you got the guns,” said Ted Morgan.
“Killed with his own gun, is what I heard. It could have been suicide,” Spooner said.
Einstadt glanced at the other two, then said, “You know what? I keep my ear to the ground, and I haven’t heard it was his own gun. Nobody told me that. Anybody tell you boys that?”
The other two men shook their heads, and Morgan said, “Nobody told me.”
“What I want to know, more than whether you did it, ’cause I know you did, is why you did it. If you tell me that, I’ll give you a piece of good advice.”
“Not even your advice is free, huh, Emmett?” she asked. And, “You tight sonofabitch.”
Einstadt shook a finger at her, but before he could speak, she said, “That Tripp kid found out that Jake was one of the boys who was there when Kelly died. He told Jim that Jake came in with his shirt off, and he saw that Liberty head above his belt buckle, and that Kelly had told him that she was fuckin’ some rough guy they called Liberty because of the tattoo. He was going to spill the beans to some newspaper guy. So Jim killed him. But by the time he got home, he was scared to death. He knew all about this crime-scene stuff, and he thought they’d figure it out.”
Emmett’s face had gone still, and he said, “So . . . he did right by us. Why’d you kill him?”
“He said if they got him, he wasn’t going to prison. He said he knew what happened to cops in prison. He got a little drunk, and he started to cry, and that’s what he said. What he meant was, he’d make a deal. He started out right, but then . . . he would of took us down.”
“A deal.”
“That’s right. I mean, Emmett, I know you’ve got your theories and all, but the state’s got its theories, and if they knew about your little religion, they’d put you under the jail. All of you. All of us. And I think there’d be some who’d talk. Look to Alma: I hear she’s got the Bible real bad.”
“The Bible is the core . . .” Einstadt said.
“This is Kate Spooner you’re talking to,” Spooner said. “You’ve been talking Bible to me since I was five years old, and your dad before you, and his dad before him, and all you ever hear is Lot and his daughters and Tamar and Judah and Jacob and Leah and Rachel and you don’t hear about anything else. I’ll tell you what, Emmet, reading the Bible for the fuckin’ parts is not really reading the Bible. That’s okay with me; but now Alma is reading the other parts.”
“I’ll take care of Alma,” Rooney said.
“Rooney, excuse me, but you couldn’t take care of a fuckin’ rock,” Spooner said. They heard the sound of a car in the parking lot, and Einstadt stepped to the window and looked out. Pizza delivery truck.
“You got a pizza coming?” he asked.
“No,” she said, and she took the moment to step up beside him and away from the two other men, to look out the window, and then step quickly past them so she could sit on the far end of the couch. That was a comfort, because her .45 fell under her hand, nestled in the pocket off the end of the couch.
She asked, “So what advice have you got, Emmett?”
Einstadt stared at her, his mouth turned down in a sour line, and he said, “They know a woman did it. They’re probably going to get some of this DNA stuff off Jim’s body—that’s the word in town. They say you were sucking his cock, and they can get the DNA from dried spit. So if it was you, you best stay away from the cops. And after you’ve kept your head down for a while, you might think of moving someplace else. Like Alaska, or somewhere.”
She said, “I’ll think about that, Emmett. Now, I’ve got to eat my lunch, or I’ll be no good the rest of the day. So you go along. And you remember, I put my ass on the line for all of us.”
“Bullshit. You done it because you wanted to. If it had to be done, there’d be better ways to do it,” Einstadt said. “Coulda had him out to the house, taken him out back, and buried the body in the field. Never would have found it in a thousand years.”
“That’s water down the drain,” she said. “I had to do something, and I did it.”
Morgan took a step toward her, but spoke to the others: “We oughta get her airtight one more time, then wring her neck.”
She lifted her hand from over the arm of the couch, with the .45 in her grip, and laid the hand and gun across her lap. “Time to leave,” she said.
A quick relay of glances, and Rooney took a step back. She was crazier than a bucket of frogs.
WHEN THEY’D GONE, Spooner put the .45 back in the couch sleeve, looked out to the parking lot, saw them talking and looking up at her apartment window. Cold out: steam coming out of their mouths as they talked, mostly Morgan and Einstadt. Rooney’s opinions were given to him by Einstadt, especially since he’d given Rooney Alma and the girls.
Maybe, Spooner thought, she ought to give a gun to Alma. Or the girls. Surprise that old sonofabitch someday. She waited until the men got in their trucks and rolled out of the parking lot, then went and put a Lean Cuisine chicken carbonara in the microwave. While she waited for it to ding, she thought about Morgan and his threat, went and got the small 9mm Taurus pistol from her purse, and put it in the pocket of her fleece.
The microwave dinged, and she took out the plastic tray, ate standing up at the kitchen counter, thought about DNA, thought she should know more about it, and had just tossed the tray into the trash when the doorbell rang.
The doorbell hadn’t rung unexpectedly more than three or four times since she’d been in the apartment. She went to the door and looked through the peephole, and saw a tall, blond man, hatless, waiting in the hall. Didn’t know him. Wary, she left the chain on the door, opened it, and peeked out.
“Yes?”
Virgil said, “Miz Spooner? I’m Virgil Flowers, with the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. I’m investigating the death of your ex-husband, and some related problems. I’d like to talk to you a minute.”
“Oh . . .” A chill ran up her spine. They were already here. “I’ve got to get back to work,” she said. “I’m due back in ten minutes.”
“I could talk to your boss. I’m sure he’d be cooperative. . . .”
She looked at him for another two seconds, then said, “Let me get the chain.” She took the chain off, opened the door, and said, “Come in. I really haven’t seen Jim in a long time. I heard about it, him being killed, but I just . . . I mean, I felt a little sad, I guess, we were married for five years, but that’s all back then.”
And Virgil thought, Interesting. She’s lying already.
Virgil stepped inside, looked around. Compact kitchen off to the left, with the smell of pasta still in the air; a small living room straight ahead, down a hall, with another door to the left, presumably to a bedroom. Neat, not expensive. “Okay, well, if we could sit down for five minutes . . .”
They sat in the living room, Virgil taking the couch as it faced the television, and started with a thirty-second summary of what he thought: that Tripp had killed Flood for reasons unknown, that Crocker had killed Tripp to hide something that Tripp had known—something linked to the killing—and that both killings were somehow linked to the murder of Kelly Baker.
“Do you know if Jim knew any of those people? The Floods, the Bakers, the Tripp family . . . any of those?”
“He and Jake Flood were old friends since they were kids,” she said. “We all came from the same place. And we knew the Bakers, ’cause we were all from the same part of the county, and the same business. Went to church services together.”
“You’re from the same area? Over around Battenberg?”
“Oh, yeah—my folks have a farm a mile down the road from the Floods. They all go back like to the nineteen hundreds, the families. Came from Germany. So we all know each other.” As she was talking, she was trying in her mind to stay o
ut front of the conversation: what he could find out easily, she’d tell him, so she couldn’t be caught in a lie.
“When Iowa investigated, I guess they talked to all the folks in the church to see if anybody knew or heard anything?” Virgil asked.
She shook her head: “I don’t think the church ever came into it. It’s not really a church, you know. There’s no church. We’d have services at different people’s houses, usually in the barn, unless it’s too cold. Sometimes, there’ll be a couple different services going on, so we don’t all go to the same one. We talk about the Bible, and all of that.”
“Huh. Okay.” Virgil scratched his head. “I thought Iowa had been all over everything—that they’d have talked to all of the Bakers’ friends and neighbors. Anyway, when Kelly Baker was killed, did you have any feeling of what she might have been involved in? Who she might have been hanging with? Was she still going to the religious services, or had she dropped away?”
“I really couldn’t tell you. I mean, she was there, but the Bakers are down at the far south end of the county, so we didn’t see them every day,” Spooner said. “I really don’t know. I mean, I guess . . . they say, the word is, she was sexually active. I was surprised, but I wasn’t really close enough to her to have any . . . instinct . . . about that. Maybe she was working in town, maybe she got loose somehow. I don’t know.”
“Were you homeschooled?”
“Oh, yes,” she said. “Reading, writing, arithmetic, German. Every year, for thirteen years, five days a week.”
“Is that part of the, uh, religion?”
“That’s one of the main parts—to keep the kids away from the influences in schools,” she said. She glanced at her watch. “I’ve really got to go.”
Virgil asked, “Jim—was he violent with you?”
She shook her head: “No. Jim was boring. That’s why I left. He’d get up, eat eggs, go to work, come home, eat dinner, sit on the couch and drink beer, go to bed. Every day. I couldn’t see living my whole life like that. This idea that he could have killed the Tripp boy . . . I mean, that’s very strange. I couldn’t believe it.”