Deep Freeze

  Hadn’t been Corbel Cain shooting at him, or David Birkmann, because they’d both been in the restaurant, still eating, when he drove back to the cabin. Whoever shot at him had been set up and waiting.

  —

  He was working through that reasoning when headlights swept the cabin. He got his gun, slapped the magazine to make sure it was seated, and went to stand beside the door. Johnson, he thought.

  But it wasn’t. A big man knocked on the door, and when Virgil peeked, he saw Elroy Cheever looking through the window glass. Both hands in sight.

  Virgil opened the door and said, “Elroy?”

  “I heard what happened,” Cheever said. “About your truck getting shot up and burned.”

  “Yeah, it’s a mess.”

  “I got that Tahoe out in the driveway, big guy. Ninety-seven miles on it. I’ll throw in a free Class III hitch, with all the wiring, and the upgraded radio, for the same price we were talking about.”

  “Elroy . . .”

  “Gonna make a sale, gotta strike while the iron is hot. Your iron was hot, judging from what I saw go by on Gene’s wrecker,” Cheever said. “What do you think? Want to go for a ride?”

  —

  Virgil felt vaguely embarrassed but he went anyway. He liked the truck, said he wanted to look at what Ford had. Cheever was pleasant about that, seemed to know all about Fords, was even complimentary, while letting Virgil know he was a fool if he didn’t go for the Tahoe.

  Virgil was at the wheel, going through town, when the sales pitch wound down. Virgil asked, “Tell the truth, who do you like for the murders?”

  “Rob Knox,” Cheever said without hesitation. “I wanted to talk to you about that, which is the other reason I came over. Look, Lucy and I had nothing to do with these murders. We’re appalled. Honest to God, we really are. About the loan thing . . . Lucy and I are going to wind up as the richest people in town, because we know what we’re doing and we’re in the right business at the right time. Gina not giving us the loan was a blip in the process. It’d cost us ten thousand a year, but we’re talking about five million in gross sales from the new dealership, once we get it running right. We’d like to have the ten grand, but it wasn’t important, really. We sure as hell wouldn’t kill anyone for it.”

  “We’re not thinking that the murder was planned,” Virgil said. “We’re thinking it was an impulse. Like a slap, but with a bottle . . . by somebody who was angry.”

  “But that wasn’t the case with Margot, was it? That was cold-blooded murder. And with Gina, somebody would have had to go back to kill her. They’d already left. That argues against impulse. Looks like intention to me.”

  “You’re a smart guy,” Virgil said. “Either the killer had to go back . . . or was new to the whole scene.”

  “That’s why it was Knox,” Cheever said. “I’m not saying that because he’s gay. We’re way past that, even in Trippton. There must be twenty guys who are openly gay in Trippton, and probably that many woman. Probably always have been that many, or more, in the closet. Most people knew that. Knew who they were. So nobody cares who’s gay and who isn’t, but it’s money. It’s money that’s done it. Knox is an idiot, he’s hungry for money, and, if the rumors are true, Justin Rhodes is about to come into a million bucks.”

  “I’ve had a couple other people suggest that to me,” Virgil said.

  “See? When you know a bunch of people in a small town like this, know them really well, you know who’d kill and who wouldn’t . . .”

  “You didn’t see it in your school board,” Virgil said. “The whole board turned out to be a bunch of killers.”

  “Well . . . that was nuts. But you’re right. I never saw that. I never even suspected it,” Cheever said. He stared out the passenger-side window, his face turned away from Virgil. “That was crazy. That was all about money, too. Millions of dollars. For me and Lucy, the amount involved was ten thousand a year, in interest, and after you write it off as a business expense, half that. Nothing. But for Knox, you’re talking about a million or more. Serious money.”

  They worked that back and forth for a while. Virgil asked about Barry Long, the state legislator, Homecoming King, and greenhouse owner.

  “Ah, Barry wouldn’t kill anyone. Barry has one passion: politics. Nobody, and I mean nobody, will talk to him about it because he could bore the bark off a tree, once he gets started. He’s a good representative because he knows all the ins and outs of state government and he brings home the bacon, but he doesn’t have the . . . intensity . . . to kill somebody. Or anybody. He sure as shit wouldn’t have come creeping up on you and tried to kill you with a deer rifle.”

  “Then who did? I’ve got two completely different sets of possibilities—the person who killed Hemming and Moore, or the people who are involved with Jesse McGovern in this Barbie-O thing.”

  Cheever’s head bobbed up and down, considering, and said, “Look. Jesse gathered up a bunch of people who are really . . . backed into a corner. Can’t live on welfare. We’re talking people who might not have enough food to eat, even with the food shelf, not enough money to pay for heat. I’ve got a mechanic who’s supporting his brother and his brother’s family because his brother can’t find work. Telling that guy to move to Texas to find a job is like telling him to move to Mars.”

  “Desperate.”

  “It’s all over, in small towns. Hell, Trippton is better than most. Anyway, Jesse probably has fifteen or twenty working with her, all of them people like that. To have somebody trying to take away what Jesse’s giving them . . . well, you want to talk about fear and anger and hate all stirred together, that’s what you got.”

  —

  Cheever offered to loan the Tahoe to Virgil overnight—he could drop Cheever off at home and take the truck to the cabin—but Virgil declined, and Cheever left him at the cabin a few minutes before eleven o’clock.

  That night, Virgil lay in bed and tried to decide whether he’d been attacked by Jesse’s people or by the murderer.

  For the life of him, he couldn’t decide one way or the other.

  —

  Jenkins called at nine o’clock, as Virgil was getting out of bed, and said he and Shrake had heard about the fire. “Somebody’s trying to kill you, man. You gotta get out of there. Get a hotel up in La Crosse or something.”

  “I’ll think about it,” Virgil said. “What are you guys up to?”

  “Waiting for Margaret to tell us—but something’s going on. We know she was meeting with an informant last night. Apparently, somebody’s taking her money.”

  “Keep me up to date,” Virgil said.

  Jenkins said he would.

  Fuckin’ Margaret S. Griffin.

  —

  Johnson showed up at ten o’clock, and, by eleven, Virgil was driving a Toyota 4Runner, with thirty thousand miles on it and a couple of dents. He didn’t like it as much as he liked the Tahoe, but it was cheaper and felt more like a real truck. That is, less comfortable than the Tahoe. Something to think about when he had the time, which he wouldn’t until he had the murders figured out.

  When he left the Hertz agency, he followed Johnson back across the river to a La Crescent café, where they had breakfast, and Virgil stewed about the burning of his truck. Johnson had brought along a copy of the new Republican-River, and Virgil read with interest the story about the murders of Gina Hemming and Margot Moore, filled with quotes from Jeff Purdy, who was all over the case and who expected that an arrest would be made momentarily.

  “What I’d like you to do,” Virgil told Johnson when he was done with the paper, “is to call Jesse McGovern behind my back, since you obviously know how to get in touch with her, and tell her to call me again. I want to know who’s shooting at me. I don’t know if I can trust her, but I can at least get a start on working it out.”

  “I categorically deny knowing how to
get in touch with her,” Johnson said. “But keep your phone handy when you’re driving back to Trippton.”

  “You’re starting to piss me off,” Virgil said. “I was shot at. With a .308, or something like it.”

  Johnson said, “You know I don’t lie to you much, and I’m not lying now. I don’t know how to get in touch with her directly. What I’ll do is, I’ll call a bunch of people who might know how to get in touch with her and tell them what you want. One or more of them can probably get in touch with her, but I don’t know which ones.”

  “I need to talk to her,” Virgil said. “Bad.”

  —

  On the way back to Trippton, he called his insurance agent, told the agent that the car wouldn’t be coming back to Mankato unless State Farm wanted to truck it back. “It’s sitting in a junkyard and that would be the cheapest place to leave it,” Virgil said. “It looks like it’s been in a war zone. Bring your adjuster to the car, is what I’m saying.”

  He was twenty minutes out of Trippton when Shrake called. “Margaret thinks she’s got Jesse McGovern spotted. She got direct testimony from her informant, and the governor got the AG to issue another search warrant. We’re on our way there, if you want to join up.”

  He and Jenkins were north of Trippton, not more than ten or twelve minutes away, following Griffin out to another isolated farm. “Drive slow, I’m on my way,” Virgil said. “We’re also looking for a recently used .30 caliber rifle.”

  “Hope they don’t use it on us,” Shrake said. “Get my bullet allergy all in an uproar again.”

  —

  Virgil didn’t even think about trying to warn Jesse McGovern—he wanted to get the whole Barbie-O case done with, and if that meant slapping McGovern’s ass in jail for a while, he was good with that.

  The target farmhouse was up behind the bluffs, ten miles out of Trippton. Shrake called again and said Griffin was not going to slow down to wait for Virgil but was going straight in. “She’s paranoid about them getting away again. About her source playing both sides.”

  “Coming fast as I can without wrecking the truck,” Virgil said.

  But he was late.

  When he got to the farmhouse, Jenkins’s truck was already in front of the barn, blocking the doors, and Griffin’s Prius was right behind it. The side door of the farmhouse was open, but nobody was in sight. Virgil pulled in, hesitated, got his Glock out of the gun safe, and put it in his parka pocket.

  As he was walking to the house, Shrake stuck his head out, held up a hand, disappeared back inside.

  Virgil followed him in and found Jenkins, Shrake, and Griffin facing three women sitting on a broken-down couch in the living room. None of them was Jesse McGovern.

  Jenkins said to Virgil, “This is the main factory. We got three or four hundred dolls, and boxes of parts out in the barn, more in here. The sheriff’s bringing a van out here to take the Barbies and the parts. We’re waiting for that.”

  Griffin added, “They’ve all been served, and we’ve got IDs on all of them.”

  “I’d like to look in the barn,” Virgil said.

  Shrake said, “I’ll take you.”

  The three women on the couch, looking ragged and out of breath, all of them crying a little, hadn’t said a word to Virgil. He followed Shrake out the door and, on the way, said, “I’d like to talk to those women without Griffin around. You think you could get her out here and leave me inside?”

  “Sure. When the truck gets here, we’ll get her out here to certify the seizure,” Shrake said. He added, “Can’t remember when I felt this bad about doing my job.”

  “The question is, are we doing our job or are we running an errand for the governor because he’s hoping for payback from somebody?”

  “Could have gone all day without asking that,” Shrake said.

  —

  The Barbies were housed in a variety of plain brown moving cartons, had been purchased individually in retail stores, and packed in the boxes for transport to the barn-factory. An assembly line had been set up on a rough plywood table, with four or five stools on each side of it, littered with batteries, tools, and surgically violated Barbies. A plastic bin of replacement parts was sitting in the middle of the table.

  Virgil took it all in and thought about how sad it all was. “You guys going to arrest the women?”

  Shrake shook his head. “Nah. Griffin says there’s no point. She wants to stop the manufacturing, and this ought to do it. She’s given everybody the cease-and-desist orders, so . . . I guess the Barbies go away, and that’s the end of it.”

  “No sign of a rifle?”

  “Really couldn’t look,” Shrake said. “Wasn’t on the warrant.”

  —

  There was an uncomfortable wait until the sheriff’s truck showed up, which turned out to be a city public works department utility truck. Shrake said he’d stay inside with the women until the boxes were all loaded, to keep them out of trouble, and Griffin went out with Jenkins to supervise the seizure of the dolls and the replacement parts.

  When Griffin was gone, Virgil said to the women, “We’re not arresting you—but please, please don’t go back to manufacturing the dolls. I don’t want to come back to bust anyone, and I’ll have to if you violate the court orders.”

  One of the women said, “You’re Virgil.” She was wearing a thin nylon babushka and looked like what Virgil thought a Syrian refugee might look like.

  Virgil nodded.

  “How in the hell are we going to eat, Virgil?”

  “Don’t ask me that,” Virgil said. “Let me see what I can fix up with the town. Talk to the sheriff and see what can be done. I don’t like this, and Jenkins and Shrake don’t like it, but what you’re doing is illegal, and with the court orders . . . I mean, we got no choice.”

  “You’re just following orders,” another woman said.

  “C’mon,” Virgil said. But, he thought, he was. “Listen, I know you don’t owe me, but somebody tried to kill me last night. I need to know if it was somebody involved with you guys or if it came from whoever killed Gina Hemming and Margot Moore.”

  The third woman said, “Like you said, we don’t owe you.”

  “You don’t, but I’m going after the guy who did that . . . but maybe less hard if it was somebody trying to set me back a little, get me off your back. If it was the murderer, well, I’m going to be pulling up trees by the roots to find him. It’d help if I knew which was which.”

  After some sideways glances, one of the women said, “You know what? If I thought it would slow you down going after our people, I’d tell you. But I can’t because we really don’t know. Heard about it this morning down at Dunkin’ Donuts, and we were talkin’ about it on the way out here to work . . . But . . . don’t know.”

  “All right,” Virgil said. “You’ve got your legal papers there, don’t violate them. When we’re out of here, if one of you knows how to get in touch with Jesse, tell her to call me. She knows the number.”

  TWENTY-SIX Virgil left the farmhouse to Jenkins, Shrake, and Griffin and drove into town, straight on through, and down Highway 26 to Lansing, Iowa, where he crossed the river and continued down Highway 35 to Prairie du Chien. Snowpacked spots on the highway, and the unfamiliarity of the new truck, slowed him down, and he was driving for two hours. On the way, he called the duty officer at the BCA and asked him to tell the Prairie du Chien cops that he was going to stop by and why.

  He figured out the truck’s navigation system as he drove, and the truck steered him right into the police department, which was housed in a white stone building next to what looked like, under the snow cover, a city park. The chief, he was told, was vacationing in Pensacola Beach, Florida, but Lieutenant Anderson Blaine was waiting and had been briefed on Virgil’s problem.

  Blaine turned out to be a tall, mild-mannered man, with black hair, black-rimmed
glasses, and a black uniform. “Call me Andy. I understand you’re looking for William Gurney, Mark Pendleton, and Son Davis,” he said.

  “Need to chat, unless one of them suddenly confesses to murder.”

  “Don’t see that happening,” Blaine said. “Let me get my coat. I’ll walk you over to Le Café—it’s a couple of blocks—you can talk to William and Mark.”

  Outside, Virgil asked, “This is a French restaurant?”

  “Bastard French,” Blaine said. “Started out with crêpes, steak-frites, baguettes, and cheese plates, ended up with really good coffee and banana muffins in the morning, chicken-fried steak, fries, and baguettes at night. The cheese plates stayed, of course, this being Wisconsin.”

  “Of course,” Virgil said.

  “I might mention to you, William and Mark are gay,” Blaine said. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that. They’re a little flamboyant about it, but they’re good guys, on the whole.”

  “Good information,” Virgil said. “The guys I’m looking at up in Trippton are gay, too. Or something like that.”

  “Something like that? How are you something like gay?” Blaine asked.

  “What do you call it if one guy thinks he’s incorrectly gendered and is actually a woman in a male body, and he’s dating a man? I mean, if he’s a woman . . . and the guy’s a guy . . . they’re not gay, are they?”

  “Beats the heck out of me,” Blaine said. “I’m comfortable not thinking about it.”

  —

  Le Café was crowded, for two o’clock on a chilly afternoon, but Gurney and Pendleton, two short men in late middle age, were willing to make some space in the work routine to talk to Virgil. They agreed that they knew Knox, who had patronized Le Café because, as a gay man, he felt more comfortable there than anywhere else in town.

  “He took cooking classes from us, and he worked—for free—in our kitchen for a few weeks, at night, getting experience,” Gurney said. “He hoped to open his own café somewhere, which he did. He hired a person who worked here in Prairie du Chien, and used to work for us, to be his main cook. Rob is still learning.”