“No. And probably not tomorrow night. Goddamnit, Lucas, this has got a mushy feel about it.”
“Stay with it, let me know what happens,” Davenport said. “A state senator, Marsha Williams, called about the McDill case. She’s a friend of McDill’s father, wanted to see what was up.”
“You’re taking pressure?”
“No, not really, she was doing a favor and she asked to be kept up-to-date,” Davenport said. “If it’s okay with you, I’ll give her a ring, tell her where we’re at.”
“You can, but, uh . . . leave a little wiggle room.”
HE WAS WALKING back toward the emergency entrance when Wendy Ashbach ran through the doors. She was dressed in a loose white blouse, jeans, and flip-flops, her hair uncombed; she stopped, looked around, saw Virgil, and cried, “Is he dead? Where’s my brother?”
Virgil came up and said, “He’s in the operating room. He was shot.”
She began to weep, and pleaded with him: “He’ll be all right? He’ll be all right?”
“He was mostly hit in the legs, but he’s hurt,” Virgil said. “He lost a lot of blood before they got him here, but they’re putting more into him. They’ve got two docs working on him.”
“Where is he?”
He led her along to the emergency room, where Sanders was waiting with two more deputies, and Sanders saw her and came striding over and took her hand and said, “They’re working on him. I can’t tell you how he is, yet, but as soon as I know, I’ll let you know.”
She began getting angry, wanted to know what had happened, and Sanders put an arm around her shoulder and walked her down the hall. Virgil thought that he wasn’t bad at that—at taking care of a relative.
THEY WAITED ANOTHER HOUR. Virgil took a call from Ignace, and asked, “When did you start carrying a camera?”
“Pretty neat, huh? It’s about the size of your dick, so it’s easily concealed. Fully automatic, point-and-shoot. How’d you like the picture?”
“Okay, I guess.”
“I’ll make you a print,” Ignace said. “So, anything happen this morning?”
TWO HOURS AFTER the Deuce went in the operating room, a stocky dark-bearded surgeon came out and said, “We’ve stabilized things, but he’s pretty messed up. We’ve stopped the worst of the bleeding, but he has multiple shattered bones in his leg and pelvis. He’s taken four units of blood. We’ve got a helicopter coming from Regions Hospital in St. Paul, we’re going to lift him out.”
“Will he be okay?” Wendy asked.
“He’ll need a lot of rehab,” the surgeon said. “And, uh, he’s not totally out of the woods, yet. He’s still in trouble, but we can move him.”
THEY GOT MORE DETAILS, and Zoe came through the door, wrapped up Wendy. Half an hour later, the Deuce was rolled out to a waiting helicopter, saline and painkillers flowing into one arm, was loaded aboard, and was gone.
24
VIRGIL, SANDERS, AND JOHN PHILLIPS, the county attorney, met for a few minutes at Phillips’s office. “If the blood works out, and with the credit card, and if his old man goes along, we’re probably good,” Phillips told Virgil. “But we could use a statement from Ashbach, when he recovers enough to give one. You should be right there. Get in there and read him his rights, and then see what he has to say. No big rush to get a public defender with him . . . wait until he asks.”
“I wish I could find that damn .223,” Virgil said. “He must have it hidden somewhere around the farm. I’m going to push Wendy and Slibe about it, see if he has a special place out there, in the woods.”
“The gun would be the icing on the cake, if we could take a couple of prints off it,” Phillips agreed.
VIRGIL CALLED DAVENPORT AGAIN, to fill him in on the meeting, and to impress on him the thinness of the case against the Deuce. “Gotta push that DNA, man. I know we’re stacked up, but we need it.”
Zoe called and said, “I’m at my house, with Wendy. You better come over here.”
WENDY AND ZOE WERE sitting in Zoe’s living room, both looking a little apprehensive, when Virgil arrived. The odor of marijuana floated softly through the room, and Virgil said, “Mellowing out, huh?” and Zoe said, “Not exactly,” and Wendy said, “You’re an asshole.”
“I didn’t like seeing your brother get shot,” Virgil said. The two women were on the couch, side by side, and he sat down opposite, in an armchair. “I don’t like seeing anybody get shot. The deputies were worried that if he got back in the trees with his rifle, he could pick them off one at a time.”
“They could have just stayed back and waited—they didn’t have to shoot him,” Wendy said. “He was probably scared to death, with a helicopter coming down on him, and all those boats.”
“You were out there?” Virgil asked.
Wendy shook her head and Zoe said, “No, but it’s all over the radio. Everybody’s talking about it.”
Virgil said, “Wendy—I’m sorry.”
Zoe: “Wendy: tell him.”
Wendy started to cry. “Ah, God,” she said, “this is so awful.”
Virgil: “Tell me what?”
Wendy looked at Zoe, who nodded, and turned back to Virgil and said, “I don’t think the Deuce did it. I think my dad did.”
After a moment, Virgil asked, “Why do you think that?”
She said, “The day Erica got killed . . . I left out of there early in the morning, but I was feeling really up about everything. Excited about what we might do. We were recording at the Schoolhouse that afternoon, and the night before she seemed really into it. How we did that. How it all worked. So I thought, maybe I’d run by and invite her to come down and sit in. We took a dinner break and I ran out to the Eagle Nest.”
“What time was this?” Virgil asked.
“Six-thirty, or so.”
“You didn’t see her?”
“No. She wasn’t there. Her car was, but she was out somewhere, I didn’t know where. Probably, I guess, she was already paddling down to see the eagles.”
“Okay.”
“Anyway, we had the session going, so I had to get back. When I came out of the lodge driveway, I thought I saw Dad’s pickup going by. On the road. I went out after him, but the truck was really going fast, and I never did catch it. But it looked like his.”
Virgil looked at her for a minute: “That’s it?”
She turned to Zoe again, who said, “Better tell him the rest.”
“What?”
Wendy was reluctant, but she said, “The next morning, I heard from Cat, who heard from a deputy, that Erica had been killed down in that pond, and that people were waiting for the state cops to come. I freaked out. I mean, I really freaked. I got in my car and I drove out there, and parked up in one of those driveways. I could see where somebody had walked back through those weeds so I went through and looked out on the lake and saw the boats . . . about a billion mosquitoes . . . so I watched them for a minute and then I snuck back to my car and took off. I was really scared.”
Virgil rubbed his face with his hands. “Ah, man. What kind of shoes were you wearing?”
“Mephistos. Zoe told me that night that you were looking for Mephistos. I didn’t want to throw them away, because they cost more than any shoes I ever had, so I hid them at the Schoolhouse in my equipment box.”
“You told me I could talk about it,” Zoe said to Virgil.
“Yes, I did,” Virgil said.
“One more thing,” Zoe said. She glanced at Wendy, then said, “The band was working on a song on Tuesday afternoon. . . . Slibe came looking for Wendy. McDill was there. Wendy got Slibe to order some pizzas, and they all sat around and ate them.”
“Yeah.”
“And Erica talked about the eagles, and about going down to the pond,” Wendy said, finishing for Zoe.
“Oh, boy.” They all sat around and Virgil thought he might’ve taken a toke or two himself, if it’d been offered. He said, finally, “You thought it was his truck. But you’re not sure.”
&n
bsp; “I . . . you know how you see a truck, and they’re all the same, but you know your friend’s truck, the way he drives it, something about it? I thought it was Dad’s. I was driving up to the road, and I thought, What’s he doing here?”
ANOTHER SPACE, and Virgil said, “All right, Wendy. Constance Lifry was killed, Erica was killed, Jud Windrow’s disappeared, and I think he’s probably dead. All those seem to be connected to the band. But what about Washington?”
“I have no idea,” Wendy said.
“Did the Deuce know Washington?”
“Not as far as I know. He doesn’t really eat candy.”
“How about your father?” Virgil asked.
“Same thing, I guess. I mean, she isn’t friends with any of us.”
“So why . . . I mean, if the Deuce is nuts, maybe he’d shoot Washington because he liked doing it. Because it was like hunting. He got a taste for it. But I don’t see your old man like that. He seems too . . . tight.”
“I don’t know. I just don’t know,” she said. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
ZOE ASKED WENDY, “If it was your father, if he killed all those people, why’d he do it? To keep you close?”
Wendy nodded. “The only people my dad ever loved was my mom and me. And the Deuce, I guess. He’s told me that a hundred times. When she left, it almost killed him. He says I act just like her.”
“Your father never . . . ?” Virgil let the sentence fragment hang out there, instead of asking, “sexually molested you?”
Wendy took just a second to catch on, and then said, “Oh, no. No, no. Nothing like that.”
“Never?”
“No. There was a time when I was thirteen, or twelve, I got kind of a bad feeling about him, like he was watching me, so I was kind of careful around him for a while. But nothing ever happened. Ever.”
“What about with the Deuce?”
She smiled ruefully. “He liked to spy on me. You know, when I was coming out of the bathroom, peeking in my window and stuff. I didn’t mind so much—he never did anything, either. He’s really shy.”
“What’s your dad’s relationship to the Deuce? He’s seems to be pointing us at him.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. He used to spank us both, because he believed in discipline. But Mom would jump in. . . . After she was gone, he beat up the Deuce pretty bad, a couple of times. That stopped a few years ago, when the Deuce started fighting back. It looked like maybe . . . like maybe Dad was taking on more than he could handle.”
THEY SAT around for a minute, then Virgil asked, “Has your father ever talked to you about not leaving?”
She nodded. “Oh, yeah. He came from this really poor family—I mean, really poor. He had this brother who died young, supposedly of a heart problem, but Dad told me once that he thought it was because he didn’t have enough to eat when he was a boy. There were times when they went hungry. They had a welfare program back then, where the government would give people peanut butter and lard and that kind of stuff. Leftover stuff, when the farmers grew too much. He said there were months when they ate peanut butter for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. He can’t even stand the smell of it anymore.”
She trailed off, and Virgil, trying to keep her rolling, said, “I can understand that.”
She nodded. “Anyway, after high school he was a shovel man for another septic tank construction company, then he went in the army and learned heavy equipment. He was in for six years, saved every dime he could, and when he got out, he put a down payment on a Bobcat and then . . . he worked and worked, and he met Mom and got married, and Mom worked and worked, all the time, and they finally got the business going. He doesn’t think the Deuce can handle it; he wants me to. He thinks if I go running off to Nashville or somewhere, the business will . . .”
She shrugged.
“Go down the toilet,” Zoe said.
“Not funny,” Wendy snapped. To Virgil: “But I don’t want to do it. I don’t want to spend my life pushing some goddamned Bobcat around, or doing the office work for a bunch of rednecks.”
“SO, why’re you telling me this?” Virgil asked.
“ ’ Cause if Dad did it, they should stop him,” Wendy said. “And the Deuce . . . the Deuce can’t help the way he is. Dad made him that way. After Mom ran off with Hector, it was like I was the mom, and I had to take care of the Deuce. Stand between him and Dad, as much as I could.”
“The Deuce is what? Four or five years younger than you?”
“Seven,” Wendy said. “You know, I think they’d kill him in prison. I think being in prison, in a cage, might kill him, all by itself. But he seems to attract attention . . . from people who like to make fun of him. If he went to prison, he’d die there, or get killed there. And it’s not right, if he didn’t do it.”
“No, it isn’t,” Virgil said.
He leaned back and closed his eyes. If Slibe did it, and the Deuce was innocent, they had major problems. Once the police arrested somebody for a crime, it became almost impossible to convict somebody else, without a perfect, watertight case. Given the standard for a conviction—guilty beyond a reasonable doubt—a defense attorney would beat them to death with a prior arrest: “If you’re so sure X is guilty, why’d you arrest Y two days before?”
They might be able to slide around that, since the two people involved were closely related, so the same evidence could point at either of them, but it’d be tough; especially if the only thing that pointed at Slibe was a “maybe” sighting.
Although he thought she was right about the truck. . . .
He opened his eyes and asked Wendy, “What would you say if you hit your dad with the accusation that he was there, with his truck, and he said, ‘No, I wasn’t. I was over at Joe Blow’s house’?”
“Well, then . . . I guess I’d believe it,” Wendy said. “Especially if Joe Blow backed him up. I’m not absolutely sure it was Dad’s truck. I just thought so. At the time.”
“Man. That’s really soft,” Virgil said. He leaned forward. “What would you think of the idea of wearing a wire . . . a microphone . . . and accusing him of killing Erica? Tell him about seeing the truck, see what he says? We could be right there, outside, if he tried anything.”
“Ohhh, God.” She brushed her fingers through her hair. “That would really be . . . traitorous, wouldn’t it? He’d never forgive me, even if he’s innocent. I mean, when Mom turned traitor, he never got over it. He did nothing but work, and come home and do the garden, and clean the house, and feed us kids. All the stuff that he used to do, plus all the stuff that Mom used to do, and then go to bed and get up and do it all over again.”
“I can’t think of what else to do but the wire,” Virgil said. “Especially if that blood comes back as belonging to Jud Windrow. That points right at the Deuce. And I gotta tell you, honey, a singing career is looking pretty distant, if it turns out that your old man kills everybody who tries to help you along.”
She said, “I’ve got to think about it.”
“Think quick,” Virgil said.
Zoe said to Wendy, “We could talk about it. Kick Virgil out, work through it together.”
VIRGIL THOUGHT it might be a while. He called the sheriff and asked him for a couple of deputies. “I’m going out to talk to Slibe and I’d just as soon not be alone.”
“I can understand that, what with his son being all shot up,” Sanders said. “I’m up in Bigfork again. Swing on by the office; I’ll have a couple guys waiting.”
VIRGIL AND TWO DEPUTIES went out to talk to Slibe; but Slibe wasn’t home. The dogs were fed and watered and happy, but the house, the loft, and the trailer were all empty, and Slibe’s truck was gone.
When Virgil called Zoe, to get a verdict on the idea of bugging Wendy and having her talk to Slibe, Zoe said, “Bad news on that. Slibe called and she went out to meet him.”
“Meet him? Zoe, if he’s the killer, and they get alone—”
“They were meeting at Dick Raab’s office,” Zo
e said.
“Who’s he?”
“An attorney,” Zoe said. “Probably the best one in town. Slibe told her it’s time to shut up and save the family.”
“Aw, that really makes my day,” Virgil said.
“You want to know something?” Zoe said. “I think Wendy likes me again.”
“Aww . . .”
VIRGIL CALLED SANDERS and told him they needed to get together with Phillips, the county attorney. “Trouble?” Sanders asked.
“Maybe,” Virgil said.
THEY MET IN SANDERS’S OFFICE. Phillips looked unhappy; an older man sat in a corner with a carefully neutral expression on his face.
“Bob said there might be trouble,” Phillips said, as soon as Virgil walked in.
Sanders nodded at Virgil, then gestured at the older man: “This is my dad, Ken Sanders. He was the sheriff here before me. Half the people in the county still think they’re voting for him.”
Virgil and Ken Sanders shook hands, and Virgil sat down and said, “I talked to Wendy Ashbach. She doesn’t think the Deuce did it; she thinks her old man did.”
He told them about the discussion with Zoe and Wendy, and about Slibe calling, and about the meeting with Dick Raab, the attorney. Ken Sanders looked skeptical, while his son and Phillips tended toward apoplexy.
“She’s telling us now?” Phillips exploded. “After another woman is shot, and another guy disappears, and her brother gets shot up?”
“Slibe’s her old man,” Ken Sanders said. “He’s the only one she’s got, except for her brother. She was protecting him.”
“If she’s telling the truth, her old man’s gotta be the biggest asshole in northern Minnesota,” Virgil said. “He’d be framing his own kid.”