Rough Country

by John Sandford

  Sanders shook his head: “Can’t say that I have. We’ve got forty-five thousand people in the county, and I only know about thirty-eight thousand of them.”

  “So he’s not big on your felony list?”

  “Not that I’ve noticed,” Sanders said. “He live up there with Slibe?”

  “I guess. I’d like to check your records.”

  “We can do that—let me call the deputy who runs that area. He might know him.”

  ITASCA COUNTY—the Grand Rapids police department, actually—had run into Slibe II on two occasions, after fights at the junior high school. There’d been no charges out of either fight, and nobody had been seriously injured. The police had been called because both of the fights had been on the school grounds, and the cops had written reports mentioning Slibe as one of the combatants.

  Sanders said a dozen or so similar reports came in every year, either through the sheriff’s department or the Grand Rapids Police—“Everybody’s screaming at us to stay on top of the schools, ever since the school shootings at Red Lake. We don’t let anything go anymore.”

  When Virgil finished reading the reports, the deputy who might know Slibe II hadn’t shown up, so he walked kitty-corner over to a coffee shop, and was sitting there, looking at a cup of coffee, and listening to an orchestrated, Muzak version of “Hells Bells,” when the deputy came in and offered a hand and said, “Roy Service.”

  Service got a cup of coffee, and the waitress behind the counter said, “Pretty fast service, huh, Service?” and cackled and went off with her coffeepot.

  “Honest to God, she’s said that to me three hundred times,” Service muttered to Virgil. “One of these times, I’m gonna take out my gun and shoot her. Or myself.”

  “Don’t think I would have lasted this long,” Virgil said. “Don’t tell her my name is Flowers. . . . So, you know a Slibe Ashbach Junior? They call him the Deuce?”

  Service nodded. “I’ve met him. You think he might be involved in these shootings?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve only seen him once. . . . He seemed a little odd,” Virgil said.

  Service chuckled. “Yeah, you got that right. He’s a little odd.” He stirred some nondairy creamer into his coffee, then said, “You like movies?”

  “Sure.”

  “You know Jeremiah Johnson? Robert Redford as a mountain man?”

  “Sure. One of my favorite movies, aside from The Big Lebowski.”

  “Well, the Deuce is like Jeremiah Johnson. A mentally impaired Jeremiah Johnson. He goes sliding around the woods and the lakes up here, popping up here and there . . . don’t know what he eats, if he always does . . . fish, I guess, squirrels, eats at home sometimes, I suppose. But he walks all over the place. I’ve seen him out twenty or thirty miles from home, on foot. Carries a gun. He sleeps out there, in the woods.”

  “You know what kind of gun he carries?”

  “Depends. Sometimes, a single-shot shotgun, when he’s shooting grouse. Sometimes an old pump .22. A DNR guy told me once that he shoots deer with his .22—slides right up next to them and shoots them execution-style, ten feet, one shot to the brain.”

  “A .223?”

  Service shook his head. “I’ve never seen him with anything like that, with a centerfire. He may have one. Probably could get one. But I don’t think he really needs one—getting really close is part of his game.”

  Virgil took a sip of coffee and thought about it, about the way the shooter found his way into the back-bay, the pond, off Stone Lake. “Does he drive? Does he work?”

  Service said, “He did. He’s got a Chevy pickup, and he used to work out at a junkyard on Highway 2, tearing down cars for salvage parts. He was the yardman for a few months, but then he quit. I don’t know why. I guess he works for his old man now, at the kennels. His old man does septic-system excavation, and he helps with that.”

  “You think he could hurt somebody?” Virgil asked.

  Service said, “Going back to movies. Have you ever seen Of Mice and Men?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Lennie, you know, who kills the guy’s wife. The Deuce is like that,” Service said. “He could get excited and kill somebody by accident, but I don’t see him planning it out.”

  “How about if he popped a couple of people because he got the urge?”

  “Maybe,” Service said. “He’s had enough shit shoveled on him, all his life. He could be pretty angry under all of it. Kids gave him a hard time in school, old man gives him a hard time at home, doesn’t have the brains to deal with it. He just heads for the trees.”

  Interesting, Virgil thought, when he said good-bye to Service. A good suspect whom he had no good reason to suspect.

  FROM HIS CAR, he called Mapes and asked him about Slibe’s AR-15, and was told that they’d done test shots with it, and whatever it might be, it wasn’t the weapon that had produced the shells at Stone Lake or the Washington shooting.

  “Could you get that back to me? Is there some way I could get it back this afternoon?”

  “Let me check around. We’ll figure out something.”

  The gun, Virgil thought, was an excellent reason to go back out to Slibe’s place.

  HE WAS ON HIS way to the hospital, to check on Washington, to see if she was awake and had anything else to say, to ask if she or her husband knew anything about Jared Boehm or the Deuce, when Sanders called. “I got a woman who wants to talk to you. She says she might have some information.”

  “Yeah? Who?”

  “Iris Garner. She’s Margery Stanhope’s daughter.”

  IRIS GARNER was a tall redheaded woman in her mid-thirties who lived not far from the Boehms, in another sprawling ranch house, but on the precise edge of town, off the water, with an actual ranch in the back. Not exactly a ranch, but a training ring for horses, with a small horse barn behind it, and a pasture that extended out to a tree line that marked the edge of the real countryside.

  She smiled in a tired way when she answered the door, said, “Come in,” and as they walked through to the living room, she said, “I wasn’t sure I should call you. I had to think about it. But after Jan Washington . . . I’m not even sure that this amounts to anything. . . .”

  “I take everything,” he assured her.

  “Mother doesn’t know that I called you,” she said. “Please don’t tell her, unless it’s necessary. She’d be really upset.”

  She sat down in a red armchair next to a flagstone fireplace, and Virgil settled onto a couch. “That’s not a problem. The only time the specifics of an investigation get out is when they get into court. At that point, of course, things are pretty serious.”

  She understood that. “All I want to say, that I think you should know, is that Mother told me that you were a little friendly with Zoe Tull. Is that right?”

  “A little. She gave me a ride from the Eagle Nest to the airport, to pick up a rental—and she showed me the Wild Goose, so I could interview some of the people who hang out there,” Virgil said.

  “Wendy and her band. I know about that.” Garner sighed, then asked, “Did you know Zoe wants to buy the Eagle Nest from Mother? That she’s been trying to do it for a couple of years? And that Erica McDill is . . . was . . . another possible buyer?”

  A moment of silence, then Virgil said, “Nobody mentioned it to me.”

  “Here’s the thing,” Garner said. “Mother would like to retire. Earl and I—that’s my husband—think she should stay on for a few years. The real estate market is falling to pieces, and five years from now, she could probably get a lot more. Unless we’re in a depression, or something. Anyway, Zoe is pushing her to sell. Zoe would like to market the place more to lesbians. She thinks that lesbians are a rich specialized market. Mother has never really done that. We had lesbians, but we had a lot of straight women, too. Heck, when I was a kid, we were a family resort. My folks only started the all-women thing when every Tom, Dick, and Harry from the Cities started building fishing resorts.”

  “A
bout McDill . . .”

  “Mother mentioned to Erica McDill that she might want to sell the place, and Erica right away said that she might be interested in buying it,” Garner said. “Mother told me at dinner Sunday before last. I don’t know how serious Erica was, and I don’t know what became of it.”

  “You’re saying that Zoe might have had competition for the place,” Virgil said.

  “Not just that . . . by the way, I do like Zoe, even if she is gay. What I’m saying is that Zoe works really hard, and saves her money, and really has her heart set on this. Then Erica comes along. A bidding war would push up the price, and Zoe can’t afford that. A bidding war would be the end of her. Erica, as I understand it, has a lot of money. Had a lot of money.”

  “When’s the sale supposed to take place?” Virgil asked.

  “Well, if it does, this winter. Usually, that sort of thing happens in the off-season. It would have happened last winter, but Zoe couldn’t get the financing together, and asked Mother for another year.”

  “Why wouldn’t your mother have told me this? Or Zoe?”

  “I suppose because . . . they didn’t want you to suspect them,” she said. “I’m only telling you because . . . well, what if it is Zoe? What if she’s gone a little crazy? What if Mother’s on her list?”

  “Huh. All right. Interesting,” Virgil said. “You did well to tell me. I will keep your name under my hat, but I will look into it.”

  AT THE HOSPITAL, he found Jan Washington had been moved to Duluth.

  “When did this happen?” he asked the nurse.

  “About an hour ago. They think she might be bleeding again, inside, and they need better imaging equipment. They’re probably going back in.”

  “Is she . . . how serious is this?”

  “Serious, but nobody thinks she’ll die. I mean, she might—but it’s mostly getting inside to see what’s happening. She’s pretty strong.”

  VIRGIL STOPPED AND KNOCKED on Zoe’s door, but nobody was home. He called the sheriff’s department, identified himself, and asked for an address and directions. He got them, found Zoe’s business office at the end of a strip mall, ZOE TULL, CPA.

  Inside, he found a waiting room, with a half-dozen comfortable chairs with business magazines, two people waiting, and a secretary-receptionist who said Zoe was with a client, behind one of three closed office doors down a short hallway. A bigger operation than Virgil had expected.

  Virgil identified himself and asked, “Could you break in, tell her that I need to talk to her for a minute? It’s somewhat urgent.”

  The secretary was reluctant, knocked on the last door, then went in; a moment later, she came back out and said, “Just one minute.”

  Zoe came out a minute later, and Virgil tipped his head toward the door, and they stepped outside.

  “What happened?” Zoe said.

  “Why didn’t you tell me that you were competing with McDill on the purchase of the Eagle Nest?”

  Zoe pulled back a bit, watching him, judging, then said, “Because it had nothing to do with the murder, and it was a complicating factor. Besides, she wasn’t serious. When Margery told her that she might sell out, she said something like, ‘I could be interested in something like that.’ But she never came back to it. Never asked any serious questions.”

  “I needed to know, Zoe.”

  “Why? It’s a distraction. It has nothing to do with these killings,” she said.

  “Because there’s a few million dollars in play there. That’s enough for a murder,” Virgil said. “Her daughter, and her husband, want Margery to stay on, because they think the resort’ll bring a better price once we get out of this market slowdown. And the reason they want that is because they’ll probably inherit, eventually. So it’s not just you.”

  “You don’t really think Iris and Earl would kill somebody to stop a sale?”

  “How would I know? I don’t know Earl. Or Iris,” Virgil said. “I do know that McDill was shot and somebody broke into your house. I have to look at them—and I have to know about them before I can look at them.”

  She nodded. “Okay, okay. So, I was dumb. But it didn’t seem related. Erica wasn’t serious. . . . I’m sorry.”

  “Is there anything else that you don’t think is important, that maybe I should know?”

  “No. No, there’s nothing. Jeez. I thought for a minute that I might be back on the suspect list.”

  “You never really left it,” Virgil said, shaking his head at her.

  MAPES CALLED: the rifle was on the way to Grand Rapids with a highway patrolman. “He left here ten minutes ago, but it’ll be better’n an hour before he’s down there. He’ll leave it with the sheriff ’s office.”

  “Thanks, man. I’m gonna use it as an invitation to get back into a place.”

  “Piece of shit, I can tell you. Been shot a lot. Our gun guy put it on a bench out at the range and couldn’t keep it inside four inches at a hundred yards,” Mapes said. “Suppose it’d be a good self-defense weapon.”

  AN HOUR TO KILL.

  He’d get some lunch, he thought, pick up the gun, and go roust Slibe. There was something in the whole mess that seemed to want to pull him toward Wendy and her band, including her old man and her brother. An ambient craziness.

  He headed out to the highway, to a McDonald’s, got a call from Johnson Johnson, who was back home: “Fished the V one more day, never did see a thing. You solve the murder yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  “I was thinking, since they peed all over your vacation, why don’t y’all come along to the Bahamas this fall? Get you in a slingshot, put you on some bonefish.”

  “Johnson, the chances of getting me in a slingshot are about like the chances of you getting laid by a pretty woman.”

  “Aw, man, I been laid by lots of pretty women,” Johnson said.

  “Name one.”

  After a long silence, “This woman . . . she gotta be pretty?”

  Virgil laughed and said, “Johnson, I’ll call you when I get back. But count me in. Goddamnit, they can’t pull this shit if they can’t find me.”

  SITTING OVER A BIG MAC, fries, and a strawberry shake, he took another call, this one from Jud Windrow, the bar owner from Iowa.

  “You in Grand Rapids?” Windrow asked.

  “I am,” Virgil said, through the hamburger bun. “Where’re you?”

  “About three thousand feet straight up . . . just coming in. Wendy’s playing the Wild Goose tonight. I’m gonna stop by and take a look. You gonna be around?”

  “Could be,” Virgil said. “You got something?”

  “Huh? Oh, no. You told me to be careful, and I thought if you were around, with a gun, that’d be careful,” Windrow said. “Besides, you were wearing that Breeders T-shirt.”

  “Well, hell. What time you going?”

  “First set at seven o’clock,” Windrow said. “If she’s decent, I’ll stay until she quits. If she’s not . . .”

  “See you at seven o’clock,” Virgil said.

  VIRGIL BACKED out of his parking place, drove a block, pulled over, and got on his cell phone. Davenport’s secretary answered, and Virgil asked, “Lucas in?”

  He heard her call back to Davenport’s office, “It’s that fuckin’ Flowers.”

  Davenport picked up, said, “Virgil,” and Virgil said, “Sometimes I get tired of that ‘fuckin’ Flowers’ stuff.”

  “I’ll let her know,” Davenport said. “But it’s part of the growing Flowers legend. Or myth, or whatever it is. What’s up?”

  “Wanted to fill you in,” Virgil said.

  “Shoot.”

  Virgil spent five minutes filling him in. When he finished, Davenport said, “You know what I’m going to say.”

  “So say it.”

  “Go see this band with the guy from Iowa, stay up late, have a couple beers, and in the morning . . .”

  “Say it . . .”

  “Go fishing.”

  “I wanted it to be officia
l,” Virgil said. “So I could say that you ordered me to.”

  THE HIGHWAY PATROLMAN HADN’T gotten to the sheriff’s office yet, so Virgil hit the men’s room, then wandered outside, not wanting any more food or coffee, and so at loose ends; standing there, with his fingers in his jeans pockets, he saw the liver-colored patrol car turn a corner, and walked out to meet the driver.

  The patrolman’s name was Sebriski, and he wanted to hear about the shoot-out in International Falls. Virgil told him a bit about it, and Sebriski said, “Better you than me, brother.”

  He’d handed over the rifle and Virgil had signed a receipt for it, and they talked for a couple more minutes about Department of Public Safety politics, and the prospect of raises, and then Sebriski slapped Virgil on the back and went on his way, and Virgil threw the rifle in the back of his truck.

  Sebriski had been sucking up a little bit, Virgil thought.

  In the immediate wake of the shoot-out in International Falls, in which three Vietnamese nationals had been killed, and another wounded, Virgil, who had a second career going as an outdoor writer, had been invited to write two articles for The New York Times Magazine.

  There’d been some bureaucratic mumbling about it, but the governor’s chief weasel, who was using the episode to pound his Republican enemies, did the algebra, got the governor to clear the way, and the Times published the articles, the second one two Sundays earlier.

  The effect had been greater than he’d anticipated—the Minneapolis papers subscribed to the Times’s news service and reran the articles, and that had put them in every town in the state. He was, Davenport said, the most famous cop in Minnesota.

  Which worried him a little.

  He’d always been the genial observer—that was most of his method—and having other people looking at him, questioning him, watching his moves, was unnerving.