Rough Country

by John Sandford

  “Huh,” Virgil said.

  “On the other hand,” said the first guy, who Virgil thought was Dan, “maybe you better take a closer look at Zoe, too. That whole family’s always been a little off center. You know their mom was a lesbian? You know, became one?”

  “Yeah? So what?” But he didn’t say it. He stood up, slapped the door, and said, “You guys take it easy. Find that damn Windrow. Man, I’m gonna be pissed if he’s off at one of these resorts. . . .”

  “And that could be—there’s only about a million of them,” Dan said. “But we called in when we got out of there. No sign of him yet.”

  “The thing that messes me up is that we can’t find the car,” Virgil said. “I can’t figure out why we can’t find the car. I mean, even if they snatched him, we ought to be able to find that.”

  “Out in the bush somewhere,” Ben offered.

  “Find him,” Virgil said, and he headed back to his car.

  AND THE THOUGHT:

  If somebody were going to snatch Windrow, with his car, and kill him and take the car out in the brush and ditch it . . . how would the killer get back to his car? It was possible that the killer was willing to walk eight or ten miles in the dark, and had left the car in an all-night parking lot somewhere. Or maybe had ditched it only a couple of miles out, so the walk back would be a half-hour or so. But how would he know that in advance? He had to know where Windrow would be eating, for one thing.

  Unless there were two of them.

  Like Slibe & Son.

  And the Iowa cops thought the killer was male. . . .

  THE WASHINGTONS LIVED FIVE or six miles out of town, on another country road, but not nearly as isolated as the Ashbach place. There were lights all along the way, and Virgil got glimpses of houses and sheds and cars and mailboxes on posts.

  He drove past the Washington place and had to double back, shining his flashlight on the rural mailboxes, before he found it. They lived in a plain white one-floor ranch-style house with a two-car garage and white vinyl siding, with a shed around the back and a flower garden along the driveway. The only light looked like it might be a night-light, but the automatic yard light came on when Virgil drove down the driveway.

  The front porch was a simple concrete slab. Virgil rang the doorbell, and a moment later he heard footfalls, and then the porch light flicked on. Washington looked out through the picture window, and came over and unlocked the door and said, “Jan? Is Jan okay . . . ?”

  Virgil held up his hands and said, “I’m sorry to scare you, this isn’t about Jan. I’m sure she’s fine. But we’ve got a serious problem, and I wanted to ask you a couple of questions.”

  Washington, in blue pajamas, said, “Sure—c’mon in. What’s going on?”

  “We’re looking for a guy . . .” Virgil said, and he quickly explained about Windrow. “I got a couple of questions. Have you or your wife had anything to do with Slibe Ashbach, or his son?”

  “No. Can’t say that we have. He’s got that septic service, right? Our septic was done by El Anderson.”

  “Do you know them? Slibe and his son?”

  “Slibe . . . the older one . . . I was on a tax adjustment board a couple of years ago, and he came in to ask for an adjustment, I believe. I can’t remember what happened, but it wasn’t a big deal. It seems like we might have referred it to the assessor for a reassess ment. . . . I’d probably know him to see him. Maybe.”

  Then: “Okay . . . do you do your own taxes?”

  “What?” Washington sat back.

  “Do you do your own taxes? Or do you have somebody do them for you?”

  “We have them done by a girl in town,” Washington said.

  Virgil’s heart sank. “And that would be . . . ?”

  “Mabel Knox is her name.”

  “Mabel Knox?” A reprieve.

  “Yeah, she works for Zoe Tull,” Washington said. “Zoe’s got a big tax business downtown.”

  THE WASHINGTONS KNEW ZOE; and Zoe knew the Washingtons.

  Probably meaningless, Virgil thought. But still, the only connection he’d found.

  And he should have found it earlier; she should have mentioned it earlier.

  Would have, if he hadn’t known in his heart that Zoe was innocent. . . .

  19

  SLIBE ASHBACH SLIPPED OUT the back door of his house, stood in the dark, and listened. If you listened hard enough at night, you could hear a background crackling, as if the leaves of the trees were talking to each other, or the bugs were foot-racing through the long grass. . . .

  He heard that, but didn’t hear anything human. There was still light from Wendy’s trailer; the light, Slibe knew, that pulled in the Deuce, like a moth.

  He stepped out in the yard, in near pitch darkness, walking quiet in tennis shoes, along the back of the double-wide, his head below the bottom of the windows. He peeked at the corner and saw the Deuce standing there, on his cinder block, eye at the window. Slibe felt a clutch of anger at the sight of him; took a breath, got a grip, and asked, quietly, “See anything good?”

  The Deuce didn’t move. There was a circle of light on his eye, coming through the kink in the venetian blind, inside. He said, as quietly as Slibe, “I heard you coming from the time you closed the door. You sounded like an elephant coming through the grass.”

  Then he stepped down and moved closer to Slibe, eyes in shadow, and asked, “What do you want?”

  “We need to talk, right now,” Slibe said. “Go on up to the kennel, get out of the mosquitoes.”

  “Mosquitoes don’t bother me none,” the Deuce said, and he was telling the truth.

  “They bother me. Go to the kennel.”

  They walked quickly, not shoulder to shoulder, but the Deuce trailing behind, so they moved single file, not talking. The dogs were mostly asleep, though one moaned at them as they walked past and up the stairs.

  In the loft, the Deuce dropped onto a kitchen chair. “So talk.”

  “You saw the cops down there?”

  “Yeah. I was sittin’ up by the asparagus patch.”

  “That one guy, the state guy, Flowers, thinks you done it. Killed those people, and now this guy Windrow who was out here this afternoon. They can’t find him anywhere, and they think he’s dead.”

  “Didn’t do it,” the Deuce said.

  “Listen, dummy. The cops don’t care no more who did it,” Slibe said. “They got one woman dead and one woman shot and one guy missing and all they want to do is arrest somebody so they can say it’s over with. Flowers asked me where you were, and I told him you’d gone walkabout.”

  “Need some food, if I’m gonna walkabout,” the Deuce said.

  “I got food. Get it out of my cupboard. Get out of here.”

  “I dunno,” the Deuce said.

  “If you don’t, they’re gonna slap you in jail, bigger’n shit. I don’t know when you’d be gettin’ out.”

  “But I—”

  “Listen to me. Didn’t you hear what I said? They don’t care. They just want to arrest somebody. The sheriff ’s got to get himself re-elected. If they find somebody else, that’s just fine—then they’ll let you out. But if they don’t, they’ll try to hang it on you.”

  The Deuce put his head down, like he did when he was turning something over in his mind. After fifteen seconds or so, Slibe said, “I told them you were already gone. I believe if you stay out there for a while, they’ll pick on somebody else.”

  The Deuce still didn’t say anything, but he moved ninety degrees in his chair, and looked at a pile of outdoor gear that sat against the wall. “I got two boxes of shells at Martin’s yesterday. I could stay out there for a while, if I had some Shake ’n Bake.”

  “I got a twelve-pack in the cupboard, never opened,” Slibe said. “I got some cornmeal, I was down at the diner and got a bunch of those little packages of salt and pepper, twenty of them. You want to pack up, I’ll go get them.”

  THE DEUCE WAS PACKED up in fifteen minutes—bivy sack
, change of clothes, four pairs of socks, pump .22 with two boxes of shells, fifty rounds in each box, his knife, headlight, head net, gloves, bug spray. He thought about it for a minute, then added an ultralight fishing rod, a compact tackle box, and a yoga pad.

  Slibe came back with a plastic sack full of food—Shake ’n Bake and cornmeal and a six-pack of beer. The Deuce said, “I’m not walkin’.”

  “What?”

  “Takin’ the canoe. You can drop me off on the river—I’ll get down south of Deer River, in those swamps back there,” he said. “Stay there as long as I want, eat sunnies and northern.”

  “I told them you went walkabout.”

  “If they ever ask, I’ll tell them I keep the canoe hid out, and walked over.”

  Slibe said, “Okay. Okay. But we gotta get going. The girls have gone to bed. I want to move now.”

  THE DEUCE PACKED the food and tackle box, gathered up the rifle, fishing rod, and yoga pad, and carried them down to the truck. Slibe got two canoe paddles out of the woodshed. It was eight minutes out and over to the roughed-out landing at Big Dick Lake. The canoe, an old aluminum Grumman, was back in the woods, chained to a tree. They unlocked it, loaded it on the truck, and headed over to the river.

  “Dark,” Slibe said, as they turned off Highway 2 and rolled past a wild-rice processing place, and down to a boat landing.

  “Not bad, when you get used to it,” the Deuce said.

  They put the canoe in the water next to the bridge, working with the Deuce’s headlamp. He dropped in the pack, the rifle, the fishing rod, and the yoga pad.

  Slibe said, “That pad, you’re getting soft.”

  “Takes the hurt out of the roots,” the Deuce said. “Sleep easier.” He took the paddles from Slibe, and added, “I don’t know what you’re up to, Dad, but I’d ’preciate it if you’d leave me out of it.”

  He pushed off, pivoted the canoe, and disappeared into the night.

  Slibe watched until he couldn’t see or hear him, then spit into the water and climbed the bank back to the truck.

  He stopped at an all-night gas station and bought a bottle of beer and drank it on the way home.

  Thinking all the time.

  Working the plotline.

  20

  VIRGIL STOOD ON ZOE’S front porch and pounded on the door like a drunk husband. The porch light came on, then the door popped, and Zoe peered at him through the screen. “Virgil?”

  She was still fully dressed.

  “Haven’t found him. I was out at the Ashbachs’. Can I come in?”

  “Sure.” She stepped back, and Virgil pulled open the screen door and followed her into the living room and plopped on the couch, his pistol digging into his back. He’d forgotten about it. He leaned forward, pulled it out, and put it on the coffee table.

  “You’re carrying a gun,” she said. Her voice was apprehensive.

  “Not for you,” Virgil said. “I was out at the Ashbachs’ with a couple of deputies and we were ready to go.”

  “You mean ‘kill somebody.’ ”

  “I mean ‘shoot back.’ We’re dealing with some loonies out there. That goddamn Slibe says his goddamn son’s gone walkabout, whatever that means.”

  “It’s Australian.”

  “I know that. I’m a cop, not an idiot,” Virgil snapped. “Anyway, the Deuce is out wandering around with a gun, in the middle of the night. When I pushed them on it, all of them out there, Berni, Wendy, and Slibe, pretty much agreed on the killer.”

  “The Deuce?” She sounded skeptical.

  “No. You.”

  She sat back. “Even Wendy?” she squeaked.

  “Even Wendy. Though it started with Berni. Anyway, so here I am, ready to do what I should have done a long time ago, but didn’t, because I like you. Go get a rope.”

  “A rope?”

  “Yeah. Like a clothesline or something. Six feet long or so.”

  SHE HAD TO THRASH around for a while, but finally came up with a piece of electrical cord, which Virgil said would have to do, and he brought her back in the living room, looped it around his neck, put his hand under the cord, in front of his Adam’s apple, palm out, turned his back on her, and said, “Strangle me.”

  “What?”

  “Strangle me. Really go for it,” he said.

  “Virgil, I don’t want to hurt you,” she said.

  “Well, if you start hurting me, stop.”

  So she tentatively pretended to strangle him, and he shook her off like a flea, said, “Really try, or I will kick your freakin’ homosexual ass all over this living room.”

  That got to her, a little bit, anyway, and she tried harder, and he yanked her around and slapped her off the cord, and said, “Just like a little girl. What a fuckin’ pussy. I’ll tell you what, my third ex-wife was half your size, and she could’ve done a hell of a lot better job than that.”

  The goading worked. The third time, she finally went for it, and he had trouble getting loose, yanking her this way and that, and with one heavy heave, yanked her around and she lost her grip on the cord and cried, “My hands . . .”

  He unwrapped the cord and asked, “You all right?”

  “You almost broke my fingers.” She was half lying on the couch, where she’d landed, looking at the reddening grooves across her palms.

  He sat down and looked at her. “All right. You could’ve strangled Lifry, but I don’t see you cutting her head off.”

  “I didn’t strangle anybody,” she said, tearing up.

  “Why didn’t you tell me that you do Jan Washington’s taxes.”

  “I don’t . . .” But then her mouth made an O. “Oh . . . shit. Mabel does!”

  “You never said anything,” Virgil said.

  “But I don’t do their taxes,” she said. “I never even thought . . . Mabel does their taxes. They bring their stuff in an envelope, give it to Mabel. Or mail it; we send out an organizer with a mail-back envelope—and Mabel does them. I mean, I bet I talk to Jan Washington three times a year, and never in the office. On the street, I talk to her.”

  He looked at her for a minute, then said, “C’mon.”

  “Where’re we going?” she asked.

  “Out to the Eagle Nest.”

  “It’s after one o’clock.”

  “If I needed the time, I’d look at my watch,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  They went out to the truck, then had to go back to the house so Virgil could get his gun, and he put it under the seat and they headed out to the lodge.

  AUGUST NIGHTS GET COLD in northern Minnesota, and this one, not cold, was at least crisp. When they pulled into the lodge, a car full of women was just unloading, heading back to the cabins; coming in from the Wild Goose, Virgil thought. The cabins mostly trailed away from the lodge to the right, from the land side. Zoe took him around to the left, behind the lodge, to a cabin set on the highest ground around, with a green-screen porch.

  “She’s gonna be pissed,” Zoe said.

  “So what?”

  “Just sayin’.”

  STANHOPE WAS MORE STUNNED than angry. She was wearing voluminous flannel pajamas with a flying-monkey pattern, with a ratty pink terry cloth robe tossed on top. “What?”

  “Zoe here has been credibly accused of being the killer,” Virgil told her. “I’m either going to clear her, or arrest her.”

  “What?” Stunned, not angry.

  “Let’s find a place to sit,” Virgil said.

  Stanhope’s living room was comfortable in a lodge-like way, with shelves for old books, lots of Reader’s Digest condensed novels from the sixties or so. A Bible was sitting on the arm of one chair. Virgil picked it up, tossed it from one hand to the other, like a softball, and said to the two women, “‘Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord.’ Proverbs twelve, twenty-two.”

  Stanhope: “Twelve, twenty-two?”

  “How can you be ‘goddamn this’ and ‘goddamn that’ and go around quoting the Bible?” Zoe asked.

  “S
hut up,” Virgil said. “Everybody sit down.”

  They sat.

  To Zoe: “Now, on the day McDill was murdered, you were out here, right?”

  “I came out, we were working on the books,” Zoe said. “I finished the next day, when you were here. In Minnesota, you report your employee stuff each quarter, but the returns aren’t due until the month after.”

  “What time did you leave?”

  “About . . . I don’t know. The middle of the afternoon.”

  She looked at Stanhope, who shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  Virgil said to Stanhope, “I’m not looking for casual bullshit answers. Close your eyes. Concentrate, if you’re capable of it. Think. When did you last see Zoe that day? What were you doing just before you last saw her?”

  Stanhope closed her eyes, her fingers knotted in her lap, and finally said, “I saw her walking across the parking lot. I was in the office. I’d talked to Helen . . .” She looked up. “Okay. Helen was getting ready to leave, and I wanted her to finish her numbers the next morning, before Zoe came back. Helen leaves a few minutes before three o’clock because she has to pick up her kid at day care at three-fifteen. So, it was just before three.”

  Virgil to Zoe: “Is that about right?”

  She nodded. “That’s about right.”

  To Stanhope. “If I pull your ass into court, you’d swear to it?”

  She nodded. “Yes. I suppose Helen would, too, because she was working with Zoe, and then she left to get Steve.”

  “Steve’s the kid?”

  “Yes. He’s three,” Stanhope said.

  “What time do you think McDill left in the canoe?” Virgil asked.

  “Early evening—six or so? I don’t really know, because nobody really remembers seeing her leave. But that’s not unusual, there are people paddling around all the time.”

  “So Zoe left at three o’clock, more or less, and McDill didn’t leave for another three hours.”