Bad blood vf-4

by John Sandford

"Oh, I don't know," she said, turning to her husband.

  "Probably the best thing would be to have agent Flowers look," George Tripp said. He said to Coakley, "I know you were doing your duty, Lee, but I gotta say… if you hadn't taken him… if your men were up to standard… he'd still be alive. I think I'd prefer it if you didn't come back here. Not unless you have to."

  Coakley bobbed her head and said, "I know what you're saying, George, and I'm so sorry. But Virgil would do a fine job, as good as anybody in the state. He's one of their top men."

  "So let's do that," George Tripp said. "Not right now. Irma and I have to… do things. If we get our boy back tomorrow…"

  "There's a time problem," Virgil said. "How about if I give you my cell number, and you call me when you're okay with it. Tonight or tomorrow. There is the time thing. We've got at least one murderer running loose, and probably more."

  George Tripp nodded. "We can do that."

  5

  Pat Sullivan, the newspaper reporter, covered cops and everything else in town, and had been calling the sheriff's office on a fifteen-minute schedule since the rumors of Crocker's death began to leak out. Coakley called him back, with Virgil sitting next to her desk.

  She said, "Pat? Lee Coakley. You called?" She listened for a minute, then said, "Why don't you walk over? We've got a state investigator here and we can fill you in." A few more words from the reporter, and she said, "See you then," and hung up.

  To Virgil: "He's on his way."

  "Good guy?" Virgil asked.

  "Yeah, for a reporter," she said. "He's accurate, usually, but he's ambitious. The editor tells me his friend-his relationship, his guy-lives up in the Cities. He'd like to get up there with the Pioneer Press or the Star Tribune."

  "Fat chance," Virgil said. "Those places are bleeding to death. Bet there are a hundred good reporters looking for jobs."

  "You know them?"

  "A few," Virgil said. "And they talk about it."

  "You think they'll be down here? For these murders?"

  "May get some TV," Virgil said. "The newspapers, you're more likely to get a call. I mean, they could have a staff meeting in a phone booth."

  They sat for a minute, looking past each other, then Coakley asked, "You at the Holiday?"

  "Yeah."

  They looked past each other some more, until Virgil asked, "You didn't mention to Sullivan that we wanted to talk to him about Tripp."

  "I thought I'd leave that to you. Best to ask him first, before we get to Crocker. That way, we're holding the Crocker information over his head. Or, you are. I'm just a humble county sheriff, who has to defer to the state agent, if he decides to screw over the local media." She leaned back in her chair, turned, put her boots up on top of a wastebasket, put her hands behind her head, and stared at the ceiling. She did it in a comfortably coordinated way, which made Virgil think it was her regular thinking posture. "I have two possibilities."

  "Only two?"

  "No, there are several more, but two I'm thinking about. One: Flood and Crocker were friends, which we know, and that Crocker killed Bobby out of simple revenge. Two: Crocker killed Bobby because he was afraid that when Bobby told us why he killed Flood, that it'd come back on Crocker."

  They considered that for a moment, then Virgil said, "Crocker didn't kill Tripp until early morning, almost time for a shift change. I wonder why he waited? I wonder if he needed to talk to somebody about it? Like your other woman. We oughta check the phones here, see if he called anyone during the overnight. And check his cell."

  "We can do that," she said. Another moment, and she asked, "You cook? Or you eat out?"

  "I'm not much interested in food," Virgil said. "I mostly eat microwave. Healthy Choice, like that. Cereal. Milk. Scrambled eggs."

  "My husband used to cook, a lot, when I was married," Coakley said. "I used to work some odd hours. Now, I get home in time to cook, most nights, but can't get it going again. The boys are happy with pizza and burgers and fries, but I feel guilty about it."

  "How many kids you got?" Virgil asked.

  "Three. Sixteen, fourteen, and twelve," she said. "The twelve was supposed to be a girl. So was the fourteen, for that matter. All I got is a bunch of big lugs. Though I love them to death."

  "Sounds like you kept busy for a while. Three kids in four years."

  "Yeah, well. Going to Mankato State, got married halfway through my senior year. I was knocked up by Memorial Day," she said.

  "What'd your husband do?"

  "He's the new car sales manager over at Gable Ford," she said.

  "Still see him?" Virgil asked.

  "Oh, no. The new wife wouldn't like it, for one thing," Coakley said.

  "Oh-oh."

  "What can I tell you? He got married three weeks after our divorce was final," she said. "I guess it had been going on for a while. Never saw it coming."

  "She have really big breasts?" Virgil asked.

  The thin smile again. "Ample. Or ample-and-a-half."

  "Give her any speeding tickets?"

  "Hadn't thought of it, but now that you mention it, I'll keep it in mind," she said. Her phone rang, and she picked it up, listened, and said, "Send him in."

  Pat Sullivan was a short, thin man, of the sort that Virgil thought of as "weedy." He had brown hair, a prominent nose, a brush mustache, and square Teddy Roosevelt teeth. He wore brown boots with studded soles, was carrying a parka and a reporter's notebook.

  "Virgil Flowers," he said, when Coakley introduced him. "I've followed your adventures. That shoot-out up in International Falls, with the Vietnamese dragon lady. The one out by Bluestem, with the federal guys."

  "They're like bad dreams slowly fading away," Virgil said. He pointed at a chair: "Sit down. We gotta talk. There's more going on than a story."

  Sullivan sat down, a skeptical look on his face: "Like what?"

  "We have to go off the record for a bit," Virgil said. "That good with you?"

  "Depends. We can start that way. If I can't keep it off, I'll tell you," Sullivan said.

  "When Bob Tripp was arrested, he wouldn't talk to the sheriff until he talked to you first," Virgil said.

  Sullivan's eyebrows went up. "Me?"

  "Yes. Are we off the record?"

  "Okay. For now."

  "We wondered if you knew what he might have wanted to talk about," Virgil said.

  "So you didn't ask me to come in as a reporter, but as a possible witness."

  Virgil shrugged: "I don't care if you're both. Not a problem for me."

  Sullivan said, "I'll have to think about it… but if Bobby wanted to talk, why would he have committed suicide?"

  Virgil said, "He didn't. He was murdered. Probably by Jim Crocker."

  "Whoa." Sullivan went pale, leaned forward. "This has got to be on the record. Not about Bobby wanting to talk to me, but about Bobby and Crocker."

  "We'll come back to it, give you a formal interview, on the record. Let's stay off for now."

  Sullivan paused, then nodded.

  "Crocker isn't a sure thing, for Bobby's murder," Virgil said. "I can think of scenarios where he didn't do it-but we think he probably did. We may have more definitive answers after the investigation."

  Coakley jumped in, pressing the question, "Do you have any idea why Bobby might have wanted to talk to you?"

  Sullivan leaned back, looked at Coakley, then Virgil, then back at Coakley. "Lee, I assume you know that I'm gay."

  "I knew that," she said, nodding.

  "I cover a lot of sports. People around town had heard I was gay, and some of the high school kids knew about it. Maybe most of them. Anyway, I interviewed Bobby a few times, he was a star. Then, one time, he asked me if he could stop by my apartment and chat. I said, 'Sure,'" Sullivan said. "By that time, I had an idea of what was coming. Anyway, he came over, and beat around the bush for a while, then said that he'd heard that I was gay, and that he was worried that he might be, and he just wanted to talk about it."

&nb
sp; "Was he?" Coakley asked.

  "Oh, sure. As far as I know, he hadn't been sexually involved with anybody-including me, we never were-but he had already gone through most of the self-recognition stuff," Sullivan said. "You know, feeling this strong attraction toward some of his teammates, and he'd fantasize about them, instead of the girls in his class, and all the rest-checking out the scene on the Internet, maybe checking some gay porn."

  "Did he ever mention Jacob Flood to you?" Virgil asked.

  Sullivan shook his head: "No. When I heard that Bobby was dead, and that he'd been arrested in the Flood case, I was amazed. We talked quite a bit, and he never mentioned Flood's name."

  Virgil: "And nothing about Crocker."

  "Not a thing. Not even during the election."

  "Do you know if Flood or Crocker were active in the local Homestead gay culture? There must be a few more gay people here."

  Sullivan nodded. "Quite a few," he said. "Maybe a hundred, or more? But not all of them are active around here, and I've never heard of those two. That doesn't mean much, though-it's not like we all hook up. I know maybe… a dozen gay people here? Something like that."

  "Did Bobby ever mention a girl named Kelly Baker?"

  Sullivan, who'd been slumping in the chair, straightened, and tipped an index finger at Virgil: "Now her, we did talk about. Is she involved in this deal?"

  "Wait," Virgil said. "You say you talked about her. Did he know her?"

  "Oh, yeah. He met her at the Dairy Queen. He used to give her a ride home, sometimes. I think he was hoping that he might, you know, get involved with her, find out that he really wasn't gay. It didn't work out that way. I think… I think-he didn't actually tell me-that she picked up on the fact that he was gay. Didn't bother her, and they became friends."

  "The Iowa people didn't talk to him? The cops?"

  "Not as far as I know. I mean, Bobby and Kelly were a summertime thing, when the Dairy Queen was open. After school started, she was gone, and then, you know, she was killed. He didn't know anything, and they never really had a relationship, so… it just went away, I guess."

  "Doesn't help much," Virgil said.

  "Let me ask a question," Sullivan said. "Have you actually checked on Flood's sexual orientation?"

  "Not yet, but it's on the list," Coakley said. "We know he was married, but we also know that whoever killed Kelly Baker was into some extreme sexual behavior. Homosexuality might fit in there."

  "Doesn't seem all that extreme to me," Sullivan said. "Homosexuality."

  "You don't know the details," Virgil said. "But here's the thing that hangs me up. Bobby wanted to talk to you. Not his father, or one of his pals. So, I have the feeling that you would already know something about what he wanted to talk about, and that most likely would have to do with sex. You say it's not Crocker, not Flood, so it has to be Kelly Baker. But why would he want to talk to you about Baker?"

  "I don't know," Sullivan said. "Maybe because I knew about the situation between them."

  "He never said anything to you about Baker being involved in… extreme sexual situations?"

  Sullivan let a grin show: "That's the second time you guys have used the phrase… I'm starting to get interested. But no. He never mentioned anything like that."

  "Damnit. I was hoping for magic," Virgil said.

  "Let's go back on the record, so I can get a few questions in," Sullivan said, flipping open his notebook.

  "Talk to Lee," Virgil said. "I've got to make some phone calls before it gets too late."

  "I'm going to say that you were called in to work the case," Sullivan said.

  "That's fine. Refer to me as the affable, good-looking, outdoorsy blond guy," Virgil said.

  "With a serious line of bullshit," Coakley added. VIRGIL CALLED Jacob Flood's home number, got a woman who said she was his daughter, and who said, "Mother's out. She'll be back at supper time."

  "Does she have a cell phone?"

  "No. I can give her a message."

  Virgil identified himself and said that he'd like to come over after supper. He left his cell phone number and asked for a call-back if Alma Flood wouldn't be there.

  He called the duty officer in St. Paul, learned that Beatrice Sawyer and Don Baldwin had the crime-scene van and should be at Crocker's place. He called Sawyer, a cheerful middle-aged woman, who, Virgil thought, was sometimes a little too interested in death.

  "Got here half an hour ago and had a look, eyeballin' it," Sawyer said. "It's murder, all right. Tell you something else-the sun went down, and it's dark as the inside of a horse's ass out here."

  "You're sure?"

  "Well, I've never actually been inside a horse's ass."

  "About the murder?" Virgil asked.

  "We feel that after the slug penetrated his lower jaw, tongue, roof of his mouth, sinus passages, eye socket, brain, and skull, he probably wouldn't have had time to wipe the gun, or any interest in doing so," Sawyer said. "But the gun was wiped. With a cotton blouse, we think. A couple threads got caught in the action. Ergo…"

  "All right. So he wasn't alone," Virgil said. "You saw his penis? Exposed?"

  "Yes. We believe he was involved in heterosexual activity immediately prior to his demise. Whether he actually ejaculated we won't know until the autopsy is done, but we have no signs of semen on his clothing or the couch."

  "There was a suggestion here, by the sheriff, that he may have been involved in oral sex," Virgil said.

  "That would be accurate," she said.

  Virgil was surprised that she was so positive. "Really?"

  "Yes. Because that explains the lipstick on his penis," she said. "That's also why we think it was heterosexual, and a blouse was involved in the gun-wiping. We could be wrong, but we rarely are."

  "Bea… you're my huckleberry."

  "Yeah, you say that to everybody," she said. "If it was oral sex, we have the possibility of getting some DNA. I won't go into the details of how we plan to collect it."

  "Thank you."

  "But we will be doing that. I'll tell you, Virgil, there might not be much more. This shag carpet, this fuzzy couch, there was a blanket… it's an old house, and there's a lot of dirt around. The furnace has been blowing dust on everything. It's going to be a chemical mess. Our best hope is the DNA on his penis, and we'll check the fly of his pants."

  "We're also looking for a pair of uniform pants, green wool, with blood on them," Virgil said. "Could be a very small amount, but you've got to find them. Check every pair of green wool uniform pants you can find. The blood comes from a ripped fingernail, so there might not be much. We'll need DNA on that, too."

  "If it's there, we'll get it," she said.

  "Bea…"

  "Don't say it," she said. "The huckleberry thing. Once was annoying enough."

  On his way back down the hall to Coakley's office, Virgil got a local call, from a number he didn't recognize. He answered, and found Bob Tripp's father on the other end. "I've talked to my wife, and we're going over to the funeral home tonight at seven-thirty. If you wanted to get here at seven twenty-five, we could put you up in Bob's room by yourself. We'd just as soon not be here when you go through it."

  "I'll see you then," Virgil said. "Thank you."

  Coakley was alone when Virgil got to her office. She had her boots back on the wastebasket, and was staring out her office window. When Virgil stuck his head in, she pointed at a visitor's chair.

  "Look a little bummed," Virgil said.

  "I am."

  "We'll get this cleared up, you'll be the town heroine," Virgil said.

  "Three murders," she said. "And probably four. You know the last thing I did before I got elected sheriff? My last investigation? I was looking for some kid who was going around keying trucks."

  "Catch him?"

  "No, but I know who did it," she said. "I got myself close to the little asshole's father, down at the diner, in the next booth. I was having lunch with the chief, and I said, 'There's gonna be troub
le when I catch this kid. He's done fifty thousand dollars' worth of damage, and the insurance companies will be after him or his parents with a chain saw.' That stopped it, you betcha."

  "Well, that's good," Virgil said.

  "But you never did car-keying investigations," she said. "And I can tell you, you can flat get whiplash from the change in speed, from car-keying to quadruple murder."

  "Never did a car-keying investigation, but I once investigated the theft of toddlers' pants," Virgil said. He told her about it, and they exchanged a few more stories, and Virgil told her about the phone calls, and finally she sighed and said, "It's supper time. You should get out to Flood's, and I'm going home to cook some… crap. Macaroni and cheese. I can't stand to think about it."

  "So take some time, cook something good. Think about the case while you're doing it. Call me when you think of something."

  She poked a finger at him. "And you call me. Tonight. I want to hear about Flood, and about Bob Tripp's room. Tonight."

  They walked out to the parking lot together, and then Coakley said, a frown on her face, "By the way, when we were talking to Pat, you said you could think of a few scenarios where Crocker didn't kill Bobby. So what're the scenarios?"

  Virgil shrugged. "Crocker is having an affair with a female deputy, who came in to shut up Bobby. She kills him, while Crocker is off someplace, doing something. Gets her pants scratched. But she's worried that Crocker is going to tell somebody that she was there-use her for an alibi, if somebody finds out Bobby was murdered. And maybe she knows enough about autopsies to know that we might find out. So she goes over to Crocker's and kills him to shut him up, before he can tell anyone that she was at the jail."

  "Well, goddamnit, Virgil, you're coming back on me again," she said.

  "No, I'm not," Virgil said. "I was just thinking of scenarios. Besides…"

  "Besides, what?"

  "Bobby was a star athlete," Virgil said. "I don't think you're strong enough to keep him pinned long enough to strangle him."

  "Ahh… Go away."

  "You gonna think about it?" Virgil asked. "The scenario?"

  "I'll think about it, but it's bullshit," she said, and Virgil went away. VIRGIL GOT to the Flood house well past dark, but could tell the house was a big one, a cube, white clapboard around the first floor, dark brown shingles around the second floor and the attic level. It sat squarely facing the county highway, on a low rise a hundred yards back, with a shelterbelt of fir trees to the northwest and west, dark against the Milky Way. Five snowmobiles were rolling down the ditch to Virgil's left as he came to the Floods' driveway, and they went bucketing on past into the night.