"What is it this time?" she asked.
"I wanted to talk to you," Virgil said, taking a chair without asking. "I've been trying to settle the whole Kelly Baker murder in my mind. I'm pretty sure I know what happened. I believe your husband and Jim Crocker were involved in a sexual relationship with her, and were present when she died, and that the Tripp boy found out about it. That set him off, and his arrest set off Crocker, and Crocker was killed to keep him quiet."
"Impossible to prove all that," she said. "Everybody's dead."
"But proving it, if we could do it, would still be interesting, because there might have been a third man involved, or even more," Virgil said. "Which brings up the whole question of the World of Spirit. All of these people were members, including Kelly and her parents. So the question comes up, was this a church thing? I mean, a regular church thing, allowed and supervised by the church? How many people were involved?"
"It's not the church," she said. "It can't be the church." But she was stressed, and, Virgil thought, maybe lying.
"It would be hard to believe," Virgil said. He nodded at her Bible. "Anyone who takes the Bible seriously, who believes that we'll go on to another world, couldn't be involved in this kind of thing. Child abuse, murder. But we know about the problems that the Catholic Church has had… There will be, Mrs. Flood, hell to pay. Literally. You read in your Good Book where John the Revelator says, when he talks about the City that has no need of the Sun, because it has the Light of the Lord. He says, 'There shall in no wise enter into it anything unclean, or he that maketh an abomination and a lie: but only they that are written in the Lamb's book of life.' Will the people in the church enter that City?"
She sat as if stricken, didn't say a word, but fixed him with an eye like a dead bird's, not even blinking.
One of the girls said, "Mom? Are you okay?"
"'They repented not of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts,'" Virgil said, leaning forward, pounding it in. "And then there's the part that says, 'And I saw, and behold, a pale horse: and he that sat upon him, his name was Death, and Hades followed with him.'"
No response. One of the girls said, "I think you should go now."
Virgil stood and said to Alma Flood, "I've got a source who knows about the church. I spoke to her yesterday, and it's possible that the sins of the church will come back to haunt all of you. Save yourself and your daughters, Mrs. Flood. Help me out, if you can."
Finally, she moved, to shake her head. "You go on now," she said. "Go on out of here."
Virgil turned away, and she said, "Maybe."
"What?"
"Maybe something will happen. Maybe the pale horse is already here." She held up her hand and looked at it in the light of her reading lamp, and said, "You go on. But I will talk to you one more time. Not now."
The two girls came as far as the side door.
Edna said, "Rooney wouldn't like to see you here. He says you have a bad effect on our minds."
Virgil said, "I'd like to hear you speak your minds, what you two really think. What you talk about at night, between the two of you. You're old enough to have your own thoughts. Then we could decide whether I'm bad for you, or Rooney is."
Neither one said anything, and Virgil walked away, turning once to see them standing on the porch, watching him. Helen's lips were moving; she was speaking to Edna without looking at her, tracking Virgil instead; or maybe it was a prayer. Virgil was thoroughly creeped out, not only by Alma Flood and the two girls, but by himself.
There was, he thought, something fundamentally crooked about using the Bible to crack a Bible-believer, and that feeling of being stained by his own actions, if that's what he felt, reached so far back into his childhood that he'd never escape it.
He looked back at the house, snarled, "Fuck it," over his shoulder, and headed down the drive. SOMETHING LIKE two hours over to Hayfield, but he made it in a bit more than an hour and a half, by driving way too fast. As Virgil pulled in to the curb in front of Holley's place, a brown Cadillac sedan came around the corner and pulled up behind him. Jenkins and Shrake, the BCA's muscle, got out of Shrake's Cadillac, and Shrake said, "Yet another case he can't handle on his own."
Virgil asked, "You guys bring your guns?"
Jenkins said, "Oh, shit, I knew we forgot something." He was carrying a canvas bag and he lifted it and said, "Radios."
Shrake was looking at the house and said, "Are we all going to fit in there?"
"Probably not. Probably only me, I'll be in a bedroom closet, and one more guy, down the basement," Virgil said. "The other guy will be next door, and when the talk stops, you'll come out to the side door. If we need you, you're five steps away."
"Couldn't hear-"
"I'll be able to," Virgil said, "and I'll yell."
Louise Gordon, Dennis Brown, and Schickel were sitting in Holley's living room, watching television, with a couple of sacks of Doritos and brown bottles of root beer. Gordon got up when Virgil knocked and came in, and said, "Are we going to do it?"
"Sure, we're good," Virgil said, smiling at her. He introduced Shrake and Jenkins to the others, and asked Gordon, "You study your lines?"
"Yes, I did. But Clayton said they sounded stilted-he used to be in a little theater."
"I was pretty good, too," Holley said. "I once played the Nazi in The Sound of Music. That was sort of the high point of my career."
"We don't want a play," Virgil began, but Schickel interrupted.
"You want an improv," Schickel said. "So we've been practicing, like we're talking on the telephone with her. We got it going."
"All right," Virgil said. "I'll bite. Let's say I'm Roland…"
They went through the phone call, and Virgil stopped it a few times and went off in different directions, and she always brought him back, sounding appropriately flustered and, at times, frightened.
"Okay, I'm impressed," Virgil said. She was a natural bullshitter. "Let's make the call."
"What if he's not home?" Gordon asked.
"Then we make the call later," Virgil said. "Keep making it until he answers. We know he's around the farm, because Sheriff Coakley has seen him."
They made the call and he wasn't home.
They spent the next half hour going around to the neighbors, and talking about where to leave the cars, and deciding who would be doing what; fifteen minutes into the half hour, Gordon called again, and got no answer. At the end of the half hour, as they were all getting back to Holley's, she made a third call and suddenly lit up, and asked, in a hushed voice, "Roland?… This is Lucy. Lucy."
They couldn't hear the other end of the conversation, but they could hear the pitch.
Gordon: "I'm a little scared here. I don't know how they tracked me down, but this state agent said if I protect you, then I'm an accomplice. I haven't even been there in forever, and he says that makes no difference. He wants me to testify against you, against the Spirit and Emmett and all them… No, I'm not going to tell you where I'm at. What I'm going to do is, I'm going to get a suitcase and tomorrow morning I'm going to Florida or California or Hawaii or someplace and let you clean up your own messes… I don't want to hear about any money, you sonofabitch; you passed me around like I was a side of beef, you owed me that money and more… But you… I don't care, I'm just telling you. They're coming and you better hide out, because this Flowers guy is going to put you all in prison… I didn't tell him anything, I told him I didn't have anything to tell, but he knows I was lying. Now I'm going, I'm on my way, and I've said what I was going to say, and I only got one more thing to say to you, which is, go fuck yourself."
And she slammed the old-fashioned phone back on the receiver and looked around, a thin veil of sweat on her forehead and upper lip. "How'd I do?"
Shrake launched himself out of his chair and said, "Goddamn! That was so amazing, you oughta be in the theater."
"Awful good," Virgil said. He was beaming, and he beamed on. "Awful good
. Okay, folks, the fire is lit. They couldn't get here in less than a couple hours and probably not less than four or five. I say we order up some pizza and beer, see if we can get a decent movie… Clay's got a Blu-ray."
"Party on," Jenkins said. "Goddamn, I like this kind of detectin'. You detect good, Flowers." They got the pizza and beer and soda and a Bruce Willis Die Hard movie about a computer genius; and Holley got a couple of the cooperating neighbors over, and it was a little like an old-fashioned Christmas.
While that was going on, Virgil took Shrake and Jenkins in the back bedroom and they sat on a bed with a bowl of chips and Virgil said, "If they come, and if they say or do something that we can pop them for, we're going to go straight at them. Read them their rights, but roll right through that, threats, whatever it takes. If they ask for an attorney, we'll tell them that we're taking them up to Ramsey County, and they'll get an attorney there. We ask no more questions, but we talk among ourselves, you know…"
"We know…"
"Right at the beginning, even before reading the rights, we break them apart. We've got two bedrooms, the kitchen and living room, the car, however many there are, we isolate them. I'll come and talk to each of them, in turn. I'm looking for one good solid piece of information-"
"What?" Jenkins asked.
"I don't know, but I'll know it when I hear it," Virgil said. "I'm looking for something I can use in a search warrant. If I get it, I'm going to take off, and you'll be on your own for moving these people up north. I haven't talked to the sheriff here, but we could probably get a car if we needed it."
"We can work that out," Jenkins said.
"I know it's all sort of ramshackle, but I'm in a big hurry, and this is what I've got," Virgil said. TWO HOURS WENT BY, and they moved the cars around the block, scattering them. Jenkins and Virgil stayed in the house with Gordon, while Dennis Brown went to the house on one side of Holley's, Shrake and Schickel to the house on the other side, and Holley went down to his girlfriend's place. Everybody would be watching the street, linked with cell phones and radios.
Gordon started cleaning up after the party, and Jenkins set up a half-dozen wireless microphones, with recording equipment under the bed. Virgil, Jenkins, and Shrake would have headphones to monitor the talk, although Shrake's wouldn't work until he was just outside the house.
And they waited, watching TV.
They asked one question, two hundred times. "Do you think they looked up the phone number?"
Virgil found it hard to believe that they'd be too stupid to do that; that somebody wouldn't do it.
"Our big problem is gonna be if they come hat in hand, are polite, say their piece, and leave," Virgil said. "Even if there are some little threats buried in there… you know, 'We'd sure be unhappy, Miz Lucy, to hear you were telling lies about us.' If they go that way, we've got nothing."
They got past three hours, and past four hours, but they didn't get past five hours.
18
They came in a crew-cab pickup, three of them. The first word came from an elderly couple who lived at the end of the block, an excited woman on her cell to Virgil: "Big pickup, not from town, turning the corner like they're lost, looking at house numbers."
Virgil clocked his radio: "Incoming," he said.
"We got them," Dennis Brown said. "The guy in the driver's seat is Emmett Einstadt Junior. They call him 'Junior.' There are two more, I think, but I can't see who they are. Could be one in the back-that'd make four."
The big Chevy crew cab stopped in front of Holley's house, and a minute later three men climbed out, awkwardly, a little stiff from the ride, and regrouped on the sidewalk.
Jenkins hurried across the house and down the stairs into the basement, while Virgil crouched in the front bedroom, looking out through a hole in a venetian blind. Gordon stood behind him, in the doorway, twisting her hands nervously. They had wrapped a woman's bulletproof vest around her, and covered it with a thick quilted housecoat. She still looked a little porky, but with her round face and fleshy hands, not unconvincing.
A radio beeped, and Virgil said, "Yeah?"
"The guy with the black watch cap is Roland Olms, and the third guy-"
"Wally Rooney," Virgil said. Outside, Rooney had pulled off his baseball cap to scrub at his hair, and then replaced it. "Excellent."
He turned and repeated the information to Gordon, and she repeated it, "Cowboy hat is Junior, the other guy is Wally Rooney, and I know Roland…"
She was almost hyperventilating, and Virgil grinned at her and said, "Take it easy. This isn't as hard as it looks, and it's gonna be interesting. They didn't bring their shooter with them, so I don't think we have to worry about that. You just get out there and argue with them."
"They brought this Rooney man you told me about-do you want me to tell them that you think he's messing with Flood's daughters?"
"Keep it in mind, and if it comes up, mention it. Don't force anything," Virgil said. "Okay, they're coming up the walk. When the doorbell rings-"
"Count to five."
"Jenkins is right at the bottom of the basement stairs, I'll be right here… Leave the bedroom door open." He was looking out through the blind. "Okay, they're on the porch. Here we go."
He put the radio to his face and said, "Shrake, as soon as they're inside, and talking, I'll double-click, and you get up by the side door."
"Got that," Shrake said.
The doorbell rang, and Virgil stepped over to the bedroom closet and said, "Break a leg," and stepped inside and plugged in the radio earpiece and turned off the speaker. Gordon was headed toward the door and he said into the radio, "Showtime."
Gordon pulled the inside door open and looked through the storm door. Roland Olms was there, and she looked at him and said, aloud, "Oh, no. Go away."
Olms pulled at the storm door handle, got it open, and said, "We need to talk to you, Birdy."
"I said everything I was going to say. What if the police are watching? Go away, go away," Gordon said.
Olms was just under six feet tall, and thick through the chest. He stepped directly at her and said, at the same time, "We can't do that. We need to talk," and his momentum pushed her back without touching her. She backed into the living room, and Junior Einstadt followed, with Rooney right behind. He pushed the inner door shut with a solid thunk, and they were all standing in a circle.
Roland Olms asked, "You been here the whole time?" and, "You spend all my money?"
"If this Flowers gets on to you, you won't need any money," Gordon said. "He says you all killed some girl and left her body in a cemetery. Some underage girl, and he's like death on that. He says somebody beat her with a whip, and more than once, more than the time she was killed. He says she was gang-raped-"
"Wasn't no rape," Einstadt said. "She was glad to get it any way she could."
"You were there?" Gordon asked, and her hand went to her mouth.
"Didn't say that," Einstadt said. "But it wasn't no rape. She was friendly, and she liked it. She'd get in a pool, and she could get seven or eight of us in one night. More the merrier."
Rooney said, uneasily, "That's not something we ought to talk about."
"Why not?" Einstadt said. "Old Birdy here was the same way, hot to get it on."
"Was not," Gordon said. "That's why I ran away, you sonofabitch."
They were still standing and she began backing away from them.
Olms said, "I oughta take my money's worth right now."
Rooney said, "Shut up, Roll. We're not here to fuck around." He looked at Gordon. "What all did Flowers ask you? We want to know all of it."
"He said that this dead girl got raped by a bunch of you," Gordon said. "He said that you were all church members, and he wanted to know if the church, you know, made little girls do it."
"He mention anybody?" Rooney asked. Gordon's mouth flapped for a moment, as she tried to decide whether to mention Rouse, and it looked to the three men as though she was trying to avoid saying something,
and Rooney pressed: "Did he mention me?"
"Well… he sorta wanted to know about you and the Flood girls. The girls were just little bitty kids before, I couldn't even remember them, hardly."
"Sonofabuck," Rooney said to Einstadt. "He knows."
Gordon said, "He was asking about some other people… the Bakers, a boy named Loewe, I think he was that little queer back then-"
"Didn't know you knew him," Olms said.
"I knew who he was; some of the women thought he was queer… and Flowers is telling me all these things. Rouse? Rouse's daughter, riding around with people? Does that mean anything?"
"Ah, shit," Einstadt said. "Who's talking to him?"
"I think he's talked to a lot of neighbors."
"If he's asking about the Rouses, we got a problem," Olms said. "Greta Rouse has been serviced by everybody in the Spirit. If they get hold of them-"
"We gotta get back," Rooney said. "We need a meeting tonight. With everybody. We gotta call Emmett, right now."
Einstadt looked at Gordon for a moment, then said, "We got a friend who's going to stay with you overnight. Just to make sure you don't go talking to cops until we can have our meeting."
"You're not staying here," Gordon said. She had pulled enough out of the three men that she expected Virgil to burst into the living room. She wanted to look back toward the open bedroom door, but didn't.
"We're not. But you remember Kathleen Spooner?" Einstadt asked. "She'll be here in a few minutes. She's gonna stay with you. We don't have time to fuck around, Birdy. So we'll bring Kathleen in, and tomorrow morning, we'll have figured out what we're gonna do, and she'll be gone."
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