Bernice, he said, had already outed one affair at the school, which had ended with resignations and divorces.
“Huh. Sounds like you’ve got a little rats’ nest over at the high school.”
“Nah. You know, it’s just pretty human,” Mackey said. “People getting to be middle-aged, and rearranging their lives. Pat and Jeanne have a ten-year-old daughter. Pat doesn’t care much for her, and I do, and we’d make a nice little family.”
“Well… might still happen,” Virgil said.
“I don’t think so, really,” Mackey said. “It all looks pretty bleak, with you figuring me out. I would never have made the call if it hadn’t seemed to be slipping away.”
Jeanne Shepard, Mackey said, was at home. Pat Shepard, he said, was out on the golf course, “probably on number three. He and his friends aren’t fast, they’ll be out there for another three hours.”
Virgil called Davenport, to tell him about the political break, but Davenport was out of touch. He called Ahlquist and said, “I need an honest prosecutor to come talk to a woman with me. Like right now.”
“You got a break?”
“Not on the bomber; something else. I need a prosecutor who can keep his mouth shut, and isn’t much interested in politics.”
“I’d have to think about that for a couple days,” Ahlquist said.
“C’mon, man-it’s something I don’t want to talk about yet. I could do it on my own, but it’d be better if I had a guy.”
“Let me talk to Theodore Wills. He’s the county attorney. Get back to you in five.”
More like ten. In the meantime, Virgil took a call from a blocked number.
“Lucas told me about the bomb. You okay?”
“I’m good,” Virgil said. “My boat is a smoking ruin.”
“But you’ve got insurance.”
“Yeah, with State Farm,” Virgil said. “I’m a little worried about that clause that says they won’t pay if there’s a war or civil insurrection.”
“Who’s your agent?”
“A woman named Mary Trail, down in Mankato,” Virgil said.
“I’ll give her a call. Tell her I’m worried about it.”
“I’m not sure that would be appropriate,” Virgil said, but he couldn’t keep the hope out of his voice.
“Sure it is. I’m just a friend making an inquiry for you, since you’re busy with this investigation.”
“Well…”
“Relax, Virgil,” said the governor of Minnesota. “It’s just fine. You take care of yourself, hear? I mean, goddamnit, you’re my thirdmost-favorite troublemaker.”
“ I got you a prosecutor, ” Ahlquist said, when he called back. “We’re all curious about what you’ve got going.”
“I’ll tell you this evening,” Virgil said. “What’s the guy’s name, and where do I find him?”
“Her name is Shirley Good Thunder, and she’s at the courthouse. Let me give you her number.”
Good Thunder was a sioux -a Dakota, for sticklers-a good-looking, dark-eyed woman about Virgil’s age, with long legs and a large briefcase. When she climbed into the truck, she asked, “Are you okay? I mean, after the bomb.”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” Virgil said. He was a little tired of the question; it wasn’t like he was bleeding from the ears. “Are you any relation to Larry Good Thunder, from Marshall? I played basketball with him.”
“Probably, somehow, like a great-uncle-fifth-cousin or something,” she said. “Quite a few Good Thunders running around.”
“Terrific ball player, but he didn’t shoot enough,” Virgil said. “He was too good not to put it up more often.”
“Tell me more about basketball,” she said. “I find it almost as fascinating as soil management.” But she said it with a smile.
“I’m happy to hear you’re interested in soil management, ’cause we’re out to dig up some dirt,” Virgil said.
The Shepards lived all the way across town, on a wide, well-treed peninsula that stuck out into the lake. On the way over, Virgil told her about the tip from the kid at the Holiday Inn, and about his conversation with Mackey. When he finished, she said, “All right. I’m now officially nervous.”
“About what?”
“Oh. Let me think,” she said, putting an index finger at the corner of her mouth and cocking her head. “Okay, uh, how about, if you’re right, we’re about to set Butternut Falls on fire, and I have to live here, and my boss is the most political guy in the county.”
“One good thing about it,” Virgil said.
“What’s that?”
“I live in Mankato,” Virgil said. “I won’t have to listen to it.”
That didn’t make her laugh. Instead, she got busy with her briefcase, pulled out a yellow pad, and said: “All right: give me the names, and tell me the story again. I gotta say, I hate the idea of people taking money under the table. Especially when a whole bunch of people are going to get hurt by it.”
“That’s my attitude,” Virgil said. “Though, I feel kind of sleazy, getting it this way.”
“I feel a whole bunch sleazy, and we’re not even at the Shepards’ place yet.”
When they got to the Shepards’ place, a minivan was sitting in the driveway, with the side doors open. A young blond girl was pulling out a bag of groceries, and Virgil said, “Damnit. That’s their kid, I think. I hate to hit her with the kid around.”
“Go on past,” Good Thunder said. She took her phone out of her pocket, asked Virgil if he had the Shepards’ phone number, and he said he didn’t. She pushed a single button on the phone, then said into it, “This is Shirley. I need a phone number for a Mrs. Pat Shepard, a Jeanne Shepard, on Bayview.”
She got the number, punched it into her phone, got an answer, identified herself, asked if she was speaking to Mrs. Shepard, got a “yes,” and said, “We have to talk to you about a legal matter. We just went by and saw your daughter in the driveway. We’d prefer to talk to you alone-we don’t want to upset your child.”
After a minute of back-and-forth, in which Good Thunder refused to say why they wanted to talk, she listened, and then said, “That would be best. We’ll see you in ten minutes.”
She hung up and said, “She can leave the kid with a sister, but has to take her over there. Her sister lives south of the highway, less than a mile. She said she’ll be back in five minutes.”
“Good enough,” Virgil said. They sat at the end of the block and watched Shepard, in sunglasses, a short-sleeved shirt and slacks, usher her daughter into the van and take off. She was too far away for Virgil to tell for sure, but he thought Thor, the desk clerk, might have been right: she did look fairly hot.
“What? Did you say something?” Good Thunder asked.
“I said, it’s gonna be hot out.”
She laughed. “Oh, jeez. I thought you were looking at her ass, and said, ‘hot.’”
“Hey, c’mon,” Virgil said.
She was gone not five minutes, but twenty, and Virgil and Good Thunder were getting a little itchy before she showed up. They were still sitting down the block, and after Shepard had parked, and had gone inside, Virgil started the truck and pulled into the driveway behind the minivan.
The front door was open, and they could hear Shepard inside. Virgil rang the doorbell and Shepard called, “Come in.” They went in, and found her dragging a second suitcase into the living room. The first one lay open on the couch.
Virgil asked, “Are you, uh…”
“Going over to my sister’s,” Shepard said. She was a tall, busty blonde with a narrow waist and a slender, foxy face, with downslanting eyebrows. No makeup; she didn’t need any, with a face as smooth as a peach, and gray-green eyes. She said, “I need to get out of here before Pat gets back.”
Virgil introduced Good Thunder, and then himself, and asked, “You know why we’re here?”
“I think so. I’m going to need a lawyer before I talk to you,” Shepard said.
“That might not be a bad idea,�
� Good Thunder said. “I would want to get that going as quickly as possible. If you don’t have a lawyer of your own, I can recommend one, and I can get you a public defender if you can’t afford one-”
“Tom LaRouche,” Shepard said. “He’s over in the Lakeside Center.”
“Okay, good, I know him,” Good Thunder said. And, “We basically have hard information that you know about your husband’s taking a bribe from PyeMart Corporation, in exchange for his vote on the zoning. We are willing to offer you immunity from prosecution on the basis of your providing us that information. Do you think you will have something to discuss? I’m not asking you to commit yourself, but just to tell me whether we’re wasting our time.”
“If you give me immunity, we’ve got something to talk about,” Shepard said, blowing a hank of blond hair away from her eyes. “When I found out about what Pat had done, I felt terrible. So many people are getting hurt. I felt even more terrible when I found out he was having an affair.”
“You know about the affair?” Virgil asked.
She stopped, looked at him: “ You know about it?”
Virgil said, “Yeah… I guess, our source…”
She shook her head and said to Good Thunder. “Carol Anne Moore? You know her? She works for the county, in the license office. I couldn’t believe it…”
Virgil thought, Oh, boy.
Shepard called her attorney, explained the situation to him. He told her to stop talking to Virgil and Good Thunder, and said that he could see her that afternoon, and Virgil and Good Thunder immediately afterward.
She hung up, made a hand-dusting slap, and said, “Finally. Something is getting done. But he says I shouldn’t talk to you again until I speak to him.”
“Well, we’ll see you this afternoon, then,” Good Thunder said.
Back in the truck, Good Thunder said, “So Pat Shepard tells his pal that he’s having an affair with Marilyn Oaks, but Pat’s wife thinks he’s having an affair with Carol Anne Moore.”
Virgil said, “I feel bad about myself for saying this, but if the lawyer tells her that she might not want to talk to us… I bet Marilyn Oaks could change her mind.”
“I’ve got to go talk to the boss,” she said. “This is going to get ugly, on a lot of levels.”
Virgil dropped her at the courthouse and drove back to look at his boat. It was still blown up. The crime-scene tech had finished, and had thrown a blue plastic tarp over the hulk, like pulling a sheet over the face of a dead man.
He left it that way, and walked into the motel. Thor was behind the desk, saw him coming, and asked, “Did you talk to Mrs. Shepard?”
“I can’t really talk about that,” Virgil said.
“So, was she as hot as I said?”
“She was… yes, she was,” Virgil said. “Did some deputies come around and talk to you about people prowling your back lot?”
“Yeah, they talked to everybody, but nobody saw anything,” Thor said. “You think I got a chance to get Mrs. Shepard before Mr. Mackey?”
“I gotta go,” Virgil said.
From behind him, Thor said, “Sonofagun, he already got there, didn’t he?”
Virgil turned around and Thor said, “I’ll tell you what’s got me scratching my head.”
Virgil turned back. “Yeah?”
“Why’d they try to kill you?” he asked.
Virgil said, “Well, see, I’m a cop, and I’ve been assigned to find the bomber-”
“Yeah, and what happens if you get killed? About, what, a hundred more cops come in?” Thor asked. “Right now, we got the sheriff’s department, and Sheriff Ahlquist is a nice guy, but to be honest, his deputies couldn’t find a stolen bike unless it was parked between the cheeks of their ass. So we got two real cops here, one state and one federal. If he kills a real cop, what happens? We get a hundred real cops, and they’re all pissed off. So, what’s the percentage? Is the guy stupid? He doesn’t seem stupid.”
Virgil had no answer for that. He said, “You need to lie down and take a nap before your brains burn up.”
So, Virgil asked himself, back in his truck, why’d he try to kill me?
14
Virgil intended to spend some time thinking-stretch out on the bed and have at it. As a backup, and just to make sure he didn’t fall asleep, he set the alarm, and the alarm woke him a half hour before he was to meet Good Thunder at Shepard’s lawyer’s office.
He got up, checked his vital signs-he had an after-nap erection, which was always good-brushed his teeth and took a quick shower.
Good Thunder had given him directions to the lawyer’s office, and wearing his most conservative T-shirt-an unauthorized souvenir from My Chemical Romance, with the band’s name only on the back, and with a black sport coat covering it-he set off for the lawyer’s office.
The office was in a low, low, rustic strip mall-fake log cabins-with Butternut’s most complete collection of upscale boutiques, including one called Mairzy Doats with a window full of stuffed velvet moose dolls. Good Thunder was sitting on the hood of her car, a new fire-engine-red Chevy Camaro, waiting. When Virgil got out of the truck, she said, in a phony baritone, “Johnny Cash, the ‘Man in Black.’ ”
“You seem to be in a pretty good mood,” Virgil said.
She hopped off the hood. “My boss put a thumb in the wind-that’s not where he usually keeps it-and decided that if we can bag the city council, if they really did it, then he’ll be a lock for reelection. What he really doesn’t want, though, is for us to screw it up. He’s gonna be really unhappy if we just wound them.”
Virgil nodded. “I know how it is. You get a wounded city councilman out in the brush, they’ll charge at the drop of the hat.”
“Whatever,” she said. “Let’s not have any show of wit in here. Let’s just play it straight.”
“This lawyer’s pretty smart?”
“As a matter of fact, he is.”
The lawyer was an extremely white man named Thomas LaRouche. His secretary ushered them into his office, where Jeanne Shepard sat in a corner chair, looking apprehensive. LaRouche was tall, courtly, and silver-haired, wearing a blue suit and a white shirt, open at the throat; a burgundy necktie was curled on a corner of his desk. He was maybe sixty, Virgil thought.
When they came in, he stood up, smiling, said, “Shirley,” and came around the desk and kissed Good Thunder on the cheek, and shook hands with Virgil and pointed them at two leather visitor’s chairs.
“I heard your boat was blown up this morning,” he said to Virgil, as he settled behind his desk. “That qualifies as a war crime.”
“You’re right,” Virgil said. “People keep asking me if I’m all right, but I keep thinking about the boat. I took that thing all over the place.”
LaRouche asked him what kind of boat it was, and when Virgil told him, he lit up, a bit, and said, “I used to have one like that-but it was years ago. I had a 40 Merc tiller off the back. One time up on Mille Lacs…”
By the time he got finished, he had Virgil liking him; that had happened before with lawyers, usually the kind who won in court. “So,” he said finally, “we have a situation here. I’ve agreed to represent Jeanne, and I have to say that I was a little disturbed when I heard about your conversation this morning.”
Then he and Good Thunder went back and forth for a while, on the propriety of having spoken to Jeanne Shepard without a lawyer being present, and while he scored a point or two, when they were done, Virgil had Good Thunder four points up and standing on the free-throw line with two seconds left in the game. It was over, and LaRouche knew it.
“The point being,” Good Thunder said for emphasis, “we do not necessarily have an issue with Mrs. Shepard, although, of course, she should have spoken to police immediately after learning that Mr. Shepard had taken a bribe.”
“We should be able to handle that,” LaRouche said.
“Oh, I think so. I’ve spoken to Theodore”-Theodore was her boss-“and he is totally on board with immunity
for Mrs. Shepard, contingent only on her complete cooperation.”
“I should put in here,” Virgil said, “if Ms. Good Thunder doesn’t mind, I’d like to say that we’re coming from several different directions on this investigation. If Mrs. Shepard declines to cooperate, then, of course, there will be no immunity, and no second chance.”
“Aw, c’mon, Virgil, you don’t have to bring the knives out,” LaRouche said. “We’re all friends here, trying to do what’s right.”
When he was finished, and everybody agreed they were friends, Good Thunder produced a file of papers-a contract, more or less-that defined the terms of the immunity and the scope of her cooperation. LaRouche said he would look at them overnight, brief his client in the morning, and, if everything was properly done, return them signed that afternoon.
“The terms are all standard stuff, they shouldn’t give you any trouble,” Good Thunder told LaRouche. “But time is a major problem. It’d help a lot if we could get them back this afternoon, and talk with Mrs. Shepard tonight. We understand that she’s left her husband, and that could signal to him, and to the other people involved in this conspiracy, that there could be trouble. Evidence could be lost, if there’s a delay; or the conspirators could have a chance to talk about a common defense, before we can get to them.”
LaRouche: “I’m afraid we’ll need a little more time than that.”
Good Thunder: “Agent Flowers is planning to continue his investigation-time is of the essence. I have to warn you, that if there’s another development, with another suspect, the same deal might not be available tomorrow.”
LaRouche: “Shirley, gosh darn it, we need a little time.”
Good Thunder: “I’m not trying to be harsh, Tommy, I’m just saying that we have a serious time problem. Things are moving fast. If something else breaks… it breaks. We’ll have to jump at it. We have to take the bird in the hand, we can’t count on the one in the bush.”
There was more back-and-forth, and LaRouche asked them to step out of the office for a moment, so he could talk privately with Shepard. Virgil and Good Thunder sat outside for twenty minutes, talking about nothing, for the benefit of LaRouche’s secretary, who listened carefully while pretending to type, and finally LaRouche called them back.
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