Bad Blood

if the names Jacob Flood, Bob Tripp, or Jim Crocker show up anyplace along the way?”
    After a moment’s silence, Wood said, “Doesn’t ring a bell with me,” and Ingle said, “Me neither. I can run a search on my computer.”
    “If you could,” Virgil said.
    He and Ingle exchanged phone numbers, and Ingle said, “Minor Wood has filled me in on your investigation there, and if there’s anything I can do, I’ll come up. If you need help down on the Iowa side . . .”
    “Don’t know where it’s going yet,” Virgil said. “But I appreciate it.”
     
     
    HE WAS BACK in the paper when he heard cowboy boots coming down the hall, and Coakley stuck her head in the door: “You got the file. John said you’re pulling the Kelly Baker case into it.”
    “I haven’t found any direct connection, but it’s a pretty interesting coincidence,” Virgil said.
    She came in and sat down at the side of the table, leaned toward him, and said, “I got to Baker about halfway back from Crocker’s folks’ house. I would have gotten to it quicker, if I hadn’t been so run over by the murder. The Baker case is no coincidence, Virgil. You remember I told you that Crocker belonged to a private religion? Flood was a member of the same group—and so was Baker.”
    “Okay—that’s good,” Virgil said. “What about Tripp? Was his family—”
    “No. Lutherans. But still, there has to be a connection.”
    “I think you’ve made up the same story I have,” Virgil ventured.
    She said, “Crocker and Flood somehow get on to Baker’s availability, maybe because of their church activities. Who knows how? They begin some kind of complicated sexual relationship, probably a four-way, between Crocker, Flood, Baker, and the other woman. Baker’s in on it, voluntarily. Maybe Bobby and Baker have a secret relationship of some kind. She tells him what Flood is doing to her . . . maybe doesn’t tell him about Crocker . . . and he reacts by killing Flood. We bring him in. Crocker realizes that Bobby could spill the beans about their sex ring, and also realizes that Bobby doesn’t know who he is. But he’s a danger, so Crocker sneaks into Bobby’s cell while he’s asleep, and kills him.”
    “The other woman?” Virgil asked.
    “The woman who was doing oral sex on Crocker when she killed him.”
    “You think?”
    “I think. It’s plausible.” Her mismatched eyes narrowed as she ran through it. “His penis is sticking out of his pants, he’s lying way back on the couch, with his legs spread, one foot on the floor, and he gets shot under the jaw. If it’s murder, and I think it is, that means that he let somebody get close enough to him to put that gun right under his jawline, and doesn’t react. That’s because he’s reacting to something else.”
    “Why would she do it?”
    “Because she was in on the Baker murder,” Coakley said. “She was in on a statutory rape, which meant that Baker’s death was murder.”
    “Like she had some legal knowledge. She knew she’d been contaminated by the death of Baker. And she knew Jimmy and knew how to handle his gun,” Virgil said, with a faint smile.
    She leaned back, picking up the implication. “I didn’t do it, you jerk. If I had a choice between giving that moron a blow job and going to the chair, I’d take the chair.”
    “We don’t have the death penalty—”
    “You get the point,” she said. “Jeez, I’m starting to understand ‘that fuckin’ Flowers’ thing.”
    “Don’t get in a huff,” he said. “I was filling out your line of reasoning. And maybe teasing you a little.”
    “Fill it some other way,” she said.
    “Any other female deputies, or cops, who might have known what Crocker had done? Who he might have confided in?”
    “Two, but they didn’t do it. I know them well enough to say that. Though I guess we have to talk to them.”
    “You knew Crocker pretty well, too,” Virgil pointed out. “Was he attractive to the other women in the department? Did he hang around with any of them? Where was his social life? In the department, or outside?”
    She shook her head: “Not an attractive man, no. The other deputies . . . no.”
    “Of course, even if Crocker was getting oral sex, we don’t know it was a woman.”
    “You think . . . ?”
    “What I think is, the sex with Baker was so crazy that they probably do a little of everything. Just for the excitement.”
    “That’s a point,” she said. And, “You know what? We need to