Bad Blood

night.”
    George Tripp lurched off the couch, to his feet, and said, “I knew it. I knew it,” and Irma began to weep. George Tripp said, “Where is he? Crocker?”
    Coakley said, “He’s dead, George. We went to his house with a search warrant, and found him dead. He also looks like a suicide, but agent Flowers and I both believe that he was also murdered.”
    “What the hell is going on?” George Tripp demanded. His wife was twisting the dish towel into a rope; but Virgil’s statement had stopped the weeping.
    “We don’t know yet, George, but . . . uh . . .”
    “Things are getting very strange, and very complicated,” Virgil said. “We need to ask you something: do you know whether or not Bobby was acquainted with, or dating, a young woman, a girl from the west end of the county, named Kelly Baker?”
    Irma: “Baker? Wasn’t that the girl who was murdered?”
    “Yes. Last year, down by Estherville,” Coakley said.
    “You can’t think that Bobby had anything to do with that,” George Tripp said, anger threading back into his voice.
    “No, no, we don’t,” Virgil said. “But we’re wondering if Jacob Flood might have.”
    The Tripps stared at him for a moment, then Irma Tripp rocked back on the couch and said, “Ohhh. Oh, no. You think Bobby found out about . . . Ohhh.”
    “Did they know each other?”
    The two looked at each other, and then George Tripp said, “Our son, you know, never really had much to do with girls, yet. He was shy. But there was something going on a year ago. We don’t know with who, because he wouldn’t talk about it.”
    “He didn’t take anybody to the junior prom,” Irma Tripp said. “We kept trying to get him to take Nancy Anderson, she’s really a nice girl, and we’d hoped . . . Do you think he was seeing this other girl? Kelly?”
    “She lived out in the countryside,” Virgil said.
    “He was always borrowing the car, soon as he got his license,” George Tripp said. “That wouldn’t have been a problem.”
    “She worked at the Dairy Queen here in Homestead, during the summers,” Coakley said.
    “There you go,” George Tripp said. “The Dairy Queen’s a regular meeting place for the kids. He would have been down there most every day, at one time or another.”
    “So there’s a possibility he could have known her, but you don’t know that specifically,” Virgil said.
    Irma’s head bobbed. “That would be it. But now that you bring it up, I think he must have known her. He was so strange last fall. He grew up a cheerful, outgoing kid . . .”
    “Got a football scholarship, over in your hometown,” George Tripp said to Virgil.
    “I heard that,” Virgil said.
    “. . . but last fall, he was so gloomy,” Irma continued. “We thought maybe the football team, it didn’t do as well as people hoped. We thought he was down about that. But if . . .”
    “We would like to look through his private things . . . anything would help,” Coakley said.
    “What would you look for?” Irma asked.
    “Any indication that he had prior contact with Flood, with Baker, with Crocker, any notes or letters . . .”
    “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
    P at 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