Bad Blood

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