Bad Blood

. too much.”
    “Did you figure anything out?” George Tripp asked.
    “We did learn one thing—your son did know Kelly Baker,” Virgil said. “We know that for sure. They hung around together the summer before last, but probably stopped seeing each other when the summer ended. We don’t think they were intimate, but, of course, we really don’t know, one way or the other.”
    “Crocker killed them both,” George Tripp said. “Or Flood killed the Baker girl, maybe with Crocker. Is that what you think?”
    “It’s a possibility,” Virgil said. “But I just talked to Flood’s wife, and they turn it around from that—they think your son killed Baker, and Flood found out something, so Bobby killed him.” They both objected, and Virgil held up his hands: “I’m just sayin’. I will tell you that I’m not buying any theories, yet. But we know that we have at least one killer running around loose, and that’s the thread we’ve got to pull on.”
    “You don’t have any idea who he is?” Irma Tripp asked.
    “Well, we’re pretty sure it’s not a he . We think it’s a woman,” Virgil said. “Somebody who was intimate with Deputy Crocker. We’re pushing that aspect of it.”
    “If you look hard enough, you’ll find out that Bobby comes out okay,” George Tripp said.
    “That’s why I want to look at his room,” Virgil said. “Maybe there’s something. Maybe he left a letter or a note or something that would explain this to us.”
    Bob Tripp’s bedroom was at the far end of the house, in the front corner. The bed was neatly made—Irma went in and made it after he was killed, as though it were a final favor—but the rest of the room was about as messy as any teenage boy’s might be. Books and papers were scattered over a desk, where a MacBook sat in front of an old-fashioned wooden office chair. A backpack lay at the foot of the bed, and a sports trophy, with a tennis player on top, stood on a chest of drawers. There were none of the expected jocko pennants on the wall, but there were posters for the Minnesota Vikings and New Orleans Saints, a couple of dozen postcards, mostly of nude women, stuck on the wall with pushpins. The place smelled faintly of sweat socks and male deodorant.
    Irma said, “Those postcards aren’t anything—those dumb boys would find them and mail them to their friends with, you know, messages, on the back. Trying to embarrass each other. They were all doing it.”
    “We’ll just leave you,” George Tripp said. “We don’t want to see any of this, to be honest. And we have our appointment, you know, we have to pick out . . .” He trailed off, and Virgil mentally filled it in: a coffin.
    “Take off,” Virgil said. “I’ll wait until you get back.”
    They left him, but then Virgil stepped into the hallway and asked, “Did he have a cell phone?”
    “Yes, it’s on his desk.”
    “Okay. You don’t know if he had a password on his computer, do you?”
    Irma smiled for the first time, an almost shy smile, and she said, “Yes, he did, and he wouldn’t tell us what it was. He said it was his private business. You know, I think with what boys look at on the Internet . . . We have wireless.”
    “Okay. I may want to take the computer with me,” Virgil said. “We have some people in St. Paul who can work around the password.”
    George Tripp said, “I don’t know how valuable it might be. . . .”
    “I’ll get it back to you,” Virgil said. “I’ll give you a receipt. You go on—we’ll work it out later.”
     
     
    HE WENT to the computer first, and the first thing it did was ask for a password. He tried “Tripp” and “BJ” and “Bobby” and “RJ,” “Irma,” and “George,” and, from a school poster taped to the wall, “Cardinals” and “Vikings,” “wide receiver” and “receiver.” Nothing worked.
    He checked the phone and came up with a list of names and phone numbers. He recognized “Sullivan,” the reporter, but the rest meant nothing to him. No Baker, Flood, or Crocker.
    The phone would have to be run. He set it aside and turned to the room, starting with the chest of drawers. He pulled each drawer three-quarters of the way out, felt through the underwear and summer clothing, then pulled each drawer completely free to look under it.
    Under the bottom drawer he found a plastic baggie containing a couple of joints and a package of rolling papers. He thought about it for a moment, then put the dope and the papers