Bad Blood

got a job in Blue Earth, so he never was around Homestead. And then he went off to study wind power.”
    They talked for a while longer, and Louise Baker asked if they should be afraid for their own lives: “There’re killers out there, and they’ve already taken Kelly from us. What if they’re crazy people?”
    “If you don’t know what’s going on, then I think you’re safe,” Virgil answered. “There’s a thread that links all this together, and if you’re not pulling on the thread, then you should be okay.”
    Louise shivered: “I’m still scared.”
    “At times like this, you need to be strong and courageous. Don’t be afraid or terrified; we’re with you,” Virgil said.
    They nodded, and Leonard Baker said, “Just . . . mystified. Mystified.”

    BACK OUTSIDE, Coakley said, “That wasn’t a lot of help. But they’re also pointing us back to Tripp. Maybe there’s something—”
    “They were lying through their fuckin’ teeth,” Virgil said. “The Bakers know something and they’re scared. That probably means they know something about their daughter’s death, and they’re hiding it.”
    “What’d they lie about?” Coakley asked. “I missed it.”
    “Louise said Crocker was a righteous man. Mrs. Flood said the same thing, the same words, but they deny that they know each other. Bullshit. They know each other and they’ve been talking. And this Bible thing, the righteousness thing. Mrs. Flood had a Bible, and now the Bakers say they belong to a Bible-based religion, and they’re pretty serious about telling you that.”
    “So?”
    “So I threw a little Deuteronomy thirty-one:six at them, one of the most famous verses in the Bible. They had no idea,” Virgil said. “ Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the Lord your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. ”
    “Well—just because they’re Bible-based, doesn’t mean they know every word,” Coakley said.
    “They should know those words,” Virgil said. “There’s something going on here, out in the countryside, and we don’t know what it is, do we, Mrs. Jones?”
    “My: from the Holy Bible to Bob Dylan. I’m impressed,” she said. “Did you notice that Louise was a little spare on the clothing?”
    “I noticed,” Virgil said.
    “I noticed you noticing,” Coakley said.
    “She didn’t look prim, she didn’t look controlled, like a fundamentalist usually does. She looked a little out there, in a morose kind of way,” Virgil said. He smiled at Coakley. “There’s something going on, and that makes me happy. Second day on the case and we’ve got something. We need to think about the Bakers and the Floods. About their religion. Something going on, Lee.”
    “What’s next?”
    Virgil looked at his watch: he had time. “I’ve got Kathleen Spooner’s address over in Jackson. I’m going to run over and talk to her,” he said. “If I have the time, I might check with Junior Baker up in Canby . . . though that might have to wait. That’s a ride.”
    “I’m going to check back with my girls up in Battenberg,” Coakley said. “Stay in touch.”

8
    K athleen Spooner had her back to the wall—the front room wall—facing off the three men who’d shown up unannounced as she took her lunch break. Emmett Einstadt, flanked by two younger men, all three farmers, dressed rough in work coats and pants and boots, tracking dirty snow across her floor.
    She said, keeping her voice low, controlled, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Emmett. I heard Jim was killed, and I felt bad about it for one minute, but I had nothing to do with it.”
    “You two were going at it, the last pool,” Einstadt said. “They says it was a woman who done it, and he wasn’t going with nobody else.”
    “Old times’ sake,” Spooner said. She was an average-sized woman, a little heavy, but not too, with dark hair and eyes. She wore a University of Minnesota fleece, dark slacks, and a touch of red lipstick. “Besides, everybody else was taken up.”
    “But we thought about who else it might be, and we can’t think of nobody,” said Wally Rooney. “The thing we know is, that nobody else knows, is that you’re crazier than a bucket of frogs. It didn’t bother you one little bit to put a bullet through his head.”
    “And you got the guns,” said Ted Morgan.
    “Killed with his own gun, is what I heard. It could have been suicide,” Spooner