Bad Blood

something else. I led Spooner on a bit . . .”
    “How unlike you . . .” But she said it with a smile.
    “. . . and she told me that Einstadt gave a nice talk at Kelly Baker’s funeral. Einstadt and the Floods and the Bakers know each other very well, and they’re lying about it. Why would they do that?”
    “They . . .”
    “They’re covering something up. Maybe Kelly Baker’s death,” Virgil said.
    She looked at him for a long time, then said, “Maybe. But it’s a jump.”
     
     
    THE FOOD CAME, and Virgil asked if she could send one of her deputies up to the BCA, in St. Paul, with Spooner’s hair samples. She nodded. “Most of them would be happy for the chance, on the county’s dime. Do some shopping.”
    “I’ll give you the sample when we leave,” he said.
     
     
    SHE WAS PICKING at her food without much interest, and then she said, “I was talking to a friend up at the BCA. She said you’ve been married so often that the judge gives you a discount.”
    Virgil nearly spat out his hamburger. “What? Who told you that?”
    “A friend. She’s anonymous,” Coakley said. “She said she thought you’ve been married and divorced four times.”
    “That’s slander; I’d arrest her if I knew who it was,” Virgil said.
    “So how many times, then?”
    “Three,” Virgil admitted. “But it’s not as bad as it sounds.”
    “Tell me the truth,” Coakley said. “How bad did it hurt? When you got divorced?”
    “It hurt,” Virgil said. “I’m human.”
    “But she said all of this, all three marriages and divorces, were like in five years. And you have another girlfriend about every fifteen minutes. And that you’ve supposedly slept with witnesses. I don’t know. I was kind of shocked.”
    “Hey . . .”
    “Because when I got divorced, I mean, I was lying there for months, at night, trying to figure out what went wrong—and whose fault it was. I still do it,” she said. “You know. I could no more have gotten married again in six months . . . I was still a basket case in six months.”
    “Well, I didn’t have so much of that,” Virgil said. “It was pretty clear, pretty quick, that me and my wives weren’t going to make it. One of them, it was about a week and a half, you know, that we had the talk.”
    “That’s absurd,” Coakley said.
    “Yeah,” Virgil said. “I know. I did like the first one. But she had lots of plans. I didn’t have much input into them, and I wasn’t doing what she planned. Then, one day, I just wasn’t in the plans anymore. She’d decided to outsource her expectations.”
    “How about sex. Did she outsource the sex?”
    “Not that I know of—that wasn’t the problem,” Virgil said. “The problem was more . . . business-related. She’d decided I couldn’t really be monetized.”
    “Hmph,” Coakley said.
    “That was a denigrating hmph.”
    “Well. Might as well get it out there,” she said. She glanced around the room. “The thing is, when Larry stopped having sex with me, I thought maybe he was . . . just losing interest in sex. I’d never gotten that much out of it. I’m not especially orgasmic, and so, I just let it go. But then, he dumps me off, for this other . . . person . . . with big . . . and I start to wonder, maybe I’m just a complete screwup as a woman.”
    Virgil held up his hands, didn’t want to hear it. “Whoa, whoa, this is a lot of information—”
    She said, “Shut up, Virgil—I’m talking. Anyway, I’m wondering, am I a complete screwup? The major relationship in my life is a disaster—”
    “Hey, you’ve got three kids,” Virgil said. “Is that a disaster?”
    “Shut up. Anyway, I know I’m not all that attractive—”
    “You’re very attractive,” Virgil said. “Jesus, Lee, get your head out of your ass.”
    “Well, see, nobody ever told me that—and you might be lying,” she said. “I suspect somebody who got married and divorced three times in five years probably lies a lot.”
    “Well . . .”
    “So, you can see where this is going,” she said.
    “I can?”
    “Of course you can. I’m the sheriff of Warren County. There are twenty-two thousand people here, and all twenty-two thousand know who I am. I can’t go flitting around, finding out about myself. If I pick out a man, that’s pretty much it. But how can I pick out a man if maybe I’m a total screwup as a woman? I mean, maybe I should be gay. I kind of dress like a guy.”
    “Do you feel gay?”
    “No, I don’t.