Bad Blood

waxed mustache stood up from the booth where he’d been reading the Star Tribune , folded it, looked around, and walked down and slipped into the booth opposite Virgil.
    “I’m Rich,” he said.
    Virgil nodded: “Good for you. Hard to get that way, with all the high taxes.”
    The man half-smiled, showing brown teeth. He leaned forward on his elbows and said, “I know something that might be of interest in your investigation.”
    “I’m listening,” Virgil said.
    “Is there any kind of reward?”
    Virgil nodded again: “The knowledge that you’ve helped your fellow man.”
    “I was afraid of that,” the man said. His furtiveness seemed to be a built-in part of his personality, Virgil decided. “Anyhow. People are talking. They’re saying you’re looking at all these church people, out there in the sticks. And they might have been doing dirty by this Kelly Baker girl. That got me to thinking.”
    Virgil said, “We’d be very interested in anything about Kelly Baker.”
    “Not exactly about her. But I work down at the Wal-Mart. You know where that is?”
    “I do.”
    “So. I’m the photo technician. I used to run the print-making machine and so on, back when we developed film, and I got to know who was who in the local photography community. One of these church people out there, his name is Karl Rouse, this is back in the film days, he used to buy a load of Polaroid film. I mean, a load. You know what I mean?”
    “A lot,” Virgil said. He took a sip of coffee.
    “A load. And when people bought that much Polaroid, unless they were a real estate agent or something, I’d get ideas of what they were taking pictures of. You know?”
    “Okay,” Virgil said. “You ever see any evidence of that?”
    “No, not exactly. But I can tell you, it’s a heck of a lot cheaper to shoot with a film camera and have us develop it. And he did that, too. He was a regular shutterbug, taking church pictures and so on. So I’m asking myself, ‘How come we’re only getting half of his business? The non-Polaroid part?’”
    “But no real indication . . .”
    “No. I can tell you, when digital came in, he was first in line to buy a photo printer, and he still buys a lot of paper from us. Keeps really busy. Anyhow, I thought you’d like to know that.”
    “Well, I’ll keep it in mind,” Virgil said. “But I’ll tell you, there’s no Rouse in this investigation so far.”
    Rich was disappointed, but said, “Well, you oughta take a look. I got an instinct for these things, and I think something was going on there.”
    Jacoby came back and said, “Hey, Rich. You find a clue?”
    “Maybe,” Rich said. He slid out of the booth. “I gotta get going, I’m due at work. But: think about that. I believe it could be important.”
    “What was that?” Jacoby asked, when Rich was out the door.
    “Nothing much, I’m afraid,” Virgil said. “Another guy trying to help out.”
    Jacoby dropped his voice: “Not so much a guy, as the village idiot.”
     
     
    VIRGIL PICKED COAKLEY up at her house, a pleasant wood-and-brick sixties rambler. She met him at the door, invited him in, led him through a kitchen that smelled like toast and peanut butter and jam, to a tiny office. “I’ve got Harvey Loewe’s house spotted on Google,” she said. She touched the mouse, and a satellite shot popped up on the screen. “He’s on Twentieth Street, way down here in the southwest. Right . . .” She reached out and pushed the scale on the map, then tapped the screen with a fingertip. “Here.”
    The picture had been taken in the summer, in a raking, early-morning light, and Loewe’s house, which was white, stood out clearly in the green fields that ran right up to it.
    “No yard,” Virgil said. “Not even a front yard. No outbuildings.”
    “It’s like with Crocker. It’s an old vacant farmhouse,” she said. “Some of them get burned by the fire department, but some of them aren’t so bad. You can live in them, with a little work, if you’re handy. Most farm kids are.”
    “His folks are right around there someplace,” Virgil said. There was nothing exactly across the road, but there were single houses both east and west of Loewe’s, and both were across the road, and appeared to be inhabited. “I’d rather not have them know we’re talking to their kid, you know?”
    On the way out, Virgil detailed his talk with Sullivan.
    “Do you trust him?” Coakley asked.
    “No, not entirely,” Virgil said.