Bad Blood

Rouse, I call you, and you go with all the guys you can get.”
    “Say I believe you when you say they’ll track her down. But what if the people who show up aren’t the people you know? But she should know? And she goes to the door, and she doesn’t know who Roland is—”
    “She knows Roland,” Virgil said. “She saw him a lot, when Lucy was first married. And she can refuse to let him in . . . unless he’s the only one who shows. But I see what you mean.”
    “Best shot would be to take Dennis and Gene with you. They might be able to pick out who they are.”
    “Let’s talk to them,” Virgil said. “Too late tonight, but first thing in the morning. Damn, this is going to be interesting.”
    Her hand slipped down his thigh, and groped, and found him, and she sighed and said, “I’m gonna miss you, Virgil.”
    “Yeah? How much?”
     
     
    THE NEXT DAY was a rush. Instead of picking up Gordon, which would have been a two-hour detour, he called her and she agreed to drive to Hayfield on her own. She was excited.
    “This is a lot better than sorting nuts. I bought a new pair of shoes, I just, uh . . . I don’t know why I did that.”
    Virgil said, “Take it easy; drive carefully. We don’t need you winding up in a ditch.”
    Dennis Brown, the police chief, and Schickel agreed to go, and would drive over together. Virgil told them to take binoculars and be prepared to stay late, and maybe overnight. “We’ll pick up a motel tab, if you have to stay over. If they don’t come by the second day, they won’t be coming.”
    Virgil was out of the motel at eight o’clock, heading west on I-90, to the Flood place. When he pulled in, one of the girls, dressed in work clothes, came out of the barn and took a look at him; went back in the barn and, a few seconds later, came back out with her sister, who was carrying a basket containing a half-dozen eggs.
    “Whatcha want?” Edna asked.
    “I need to talk to your mother again,” Virgil said. “Is Mr. Rooney around?”
    “He’s run into town. He’ll be back in an hour,” Helen said. “Whatcha want him for?”
    “I don’t,” Virgil said. “Just wondering if he was around.”
    The two of them, standing side by side in the snow-covered yard, looked like a black-and-white photo from the 1930s, a couple of orphan girls in a coal town in West Virginia, or out on the prairie in a sod house, or something, drab, colorless clothes, too-fair skin, and pale eyes. And they carried with them the general sense of solemnity he often saw in old photos. Edna said, “Well, Mother’s inside. She’s been a little off-center, ever since the last time you were here. Maybe got a bug. But we’ll go tell her you’re here.”
     
     
    AND ALMA FLOOD looked like one of the old photos, too, Virgil thought, when the girls took him up to the front room. She was sitting in the same chair, dressed in a long black skirt and a gray shirt with a darker gray cardigan sweater, buttoned almost to the top. The pocket of the sweater showed some wads of toilet tissue; a reading light shone over her shoulder, and she had one finger inserted in her Bible, toward the very end.
    “What is it this time?” she asked.
    “I wanted to talk to you,” Virgil said, taking a chair without asking. “I’ve been trying to settle the whole Kelly Baker murder in my mind. I’m pretty sure I know what happened. I believe your husband and Jim Crocker were involved in a sexual relationship with her, and were present when she died, and that the Tripp boy found out about it. That set him off, and his arrest set off Crocker, and Crocker was killed to keep him quiet.”
    “Impossible to prove all that,” she said. “Everybody’s dead.”
    “But proving it, if we could do it, would still be interesting, because there might have been a third man involved, or even more,” Virgil said. “Which brings up the whole question of the World of Spirit. All of these people were members, including Kelly and her parents. So the question comes up, was this a church thing? I mean, a regular church thing, allowed and supervised by the church? How many people were involved?”
    “It’s not the church,” she said. “It can’t be the church.” But she was stressed, and, Virgil thought, maybe lying.
    “It would be hard to believe,” Virgil said. He nodded at her Bible. “Anyone who takes the Bible seriously, who believes that we’ll go on to another world, couldn’t be involved in this kind of thing.