Bad Blood

hand up to deflect another slap.
    Einstadt went to the door and waved at the truck, and Gordon wondered where Virgil was.
     
     
    VIRGIL, in the closet, clicked the radio a couple of times, which meant, “Wait.” Gordon had gotten more out of the men than he could have hoped for. But with Spooner—he wanted Spooner, too.
     
     
    SPOONER CAME across the porch steps and inside. “What?”
    “It’s worse than we thought,” Rooney said. “We need to call a general meeting and get back. You’ve got to babysit.”
    Spooner showed her teeth to Gordon: “I can do that. We’ll get along fine.”
    “I don’t want you here,” Gordon said.
    “Tough shit,” Spooner said.
    Einstadt said to Spooner, “You know what we talked about. The Flowers guy is all over her.”
    Spooner nodded and said, “Okay.”
    “We’re going,” Rooney said, and they tramped out, and as he went through the door, Olms turned and said, “You never were any good.”
     
     
    THEY WERE GONE, Einstadt pulling the door shut behind him, and still no Virgil.
    Gordon faced Spooner and said, “I don’t want you here. And to tell you the truth, when those men are gone, I’m going to throw you out of here. You might as well go peacefully . . . you’re just making me madder and madder.”
    Spooner said, “We’re just going to sit down and relax for a while.”
    “No, we’re not. I’m telling you—”
    Gordon took a step forward and Spooner lifted a hand out of her jacket pocket and showed her a gun, a compact .45. She said, “You’re not telling me anything.”
    Gordon said, “She’s got a gun. She’s got a gun.”
    Spooner, confused, asked, “Who’re you talking to?”
    From the front bedroom door, Virgil said, “Me. I’m aiming a pistol at your head, Miz Spooner. If you even start to move the gun, I’m going to kill you.”
    From the kitchen door, Jenkins said, “And if he misses, I won’t.”
    Spooner stood stricken for a minute, then realized, and said, “Oh, my God.”
    “It’s all done,” Virgil said. “Stoop down, lay the gun on the floor, and then we need to talk. You’ve still got a chance.”
    She put the gun on the floor and stood up, and Virgil and Jenkins moved her to a wall and patted her down, and Jenkins put the cuffs on. Spooner said to Gordon, “Birdy, how could you—”
    “Eh, not Birdy,” Gordon said, with a smile. “You can refer to me as Louise.”
    Virgil put his arm around Gordon’s shoulder and gave her a squeeze. “You were so good.”
    Jenkins said, “You were so good you made me laugh.”
    Shrake came in the side door and asked, “Are we taking them on the highway?”
    “We gotta figure that out,” Virgil said.
    Shrake said to Gordon, “You can work with me anytime. That was prime rib.”
    Gordon was pleased and flustered, and said, “I missed my calling. I should have been a cop.”
     
     
    BROWN AND SCHICKEL came in, and then Holley and his girlfriend, and the BCA agents moved Spooner to a bedroom, sat her on a bed, and read her rights, and then Virgil said, “If you want an attorney, we won’t say another word to you until you have one. That’s because by the time you get an attorney, everything will have broken open, and you’ll have nothing to give us. At this point, I think a jury will listen to those tapes and understand that you were here to kill Birdy—Louise—and they’ll convict you of killing Crocker. So if you want a little break, we can tell the prosecutor that you were cooperative, or that you weren’t. I have three yes-or-no questions, that’s all. Do you understand?”
    “I want an attorney,” she said.
    Virgil said to Shrake, “Move her up to Ramsey County. Murder one, conspiracy to commit murder, conspiracy to commit child abuse, false imprisonment, no bail. Get her a public defender.”
    Shrake nodded: “Okay. You headed back to Homestead?”
    “Yeah.” To Jenkins: “You better come with me. We may need the help. We’ll be rounding up a lot of people.”
    “What were the questions?” Spooner asked.
    Virgil looked at her, then called to Schickel and Brown, “Could you guys come in here for a minute?”
    They came in, and Virgil said, “She asked for an attorney, and we signed off on her. Now she wants to know what my questions were going to be. We want you to witness this: we’re offering to take her to Ramsey County jail and get her a public defender. No pressure. I’m going to ask her the questions, and if she answers, you’re