Rough Country

get more in the scene over in Duluth, or down in the Cities.”
    Virgil patted her on the shoulder. “Look. You’re planning to buy the Eagle Roost . . .”
    “Eagle Nest.”
    “. . . Nest. You want to turn it into a lesbo destination, right?”
    “We don’t use the word lesbo that often,” she said, “but that’s correct.”
    “You’re going to meet somebody. Somebody who’s successful, like yourself, and you’re going to have a terrific relationship,” Virgil said.
    “You think?”
    “It’ll happen,” Virgil said.
    “You going over to see Sig?”
    “Oh, yeah. If you show up tonight, by the way, I guarantee that you won’t be buying the Eagle Nest, or having a great relationship with anybody, because I’ll choke the life out of you.”
    “Come have coffee with me tomorrow morning,” she said. “I’ll want all the details, about what my sister does in bed. I know she’s been getting ready.” She stood on tiptoe and pecked him on the cheek. “See you tomorrow; and good luck.”
     
     
     
    LIFE, AND CRIME, were complicated. There was a lot of work yet to be done: statements to be taken, evidence to be marshaled, reports to be written. Expense accounts to be submitted.
    But not tonight.
    Tonight, he was heading for Signy’s.
     
     
     
    HE’D JUST PULLED off his shirt when his cell phone rang. He looked at the number: Sanders. Damn. Well, he was going to Signy’s, he didn’t care what else had happened. He pressed the “talk” button: “Yeah?”
    “We had people walking through the woods on the other side of the fence from Slibe’s—looked like some machinery had been through there,” Sanders said. “We’ve got a patch of roughed-up dirt, about car-sized. Bunch of dead trees and brush pushed over it, but . . . we got your crime-scene boys coming out in the morning. I think it’s probably Windrow.”
    “Sounds like it,” Virgil said. “I’ll be out there to watch.”
    He hung up, and caught the image of himself in the dresser mirror: his eyes dark, sad. Windrow had been a good guy, full of life. If Virgil hadn’t told him about Wendy . . .
     
     
     
    NOW HE NOT ONLY wanted to go to Signy’s, he needed to. Needed a human touch; and a little physical pleasure. He was not a man to boast, Virgil thought to himself, but he was going to turn the woman every way but loose. They’d been dancing around each other for a week, and she’d as good as told him that she hungered for Dr. Flowers’s Female Cure.
    Virgil got cleaned up, carefully pulled the cotton packs from his nostrils—that hurt like fire—and shaved and perfumed himself, although he didn’t call it that. Old Spice was a manly deodorant, not a perfume, even if you did put a small splash under the testicles.
    When he was ready, he checked himself in the mirrored door of the motel room: tapered long-sleeve shirt, sleeves rolled up to the elbows, second button casually undone, boot-cut faded jeans over high-polish cowboy boots with the decorative teal-colored Thunderbird stitching up the sides. Women went for men with polished boots.
    I am a genuine piece of crumb cake, he thought, admiring his image in the mirror; there was that thing about the aluminum brace on his nose, and the tape, and the incipient black eyes, but a woman of quality could see past all that.
     
     
     
    THERE WAS A KNOCK on the motel room door, and he thought, No .
    And he thought about turning out the lights, so they wouldn’t shine around the curtains, or under the door. . . . He could lie on the bathroom floor, and stop breathing. . . .
    Another knock, louder. “Officer Flowers, please, I need some help.”
    A genuine piece of crumb cake, Virgil thought. He opened the door.
    He’d never before seen the woman standing on the walkway. She was older, in her fifties, wearing walking shorts and a Hawaiian shirt, and pink plastic-rimmed glasses with a retainer cord. She said, “They told me you were here.”
    “Who?”
    “The desk clerk. He told me you were here.”
    “I was just going out. . . .”
    “Look,” she said. She pointed across the way, at another motel, a taller, bigger one, that called itself a lodge. “I’m staying over there, my husband and I are up for the week.”
    “I really don’t work town calls—”
    “I think it’s Little Linda,” she said.
    A long moment, then Virgil said, “Little Linda.”
    “Yes. My husband didn’t think we should get involved, but we’ve been here for four days now, and they