Rough Country

ideas.”
    “Poop,” he said.
    He looked toward the bar and saw the bartender smiling and shaking his head, then hold up a finger, pull another Diet Coke, and bring it around the bar. “On the house,” he said, when he put it on the table.
    “Coulda put a little rum in it,” Virgil said.
     
     
     
    VIRGIL SAID TO ZOE, “You know, I can usually pick up on it? I apologize if I’ve offended you along the way.”
    “No, no, you were fine,” Zoe said, “and I’ve had boyfriends. Maybe that’s why you didn’t feel it. But I . . . like women better. Always did and I finally admitted it to myself. I can still be attracted to some men. I mean, you’re attractive in an obvious, superficial way. When I’m attracted to a guy at all, they usually have strong feminine characteristics. Like you, with the long blond hair, and you’ve got sort of a delicate face.”
    Virgil said, “Okay—you’ve guaranteed my shrink’s income for another two years.”
    “You’ve got a psychiatrist? I think that’s very interesting. It shows an unexpected psychological sensitivity.”
    “I don’t really have one,” Virgil said. “I was lying.”
    “Really?”
    “Yeah. I lie a lot,” he said.
    She said, “Sorry about this. I mean, the lesbian thing. I didn’t mean to lead you on, if I did.”
    “That’s okay. The band doesn’t have a straight saxophone player, does it?”
     
     
     
    HE GOT HER LAUGHING AGAIN , then asked, “Why don’t Minnesota women wear makeup? There are ten women in here, and a couple of them are pretty good-looking, including you, and none of you wear lipstick. Is it some kind of Minnesota thing? An efficiency thing? An egalitarian thing? What is it?”
    “Not many people wear lipstick anymore,” Zoe said. “It’s a pain to keep it looking good. You wind up chewing it off. But . . . people will put on a touch when they go out.”
    “Even gay women?”
    “Not so much, maybe,” she said. “But . . . some. The girly ones.”
    He thought about that for a moment, then said, “Ah, man. Well, I’ve got to get back and talk to Erica McDill’s friends from the Cities. I thank you for the tour. Maybe I’ll come back tonight, take a look at the band. See if I can figure out your type.”
    “Wendy . . . Whatever. She’s a slut. But she turns my crank. If I had a crank.”
    Virgil laughed and asked, “Why don’t you pay for the drinks?”
     
     
     
    OUTSIDE IN THE PARKING LOT , she walked with him to the Trailblazer and asked, “You really don’t care if I tell some friends about this? About . . . that a woman did it?”
    He shrugged. “No, go ahead. Something to talk about. Better than the Internet. But be careful about who you talk to—we are dealing with a nutcase.”
     
     
     
    THE CRIME-SCENE CREW was eating dinner at the Eagle Nest, and Mapes said, “We think she braced the rifle across a four-inch log. Looks like she moved the log for that reason—to get a rifle rest. There were a couple of other logs she might have braced her hands or her arms on, and we’ve bagged all that and we’ll look for prints and DNA. Haven’t found any hair, but we did find some cotton fibers that may have come from her shirt. No more shells, so there might have been only the one shot.”
    “Any possibility that more might have gotten thrown into the water?” Virgil asked.
    “We checked with a metal detector. Never got a flicker,” Mapes said.
    “So it’s basically prints or DNA and the Mephistos,” Virgil said.
    “I wouldn’t count on prints—I took a long look at that cartridge, and it looked clean and a little oily. I should have been able to see a print. But, maybe not. Maybe the lab will bring something up. And I’ve got to believe that if she came through that swamp, and knew what she was doing, she was wearing gloves. It’s not so bad out in the open, but coming over the margins of the marsh, the mosquitoes were so thick they were clogging up our head nets. If she knew what she was doing, she would have covered up. Gloves, maybe even a head net.”
    He left them to finish eating and went looking for Stanhope. A woman Virgil hadn’t met was turning off lights in the office. She said, “She took them up to the library.”
    “Uh, who . . . ?”
    “The people from the Cities. Miss McDill’s friends.”
     
     
     
    LAWRENCE HARCOURT, whose name was on the agency, was a slender man with close-cropped white hair, quick blue eyes behind military-style gunmetal glasses, and a