Rough Country

Berni said.
    “He’s talking to Zoe Tull,” Wendy said. “They’re hanging out.”
    “Did you mention Constance Lifry?” Ashbach asked.
    “No way,” Wendy said. “Let him find out for himself.”
    Ashbach looked at the two of them for a minute, then said, “You didn’t say a word.”
    Wendy rolled her eyes: “Dad, we’re not talking to him. Okay? We said we weren’t, and we’re not.”
    “But you both lie like motherfuckers,” he said.
    Berni leaned toward him and asked, “Gee, what’s a motherfucker lie like, Mr. Ashbach?”
    Wendy said, “This doesn’t have anything to do with us. Lifry was up at the Eagle Nest, like McDill. Another gay murder, if it comes to that.”
    “Another gay murder of somebody who was talking about helping the band, which is pretty fuckin’ weird, if you ask me,” Berni said.
    “I’ll tell you what, you little bitch, talking like that . . . your goddamn alligator mouth could get your butterfly ass in trouble,” Ashbach said.
    “Is that right?” Berni asked, staring him down. “I’ll tell you what, SA, we just hope the fuck that you didn’t have anything to do with those murders. You or the Deuce.”
    “Dad, take off, okay?” Wendy said. “Get out of here.”
    “Watch your mouths,” Ashbach said. He jabbed a finger at Berni. “Watch your mouths.” He gave them a last look, turned, and headed out, letting the door slam behind him.
    When he was gone, Berni said to Wendy, “I hope to fuck you didn’t have anything to do with McDill.”
    Wendy shook her head: “I’m cool,” she said.
    “Okay. I’m not so sure about Slibe Two, though,” Berni said. “Every time I look at the Deuce, I get the feeling that somebody smacked him on the side of the head with a coal shovel. He ain’t right.”
    “He wouldn’t hurt anybody,” Wendy said about her brother. “He’s . . . you have to understand him. He’s out there.”
    “Watches me. All the time. Creeps me out,” Berni said. “I wonder what would happen if I showed him my tits?”
    “Don’t do that,” Wendy said.
    “Don’t worry—I won’t.” Berni shivered. “He’d probably go off like a bottle rocket. I wonder if he touches himself ?”
    Wendy snorted, then said, “You gotta be careful about the way you talk to Dad. You piss him off, he might throw your ass out of here.”
     
     
     
    SLIBE II WAS SITTING outside the back window, listening, and thrilled to the fact that they were talking about him. And he had seen Berni’s tits, lots of times.
    He had a concrete block that he put down at the end of the trailer, and if he stood on it, he could just get one eye overlapping the screen window. He’d gone in the trailer while they weren’t there and bent one blade of the venetian blind, to help things along, and now he spent his evenings with them, watching and listening.
    Berni liked to run around with her shirt open, and sometimes—well, once—without her pants. If he’d missed that . . . he didn’t like to think about it. That was the best thing that had ever happened to him in his entire life. Better than finding his old man’s stash of Hustler .
    He didn’t know what he’d do for company in the winter, though, and had started worrying about it. Couldn’t use his concrete block—they’d see his foot tracks in the snow and figure it out.
    Maybe something good would happen; there was time before the snow started.
    And they were talking about him.

7
    SUNDAY MORNING, getting up.
    Virgil could always wring a few more hours out of a night if he had to. With four hours in bed, he could make it through the next day, and since most investigations happened during the daylight hours, when other people were available for interviews, the night was available for travel and introspection; and retrospection, as far as that went.
    Virgil left the Wild Goose a little after ten o’clock at night, pulled into his garage in Mankato a few minutes before three o’clock in the morning. He set his alarm for eight, thought about God for a few minutes, and what place McDill’s death might have in His Great Scheme—nothing much, he decided—and went to sleep.
    The next morning, he was up before the alarm, threw his clothes in the washing machine, opened the mail, wrote some checks for the bills, moved his clothes to the dryer, and went out to drop the mail, to get breakfast at a Caribou Coffee, to return the rented truck to Avis, and to catch a cab back.
    He got a Star Tribune outside the