Rough Country

that’s straightened out now,” Davenport said. “What’s the story on the girlfriend?”
    “Still thinking about her,” Virgil said.
    “Okay. Stay in touch.”
     
     
     
    OWEN’S HOUSE SAT at the crest of a hill. A fifties-era ranch-style, the house had a later wing stuck on one end, with a garage and a shop building in back, on what Virgil thought might be ten acres. At the top of the gravel driveway, Virgil saw a man in jeans and a T-shirt watching him from the edge of a stand of sweet corn in a sprawling hillside garden. Owen , he thought.
    He parked beside a Chevy pickup, got out, looked around—the whole country smelled like fresh-cut hay and dry gravel—then walked up to the front door. The inner door was open, and he knocked on the screen door. He could hear music playing inside, but couldn’t identify it. A fiftyish brown-haired woman came to the door, wiping her hands on a towel, and peered through the screen. She smiled and asked, “Can I help you?”
    “I’m with the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension,” Virgil said. “Is Mr. Owen around?”
    “Oh, boy,” she said, the smile sliding away. “Is this about Erica?”
    “Yup. I’m interviewing people from the agency,” Virgil said.
    “All of them, or some of them?”
    “Several of them, anyway,” Virgil said. “I just came from talking to Mark Sexton.”
    “That little shit,” she said. “He probably told you that Ron did it.”
    “No, he didn’t—but . . .” Virgil scratched at the screen. “I really need to talk to Mr. Owen. You’re welcome to listen in, if you want. I’ll tell you that Barney Mann says that Mr. Owen had nothing to do with Miss McDill’s death.”
    “He’s right—well, I do want to listen in.” She pushed through the door and said, “C’mon. He’s out in the garden.”
     
     
     
    OWEN WAS SHUCKING the last of the summer’s sweet corn. He was wearing Oshkosh overalls and a T-shirt, a self-conscious hobby farmer. He nodded when Virgil and the woman walked up, and asked, “Police?”
    Virgil identified himself, and the woman said, “The Sextons.”
    “That figures,” Owen said. He asked Virgil, “You want some sweet corn? We’ve got too much for the two of us, and not enough to freeze.”
    “I’d take a few,” Virgil said. The corn smelled sweet and hot in the light breeze playing through the plot; but it was a shade too yellow, and might be a little tough. Good, though. He said, “You know what I’m doing. Were you here in the Cities night before last?”
    Owen nodded. “Yeah. I worked until six at the agency, then came home.” He named a few people who’d seen him working late. “I wouldn’t have killed her anyway. I wouldn’t kill anybody, for any reason.”
    Virgil nodded. “The Sextons said you hunt. Whoever killed Miss McDill was good with a rifle.”
    “How did it happen, exactly?” Owen asked. Virgil told him, and Owen said, “Sounds local, to me. You can look at all the Google Earth you want, and it won’t tell you about wandering around in the North Woods. And one shot, right between the eyes?”
    “Yeah.”
    “The thing about that is, it was either an accident, or maybe there was another shot that you don’t know about, and she looked at it, and caught the second one . . . or the guy’s crazy,” Owen said, shucking the green leaves off another ear of corn. He exposed a corn worm, cutting down through the kernels, snapped off the worm-eaten end, dropped it, and crushed it with a boot. “Why would you take a high-risk shot like that, when her whole heart-lung area was right there?”
    “Don’t know,” Virgil said. The question hadn’t occurred to him. “Maybe she was an amateur, and thought the head was the natural place to aim.”
    “She?”
    “We think the shooter might have been a woman,” Virgil said.
    “So you really didn’t think it was me?” Owen asked.
    “Nope. But everybody said you didn’t like her, that she might be planning to fire you, so I had to check,” he said. He glanced at the woman and said, “I mean, maybe your wife shot her.”
    The woman said, “I don’t even kill mice. I take them outside and let them go.”
    “And you were here the night before last?”
    “I was at work until five, at Highland Junior High,” she said. “I’m a teacher. I had after-school volleyball.”
    Virgil smiled: “I thought it was local, myself. . . .”
    To Owen: “If you had to pick out one woman, that you know of, who was most likely to