Rough Country

said; her head was tilted, and she stroked her cheek with the fingers of one hand. “I really would like to see you work.”

    VIRGIL CRASHED at a chain motel on Highway 169 South, the kind where they don’t bother with drywall, but simply paint the concrete blocks a dusty shade of yellow; but offered double-length parking for customers pulling boats. When he checked in, the desk clerk asked him how long he’d be there, and he said, “Three or four days.”
    Before he went to sleep, in the time he usually thought about God, he thought about Wendy. One problem with looking at a talent in isolation, he thought, was that it was almost impossible to judge exactly how good they were.
    Wendy was as good as anyone he’d heard in a small bar in Minnesota—but on the other hand, those bands were in small bars in Minnesota, and that was the problem. Put Wendy up against Emmylou Harris, and she might sound like Raleigh the Talking Bulldog.
    Of course, that didn’t mean so much if the people around her were convinced that they stood at the edge of a gold mine; on the one hand, you had life in Grand Rapids; in the other one, the possibility of Nashville and Hollywood and . . . whatever.
    Then he thought about God and, after a while, went to sleep.
     
     
     
    IN THE MORNING he put on a fresh, but vintage, Nine Inch Nails T-shirt, took five of the eight remaining free miniature Danishes in the complimentary breakfast, and two cups of coffee, and ran out to the Eagle Nest. Another good day, sun creeping up into the sky, almost no wind. He wondered if Johnson was fishing, or if he’d given it up and gone home.
    That God-blessed Davenport.
    The problem with Davenport, Virgil thought, was that he tended to think in very straight lines. Brutally straight. We have a murder in Grand Rapids, the victim’s prominent, the BCA agent with the highest clearance rate in the agency happens to be on a lake nearby, so what do you do? Send in Flowers.
    Was there anything creative in that? Was there a break for a new guy, somebody who could use the experience? Did it take into account the agent’s emotional state, or need for respite?
    Virgil thought not.
    Just drop in that fuckin’ Flowers, and forget it. Let him sink or swim.
     
     
     
    MARGERY STANHOPE was leaning against a railing, looking out over Stone Lake, when Virgil came up beside her. “Still bummed?”
    “I can’t shake it,” she said.
    Virgil looked out over the lake and said, “Well . . . another month, and you can take the winter off.”
    She sighed and asked, “What are you up to?”
    “I’d like to talk to people who are still here who knew McDill. I need some names.”
    “You want to talk one at a time, or all together?”
    “Both,” Virgil said. “I’d like to have the whole group in, and then, when we’re done, I’ll ask if anybody has anything they’d like to follow up with me, privately. Give them my cell number to call.”
    “A bunch of them went on a bear-spotting trip to Steven’s Island. They’ll be back for lunch. How about right after lunch?”
    Virgil patted the rail. “See you then,” he said.
     
     
     
    HE CALLED ZOE. “Get your locks?”
    “The guy’s here now. He’ll be done in an hour,” she said.
    “Where’d I find Wendy and Berni and the rest of them?” Virgil asked.
    “Probably down at the Schoolhouse. They’ve rented it for the month; they’re working on a record.”
     
     
     
    THE SCHOOLHOUSE was east of town, and had once been a one-room schoolhouse. A red-brick cube with a chimney at one end and a door and bell tower—no bell—at the other, it was surrounded by a gravel parking lot with a half-dozen SUVs scattered around in no particular pattern. When Virgil got out of his truck, he could see through a glass-brick wall the flailing arms of a drummer, but he could hear not a sound. He climbed the steps, went through the front doors, found himself in an entry room facing a skinny, nervous blond woman who was sitting on a desk, reading what looked like a manuscript, but turned out to be a musical score, and chewing gum in rhythm with the faintly audible bass.
    Virgil said, “I’m looking for Wendy Ashbach.”
    The woman chewed and asked, “Who’re you?”
    “The cops,” Virgil said.
    He must’ve said it in a cop-like way, because she nodded and said, “Virgil. I heard about you. You were at the fight last night.”
    “Yeah . . .”
    “They’re laying down the basic tracks for ‘Lover Do,’ and