Rough Country

double take, then grinned and said, “Hey, guy.” She had a black eye as big as a silver dollar, startling under her blond hair.
    “Wendy,” Virgil said. “That black eye looks pretty interesting.”
    “You like it? We did a couple of publicity photos this morning. Might use it for the album cover.”
     
     
     
    THERE WAS AN EMPTY wheeled office chair pushed under the control board, and she rolled it over to Virgil and plopped down, with her feet overlapping his, their knees almost touching. She did it deliberately but good-naturedly, poking at him, to see how he’d react. He said, “I need to talk to you and the band about which one of you killed McDill.”
    That stopped her: “You know . . . one of us did it?”
    “No, but you’re the best I’ve got, and I’ve got to work with what I got,” Virgil said, poking her back.
    “Well, let me see . . . I guess it was Wednesday when we decided to kill her. I said, ‘Girl, you gotta get it on. Gotta get the six-gun and shoot Erica McDill right in the ear.’ ” The smile vanished and she cocked her head: “So what in the fuck are you talking about?”
    “McDill could have been killed for business reasons, but when I dug into that, I couldn’t find any,” Virgil said. “Most everybody needed to keep her alive. Her getting killed is going to cost a lot of people a lot of money. Then, I thought maybe her girlfriend did it—but her girlfriend needs written instructions to walk across the street, and I don’t see her figuring out something this complicated. Then I’ve got a whole band full of people whose love lives are all twisted up, with you in the middle of it. A lot of emotion going around. People fighting in bars about it. Most of you are small-town girls, and I bet more than one of you has her own rifle, and could figure out how to get through that swamp into Stone Lake. That’s how I figure it.”
    Wendy looked at him for a minute, then backed up to the control board. On the other side of the glass, the musicians were chatting as they took down music and put their instruments away, and Wendy pushed a button on the control board and said, “Everybody, come on in: there’s a cop here who thinks we killed Erica.”
     
     
     
    IN A MINUTE or so, the room had filled with a half-dozen querulous women, none of them, with the exception of Berni the drummer, especially small. Virgil watched with interest as Wendy put on her outraged mask. It went on like a Halloween face, and Virgil thought, I’ve got a crazy one.
    Not knowing exactly what was going to happen, Virgil eased to his feet as the women pushed into the control room, as though he were being polite; they brought the odor of overheated bodies with them, and he noticed that a couple of them were sweating, from the session just ended—harder work than it seemed.
    Wendy said, “Well, he says one of us did it—who was it? Cat? Did you do it?”
    “Not me,” said the keyboard player. She looked at Virgil, storming up. “Did he say it was me?”
    Wendy turned to Virgil, ready to say something, but Virgil snapped, “I didn’t say it was anybody. But we’ve got a lot of women swarming around Wendy here, and Wendy was sleeping with McDill. You’re where we look. Everybody who doesn’t like Wendy, raise your hands: you can go.”
    They all looked at one another, and a couple of women flashed amused smiles. No hands went up.
    Berni said, “You know, people could get sued if you go throwing these accusations around.”
    “If you think you see an accusation, sue me,” Virgil said.
    “Maybe we ought to kick your ass,” the lead guitar said, and she sounded serious.
    More quick glances, people checking to see how far this was going, and Virgil took a step to his right, to open the distance by three feet and to get his back against a wall. One of the engineers said, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, we got equipment in here.”
    Virgil said to the lead guitar, “Well, roll it out, honey. Let’s see what you got,” and he said it with enough ice that he caught their attention.
    “You think you can take all of us?” the lead guitar asked.
    “I think so,” Virgil said. “Maybe not. I’ll have to hurt a couple people bad, maybe blind you.”
    “You’re fuckin’ crazy,” one of the engineers said.
    “I’m a BCA agent investigating a murder. If you guys take me on, I’ll beat as many of you as I can, and all of you will be going to prison for assault on a peace officer, which is a felony in