Rough Country

keyboards are okay; if we can find a decent drummer, we could go a long way with Wendy. McDill could have been part of that plan. I listened to McDill talk, and I’m a believer. She knew her shit. She was somebody we needed.”
    “But you’d have to dump Berni, right?” Virgil asked.
    “Well, yeah—but she doesn’t necessarily know that,” Sawyer said. “Or maybe she does. That’s life. Maybe she could be an assistant manager or something, a roadie, or a spare drummer, or she could do some other percussion shit—tambourines. She can sing a little, and she’s got really great tits, so she’d look good up front, I mean, she could stay . . . but the point is, McDill could have put us on that road, you know? She had contacts all over the place: she knew how to get it done.”
    “You liked her?”
    “Oh . . . no. But that didn’t make any difference to me,” Sawyer said. “It’s like you’ve got a terrific music teacher, and he puts his hand on your ass. You don’t like him, but hey—he teaches you to play a killer guitar. You like that part. Same with McDill. I’m not going to sleep with her, but she can do my PR all day and night.”
    She had been running around to a grocery store and to a Wal-Mart when McDill was killed: “I guess that’s not exactly a great alibi, but that’s what I was doing. I was in and out of here, while they were trying to figure out ‘Lover Do,’ but I didn’t have anything to do with killing McDill.”
    Virgil believed her.
     
     
     
    GERRY O’MEARA, BASS, didn’t seem to have a nickname; she’d been working on the “Lover Do” song with Wendy and the others when McDill was killed. “Yeah, there’ll have to be some personnel changes in the band, and I guess she probably knows it. I mean, this is what I do for a living, and I’m good at it, and I’ve played with some heavy people. Now I need to cash it in. I’m almost thirty, and if I’m going to make it, it’s got to be soon.”
    “But you don’t think the changes might somehow lead to this murder?” Virgil asked.
    “I don’t see how. McDill was going to help with PR, and with contacts in Nashville and so on, but . . . I don’t see how the changes would wind up with her getting shot. I think it was something at the Eagle Nest. Somebody heard about her sleeping with Wendy and got jealous. I mean, who else would know where Erica was going in that canoe?”
    “Good point. Have you heard that McDill had anything going up here, other than Wendy?”
    “No, I haven’t heard anything. I don’t hang with the gay chicks. I’m straight. But McDill getting killed has to be one of two things, right? Business—I mean, money—or sex. Jealousy. One of those two things. You just have to figure out which one.”
    “Thank you,” Virgil said.
     
     
     
    WENDY.
    “I think maybe I want a lawyer when I’m talking to you,” she said.
    Virgil said, “Okay. Get a lawyer. If you can’t afford a lawyer, I’ll arrange to have the court appoint one. . . .”
    She threw her hands up. “Wait-wait-wait. You got me. I don’t want a fuckin’ lawyer,” Wendy said. “Ask your questions.”
    “When you slept with McDill the other night, was there a man around? Did you share a man? In any way?”
    She looked at him for a minute, then did a reflexive grin, shook her head, and said, “You know about the boys, huh? But no, it was just the two of us, bumpin’ cunts.” She said it casually, no longer trying to shock him.
    “Had McDill been playing with any of the other women up there? Or any of the men?”
    “They’re not really men—they’re boys. Everybody calls them boys. And I don’t know about McDill. I went up there because we’d been talking and doing some cocktails, and we were sneaking around Berni to do this, which got me kind of hot, so when Erica says, ‘Come on up to the lodge,’ I said, ‘Okay.’ It was that quick. Nothing planned. We went up there, had a few more cocktails, and got naked. I can give you the details of that, if you’d like.”
    “Sure, go ahead,” Virgil said.
    She looked at him for a moment, then said, “Fuck you.”
    “Do I make you nervous?” Virgil asked.
    “You’re not like other cops I’ve known—the thing that worries me is that you might be nuts,” she said. “We don’t need a nut. We need somebody who can clear this up, not a big cloud over the band.”
    Virgil said, “I’d like to talk to your father.”
    “Why’s that?”
    “Because from what