Rough Country

Most people do. I asked James—he’s the husband—and he said they don’t know her well. Know her to see her on the street. They don’t go to the Goose.”
    “Gotta be something there,” Virgil said. “This shooting is different enough that if we can see the connection, we’ll know who did it.”
    “We’ll ask her when she wakes up,” Sanders said. “The thing I thought was, if she was shot because she knows something about all this, and she lived, maybe the guy’ll try again. So I got three people around her. They’ll stay long as it takes.”
    “Good idea, man. Listen, I’m heading that way. Talk to you in the morning,” Virgil said.
     
     
     
    HE GOT UP IN THE AIR with Wayne, called Davenport, filled him in, and took a call from Zoe: “Have you heard?” she asked.
    “Yeah, I heard. How did you hear?”
    “Everybody in town knows,” Zoe said. “There were only about ten deputies out there, and they’re blabbing all over the place. They say your crime-scene crew said it’s the same guy who shot Erica.”
    “Could be. Damnit. You know anything about this woman?”
    “Works in a candy store. She’s more Sig’s age than mine, but she seemed nice enough. Her husband works at the golf course, and they organized a deal to put some cross-country ski tracks around the course in the winter, and Jan raised the money for a tracking machine. She just seems . . . nice.”
    “Is she part of the gay community up there?”
    “Oh, God, no. And I’d know. Nope. She was not—is not,” Zoe said.
    “Maybe I’ll stop by Sig’s when I get up there. Think she’d know any more?” Virgil asked.
    “No, but I wouldn’t doubt that she’d like to tell you what she knows.”
    She said it with a little snap, and Virgil thought, Uh-oh. And didn’t pursue it. “Okay. Well, see you up there. Probably coming in late.”
     
     
     
    THEY WERE BACK in St. Paul before dark, landing into the setting sun, the prop beating through the pulsing orange starfire as they touched down. Virgil thanked Wayne, threw his bag in his truck, and drove over to the BCA headquarters on Maryland Avenue, climbed the stairs and walked back to Davenport’s office, checked his secretary’s desk. A file folder sat squarely in the middle of the work space, and Virgil was scrawled across the folder with a Sharpie.
    He opened it and found a single piece of paper, with a name, Barbara Carson, and an address in Grand Rapids, attached to the number that had been called once. The other number, which Constance had called three times, was for the Eagle Nest.
    On the way out the door, he ran into the BCA’s resident thugs, Jenkins and Shrake, coming through the door. They were both big guys, in sharp suits and thick-soled shoes, whose faces had been broken a few times. Jenkins said, “It’s that fuckin’ Flowers.”
    Shrake asked, “Has he got on one of those fruity musical shirts?”
    Jenkins looked at it and said, “Hard to tell. It says, ‘Breeders.’ ”
    Shrake: “Christ, if he’s breeding, now, we gotta find a way to stop it.”
    Jenkins: “I read your stories in The New York Times , and I was wondering, could I have your autograph?”
    “Envy is a sad thing to see,” Virgil said. “But I suppose my proximity might bring a little joy into your humble lives.”
    “Weren’t you dating a little Joy a couple of years ago? Played sandlot beach-ball bingo or some shit?” Jenkins asked.
    “She was a professional beach volleyball player and was highly skilled,” Virgil said. “And her name was June, not Joy.”
    “I believe the skilled part,” Jenkins said. “She looked like she had all sorts of skills.”
    “A maestro on the skin flute,” Shrake said.
    “The old pink piccolo,” Jenkins added.
    Shrake asked, “So what’s happening up north? You figure it out?”
    “It’s a little nuts,” Virgil said. He gave them a quick outline of the situation, and they all drifted over to a snack machine behind the atrium and rattled some coins through it, dropping out bags of corn chips. Virgil realized he hadn’t eaten since lunch, and was close to starvation.
    When he finished telling them about the two shootings, Shrake said, “You know, you’re right. It is nuts. You’ve got a nut. One of your problems is, none of this other stuff—the lesbians, the resort, the band, Wendy—might have anything to do with it. Even the murder down in Iowa. It might just be some weird high school kid with a rifle, getting his rocks