Rough Country

this stuff ?”
    “Some people think that Erica McDill might have been fond of him,” Virgil said.
    Sanders stared at him for a minute, then said, “Oh, shit.”
    “Hey, I don’t know if it’s serious—I just picked up a rumor, and he hasn’t been back to work since the killing,” Virgil said.
    “I’ll run him down tonight,” Sanders said. “Call me first thing tomorrow.”
    “Good kid?” Virgil asked.
    “Yeah. You know—he wears shirts like this.” Sanders tapped Virgil’s Breeders T-shirt. “He’s got a funny haircut.”
    “Girls like him?”
    Sanders said, “I never thought about it, but now that I think about it, I expect they do. Good-looking kid.”
    “There you go,” Virgil said. “I’ll call you.”
     
     
     
    VIRGIL WENT BACK to his lonely motel room, thought about Signy, lying unfulfilled in a lonesome bedstead in her rural cracker-box, and himself, lying unfulfilled in his concrete-block motel, and about God, and about how God was probably laughing his ass off. Virgil laughed about it himself for a couple of moments, then thumbed the switch on the motel lamp and went to sleep.
     
     
     
    HE’D CRACKED HIS EYES in the morning, had thought about how the pillow smelled funny, and had considered the possibility of getting up, when Sanders called. “Jared Boehm is at home, with his mother, who is an attorney. Susan isn’t sure they’ll talk to you, but you can go over.”
    “When they say they’re reluctant, does that mean they’re reluctant because Jared might have been up to something? Or reluctant because it’s a knee-jerk response from Mom?”
    “I tend to think knee-jerk. She thinks she’s smarter than anyone in Grand Rapids, including her husband and any cops, and she went into full oh-no lawyer mode when I told her you wanted to talk to her son.”
    “Did you tell her why?” Virgil asked.
    “Nope. I said you were talking to everyone who knew McDill.”
    “Find Little Linda yet?”
    There was a moment of silence, then Sanders said, “No.”
    Virgil laughed, though he knew it was wrong.
     
     
     
    VIRGIL GOT THE BOEHMS’ADDRESS and directions on how to get there, and an address for Barbara Carson, cleaned up, got out a Stones shirt from Paris, 1975, his most formal T-shirt, suitable for talking with attorneys, and pulled it on. Gave his boots a quick buff, and headed out: another good day, a good fishing day, just enough wind to keep cool. He was officially on vacation. He had his boat, right down at Zoe’s . . .
    The Boehms lived out of town, on Lake Pokegama, in a tree-thick neighborhood of ranch-style houses, long driveways, and boats. Virgil pulled his truck into the Boehms’ place, glanced at a beat-up sixties Pontiac sitting on a trailer—he wasn’t a gearhead—and knocked on the front door.
    Sue Boehm looked like an attorney: dark brown hair, dark brown suit, beige blouse, practical heels, panty hose. A real estate attorney, Virgil thought, as she asked, “Could I see some ID?”
    He showed her his identification, and she said, curtly, “Okay,” as though she were still suspicious, and, “Come in.”
    Inside, no sign of Jared. Boehm backed off a few steps and asked, “What’s this about?”
    “I need to talk to Jared about Erica McDill.”
    “Is this informational, or do you see him as a suspect?” she asked.
    “I’m interviewing a pretty broad group of people,” Virgil said. “Is there any reason that I should treat him as a suspect?”
    “Of course not,” she said. “He’s a teenager and a good kid. He graduated from high school near the top of his class.”
    Virgil spread his hands in a placating gesture: “Then . . . there should be no problem. But let me ask you, are you a criminal attorney?”
    “No. I do mostly property law,” Boehm said.
    Virgil nodded. “My concern is, if you’re not familiar with criminal procedure, you’ll unnecessarily block the investigation, when a criminal attorney would recognize the questions as routine. And I have to treat Jared as a potential suspect: read him his rights and so on. I think . . . if you think an attorney is a necessity, that you’d be better off getting a criminal attorney. I could come back later, if you wish.”
    “He doesn’t need to be defended against a crime,” she said. “He needs to be defended against somebody who’s trying to pin something on anybody available.”
    Virgil shook his head: “We really don’t try to do that, Mrs. Boehm. A criminal attorney