Rough Country

be a sexual conflict involving the boys that led to the murder. You don’t seem to think that there was.”
    “I don’t think so,” he said. “She showed up, she let me know she was interested, I don’t think any of the other guys were cut out, or anything. She didn’t seem interested in a three-way . . . and that was about it.”
    “Okay. Listen, you take care of yourself,” Virgil said. “We don’t know what’s going on here, but . . . be cool. Watch TV. Go to Duluth. Don’t go wandering around by yourself until we get this guy.”
     
     
     
    AS VIRGIL WAS LEAVING, he heard Susan Boehm ask, “A three-way?” and he thought to himself, I just said “this guy.” That feels right. The killer’s a he. So who made the Mephisto prints?
    He was getting in his truck when Susan Boehm blew through the front door and shouted, “Wait a minute! Wait!”
    He got back out and she steamed up and said, “Something has to be done.”
    Virgil shrugged. “I don’t know exactly what.”
    “But this is . . . sexual exploitation. This might be statutory rape.”
    “It’s prostitution, is what it is,” Virgil said. “My problem is, I know one boy—your son, and he certainly wouldn’t testify against himself—and one patron, Erica McDill, who was murdered. So who do I charge?”
    “You mean . . . ?”
    “I thought about going after Margery Stanhope, but she denies knowing anything about it, and your son confirms it. I don’t necessarily believe Margery—that she doesn’t know anything about it—but if everybody agrees she wasn’t part of it, what am I going to do? None of the women will testify against themselves, and none of the boys would. All we could do is send in a woman agent, get one of the boys to proposition her and mention a price, and then bust him for prostitution, but . . . I don’t even know if that would work. Or if we could get a conviction.”
    “So nothing’s going to get done,” she said.
    “If a group of parents had a quiet word with Margery, it might end. Or maybe not. You’re talking about a bunch of horny college boys who need the money, and you heard what Jared said: three hundred dollars a time to have sex with her. Who knows? He might make thirty thousand dollars a year, tax free, if he works at it. . . . Of course, he’s a prostitute.”
    She started to blubber and he patted her on the shoulder. “Listen, talk to your husband. Figure something out. Tell me what you want to do, if anything, and I’ll try to help out. But I’m not sure this is a problem the law is very well equipped to deal with.”
    Still blubbering, she headed back toward the house.
     
     
     
    VIRGIL BACKED HIS TRUCK out of the driveway and thought, The killer’s male. What’s this about the Deuce?
    He thought about the Deuce, but then switched back to Susan Boehm, and for a moment felt very, very sorry for her, and for her son; not bad people, probably. And he hadn’t been exactly diplomatic about it: Of course, he’s a prostitute. . . .
    He drove to Barbara Carson’s, suffering from the knowledge that he’d been an asshole. Maybe, he thought, looking for an excuse, the realization of assholedom was the beginning of wisdom.
    But probably not.

14
    BARBARA CARSON was a bust. An elderly widow who got around with a walker, she lived in a tiny rambler with a yard full of nasty-looking rosebushes.
    “I did know her quite well,” she said. She looked like Santa Claus’s wife, with curly white hair and pink cheeks. “We corresponded regularly about our heritage roses.”
    Virgil learned that heritage roses were old varieties no longer grown, but often found around abandoned farmsteads. A few thousand people scattered around the country were dedicated to saving them—Lifry had been one, and so was Carson.
    “Everybody was shocked when she was murdered. She was the nicest lady, that’s all we talked about for weeks, her murder,” Carson said.
    “Who’s we?” Virgil asked, one foot out the door.
    “Well, the rose people, on the Internet. That’s how I heard: I got an alert. Another one of our people down in Cedar Rapids put out all the information.”
    She knew Lifry came to Grand Rapids to “be with her gay friends at that resort.”
    “So she made no secret about being gay?”
    “Why should she?” the little old lady asked. “Nobody would care but a bunch of stuffy old men.”
     
     
     
    VIRGIL DROVE BACK to the sheriff’s department, tracked down Sanders, filled him in on