Rough Country

Virgil thought, too defensive, and he could feel something uncoil in his brain.
    “He was last seen here, talking with you people,” Virgil said. “The night before McDill was shot, she spent with your daughter. Your daughter was going to sign with Jud once before, except her contact got strangled down in Iowa. That suggest anything to you?”
    “Yeah, my daughter’s getting fucked over by somebody,” Slibe said.
     
     
     
    “WHERE WERE YOU TONIGHT around seven o’clock—and where was your son?” Virgil asked.
    “I was here. The meeting broke up, and Jud took off and the girls took off because they were playing. I fed the dogs and worked with a couple of them until it got dark.”
    “What about your son?”
    Slibe glanced toward the kennel, then said, “He’s gone walkabout. I saw him loading up his pack and told him I needed some help with the dogs. He said he didn’t have time, and he got his rifle and headed out.”
    “On foot?”
    “Yeah, of course on foot. They don’t call it drive-about,” Slibe said. “Anyway, Jud was okay when he left here, everybody saw him. How’s the Deuce gonna follow him into town, on foot? Carrying a rifle?”
    “Jud was going to the Duck Inn,” Wendy chipped in.
    Virgil looked at the three of them, running his tongue along his lower lip: goddamnit, they were lying. Had to be. Someplace along the line . . .
    Berni said, “You know who did it? If Jud’s gone? It’s your girlfriend, Zoe.”
    Virgil said, “We’ve looked at Zoe and ruled her out.”
    “Why? Because of her ass?” Wendy asked. “Let me tell you, she doesn’t do as much with it as you’d think.”
    “She’s the one who told Jud to go to the Duck Inn, so she’d know where he was,” Berni said, pressing.
    “She runs all over the place up here, doing her taxes,” Slibe said. “You see her car anywhere, you just think, she’s doing her accounting.”
    “She might have heard I was with McDill,” Wendy said. “She was all over the lodge the day after me and McDill got together and somebody might have seen us. She sure knew McDill well enough that she could have known that she went down to see the eagles every night.”
    Virgil thought about the bartender: the bartender had seen Wendy with McDill. Had somebody else?
    Wendy looked at her father and Berni. “And that lady who got killed down in Iowa . . . that’s when Zoe and I started hanging a little bit. That was . . . two years ago. It was.” She turned back to Virgil: “Jesus Christ, Virgil: it was Zoe.”
    Virgil felt the corner he’d been pushed into: they were making a spontaneous case—maybe—but it sounded good, and he had no absolute rebuttal.
    To Slibe, he said, “I want to see your son. I don’t care where he’s gone, you get him and tell him I want to talk to him. And if I don’t hear from him by tomorrow, I’m gonna start a manhunt. We’ll dig him out of the brush. . . .”
    Slibe snorted: “Fat chance.”
    “I’ll find him,” Virgil said, holding Slibe’s eyes for a moment.
    Slibe didn’t flinch, stared back, his eyes like black marbles: “What? You’re gonna frame him? The Deuce didn’t do it. And why would he, anyway?”
    No speakable answer to that, Virgil thought. Because he wanted to fuck his sister? Because he was afraid she’d go away and never come back?
    Virgil said, “I want to see him. Tomorrow.” He turned and headed back to his truck, nodded at the deputies, who got in their car. He climbed inside when Wendy screamed at him, “Zoe did it. Zoe did it, you asshole.”
     
     
     
    VIRGIL LED THE WAY out, drove until they were out of sight, then pulled over and the squad pulled over behind him. He walked back and asked, “Either one of you know, or could you find out, where Jan Washington lives?”
    “Sure. She’s out south of the river. . . .”
    Virgil got directions and looked at his watch. Midnight. Well, screw it, if Washington’s husband was home, he could get out of bed. He asked the deputies, “What’d you think back there?”
    They glanced at each other, then one said, “I got this bad feeling about them.”
    “So do I—they’re all a little too tangled up,” the other one said. “I kinda wonder about Wendy and her old man. I wonder if he knocked off a piece of that, like, maybe, years ago, or something.”
    “Huh,” Virgil said.
    “On the other hand,” said the first guy, who Virgil thought was Dan, “maybe you better take a closer look at Zoe, too. That whole