Storm Front

the footfalls of somebody moving inside, then the door opened and a short, thin, black-eyed man, with thinning black hair, peered out over the door chain.
    “What?”
    Virgil held up his ID. “I’m with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. We’re investigating the theft of a stele from the state of Israel, and a shooting earlier today at a park here in Mankato. We think you can help with that. Could you open the door, please?”
    He didn’t open the door. Instead, he asked, “Who got shot?”
    “We want to talk about that,” Virgil said. “Could you open the door?”
    “This room is my temporary domicile, and as such, you’re not permitted entry unless I give you permission, which I’m not,” Sewickey said.
    “Mr. Sewickey, I don’t want to get all lawyerly here, but I have no intention of searching your room, unless I see something illegal the moment I step inside,” Virgil said. “Several crimes have been committed, you were seen speaking to the man who committed them. If you don’t let us in, I will arrest you as a material witness, and have you sent to St. Paul for questioning. That will take several days, to effect the transfer and so on. If you want to spend the next several days in jail, that’s fine. If you don’t, you need to speak to me now.”
    “I’m going to call my attorney,” Sewickey said.
    “Fine. We will wait out here for ten minutes,” Virgil said. “If it’s any longer than that, I’ll arrest you.”
    “I don’t think that’s a reasonable amount of time.”
    “I don’t care what you think,” Virgil said. “I don’t have to give you even one minute—I can arrest you now. I don’t want to have to do all that paperwork. We can still avoid that, but you do need to answer some questions.”
    Sewickey held Virgil’s eyes for a second, then looked past him at Yael. “Who’s the Jew? Or perhaps, in the circumstances, I should ask, who’s the Egyptian?”
    Yael snorted, and Virgil said, “She represents the state of Israel in an effort to recover stolen property.”
    “That property belongs to all of mankind,” Sewickey said.
    “Yeah, but somebody in mankind has to hold on to it, and in this case, it’s the Israelis,” Virgil said. “Now, time’s a-wastin’. Call your lawyer or not, but I’m putting you on the clock.”
    “I’ll be back,” Sewickey said. He closed the door.
    Yael said, “I hope there is no other exit.”
    —
    S EWICKEY WAS BACK in eight minutes. The chain rattled, and he opened the door and said, “I reserve the right not to answer questions that may be incriminating.”
    “You have that right,” Virgil said. Sewickey backed up and Virgil and Yael pushed into the room, which smelled a little funny. Virgil said, “Why don’t you sit on the bed, and Yael and I will take the chairs.”
    Sewickey had the tense look of a man who lived with excessive stress. He was perhaps five-eight or -nine, tightly muscled, with gnarled hands and a nose that seemed to be carved from cheese: soft, but with sharp edges. His fingernails, Virgil noticed, were bitten down to the quick, and he seemed constantly to be on the verge of trembling. He was wearing black jeans, a turquoise shirt with a string tie, and pointy black cowboy boots, in crocodile hide.
    He sat down and said, “I will tell you that I did speak to the Reverend Jones, and he allowed me to look at the stele.”
    “When was this?” Virgil asked.
    “Late last night. Very late. I drove here from Austin—how much do you know about me?”
    “We read your entry in the wiki,” Virgil said.
    “All right. That’s not particularly accurate, but neither is it particularly inaccurate,” Sewickey said. “My age is incorrect. I’m forty-one, not forty-three.”
    “Fine,” Virgil said. “I’ll make a note. What did Jones tell you?”
    “He told me that he’d found the stele on an archaeological dig, and he fled the country with it because he realized its importance, and because the Israelis were already taking steps to hush up the discovery.”
    “This is untrue,” Yael said.
    “Whatever,” Sewickey said. “In any case, he said he is dying of metastasized colon cancer, and expects to be dead within the month. I believe he is trying to sell the stele, but I told him I was interested more in documenting its religious and mystical significance, than in actually purchasing it. As long as I know the stone is legitimate, and if I have photos to work from, I will be