Deep Freeze (Virgil Flowers #10)
John Sandford
ONE David Birkmann sat in his living room with an empty beer can in his hand and stared sadly at his oversized bachelor’s television, which wasn’t turned on. A light winter wind was blowing a soft, lovely snow into the storm windows. He needed to get out in the morning to plow the drive. But he wasn’t thinking about that, or the winter, or the storm.
He’d gotten away with it, he thought. That didn’t make him much happier.
David—he thought of himself as David rather than as Big Dave, Daveareeno, Daveissimo, D-Man, Chips, or Bug Boy—didn’t consider himself a killer. Not a real killer.
He was simply accident-prone. Always had been.
Accidents were one reason he’d been elected as Class of ’92 Funniest Boy, like the totally unfunny time when he hadn’t gotten the corn chips out of the vending machine in the school’s junk-food niche. He’d tried to shake the bag loose and the machine had tipped over on him, pinning him to the cold ceramic tiles of Trippton High School.
Everybody who’d seen it had laughed—the fat boy pinned like a spider under a can of peas—even before they were sure he wasn’t injured.
Even George Marx, the assistant principal in charge of discipline, had laughed. He had, nevertheless, given David fifteen days of detention, plus the additional unwanted nickname of Chips, a nickname that had hung on like a bad stink for twenty-five years.
His own father had laughed after he found out that Trippton High School wouldn’t make him pay for the damage to the vending machine.
Big Dave, Daveareeno, Daveissimo, D-Man . . . Bug Boy . . . Squashed like a bug.
—
The latest accident had occurred that night, though David thought it was all perfectly explainable if you understood the history and the overall situation. He knew that the cops wouldn’t buy it.
The history:
First, his father was the Bug Man of Trippton, the leading pest exterminator in Buchanan County. For nine months of the year, the brightly colored Bug Man vans were seen everywhere you’d find a bug. For the other three months, in the heart of winter, even the bugs took time off.
David had never been the most popular kid in school and, because of his father’s rep, had been told to Bug off or Bug out when he tried to hang with the popular kids, even in elementary school. That’d become a tired thirteen-year-long joke in the trek between kindergarten and twelfth grade. He’d always laughed about it, trying to ingratiate himself with the Populars.
He wasn’t laughing now.
Because, second, Birkmann had fallen in love with Gina Hemming during the summer after sixth grade, when the first freshet of testosterone hit. He’d loved her all through school—and, for that matter, his entire life. How, he wondered, could that love have put him here, empty beer can in his hand, a hole in his heart?
Hemming had been one of the Populars—too smart and arrogant to be the most popular, but right up there, with her gold locket, cashmere sweaters, and low-rise fashion jeans. She had a silver ring, with a pearl, in her navel. Her father owned the largest bank in Trippton, which placed her in the local aristocracy.
She was pretty, if not the prettiest; she had a great body, if not the greatest; and she was one of two National Merit Scholars in her class, selected 1992’s Girl Most Likely to Succeed. People expected great things from her, but, in the way of many small-town girls, the great things hadn’t quite come true.
After college, at St. Catherine’s in St. Paul, she’d gone to work in Washington, D.C., as an aide to a Minnesota congressman. There, she learned that being the heiress of Trippton’s richest banker didn’t cut a whole lot of ice in the nation’s capital. Plus, in Washington, she was only in the top twenty percent of pretty, and maybe—just maybe—the top twenty-five percent of good bodies. Those clipboard-carrying aides tended to spend time in the gym, and when that didn’t work, on the operating table, getting enhanced.
After two years in Washington, she’d moved to New York, as an editorial assistant at HarperCollins, and she needed a solid input of Daddy’s money to rent a barely livable apartment on the Upper West Side. One day, she was assaulted on a subway to work, or at least that was the way she thought of it, though the guy had only pushed her, probably accidentally.
Five years after graduation from college, she’d been back in Trippton, working at Daddy’s bank. Two years later, she married the scion of the Trippton real estate dynasty, such as it was, in a beautiful, eight bridesmaids ceremony at Trippton National Golf Club, to which David hadn’t been invited.
With her good marriage, her father’s support, her Washington line of bullshit, and her New York hairstyle, she’d advanced quickly enough, from loan officer to vice president, and then to president. When Daddy choked to death on an overcooked slab of roast beef, she got, at age thirty-seven, the whole enchilada.
And at forty-two, had filed for divorce, for reasons not disclosed in the Trippton Republican-River. Rumor had it that the real estate guy, Justin Rhodes, had taken to wearing nylons and referring to himself as Justine. That would be fine in Washington, New York, or L.A., but not so good in Trippton. There were no children.
There she was, David’s first and truest love.
Available.
What did he love about her? Everything. He loved to watch her walk. He loved to hear her talk, he loved to hear her laugh. He loved the brains and the self-confidence . . . the whole . . . gestalt.