Deep Freeze (Virgil Flowers #10)(23)

Cain almost laughed. “Probably the best idea. Last time, though, she had me cornered in the bedroom.”

—

When Virgil finished with the questions, Cain had a few of his own. “How was she killed?”

“Struck once with something heavy,” Virgil said.

“She wasn’t thrown in the river and drowned?”

“No.”

Cain made a twitchy movement with his hands. “You know where Orly Crick is?”

“Yes.”

“I went through the ice there, when I was a kid,” Cain said. “Almost got pulled downstream, under the unbroken ice. I’ve had nightmares ever since, about getting stuck under the ice, trying to break my way up . . . Good she was dead before she went in.”

“Well . . .”

Cain asked, “Have you figured out how she got in the water? River’s froze solid for miles.”

“I don’t know where she went in, but her body came up at the sewer plant outflow,” Virgil said.

“I heard that. You know, the sewage plant has a couple of cameras up there on the roof. I did some work for them once and they said it was okay to leave the Bobcat because there were cameras covering it twenty-four/seven.”

Virgil said, “Thanks for the tip. I’ll go take a look.”

“One more question,” Cain said. “Does Rhodes inherit? They weren’t divorced yet.”

Virgil said, “That’s really private . . .”

“Right. The sonofabitch does get something, doesn’t he? I heard a rumor about that. About how he gets the house.”

“I don’t know.”

“You lie with a straight face. That’s good if you’re a cop, I guess,” Cain said. “I’ll tell you something, Virgil. I did like that woman. A lot. And I’m not one to lay around yanking on my dick when there’s work to be done. I know all about when you were down here the last time, and I guess you’re good at it, the cop shit, but I’m gonna look into this myself. I been thinking about it all day.”

“Corbel—”

“Fuck it. I’m gonna kick some ass and take some names. If I find anything out, I’ll call you.”

“Stay away from Justin Rhodes,” Virgil said.

“That’s something I can promise you,” Cain said. “I’ll stay away from Justin Rhodes.”

—

They sat there, staring at each other, and Virgil was at a loss: he had nothing to use as a crowbar, and Cain had answered all his questions. Still, Cain had the look of a brawler about him, and, by his own admission, was a brawler. If Hemming’s death was an accident, a brawler might be exactly the person you were looking for. Virgil had a feeling that Cain had been telling the truth, that he wasn’t involved in the murder, but Virgil wasn’t yet ready to label him nope. After a moment, Virgil said, “I’m going to hold you to that. Don’t mess with Justin.”

“Justine,” Cain said.

“Rhodes.”

Virgil stood up, and Cain said, “We gotta catch the motherfucker who did this. Gina could be a pain in the ass, but you don’t get the death sentence for that.”

“No, you don’t,” Virgil said. “I don’t want you messing around with this, Corbel . . .”

“I’m a free man and I do what I want,” Cain said. “I’ll be seeing you around.”

He stuck out a hand as Virgil was leaving and Virgil took it. Cain’s hand was like a rock, but not big enough a rock to have made the dent in Hemming’s skull.

Out in the office, with Cain a few feet behind, Virgil asked, “Say, does anybody know where I can find Jesse McGovern?”

The two women and the man behind the counter, and Cain, all shook their heads.

“I didn’t think so,” Virgil said. He turned back to Cain. “You take it easy, there, Corbel.”

“You, too, Virgil.”

—

He worried a little about Cain, but Virgil had heard that kind of revenge talk before from friends of victims. Nothing had ever come of it, not in Virgil’s experience.

He went to his truck and sat a moment. A video of the body being thrown into the Mississippi was too much to hope for. Virgil knew that, even as he started the truck and drove south through town to the sewage plant.

And he was right. He talked to the plant superintendent, who told him that the cameras were pointed at the chain-link front gate, which was locked shut at night. The effluent channel was several hundred yards farther south.

The superintendent, a burly man in striped coveralls, said, “She wasn’t thrown in there anyway. I knew who she was and she probably weighed one-forty, one-fifty. You would have had to walk a half mile on a bad slick-icy path in the middle of the night with a hundred-and-fifty-pound body on your back. In a blizzard? No way.”

“You have to walk it?”

“Yup. You park in our parking lot here, and there’s a path that runs along the river. Not a government path, not a sidewalk—a path that’s been walked in.”

“How do you know it was in the middle of the night?” Virgil asked.

The guy cocked his head. “You think somebody walked a half mile down a slick-icy path in the middle of the day with a hundred-and-fifty-pound woman’s body on his back?”