Deep Freeze (Virgil Flowers #10)(38)

Virgil could tell when he wasn’t making headway, so after a bit more talk, he let Harney get back to his work. As he was leaving, Harney said, “Get up here on my table. I want to look at your nose.”

“I got a doc down at the clinic,” Virgil said.

“Let me look.”

Virgil let him look, and when he was done, Harney said, “You live in the Cities?”

“No, over in Mankato.”

“There’s a Mayo branch there. Get one of their ENTs to take a look. There’s still quite a bit of swelling, but I don’t like the way the end of the septum looks right now. You might need a little more work there.”

“Well . . . okay. If they do something, it’ll hurt, won’t it?”

“Oh, yeah.”

—

Virgil called Johnson, who was nearly unintelligible with one of his sawmills working in the background, but managed to get Clarice’s phone number. Clarice worked in the office, and when she came up, Virgil said, “If I wanted to buy some whips and chains, maybe a couple of vibrators and so on, could I do that in Trippton?”

“Nope. Not as far as I know. Why would anybody do that?”

“Because maybe they wanted to get vibrated?”

“Hang on one second, Virgil . . .” Virgil hung on for ten seconds, then Clarice came back and said, “I put ‘sex toys’ in the search field at Amazon. They sent me to their ‘Sexual Wellness’ category, where they list entire departments: Condoms and Lubes, Performance Enhancers, Bondage Gear, Sex Toys, Exotic Apparel, Novelties, Men’s Toys, Sex Furniture, and Sensual Delights. Those are all departments. I am clicking on ‘Sex Toys’ . . . and the first two entries are the ‘Utimi Upgraded Silicone Ten-speed G Spot and Clitoris Vibrating Vibrator,’ which is right next to the ‘Utimi Ten-speed Silicone USB-charging Vibrating Anal Butt Plug Prostate Vibrator.’”

Virgil said, “You didn’t make that up?”

“No, I didn’t. By the way, they’re all eligible for Amazon Prime.”

“That’s a relief. I’d hate to wait for three days,” Virgil said. Getting no response, he said, “You’re telling me that a sex toys store in Trippton would be superfluous.”

“That’s my belief, yes,” Clarice said. “If you bought something here, everybody in town would know in eight seconds. If you buy from Amazon, maybe it’s an electric toothbrush or a rubber dog bone, and it comes in a brown box.”

“I’m sorry to have bothered you, Clarice,” Virgil said.

“And I’m sorry if I embarrassed you, Virgil,” Clarice said.

Virgil hung up. Anal butt plug and prostate vibrator? What the hell was happening in the world? Somebody with a man bun and a skateboard in Portland, Oregon, might be able to explain how it was all very natural and healthy, but he wouldn’t find that guy in Trippton.

—

He called Johnson again and Johnson shouted over the whine of the circular saw, “She help you out?”

Virgil said, “Yeah. I need your expertise on the Hemming murder. You got someplace close that we can talk?”

“How about the Cheese-It? I could get a sandwich, and you could get a Diet Coke. I could be there in twenty minutes.”

“See you there.”

—

The Cheese-It was one of the lesser restaurants in a town full of them—lesser restaurants, that is. Virgil had once ordered a BLT at the Cheese-It and they’d forgotten to put the “B” in between the two pieces of soggy white bread. Johnson alleged he’d once sent an open-face roast beef sandwich back to the kitchen because it moved. On the other hand, there was nothing wrong with their Diet Cokes.

He got a Coke, and a table, and Johnson arrived a few minutes later, ordered a grilled cheese sandwich and a Sunkist Orange Soda, dropped into the chair opposite Virgil, and asked, “What’s up?”

Virgil said, “It’s Thursday night and it’s snowing, and you’ve killed Gina Hemming, maybe more by accident than by plan, and you decide to get rid of the body to delay the discovery of her death. Maybe to obscure the exact time of death . . . Maybe hoping nobody will ever find the body.”

“You dump her in the river,” Johnson said.

“Right. How do you do that in the first week of January with the river locked up tight? Who could carry her down to the effluent outflow at the sewer plant? It’s too far, and she was too heavy. The snow was really coming down, but there were also people working at the sewage plant—you, or your truck, could be seen.”

“I could have carried her,” Johnson said.

“Not many guys with your kind of strength,” Virgil said. “If you killed her and wanted to throw her in the river, would it even have occurred to you to park down there at the plant and walk a half mile with a body on your back and throw it in . . . and not expect somebody to see either you or your truck?”

Johnson shook his head. “No. It wouldn’t occur to me. It could be the guy wasn’t half bright and so he did it and got lucky. It was snowing like hell, so from his point of view, that might have been a good thing. If he thought somebody might have been coming, he could have stepped a few feet off the trail and not be seen . . .”

“True,” Virgil said.

Johnson scratched his neck and said, “I don’t believe it. He’s kinda frantic, he’s kinda panicked, he wants to get rid of her, he thinks of the river. Why? He could haul her up in the woods and stick her in a snowdrift and nobody would find her until the end of March.”