Deep Freeze (Virgil Flowers #10)(40)

“Rick Thomas,” Johnson said, as he led the way to the cabin door. “He’s the mayor of the ice town, and he’s usually around. He sleeps out here, half the time.”

He pounded on the door, and a man shouted, “Who’s there?”

“Johnson Johnson,” Johnson shouted back.

“Go away. I’m getting laid.”

“With whose dick?” Johnson shouted. “Yours ain’t worked since the Carter administration.”

The door popped open, and a man, who looked like a skeletal Santa Claus, peered out at them and asked Virgil, “What’s that on your face?”

“A squid,” Virgil said.

“Huh. Some kind of religious thing, then?”

—

The cabin was snug, warm, and comfortable, with four holes in the floor and four chairs facing one another, two by two, either side of the holes. A single bunk bed, an easy chair, a shelf of books and magazines, and an electric stove and heater made up the rest of the place. A rack of storage batteries occupied the back wall, fed by a diesel generator that sat outside. The place smelled of fish, both raw and cooked.

“I hope you got that generator isolated or you’re gonna gas yourself to death out here, Rick,” Johnson said.

“I’m all caulked and sealed. I worry about it since what happened to Jerry,” Thomas said. “I got a new CO detector on the wall, too.”

Johnson said to Virgil, “Jerry got all fucked up on fumes. Damn near died. He has one of the better spots out here, too. If he’d croaked, there would have been a hell of a fight over his spot.”

“That would have been a shame, the mourning and all,” Virgil said.

—

So what’s up?” Thomas asked.

Johnson introduced Virgil, who first explained the blue squid, then the murder problem, and Thomas said, “Well, it won’t be one of the big places out here. Has to be one of the small ones.”

“Why’s that?” Virgil asked.

Thomas pointed at the floor. “Because the big places have wood floors. You’d have to drill a hole through the floor. Or you’d have to move your whole outfit, and you can see if that’s been done, and nobody out here has moved since before Christmas. Lot of the smaller places don’t have full floors.”

“That helps,” Virgil said. “If you know all the people out here . . . where’s the first place you’d look?”

“I’m not sure you’d look in an ice house at all,” Thomas said. “Even if the guy is a rat, why wouldn’t he haul the body out to his house, pick up the auger, and go on up the river where nobody can see him, drill some holes, and drop her in there? It was snowing hard Thursday night—I wasn’t out here, I was in town, but I was out with my snow blower for a while . . . real pretty night. Anyway, in that storm he could have driven out on the river, a pickup or a sled—either one—and drilled a few holes lickety-split, dropped her in, been back to shore, nobody the wiser.”

“Well, fuck me,” Johnson said. To Virgil: “It was all so clear in my mind.”

“That’s gotta be an unexpected change,” Thomas said.

“You still might be right,” Virgil said to Johnson. He turned to Thomas. “You see any tracks going up-or downriver?”

“Yeah. About a million of them. Everybody’s been out riding.”

Johnson: “That’s true. Shit.”

“Still worth a look around,” Virgil said. He said to Thomas, “There’s a translucent plastic tent out there, a big one . . .”

“Duane Hawkins’s place. Supposed to get thermal gain—lets the sunlight in, got a dark fabric floor to soak up the radiation, mirror on the inside so it doesn’t radiate back out . . . free heat.”

“Does it work?” Johnson asked.

“I guess. He’s got a kerosene heater in there, too, thermal gain cuts the kerosene use by about half, he says. ’Course, doesn’t work worth a damn at night. But he’s not out much at night, and during the day the plastic lets in all the light you need, so it’s not a bad setup . . . Haven’t seen it in a real high wind yet.”

He looked back at Virgil. “Why? Can’t think Duane’s involved with Gina Hemming in any way?”

“Don’t particularly think he was,” Virgil said. “A plastic fishing tent . . . something I’ve never seen before.”

They chatted a few more minutes, but Thomas didn’t have much more information. And clearly wasn’t a suspect: Gina Hemming would have kicked his ass in a struggle.

Back outside, Virgil zipped up his suit and said to Johnson, “I want to take a look at that tent. Talk to the owner.”

“Oh-oh. What’d I miss?”

“The person going in there kept looking at me . . . there’s a kind of thing that happens when people look at cops and keep looking back,” Virgil said. “Attracts the eye. A cop’s eye, anyhow.”

“How’d he know you’re a cop?”

“Could be a she—couldn’t tell from the parka—and I got the squid on my face. And the hair, when I took off the helmet.”

“You think . . . ?”

“Dunno. Let’s go ask. Do you know this Duane Hawkins?”