Deep Freeze (Virgil Flowers #10)(49)

Virgil was sitting across the interview table. “What were you doing, Corbel? I understand the Harneys beat the shit out of you and your pal . . .”

“Mrs. Harney. Mrs. Harney—she ambushed us with a baseball bat . . .”

“It was a stick, Corbel. A dowel rod from a closet, for Christ’s sakes,” Virgil said. “Jeff Purdy says your friend looks like a vampire, with all his broken teeth . . .”

“Yeah, he took it bad. That fuckin’ Harney tripped me, and Mrs. Harney hit me with that baseball bat . . .”

“Stick . . .”

“Felt like a baseball bat,” Corbel said. “I might have to go to Harney to fix me up because he sat on my head. I don’t think my neck’s gonna recover for a month. You ever try to lift up your head when there’s two hundred pounds sitting on it?”

“No, I never have,” Virgil said. “Now, tell me what you were doing.”

“I will if you’ll get me a bottle of water. My mouth feels like the Sahara Desert . . .”

Virgil got a deputy to fetch a bottle of water, and Cain said, “Well, when I was fooling around with Gina, it came out, I don’t remember how, that she’d had a thing with Ryan Harney. She made me promise not to tell anyone, but what I figured was, they had this party, for the class reunion, or this meeting, whatever it was, and she said something to Harney that made him think it was all gonna come out. So he left, waved good-bye to everyone, and he came back and killed her. Or maybe she was friendly at the party, and he came back, thinking he was gonna get laid, that they could start up again, and she told him to fuck off, and he picked up a wine bottle they had there and whacked her with it.”

“How do you know they had wine bottles?”

“Hell, everybody in town knows everything that happened at that meeting. They were drinking heavy.”

“Not from what I’ve figured out,” Virgil said. “They had eight people there, and when Jeff Purdy went in Saturday night, there were two empty wine bottles on the kitchen counter, and one half full. Maybe fifteen glasses of wine split up between eight people over an hour and a half or two hours? They weren’t drinking much. I’ve asked them: nobody thinks anybody else was drunk.”

“Did you ask that question specific about Harney?”

Virgil hesitated, then said, “Okay. He might have had a little more than the others.”

Cain leaned across the table. “See, that’s what happened. Harney’s got an unhappy home life. He’s already been caught fuckin’ around on his wife . . .”

“How do you know that?”

“Found it out last night. Kinda came out in . . . the conversation.”

“The fight.”

“Whatever. Anyway, he gets loaded at the party, comes back. She tells him to fuck off. He’s drunk and pissed and whacks her with a bottle.” His eyes narrowed as he thought about it. “Now, Virgil, you really think eight people only drank two and a half bottles of wine in two hours? In Trippton? You got a missing bottle there. Nobody would have walked away with one, you can’t steal from the hostess, somebody would have seen it. He whacks her with the bottle, takes it with him when he goes to throw the body in the river.”

“Does Harney fish?”

“Well . . . not that I know of. But I don’t know all the fishing people here,” Cain said.

“Does he have an ice-fishing shack?”

“Well, no, I don’t think so.”

“Snowmobiles?” Virgil asked.

“Uh, jeez . . .”

—

Virgil sent him back to the holding cell, asked Purdy whether Denwa Burke was worth interviewing, and Purdy said no. “He’s got no idea of what happened at that meeting. He’s a hell-raiser and a shovel operator for the port. When I say shovel operator, I mean the kind with a wooden handle.”

Virgil called Harney’s office to find out if he was in and was told that he was ill and was at home. Virgil called, Harney answered, and Virgil told him they needed to talk.

“Yeah, I figured you’d be calling. Listen, could you stop and pick up a couple of large lattes at The Roasting Pig? We’ve been up all night and we’re starving here . . .”

Virgil stopped at The Roasting Pig for the lattes, walked down the block to Dunkin’ Donuts and got a half dozen donuts—two chocolate-frosteds, two glazed sticks, two original sticks, in a bag, and a jelly to eat on the way over to the Harneys. The counter clerk offered him the donuts free again, but Virgil paid. A couple of donuts was okay; seven was a bribe.

—

When Harney popped the front door open, he looked as though he’d spent the night in hell. His hair stuck out in all directions, he had a large blue bruise in the middle of his forehead, and he looked like he’d gotten exactly no sleep. He told Virgil to come in, took the two large cups of coffee and handed one to his wife, who’d come up behind him, and they all went into the large kitchen to sit at the dining bar.

Harney said, “I guess Corbel told you that I had a thing with Gina years ago.”

“He didn’t say when it was,” Virgil said. He glanced at Karen Harney, who looked fairly relaxed; he wondered about the possibility of a Xanax or two.

“Five years ago,” Harney said.

“While I was pregnant with our second child, you asshole,” Karen Harney said.