Deep Freeze (Virgil Flowers #10)(55)

“Muddy water,” Ralph said.

They all stood around and looked at the hole for a while, Ralph as quiet as the Sphinx, until Johnson said, “I bet you guys have some really great conversations in the truck, huh?”

Ralph scratched his nose and shrugged and said, “Oh . . . no.”

Two minutes after that, one of the divers—impossible to tell which—surfaced and threw a dark object onto the ice, and went back down. Virgil squatted over it: a woman’s purse with a metal clasp. He opened it and found it full of the usual female junk, including a wallet. He opened the wallet and found himself looking at Gina Hemming’s driver’s license.

“Son of a bitch,” Johnson said. “This really is the place. I sorta didn’t believe it.”

A diver surfaced again two minutes later and threw a high-heeled shoe out on the ice, and went back down.

“Well, she wasn’t kidnapped when she went out for a walk,” Virgil said, as he looked it over. “She wouldn’t have been walking in that, not on that night.”

Twenty minutes passed, and Ralph went to the truck and brought back a ladder like those that are hung off the back of sailboats except this one had spikes at the curled top end. He stuck it into the water and jammed the spikes into the ice. Another five minutes, and one of the divers surfaced and climbed the first two rungs of the ladder, and Ralph grabbed him by the shoulders and helped him up the rest of the way.

Danson took off his face mask and said, “I think that’s gonna be about it. We did a grid ten to fifteen yards upriver, twenty yards down, ten yards on either side, and that’s what we got. Don’t think there’ll be any more.”

“You got what we needed,” Virgil said. “This is where she was dumped.”

“Yeah, I figured that when I spotted the purse,” Danson said. Blue surfaced, and Ralph and Danson helped him up the last steps.

Johnson said, “How cold are you?”

Danson shrugged. “Not cold at all.”

“This is cool,” Johnson said. “I’m gonna try it.”

“Lots of people tell me that, but then they don’t,” Danson said.

—

Danson and Blue went back to the camper and climbed inside to change back to street clothes, as Ralph piled up the gear at the back of the truck. Ralph also got them a black plastic bag for the purse and shoes, began slotting the blocks of ice back into the hole he’d cut.

“Always do that?” Johnson asked.

“Yup.”

“How come?” Johnson asked.

“Liability.”

“What . . .”

Ralph gushed, “Guy comes zooming across the lake on a snowmobile going ninety miles an hour, hits a big pile of ice blocks, wrecks his snowmobile and kills himself, and his old lady sues our butts for everything we got. Liability.”

“Got it,” Johnson said.

—

Virgil and Johnson hung around until Danson and Blue were back out of the camper, and Danson said, “We’ll bill you.”

“Do that,” Virgil said. “And thanks.”

“Easier and better than our usual calls,” he said.

Johnson bit. “What are your usual calls?”

“We’re usually looking for bodies.”

—

When all the equipment was stowed, the three men got back in the truck and took off for St. Paul, and Virgil and Johnson rocketed back to the cabin on the sleds. When they got there, they found Griffin sitting in her car, the engine running, reading the Republican-River.

As they pulled in and killed the engines of the sleds, she got out of her car, walked over, and said, “Well, I’ve now read the worst newspaper in the country, from top to bottom and end to end. The most important thing I found was that if you act now and buy one turkey at full price, you can get a second turkey of the same size or smaller at half price.”

Johnson said, “For real? At Piggly Wiggly?”

“I thought the name was a joke, but that’s what the paper said.” She turned to Virgil. “You’ve got to help me out. The guy who owns the ice-fishing house, or tent or whatever it is, this Duane Hawkins, where you found the voice recording, has gone on vacation to Florida. So his neighbor says. I don’t believe it.”

Virgil said, “You know, Margaret, I’ve got a murder case . . .”

“You’ve also got a governor who told my boss at Mattel that you’d make it a priority to help out, and you’ve got a case of assault on an officer of the law that needs to get solved. That would be your case. You could probably solve it all at once by driving out to CarryTown and talking to the guy in trailer 400. Besides, tell me what you’d do on the murder case if you didn’t spend a half hour round-trip-driving out to CarryTown?”

Johnson said, “She’s got you there, Virgil. You ain’t got shit on the murder.”

Griffin said, “See? Even this lunk thinks you ought to help out.”

Johnson: “‘Lunk’? I represent that comment.”

Virgil: “Jesus, Johnson. The line is either ‘I resent that comment’ or ‘I resemble that comment,’ but it’s not ‘I represent that comment.’ Could you try to keep that straight?”

“Okay,” Johnson said. “I’m sorry.”