Deep Freeze (Virgil Flowers #10)(59)

Then there was Rocky Marciano’s 1952 knockout of Jersey Joe Walcott in the thirteenth round of their heavyweight fight, called a one-punch knockout by everyone, though there were really two; to say nothing of Muhammad Ali’s 1974 knockout of George Foreman in what some people call the greatest boxing match ever.

Virgil’s punch, though nearly a century after Firpo’s, was on that scale. The woman came straight at him, talons flashing, the brightest thing around under the sullen winter sky, but Virgil had five inches’ reach on her and had had time to set his feet.

He focused the punch two inches behind her nose, and she walked straight into it. The punch was so clean, straight, and pure, with Virgil’s wrist and elbow locked up tight, a perfect line of bone between his shoulder and his knuckles, that the woman went down on her back like a wet sack of fertilizer.

Off to the side, Griffin said approvingly, “Whoa!”

The woman on the ground was swinging her arms back and forth as though she were making a snow angel while spraying blood from her nose all over the snow wings; a bloody angel, and making loud gasping and crying sounds. Virgil said, “Keep an eye on her, I’ve got some cuffs in the truck.”

When he got back, the woman had flopped over onto her stomach, bleeding heavily into the snow. Virgil grabbed one wrist, and she tried to push up with her other hand, but Griffin stepped over, put her heel on the woman’s cheekbone, and pushed down. The woman squealed, and Virgil said, “Don’t hurt her,” and Griffin asked, “Why not?”

Virgil said, “She’s hurt bad enough already.” Virgil got the woman’s other wrist and locked it up, and said to Griffin, “Help me get her into the backseat of my truck.”

They lifted the woman to her feet, and Virgil said, “Hold on a second—keep her steady,” and he went back to the truck and got a large-wound bandage from his first aid kit, which looked like an old-fashioned Kotex pad but twice as large, and pressed it against the woman’s nose. The woman screamed and said, “Hurts,” and Virgil said, “Yeah, I know. That’s why I got a blue squid on my face. Remember that?”

“I’d do it again, fucker,” the woman mumbled through the pad.

They helped her get into Virgil’s truck, and Virgil put a leg-iron around one ankle and clipped it to a steel loop welded to the floor. When she was settled, Virgil asked, “What’s your name?”

“Carolyn Weaver,” the woman said.

Virgil said, “Okay, Carolyn, it’ll help if you get some cold on your face to hold down the swelling. I’m going to give you a big chunk of snow to put on it. I’m going inside your trailer to get something to wrap it in. Do you hear me?”

She nodded, and Virgil said to Griffin, “Hold the pad against her face until I get back.”

Virgil went to the trailer, where Weaver’s keys were still in the lock. Inside, the first thing he saw were large cardboard boxes full of Barbie dolls and smaller cardboard boxes full of the tiny voice boxes. He looked around, found a box of garbage bags, took one outside, put a couple of pounds of packed snow in one of them, carried it over to the truck, and said to Weaver, “Lean forward. I’m going to put the bag of snow against the back of the front seat. Push against it with your face—but keep the pad pinned to your nose, too. We want the pad to stop the bleeding, the cold to stop the swelling. You got that?”

“Yeah.”

They did that, and Virgil said, “I’ll get you into the clinic in ten minutes. You have to hold it there until then. Hold it with your face.”

“’Kay.”

Virgil shut the truck door and said to Griffin, “The trailer is full of Barbie dolls and those voice things. She was making them here.”

“Terrific,” Griffin said. “You’ve made my day, Virgil. I’ll get a deputy with a search warrant. And, goddamnit, that was one of the best punches I’ve ever seen. Ever. That was like . . . totally awesome.”

“Thank you. I thought it was a good one,” Virgil said. “I better go lock the trailer.”

Virgil went back to the trailer, and Griffin said, “Give me a peek.”

Before Virgil could say yes or no, she climbed the stoop and pushed the door open. In the next second or so, as Virgil was climbing the stoop, she snapped a few photos with a small Sony point-and-shoot camera, until Virgil told her to stop—“Technically, you shouldn’t be in there.”

“I’m in shock from the fight. I wasn’t thinking. When I saw the contraband, I reacted instinctively to take the pictures,” she said. “That’s my story, and I believe the court will accept it. Where are you headed now?”

“Into the Trippton Clinic,” Virgil said.

“I’ll follow you. As soon as Weaver is done with the doc, I’m going to drop some paper on her.”

The trip to town took fifteen minutes in the snow, and, on the way, Virgil said to Weaver, “I locked up your trailer.”

“Manufactured home,” she said. She began to cry, and hadn’t stopped when they arrived at the clinic.





SEVENTEEN Birkmann sat frozen with fear in The Roasting Pig, thinking about what Margot Moore had said. Moore didn’t know what she knew—but if Flowers went back to her and she blurted it out, even in confusion, Flowers would be on that one simple fact like a duck on a june bug, and he, David Birkmann—Daveareeno, etc., Bug Boy—would be fucked.