Deep Freeze (Virgil Flowers #10)(66)

Fitzgerald looked between the two cops for a minute, then asked Pweters, “Who’s the public defender?”

“Ann McComber. She’s good.”

“If you can get her to come over, I’ll talk to her,” Fitzgerald said. He edged the door closed. “Tell her to call first . . .”

He closed the door one last time.

—

Ann McComber wasn’t interested in leaving a date to talk to a tattoo artist until Virgil explained that Margot Moore had been murdered and her prospective client might have something to tell the cops about it.

“All I wanted was a third glass of wine and a little romance,” McComber complained. “But . . . Fred’s down at his shop?”

“Yeah. He wants you to call. I’ll get your county attorney involved, so if there’s a deal to be made, he can sit in on it,” Virgil said.

“Well, phooey. Okay. I’ll call Fred. I’m not sure I want to go down there by myself, though.”

“If you want, me and Pweters can sit where we can hear you scream. If you scream.”

“Let me call Fred.”

—

Virgil got the county attorney on the phone, a guy named Bret Carlson, who agreed to meet with McComber that night if a deal was necessary. “But not after eleven o’clock.”

Virgil rang off and said to Pweters, “If we can get McComber off her date and Fitzgerald off his dead ass and Carlson before he goes to sleep, we might work something out.”

“McComber’s on a date?”

Virgil heard the interest. “You got something going with McComber?”

“Not yet, but the thought has crossed my mind more than once. If I got that girl in bed, I’d turn her every way but loose.”

Virgil said, “Oh-oh,” and “How old are you?”

Pweters said, “Thirty-one. Why?”

“If you want to jump McComber . . . that suggests to me that she’s about five minutes out of law school. Is she gonna know enough to work a deal? Or is she gonna blow us off?”

“Ah, she’s been out of law school for three or four years, and she’s smart. She knows how it works.”

Virgil said, “Okay. I’ll have to trust you on that.”

As they were walking back to their cars, Pweters asked, “Why did you ask Fred if he had Sirius Radio?”

“Because on TV cop shows, people get questioned about what shows they were watching when the crime occurred,” Virgil said. “People think that might be an alibi because of the shows. But if you’re halfway smart, you know that some TV shows are also on the radio—and the show that he was ‘watching’ is on Sirius. He could have been listening to it, could have driven over to Margot’s, killed her, and driven back here without missing a thing.”

“But not if he has a 1992 Jeep.”

“No, but he could have been driving something borrowed. Something he borrowed from some other dipshit. But I don’t really think that. I think he knows something, but he didn’t kill Moore. Hemming maybe, but not Moore.”

“Why do you think that? Hemming maybe?”

“Because he’s all I got.”





NINETEEN Ann McComber turned out to be a moderately attractive frosted blonde with a haircut like some Olympic ice-skater that Virgil once saw in an Ice Capades show that his second wife made him go to. She was curt with Virgil, slightly less curt with Pweters, and told them that they were not permitted to wait inside Fred Fitzgerald’s shop even though they had to keep Virgil’s truck running to keep their asses from freezing off, a clear waste of gasoline and an environmental hazard, and even though they promised not to eavesdrop on the attorney/client discussion.

“Get a sleeping bag and huddle up together,” she said. “The shared body heat should keep you alive.”

“I’m not sure she’s all that impressed with you,” Virgil grumbled an hour or so later, as he watched the 4Runner’s exhaust fumes drift down the street. The insides of the windows were frosting up from their breath.

Pweters was reading a tattered copy of Gun & Garden, which Virgil had stolen from his dentist, in the light from the overhead lamp. “Bullshit. She could hardly hold back from throwing me on the floor and having her way with me right there in the foyer.”

“I didn’t notice that,” Virgil said. He checked his cell phone for the time. “Man, they’ve been in there for a long time.”

“That’s good, right? They must have something serious to talk about.”

“Could be,” Virgil allowed.

A few minutes later, an SUV, with its high beams on, pulled up behind them. Virgil asked, “Who’s this?”

“Don’t know, but the asshole has his brights on.”

“Why don’t you get out and look?” Virgil suggested.

“I’ll do that. With my hand on my gun,” Pweters said.

He did, and a moment later stuck his head back inside the truck and said, “It’s Bret Carlson. McComber called him to come down.”

“And didn’t call us? Left us out here?”

“Okay, she’s the bitch from hell. I’d still turn her upside down,” Pweters said.

Virgil tended to agree. “Bitch from hell” and “Turn her upside down” were two distinctly different categories.