Deep Freeze (Virgil Flowers #10)(72)

They talked about that, finished breakfast, and headed for Fitzgerald’s. On the way, Virgil called Jeff Purdy and asked, “You know that we’re gonna search Fred Fitzgerald’s place this morning?”

“Yes. Pweters has the warrant.”

“I know, we just had breakfast. Anyway, Fitzgerald’s got a computer up there, and the warrant covers it. Could you send somebody down and ask him what the password is? So we don’t have to break into it?”

“Get back to you in five minutes.”

He did, and Virgil wrote the password—Tatooine—on a piece of paper and put it in his pocket.

—

The day was dark and cold, the wind whistling down the Mississippi from the northeast, but there was no snow. Fitzgerald’s place was right across the street from the railroad tracks and the river, and a squadron of snowmobiles went by on the river as Virgil was pulling up.

Pweters had the warrant and Fitzgerald’s key ring, which had been confiscated at the jail, and they let themselves in. They spent twenty minutes on the first floor—the work area—not expecting to find much, and didn’t, except for a gun safe. The safe was keyed, and the key was on the key ring; when they opened the safe, they found no guns but, instead, a collection of action figures.

Virgil took out an eighteen-inch-high Joker figure, shook it a few times to see if something might be concealed inside, but it seemed solid. Pweters pointed him at the comic-book posters on the shop walls: Star Wars stormtroopers, Wonder Woman, Serpentor, Aquaman. “He’s a comics guy.”

They climbed the stairs and took in Fitzgerald’s living quarters more carefully. While Virgil scanned the bedroom, Pweters looked at an aging Apple iMac. He tried a couple of passwords but nothing worked. “I got no ideas,” Pweters said. “I’ve tried one, two, three, four, five . . . his initials . . . his name . . . tattoo . . .”

Virgil said, “Let me in there.”

Pweters moved, and Virgil tapped in a few letters into the password space, and the machine opened up. “Look at his emails, see who he’s talking to,” Virgil said.

“Holy shit, how’d you do that?” Pweters demanded.

“Password was Tatooine—you know, the Star Wars planet, and a pun on ‘tattoo.’ Couldn’t miss it, with those posters on the wall downstairs.”

“Hey, I’m fuckin’ impressed, man.”

“Routine, when you know what you’re doing,” Virgil said.

—

Virgil found a collection of B and D equipment, including some crappy handcuffs, in a box in a living room closet; also a folding massage table and several books on massage. Fitzgerald appeared to have a variety of sidelines, but that wasn’t unusual in an isolated small town.

“Got something here,” Pweters called.

Virgil went over to look as Pweters clicked through a list. “I put ‘spank’ in the search field, which would cover ‘spanking’ and other variations, and I got seventeen emails up. Looks like four or five different women . . . although, some of the emails could be guys, I guess . . . Jeez, I bet that’s Janet Lincoln, the JLinc one.”

“You know her?”

“Yeah, everybody does. She runs the Sugar Rush; it’s a candy store downtown. And ice cream and so on. She’s a little chubby . . .”

“Guess chubby people like to get spanked, too,” Virgil said.

Pweters laughed. “I was hoping to find McComber on the list.”

“Didn’t seem to go all that well last night,” Virgil said.

“Ah, I got her,” Pweters said. “She pushed me and I pushed her back. Now she’s worried that I’m not interested. So she’ll flirt with me next time and I’ll be cool. A little distant. Eventually, I’ll get her. I mean, she doesn’t have a lot of choice down here—last night she was out with a guy who does satellite TV installations.”

“You’re walking a thin line there, Pweters. Women do not like rejection.”

“Oh, I won’t reject her—I’ll make her work for it. I know she basically wants my body.” Pweters tapped the computer screen. “Say, look at this one. Cripes, I wonder if that’s Lucille Becker.”

“Looks like a Lucille Becker to me. What else would LuBec be? You know anybody else in town whose name would crunch down like that?”

“No, I don’t. Huh.”

“What does she do?” Virgil asked.

“She’s a fiftyish English teacher up at the high school. Had her my senior year, gave me an A. I could see her in black vinyl.”

“Let’s try to stay professional,” Virgil said. “By black vinyl, you mean the kind with cutouts over the butt?”

“Exactly,” Pweters said. He looked up and said, “I’m starting to feel a little dirty doing this. Violating their privacy.”

“Really?”

“No, not really.” He went back to the computer.

“Attaboy,” Virgil said. “Part of the job. Get those email addresses, check the letters for anything that might apply to the case, and put ‘whip,’ or something, into the search field.”

“I can do that.”

—

Virgil continued to prowl the apartment, stopped periodically to suggest new search terms for Pweters, but they found nothing that would tie Fitzgerald to the murders—nothing like a club that would match the one that must have been used on Hemming. And no guns at all.