Deep Freeze (Virgil Flowers #10)(73)

He would have gotten rid of the gun, of course . . . The gun. He had to think about the gun. What had the witness said? The gunshots sounded like Moore had been clapping her hands? Twenty-two CBs, both shorts and longs, were quiet, but Bea Sawyer had recovered .22 long-rifle shells. If the inner door had been closed, or mostly closed, when Moore was shot, the sound might have been muffled.

“Hey, Pweters?”

“Yeah?”

“You know anybody who has a .22 pistol?”

“You mean, besides me?”

—

Virgil called the sheriff, asked him to round up Sandy Hart and Belle Penney, the two women who’d been playing Scrabble with Moore when she was murdered, and take them back to Moore’s house. “We’ll meet you there in an hour.”

He and Pweters finished with the search, and Virgil lugged Fitzgerald’s computer out to his truck; they had nine names of possible B and D clients and had found ties both to Hemming and to Moore. Hemming had disguised herself by using a masked account name on Gmail but had slipped up by signing one of her emails with a lowercase “g,” and in another, from the same Gmail account, mentioning that he couldn’t come over at the regular time because she had a meeting that wouldn’t break up until nine o’clock.

Moore had used her regular email account.

In some of the emails, there’d been quite explicit suggestions for upcoming events; Hemming had mentioned neckties, which confirmed what Virgil had thought about the four men’s ties he’d found in her dressing room.

“Doesn’t really help,” he told Pweters. “We’re confirming what we already knew.”

“Can’t believe Fitzgerald had nine clients,” Pweters said. “I mean, how would they find each other?”

“Maybe some kind of female underground communications system?”

“You think?”

Virgil scratched his head. “You know . . . Corbel Cain told me about a guy who knew about some B and D stuff over here. Can’t remember his name—I’ve got it in a notebook—but there are some guys who know about it, too. You’re just not one of them.”

“As far as you know,” Pweters said.

Virgil shook his head. “You’re far too much of a Dudley Do-Right to know about that kind of thing.”

—

Jeff Purdy, Sandy Hart, and Belle Penney were waiting when Virgil and Pweters got to Moore’s house. Pweters had made a quick stop at his apartment to pick up his .22, and Purdy had collected a stack of undistributed newspapers at the Republican-River before going to Moore’s.

Virgil explained what he planned to do, put the two women at the kitchen table, stacked the newspapers on Moore’s porch, closed the inner door all but a crack. Pweters had loaded three rounds into the gun’s magazine; Virgil jacked one into the chamber, and when everybody was ready, fired three quick shots into the pile of newspapers.

That done, he took the magazine out of the pistol, checked the chamber to make sure it was empty, handed the gun and magazine to Pweters, and went back inside to the kitchen. “What do you think?”

“Way louder,” Penney said.

Hart nodded. “Nothing like what we heard.” She clapped her hands quickly, a golf clap imitating Virgil’s three gunshots, and said, “That’s what we heard.”

“Guy’s got a silencer,” Purdy said. “Remember when you were here the last time? The guy selling silencers?”

Virgil said, “Yeah. Goddamnit, that doesn’t sound like . . . I mean, the first killing seemed like an accident. This sounds like, I dunno . . . a professional. Or a semipro anyway.”

Pweters began, “That guy”—he glanced at Purdy and the women, veered away—“who, uh, made the silencers. Did you get a list of people who bought them?”

“No, but he’s available. Up in Stillwater for another three years. If we need him,” Virgil said.

They thanked Purdy and the two women, and Purdy picked up the stack of papers, Pweters went to lock the gun in his truck. Purdy asked if they’d come up with anything at Fred Fitzgerald’s, and Virgil said they hadn’t found anything useful. With Purdy gone, Pweters said, “I almost blurted out that tip you got about a blond guy in a GetOut! truck.”

“I thought that might have been it,” Virgil said. “Good catch. We’ll keep that to ourselves for now. But I’m going to go talk to Birkmann about it.”

“You want me to come? I like this detecting shit.”

“Naw. Take Fitzgerald’s computer somewhere and read any email that looks like it might be something. Don’t think you’ll find much, but we can’t let it go. I’m gonna go find Birkmann.”

—

He was on his way to Birkmann’s office when he took a call from Jenkins, who, with his partner Shrake, made up the BCA’s muscle. Jenkins said, “We’re on our way down. You gonna be there?”

“Be where?”

“On the raid,” Jenkins said. “You know, these Barbie-Os. That’s your case, right?”

“Not really. I’m not going on any raid that I know of,” Virgil said. “What the hell is going on?”

Virgil heard Jenkins and Shrake talking in their truck but couldn’t make out what they were saying, then Shrake came up and said, “Virgil, we got a search warrant from the attorney general’s office to search a farm down there in Buchanan County. Specifically, the barn. There’s a PI down there who’s hooked into the governor’s office . . .”