Deep Freeze (Virgil Flowers #10)(74)
“Yeah, yeah, Margaret Griffin. I talked to her last night and she was at a dead end. How did this get going?”
“I don’t know exactly, but she got a phone number for the ringleader of the Barbie-O people and got a GPS reading for this barn.”
“When did all this happen?”
“Well, we got the call at nine o’clock this morning, so it was before that. We went over and picked up the search warrant from an assistant AG, got it signed, and hit the road. We’ll be there in an hour and a half or so, if my nav system is correct. We thought you knew all this.”
“I didn’t know any of it,” Virgil said. “I probably won’t be on the raid—I’ve got these murders. Listen, guys, take it easy.”
“Heard something about you getting beat up,” Shrake said.
“Yeah, I did. The people who hurt me were a bunch of women who are making these dolls. These are people who are desperate for income. I don’t think they’d fight you, but take care. This could be more complicated than knocking on a door.”
Shrake said, “Huh. We were led to believe it was a door knock.”
“It probably will be. But be careful, for Christ’s sakes. Don’t hurt anyone. They’re mostly housewives.”
“We’ll take care,” Jenkins said.
“If you’re still down this evening, have dinner with me,” Virgil said.
“See you then,” Shrake said. “Keep your ass down.”
“You, too.”
—
Virgil sat in his truck, heater running full blast, getting madder and madder. He thought he knew what had happened: he’d told Margaret Griffin that he’d gotten a call from Jesse McGovern, and Griffin, as an experienced PI, had a hacker somewhere who could look at phone records.
They’d gotten into Virgil’s and had spotted the incoming call from the night before. He’d known that could happen—in theory, at least—and every PI he’d ever met had ways of getting into supposedly confidential, law-enforcement-only online records. It was illegal, but so common as to be ordinary. He shouldn’t have mentioned McGovern’s call to Griffin. He’d screwed up.
He had to think for a moment before he remembered where he’d seen a pay phone—there was one in Brown’s Bowling Alley—and he went that way, still thinking about what he was going to do. If he got caught, he could lose his job. But Griffin had betrayed him.
The bowling alley was mostly deserted; only three alleys were in use, but there was a gathering at the bar. Virgil, coming in the door at the far side, stopped at the pay phone, thought about it some more, and dropped in a quarter.
McGovern answered a moment later, and Virgil said, pitching his voice up and without identifying himself, “Your barn will be raided in the next couple hours. Somebody may be watching it right now. The phone you’re talking on is being tracked. Take the battery out. The main thing is, make sure nobody gets hurt.”
He hung up. McGovern might have recognized his voice, but if asked, he’d deny it. Lie. He liked his job and wasn’t ready to go for full-time writing.
What worried him most was the possibility that somebody would get hurt in the raid. The people making the dolls had shown a willingness to assault cops—there were still three of them on the loose—and if any of them had a gun . . .
TWENTY-TWO David Birkmann was out on bug patrol, according to the woman who sat in his office, just off Main Street. The office was a simple Sheetrock cube with off-white walls on which were hung a whiteboard, with assignments and messages written on it, and three separate corkboards with all manner of paper litter pinned to them. The place smelled a little funny, Virgil thought, a combination of body odor and bug-killing chemicals.
The woman’s name was Marge, and she said, “This is prime time for Dave, so he’ll be a little hard to catch. Rest of the year, it’s all about servicing the accounts, which our technicians take care of. January is when Dave signs up the accounts for another year, figures out fees and all of that, and he does most of it personally.”
“Maybe you can help me,” Virgil said. “How many vans do you have?”
“Maybe you should talk to Dave.” She gave him Birkmann’s phone number. When Virgil called, Birkmann said he was out of town, up on the bluffs. “I could be back in a half hour.”
“I need the answer to a routine question—how many vans do you have?” Virgil asked.
“Vans? Six. One for each technician. Can I ask why you’re asking?”
Virgil ignored the question. “Do the technicians leave the vans at the office or do they take them home?”
“They drive them home. They check in with their mileage every night before they get off; Marge reads it.”
“Are they allowed to drive the trucks when they’re off duty?”
“We discourage it,” Birkmann said. “But they do. No out-of-town trips, but, you know, they’ll stop at the Piggly Wiggly on the way home or run out to a store at night. It’s not really a problem. A small town, it’s only an extra mile on the truck . . . Does somebody think one of our vans was involved in the murders?”
“We have a witness who says one was parked on the street near Gina Hemming’s house the night of the murder.”