Deep Freeze (Virgil Flowers #10)(75)

“That was me,” Birkmann said. “Right at the end of her driveway, off to the right? I was there from about seven o’clock to eight forty-five.”

“Don’t think it was you, Dave. It might have been someone else, and later than that.”

“Well . . . do you have a van number?” Birkmann asked. “A license plate? Do you know what the driver looked like?”

“Not exactly. Are your guys licensed in any way? Do they carry IDs?”

“Oh, sure. They all have a plastic ID card, with the business name on it and their photos,” Birkmann said.

“Are there copies of the photos here in your office?” Virgil asked.

“Yup. I’ll tell Marge to let you look at them, if you want,” Birkmann said.

“That’d be great,” Virgil said.

He was about to hang up, but Birkmann said, “Listen, all my guys are good guys. Are you sure it was one of our vans? And, if it was, I’ll bet it was mine. Is it possible that your witness got the time wrong? I mean, my truck was out there for almost two hours . . .”

“I can’t answer that,” Virgil said. “I’m not putting you off—I really can’t answer the question.”

—

He gave Marge his phone, and Birkmann told her to show Virgil the file photos of his drivers. They rang off, and Marge called up a file on her computer, with pictures of all six. Two were blond. Virgil wrote down the names, with their addresses and phone numbers, and put check marks by the two blonds.

—

Virgil spent the next hour and a half worrying about the raid of the barn used by the doll makers and trying to track down Birkmann’s pest control technicians.

The first one, Randall Cambden, wasn’t on the job, and Virgil eventually found him working part-time for a carpet company. “I’m only part-time with Dave in the winter, three days a week,” he said. They were in the back of the carpet salesroom. “I go back to full-time in April.”

In the meantime, he spent two days a week pulling out worn carpeting and working as an assistant to an installer.

On the Thursday night that Gina Hemming was killed, he said, he’d been league bowling, which is why he could answer the question without thinking about it. “I bowl every Thursday. And also every Monday, but that’s a different league.”

“At George Brown’s place?” Virgil asked. Brown was the guy who drank too much and tried to date twenty-year-olds.

“Yeah, that’s the only place in town. George keeps the league records and scores,” Cambden said. “I talked to him a couple times that night, and he’ll have my score sheet. We start at eight, finish up around ten-thirty.”

Virgil would confirm that with Brown but knew that Cambden was telling the truth. Cambden said that he was home with his wife when Moore was killed. Virgil asked him, “Do you guys carry guns in your trucks?”

“No. Why would we?”

“Well, you do animal control . . .”

“We trap them with Havaharts. Squirrels, coons, skunks. If we have a problem with a dog or something, we call the cops. Dave Birkmann shot a deer once but said he wasn’t going to do that again. Too many liability problems. One bad ricochet, killing some guy on the street, and he gets sued and loses the company. If we need to get rid of a deer, we usually have the homeowner contact a bow-hunting club in town. They’ve got a couple guys who can take care of the problem.”

“You wouldn’t carry .22s.”

“Nope. I guess the old-timey guys did, but there are so many rules and regulations now . . . You can get busted for firing a gun inside the city limits, you know. So, no guns. Sorry.”

The second blond, Bill Houston, was a fifty-five-year-old bachelor and had no specific alibi for nine o’clock on Thursday. “Thursday is church night for me. I never miss, but I’m there only from four to eight. We run a food bank from four to seven, then we have the service, and we get out around eight. After that, I walk back to my apartment and watch TV and go to bed.”

“So you’re religious?”

“Somewhat religious. The pastor runs a program for alcoholics, and they got me to stop drinking twelve years ago. I’m grateful for that: they gave me my life back. So, church every Sunday and Wednesday, plus the food bank and the short service on Thursdays.”

Virgil thanked him and left, scratching his head. He’d check, but he was sure that neither Cambden nor Houston had killed Hemming.

—

After thinking it over for a moment, he took his phone out and called the number that Jesse McGovern had used to call him—and got nothing. She’d pulled the batteries on her phone. He called Jenkins and asked, “Where are you guys?”

“We’re out west of Trippton, setting up to go into this farm. You want to join in?”

“I’m thinking I might. When are you gonna hit it?”

“We’re sitting here in our truck, talking to Margaret. We’re only about a half mile away . . . probably two or three minutes.”

“Give me the location, I’ll meet you there. See what you get.”

—

The farm was seven miles west of Trippton, up beyond the river bluffs and back in the hills of the Driftless Area. The farmhouse was a shabby ranch style, with yellow siding overdue for paint. The barn behind it was as shabby as the house, but dirty white instead of yellow. The snow outside the barn’s main doors was covered with tire tracks, but none of the tracks went into the barn. A small access door to the right of the main doors appeared to have a lot of foot traffic.