Deep Freeze (Virgil Flowers #10)(83)

Those two moved along the far shore, closing on the spot where the gunfire had come from. When they were close, they stopped and set up, and the other deputies crossed two at a time. Virgil went with this last group.

When everyone was safely across, they moved slowly through the barren vegetation, powerful lights cutting through the brush, until they found the track of the shooter. As they’d expected, the shooter had walked, or run, to the other side of the finger of land to the river.

Then, as they hadn’t expected, he had walked, or run, back down the finger to the point where it connected to the mainland. The tracks led up the riverbank, across the railroad tracks.

The buildings along the tracks and the river were either industrial warehouses or abandoned, with mostly empty parking lots, and all of them vacant at night. The shooter could have left his vehicle almost anywhere and it wouldn’t have been thought of as out of place. He could have come and gone without being seen.

One of the deputies said to Virgil, “Don’t quote me, but we’re fucked.”





TWENTY-FIVE Virgil called Jon Duncan and told him that his truck had been burned to the ground, which was not an exaggeration. Duncan said, “Whoa! What are you going to do?”

“Go up to Winona and rent a Hertz, before anybody finds out what happened to my truck,” Virgil said. “Talk to my insurance guy—I’ve got a law enforcement rider on it, so maybe I’ll come out okay. Davenport’s car got all shot up last fall, and he got some good money back.”

“Well, do what you have to,” Duncan said. “Is this gonna take much longer? I mean, either a solution or a dry hole?”

“A few more days, is my guess. I’ve got a lot of people stirred up, something will crack. Or not. Anyway, I gotta do something about wheels.”

—

Virgil called Johnson, told him what happened, told him that the cabin was fine, and Johnson offered to loan Virgil a pickup. “Four-wheel drive, good heater, but the radio’s shot, and it’s got a big ‘Johnson Johnson Timber Products’ sign on the side.”

“I’ll rent,” Virgil said, “if you can give me a ride up to Winona tomorrow morning.”

“See you then.”

—

There was no chance at all that anything could be recovered from the car by a crime scene crew—the bullets would have disintegrated as they ricocheted off the engine block. Virgil called Gene’s Wrecker and Salvage and arranged for a wrecker to come pull out the 4Runner and hold it at the salvage yard until an insurance adjuster could look at it.

The wrecker showed up half an hour after he called, and Virgil went out and watched as the driver maneuvered the hulk up on top of the flatbed. The driver said, “State Farm? You’ll get ten grand. Maybe twelve, if you put a gun to the guy’s head. But I don’t think twelve. Might try to stick you with eight.”

Virgil went in the cabin to think about it. Had he been shot at by somebody involved in the Hemming and Moore murders or by somebody pissed off about the hunt for Jesse McGovern?

From the impressions in the snow where the shooter had been, it looked as though he’d been shooting while sitting, which was a good position, one that an experienced rifleman would use if he couldn’t go prone. Yet, the shooter had hit nothing but the engine compartment: it was like he wasn’t trying to actually hit Virgil.

On the other hand, he was willing to throw a lot of high-powered lead into the front of a truck with a man inside, so even if he didn’t really want to kill Virgil, he was willing to risk it.

On the third hand, Virgil was higher up than the shooter, so the shooter, who was sitting at the waterline, was effectively shooting uphill and might not have been able to see much of the windshield, and, with the high beams on, might not have been able to even see the truck that well at all. He might simply have been shooting between the headlights.

No way to know, really.

And was it really a he? Virgil thought about that for a while and decided it probably was. The boot tracks in the snow weren’t all that telling because the snow was so loose, but it appeared to Virgil that the boots were larger than anything a woman might wear. So probably a man.

Hadn’t been Corbel Cain shooting at him, or David Birkmann, because they’d both been in the restaurant, still eating, when he drove back to the cabin. Whoever shot at him had been set up and waiting.

—

He was working through that reasoning when headlights swept the cabin. He got his gun, slapped the magazine to make sure it was seated, and went to stand beside the door. Johnson, he thought.

But it wasn’t. A big man knocked on the door, and when Virgil peeked, he saw Elroy Cheever looking through the window glass. Both hands in sight.

Virgil opened the door and said, “Elroy?”

“I heard what happened,” Cheever said. “About your truck getting shot up and burned.”

“Yeah, it’s a mess.”

“I got that Tahoe out in the driveway, big guy. Ninety-seven miles on it. I’ll throw in a free Class III hitch, with all the wiring, and the upgraded radio, for the same price we were talking about.”

“Elroy . . .”

“Gonna make a sale, gotta strike while the iron is hot. Your iron was hot, judging from what I saw go by on Gene’s wrecker,” Cheever said. “What do you think? Want to go for a ride?”