Deep Freeze (Virgil Flowers #10)(89)

Not running for their lives but running because they were in a rush to see something exciting. Like a fight. Like a confrontation between Corbel Cain and David Birkmann. Virgil stuck the 4Runner in the first parking slot he saw and hurried inside.

One step inside the back door, he could already hear the shouting. He jogged down the hall, past the restrooms, to the main barroom, where Cain, with Denwa Burke at his shoulder, was facing David Birkmann. A heavyset apron-wearing man stood between them—a bartender, Virgil thought.

They were surrounded by a dense crowd of happy onlookers, most with beers in their hands, yelling encouragement to one man or the other. Virgil started to shoulder his way through the crowd when Cain pointed an accusing finger at Birkmann and stepped toward him, yelling something that Virgil couldn’t make out.

Virgil shouted, “Police! Police! Let me through,” but nobody paid any attention.

Cain suddenly launched himself toward Birkmann, fists held ear high; the bartender went chest to chest with him, but Cain grabbed him by the shirt and spun him away and turned back to Birkmann.

Birkmann was standing, red-faced, in front of the karaoke stage, and he shouted something back at Cain, then turned to the stage and grabbed a microphone stand. When Cain charged him, he swung it at him. The microphone came whizzing off the top of the stand and broke something on the back wall, something glass, and Virgil pushed through the circle of bar patrons, who continued to watch with an interest that positively bordered on delight.

Cain saw the microphone stand coming at his face and blocked it with one of his heavy forearms.

Which wasn’t quite heavy enough.

WHACK! The impact sounded like a butcher cutting a leg bone in half.

Cain yelped with pain and staggered away while Birkmann looked wildly around the bar and shouted something at Burke, who stumbled over his own feet and fell on his butt. Birkmann looked at the microphone stand in his hands, tossed it back on the stage, and ran his hands through his hair . . .

Virgil broke into the open circle of patrons, pointed at Birkmann, and shouted, “Sit down! Sit on the stage.”

Birkmann said, “He was going to kill me,” as Virgil passed. Cain was holding his left arm across his chest with his right hand and arm, and Virgil asked, “You okay?”

“Busted my arm,” Cain said.

“Why? What are you doing?”

“He killed Gina,” Cain said, and several pain tears leaked out of the corner of his eyes. “I can see it clear as day.”

“How do you know that?” Virgil asked.

“Process of elimination. When you know nobody else did it, it has to be whoever is left.”

Virgil couldn’t believe it. “That’s it? You were going to beat him up because you’d eliminated all the other possibilities? In your own mind? Which is soaked in vodka?”

“Beer, mostly. And that was good enough for us,” Cain said.

“Ah, for Christ’s sakes,” Virgil said, turning back toward the crowd. He shouted, “Everybody, go away. Go back to what you were doing.”

Not many moved. The bartender was there, and he pointed at Cain and Burke and shouted, “You! You! You’re permanently banned.”

Burke said, “Hey, Doug, I didn’t do nothing.”

“You’re banned. Permanently,” the bartender shouted again.

“For how long?” Burke asked.

“Until . . . February.”

The crowd laughed, people slapping one another on the back. Virgil asked Burke, “Are you sober enough to drive Corbel down to the clinic?”

“I don’t think so. I’m kinda . . . liquored up.”

“All right.” Virgil gave Cain a thumb. “Out in my truck.”

He pointed a finger at Birkmann. “I’ll talk to you later.”

Birkmann said, “He was going to kill me.”

“I was only going to slap him a little until he confessed,” Cain said.

Birkmann: “See? I just wanted to sing.”

“All right.” Virgil turned to the bartender. “You got this?”

“Yeah, the cops are on the way. But it’s over if you get Corbel out of here.” He nodded at Burke. “And this asshole.” To Birkmann he said, “You owe us for a microphone.”

Birkmann said, “Okay, if it’s broken.”

Burke said, “I need a drink.”

—

Virgil left Burke standing in the parking lot, loaded Cain in the passenger seat of the 4Runner. On the way to the clinic, Cain said, “My arm hurts like hell. I never broke one before.”

Virgil said, “Shut up.”

“What, you’re pissed at me, too?”

“You’re an asshole, Corbel. You deserve a broken arm. You’re lucky he didn’t bury that microphone in your fuckin’ skull.”

“Yeah, he was crazy mad.”

“Wouldn’t you be if some drunk started pushing you around in a bar and told everybody that you’d murdered Gina Hemming?”

“Yeah, but I wouldn’t have busted his arm.”

—

Virgil had calmed down by the time they got to the clinic, but as they walked to the door he told Cain, “You’re an alcoholic, Corbel. You’re a binge drinker, which is the worst kind, because you don’t believe that you’re an alcoholic. You’ll eventually kill somebody, either in a fight or driving drunk. Then you’ll dry out, because they don’t serve drinks in prison. You want to visit Stillwater for a few years, keep on drinking.”