Deep Freeze (Virgil Flowers #10)(91)

Virgil drove her back to Tony’s Chicago Style, where she got in her car and said, “Fuck this place.”

—

Virgil went back to the cabin, easing the new truck down into the fire-charred slot beside the cabin. He went in the back door, just in case, sat down, got back up, fished a Leinenkugel’s out of the refrigerator, sat back down again to focus on the beer.

Johnson called five minutes later and said, “I heard Birkmann won.”

“Nobody won, Johnson,” Virgil said. “It was another full, flat-out Trippton clusterfuck. Not only that, somebody messed up Margaret S. Griffin.”

He gave Johnson the details and then said, “Call up all the people who might know Jesse McGovern. I want to talk to her. Tonight.”

“I’ll try,” Johnson said.

—

McGovern didn’t call until much later; Virgil had given up, turned off the lights, and pulled the bedcovers up to his neck, when his phone buzzed.

She said, “This is Jesse.”

“Goddamnit, Jesse, you know what happened last night? And tonight?”

“I know what happened last night—your truck—but I don’t know what happened tonight.”

“One of your women ran into Margaret Griffin down at Tony’s and threw a slice of hot pizza in her face. Burned her face bad. And if that cheese had gotten into her eyes, it could have blinded her. Your employee now has a broken arm.”

“Oh, God. All right, you got most of our Barbie stock in that raid this morning,” McGovern said. “Not enough left to make it worth the trouble. I’ll close it down now. You can tell Griffin that we’re all done and we won’t do it again.”

“Was it one of your people who shot me up last night?”

McGovern said, “Virgil, I don’t control them. I got eighteen people working for me part-time and most of them got husbands or wives, and they’re hurting. I don’t know if one of them shot you up last night, but there was quite a bit of . . . I don’t know what to call it . . . Glee, maybe? . . . There was quite a bit of glee this morning at the other barn, where we were building the dolls. They were talking about it and laughing, but they all said they didn’t know who did it.”

“And you believed them.”

“No. I think somebody in that group knew who did it, but I couldn’t tell you which one,” McGovern said. “They won’t tell me, either—they’re protecting me from knowing. I’ve told them that they’re hurting us, not helping, but . . . they’ve got some thick heads.”

“If I catch the one who did it, he or she is going to prison,” Virgil said. “You tell them that. That should cut the glee.”

“I’ll tell them,” McGovern said.

—

McGovern: “I gave you a tip on the murders and you haven’t done anything with it.”

Virgil: “I tracked down your tipster . . .”

“I heard about that . . .”

“She says the guy in the van was blond. There are two blonds driving those vans. They both have solid alibis for Thursday night. I’ve also been told, privately, that Bobbie Cole might not be the most reliable witness. She sometimes gets confused about exactly what time, or what day, she might have seen something.”

“Huh. I have to say, that might be right,” McGovern said.

“So . . .”

McGovern said, “Do you believe she saw anything at all? The van?”

“Yeah, she might’ve seen the van there some time, but exactly what time . . .”

“Well, what other day would have one of those vans been parked in front of Gina Hemming’s house at nine-thirty at night?”

Virgil said, “Uhh . . . I’ve got no answer for that.”

“Maybe you ought to get one.”

“I’ll try. This number—will it be good for you?”

“No,” she said. “This is a borrowed phone, and I’ll be giving it back, so you won’t be able to track me with it. I’ll borrow another one and call you tomorrow afternoon, see what Griffin has to say.”

“I’ll be talking to you,” Virgil said.

—

Virgil lay in bed in the dark but spent no time at all consulting with God. He spent it, instead, in contemplation. He’d never formulated exactly what he thought about contemplation except that it was superficially like meditation. You found a quiet, dark place—a bed would do fine—and worked with your brain. Instead of attempting to empty your brain, as you did with meditation, you filled it with a particular subject matter and stirred it around, making new connections, as ridiculous as those connections might be.

Lucas Davenport, Virgil’s old boss, had a friend named Kidd who sometimes worked with tarot cards. Kidd argued that there was no supernatural aspect to the cards, but when you selected one at random, and used the tarot “meaning” as an angle with which to examine a problem, you often achieved a new clarity. The tarot forced you out of the worn ruts of your thinking. Sometimes, he said, it even worked.

And that was, Virgil believed, another form of contemplation.

Lying on the bed, near sleep, opening his eyes every once in a while to peer up into the rafters, he came to a realization: Rob Knox, Justin Rhodes’s boyfriend, had told him who the killer was.