Deep Freeze (Virgil Flowers #10)(92)

Something he’d said had given the whole game away—but not about himself. Knox and Rhodes were both innocent, Virgil realized, but he didn’t know why he was so sure of that.

Having solved that part of the crime, Virgil went to sleep.

—

At nine the next morning, Johnson Johnson called and woke him up.

“You’re still in bed? I wish I had a job that let me sleep that late.”

“I was up late last night, contemplating,” Virgil told him.

“Did it do any good?”

“Yeah. I know who knows who the killer is. Rob Knox knows. He just doesn’t know he knows.”

“He doesn’t know he knows and you don’t know—do I got this right?”

“More or less,” Virgil said. “I’m gonna go see him. You think Clarice could come along?”

“I guess . . . Why Clarice?”

“I wanted another unfogged mind to hear what Knox has to say,” Virgil said.

“Wiseass. Okay, I’ll come with you.”

“I was hoping you’d offer. I gotta get cleaned up, get some breakfast, and think about it some more. The restaurant serves lunch, so I’ll see you there at eleven. We’ll catch him before they get busy.”

—

Virgil took his time getting ready now that the end of the hunt was in sight. After shaving and showering, he dressed and called Margaret Griffin and said, “Jesse McGovern called me last night, on a borrowed phone. She was upset when she heard about the truck getting shot up, and more upset when I told her about you getting burned. The woman who attacked you will be the second of her people to go to court, so she’s calling it all off. She says she’s shutting down the operation.”

After a moment of silence, Griffin asked, “Do you believe her?”

“Yeah, for no other reason than she said we got most of her doll stock in the raid,” Virgil said. “But, I think she’s worried about the violence, too. If they’d shot me the other night, the town would have been filled with BCA agents, and there’s a chance that Jesse would be doing a few years in jail as the head of a criminal conspiracy. I think she knows that. Same if you’d been seriously hurt last night. Then we wouldn’t be fooling around with cease-and-desist orders, we’d be talking felony arrest warrants. So, I believe her.”

“Okay. I’ll talk to my contact in Los Angeles, see what they think,” Griffin said. “We’ve got people monitoring the Internet sales offers, and if those end, I think they’ll probably call me back home.”

“That would be good,” Virgil said. “Jesse’s supposed to call me again on another borrowed phone, so I won’t be able to track her, and if she does I’ll tell her to make sure the Internet stuff stops. I don’t know if she’ll be able to stop resales, but the new sales—she should be able to call those off.”

“Keep me informed,” Griffin said.

“Will do.”

—

At eleven o’clock, Virgil found Johnson Johnson talking with Justin Rhodes at Le Cheval Bleu. When Virgil walked in, Johnson said, “Knox is in the back, whipping up a crêpe. Wait—did I say ‘whip’?”

“Shut up, Johnson,” Rhodes said. And, “He did NOT have anything to do with the murders.”

“Yeah, I know,” Virgil said. “But he knows something I need to know.”

“What?”

“I don’t know.”

Rhodes and Johnson glanced at each other, and Johnson said, “Same old Flowers shit. You gotta ride with it.”

—

Knox was talking to a guy in a tall cook’s hat. When he saw Virgil, he broke away from the cook and asked, “What?”

“Tell me what you said the other night.”

“What?”

“Tell me what you said.”

“You know what I said,” Knox said.

“Yeah, but maybe not exactly. How did it go? What exactly did you say?”

Knox rubbed his forehead between his eyes and shut his eyes and began to recite what he remembered of their conversation. When he was finished, Johnson looked at Virgil and asked, “Well?”

“Nothing,” Virgil said. “Maybe I was wrong. Maybe there wasn’t anything.”

He’d pulled up a kitchen stool to listen to Knox and now he stood up and said, “But that’s not right, there was something.”

Knox said, “Maybe you should talk to a shrink. Maybe get hypnotized or something.” He pulled on his red Japanese apron and yellow bandanna and said, “I gotta help cook, if you’re done.”

Johnson followed Virgil out through the restaurant to the front door. As they left, Rhodes said, “Feel free to come back and eat anytime.”

Outside, in the cold, Johnson said, “Well, that was a total waste of time. And I won’t be eating there anytime soon. I suspect ol’ Rob might hock a loogie into my crêpes susanne.”

“Suzette,” Virgil said absently. He was staring out into the street. “It wasn’t a waste of time. He told me what I needed to know.”

“What?”

“I got it. This second. I think I know who killed them,” Virgil said.

“Who?”