Deep Freeze (Virgil Flowers #10)(93)

“Don’t tell anyone until I pile up the evidence.”

“I won’t, except maybe Clarice,” Johnson said.

“Well, tell her not to tell anyone. This is gonna take the rest of the day to figure out.”

“Who is it?” Johnson demanded. “And how do you know?”

So Virgil told him and Johnson gaped. “That’s all you got?” He looked through the window into the restaurant. “You figured it out because of a hat?”





TWENTY-EIGHT Virgil said good-bye to Johnson and called Jenkins. “You back in St. Paul?”

“Yup. What’s up?”

“I want you to run out to Stillwater,” Virgil said. Stillwater was the state penitentiary. “There’s a guy out there named Buster Gedney, doing five years on the school board murder case—he was manufacturing silencers and making full-auto modification kits for .223s. I need you to ask him a question about who he sold a silencer to.”

“I can do that. When do you need it?”

“Today.”

—

Even knowing who the killer was, Virgil had a major problem to deal with: it was perfectly possible to know who committed a murder without any chance of getting a conviction.

Virgil didn’t count on getting much from Gedney, a sad-sack machinist who’d been out on the periphery of the board murders. But Margot Moore’s friends who were at her house at the time of her murder said that the sound of the shots that killed her were as quiet as handclaps. Knowing whether Gedney sold a silencer to Virgil’s major suspect would be another good piece of the puzzle.

Virgil had realized something else: everything in the case depended on working out the precise time line Hemming was killed.

The Moore murder, on the other hand, had been so efficient that he’d have to name and arrest the killer before he could hope to find any evidence, because the only evidence would be the gun that was used to kill her, a semiautomatic .22. Semiauto .22 long-rifle pistols were made by a variety of manufacturers, including Ruger, Browning, Walther, Smith & Wesson, Sig, and Beretta. Ruger also made a semiautomatic .22 rifle, probably the most popular .22 in America, though Virgil doubted the shooter used a rifle. The firing pin’s impact mark made on the .22 shells found by the crime scene crew might give them the brand, which could be important.

But he had to get enough evidence to obtain a search warrant before he’d find the gun . . .

—

Virgil got on his phone, called Lucy Cheever. “You were absolutely the last to leave Gina Hemming’s house. If you had to make your best guess, what time was it? Down to the minute.”

Cheever said, after thinking about it, “Three or four minutes to nine.”

“Before nine o’clock?”

“Yes. People started leaving probably around eight-thirty or quarter to nine, but nobody stayed much longer after that. Gina said a few things to Margot and to Justin at the last minute, and then we had a few words, but I still think it was probably before nine when I left.”

“Did you make any phone calls or anything while you were driving home?”

“No. No, I didn’t. I was only a few minutes away; I drove straight home. If you really need an exact time, Justin is always on his phone, and I left before he’d gotten all the way down to the street. He might be able to tell you closer than I can . . .”

—

Virgil called Rhodes.

When he left Hemming’s house, Rhodes said, he’d driven home to continue reading Remembrance of Things Past in Knox’s absence. “I was probably halfway home when I called Rob to find out if he was on his way back to Trippton in the snow. He said he was . . .”

“Look at the ‘Recents’ on your phone and tell me what time the call went through.”

“Okay, hang on . . .”

A few seconds later, Rhodes said, “The call went through at nine-oh-two.”

“You were halfway home?”

“Well, maybe not exactly. I was driving home . . . I mean, I didn’t call him the minute I left Gina’s . . . It was some ways.”

“What time do you think you actually walked away from Gina’s? What time did you leave Lucy Cheever there with Gina?”

“I . . . guess . . . maybe eight fifty-five? If the call was at nine-oh-two, I had to walk down to my car and I said something to Margot, who was ahead of me a little, getting into her car, saying good night . . . So, yeah . . . eight fifty-five or thereabout.”

—

Virgil called David Birkmann. “When you left Hemming’s house, did you make any phone calls? Anything that would tell you the exact time that you left?”

“No . . . I didn’t have anybody to call. I just drove down to Club Gold. There were a bunch of people there who could probably tell you when I got there . . . Probably ten minutes to nine. Something like that. Why?”

“I realized I have to nail this time line down. I hadn’t understood how important it is.”

“Well, I walked down the driveway with Sheila. Maybe she made a call.”

“Thanks, Dave, I’ll check.”

—

Club Gold was closed when Virgil got there, but a couple of people were working inside. He banged on the glass door until an impatient man came trotting over—Jerry Clark, the manager. He opened the door and asked, “Virgil?”