Deep Freeze (Virgil Flowers #10)(99)

Birkmann said nothing for a while, finally nodding and saying, “Yeah, it was Dad’s. I’d forgotten all about it until I thought I needed it. It just jumped out of the closet and bit me on the ass. Like it wanted to be used.”

“Why?” Virgil asked. “You know, you might have beaten the Hemming murder, but you can’t beat Margot Moore’s. That was a completely cold-blooded murder. Why did you have to do that?”

Birkmann shook his head and said, “I didn’t think I could beat Gina’s death. Even though it was more like an accident than anything else . . . She’d come after me with her fingernails and I was trying to fight her off . . . And Margot saw me there too late for my alibi. She mentioned it to me and I knew eventually it’d get back to you. I was still hoping to get clear of everything.”

“Tell us about Gina Hemming,” Pweters said. “We were told that you loved her . . .”

“The only woman I ever truly loved,” Birkmann said sadly. “I’ll tell you something else. I loved her and I thought I loved my ex-wife, at first anyway, but none of them ever loved me. I was Bug Boy. Who’s gonna love Bug Boy?”

He went on, told them about the killing of Hemming, about the murder of Moore, and, when he was done, began to weep.

Virgil said, “Dave, I gotta arrest you.”

Birkmann held up his left hand and said, “Sit down, Virgil. Please.”

Halfway through his confession, Birkmann had put his hand into his cardigan’s pocket, pulled out a wad of tissue paper, and used it to soak up the tears that had been running down his face. He put his hand back in the pocket and pushed himself out of the chair. When he pulled his hand out of the pocket a second time, it held a chrome revolver. He said, “I think there’s some possibility that I’ll be able to shoot my way out of this.”

That was no .22 in his hand, Virgil thought. That was a much bigger gun.

Pweters said, “Dave, don’t even think about it. Not unless you want to die right now.” Virgil risked a quick glance at Pweters. Pweters’s parka was open and his hand was near his holstered pistol, but really not close enough, and he was still sunk in the easy chair, an awkward position from which to draw a gun.

“I actually bought this gun to kill myself,” Birkmann said, wiggling his gun hand. “Whether I do it or you do it, what does it matter to me?”

“Because it would be more pointless killing,” Virgil said. “We didn’t come rolling up here without telling anyone. We told Jeff Purdy what we were doing and asked him to get us a search warrant for the .22. Speaking of which, and before you decide to shoot us . . . what did you hit Gina with?”

“I took over a bottle of champagne,” Birkmann said, looking over at Virgil. “She even laughed at the champagne. I thought it was good stuff, but . . . I guess it wasn’t. She made fun of it and she started screaming at me—what an asshole I was, what a loser—and when she slashed at me with her fingernails, I . . . swung. I didn’t want to hurt her . . .”

His gun hand moved. He said, “Virgil, I’m sorry it’s come to this.”

“David, don’t bring that gun up,” Virgil said. “I’ve got a pistol in my jacket pocket and my hand is on it, and if you start to bring that gun up, I’m going to shoot you in the guts.”

Birkmann looked a little sadder as Virgil said it. “You know what, Virgil? One thing everybody in town knows is, you don’t carry your gun. You keep it locked up in your truck. Everybody knows that.”

“But not now,” Virgil said. “I’ll shoot you in the guts, David.”

Birkmann hesitated but then jerked the revolver up, and Pweters went for his gun.

Before either one could pull a trigger, Virgil shot Birkmann in the guts.

—

The blast from the gun was barely muffled by the nylon fabric on Virgil’s parka and, inside the small living room, sounded like a grenade. A split second later, there was a second earsplitting BOOM! and Birkmann took two stumbling steps backward, tripped over the arm of his chair, and fell on his back. The revolver fell from his hand, and he groaned once, and when Virgil got there and kicked the revolver away, Birkmann looked up at him with surprised eyes but said nothing at all.

Pweters said, “I shot my gun.”

Virgil: “What?”

Pweters was there with his gun in his hand. He looked at Birkmann and put his pistol back in its holster and five seconds later was talking to a woman at the 911 center, getting an ambulance and more cops up to Birkmann’s house.

The ambulance was there in eight minutes, the first sheriff’s car in nine. In the intervening time, Virgil sat on a hassock next to Birkmann and said, “Dave, close your eyes and don’t talk. You’re going to be bleeding bad and you need to save everything you’ve got.”

Birkmann’s head twitched once in acknowledgment.

Pweters said, “I shot my gun. I shot it right through the side of the house. I’m lucky I didn’t shoot myself in the freakin’ leg.”

—

Birkmann was on his way to the clinic in fifteen minutes, and one of the EMTs told Virgil that he’d be flown by helicopter to the Mayo at Rochester; the local docs would simply plug the hole as best they could and get him on his way.

Virgil called Jon Duncan at home and told him about the shooting, asked him to get a crime scene crew to the house. “How solid are we?” Duncan asked.