“Wouldn’t make any difference if you did,” she said.
“It might, if you knew what the threats were. But I will tell you—and I don’t want you talking about this to anyone—we believe that her husband was part of a cult, or a sect, or whatever you’d call it, that sexually victimizes its own children. Its own daughters. We think Lucy, Birdy, can help us with this. We think she could provide testimony that would get us inside the houses of some of these people, to get them away from their children, and their children to a safe place, where we could find out what was going on. If you resist, in my opinion you’re as bad as the people doing these things. You’re making it possible for them to continue.”
“I don’t know anything about any children,” she said, but she was defensive, her eyes searching for a way out.
“You may not, but Lucy might,” Virgil said. “Has she ever told you explicitly what she . . . encountered . . . with her husband?”
“A bit. He wanted to . . . he wanted to do some wife-swapping, is what it sounded like. Or maybe she went along with that, and it was something worse.”
“How, worse?”
“I don’t know. We didn’t talk about details,” Gordon said.
“How long were they married?”
“Fifteen months. Not long. But, do you want to know why she didn’t just come home? Why she hid?”
“Yes. I do want to know that.”
Gordon said, “Because she was afraid Rollo might kill her. He beat her, and said that if she tried to run, he’d strangle her and bury her behind the barn. He told her that other women had gotten what they deserved, and she believed him.”
Virgil said nothing for a minute, then, “I gotta talk to her. We’re already looking at four dead people.”
Gordon said, “I’ll call her. You go away, and I’ll call her, and I’ll call you back tomorrow morning, and tell her what you’ve told me. Then, I’ll let her decide.”
“You better tell her that it’s not a matter for her to decide—it’s a matter of whether we track her down and put her in jail, and you along with her,” Virgil said, rolling out the threats. “If they’re doing what we think they’re doing, she’s acting as an accomplice by not telling us what she knows about criminal behavior, and you are an accomplice because you’re hiding her. Make sure she knows that, Miz Gordon. Make sure she knows what the stakes are.”
AFTER VIRGIL LEFT, Gordon thought about it and realized that if she called from her house, or with her cell phone, the police could check the phone calls and trace them to Lucy. So she got her book, a novel by Diana Gabaldon, and tried to read it for twenty minutes, and finally put it down with the sense that she was ruining the story for herself. Couldn’t stop thinking about Flowers; she hadn’t liked the man at all, she decided. He had long hair, like some kind of reformed hippie, and spoke to her without kindness.
Still, if he was telling the truth about the children . . .
She made herself watch TV for another twenty minutes, an animal show about meerkats, finally couldn’t stand it, got up, put on her parka, went out to the garage, backed her Honda into the street, and turned toward Gina Becker’s house. Gina Becker was an old friend, and a night owl: it was eight o’clock, and she’d still be up. As she turned into the street, she watched her rearview mirror for headlights, but there was nothing there. Paranoia, she thought, and went on across town.
VIRGIL HAD BEEN WAITING on the street behind Gordon’s house. When the car’s headlights came on, shining through the side windows of the garage, he watched through an intervening hedge as Gordon backed out of her driveway and headed west. He followed her, no lights, moving slowly, on the parallel streets, until he ran out of street, and then cut over behind her, three blocks back, saw her turn, then hurried on, went across the street where she’d turned, saw her two blocks down. Did a U-turn, and went after her.
As was the case in Homestead, the trip was limited by the small size of the town. Four or five minutes after she left home, she stopped in front of another house, got out of the truck. Virgil was parked on the side of the road, a block away, watching, as she rang the doorbell, then apparently was invited inside.
The question he had was simple enough: was this Lucy’s house? Had she simply come home, and lived anonymously? He thought probably not; it would have been too easy for her husband to check up on that.
Most likely, Gordon had decided that she didn’t want to use her home phone or her cell.
He sat and watched, and Gordon stayed at the second house for twenty minutes, then emerged, again looked both ways, searching for him, got in her car, did a U-turn, and came back past him.
She turned back toward her own home, and Virgil started the truck, drove down to the house she’d visited, marked it in his mind, then went after her. He didn’t catch up until she was almost home: he watched her pull into her garage, then, satisfied, went back to the house she’d visited, got the street name and number.
Rather than go back to Homestead, he drove twenty-five minutes to a Holiday Inn at New Ulm, a place he’d stayed several times, and called Davenport at home.
“I need somebody to track a phone call for me. It was made between eight-twelve and eight-thirty. . . . I don’t have the name, but I’ve got an address.”
Davenport took the information down and said, “You want it tonight? That could be a hassle.”
“Tomorrow morning would be fine,” Virgil said. “I’m gonna bag out in New Ulm for the night.”
“Running from the law, huh?”
“Not necessarily the case—”
“Oh, bullshit, I know all about Lee Coakley,” Davenport said. “I actually spent a little time with her years ago, right after I got on with the BCA.”
“You can’t be serious,” Virgil said.
“Of course I’m not serious, you fuckin’ moron. I’ve never seen the woman in my life,” Davenport said. “I’ll call you in the morning with that phone number.”
“Hey, Lucas . . .”
“Yeah.”
“You got me.”
They both laughed, and Virgil went to bed and thought about God and girl children, and why God would let happen what was happening. And he thought about Lee Coakley a little.
16
E
arly the next morning, Spooner drove over to Einstadt’s house and caught him at breakfast. “They say they’re going to investigate further, but they’re not going to charge me at this time,” she told him. “They came over and searched my house, and took my computer, but I’d cleaned the place out and cleaned the computer out, so there’s nothing to find. We’re okay.”
Einstadt was gnawing through a six-inch stack of buttermilk pancakes and bacon, soaked in a crimson-colored berry syrup that looked like blood. He chewed with his mouth half-open, while he thought about it, then said, “What’d the state guy tell you? Flowers?”
“I didn’t see him after the morning. And he didn’t tell me anything,” Spooner said.
“His truck wasn’t at the Holiday overnight,” Einstadt said.
“You’re watching him? What for?” she asked.
“My boys check around every once in a while, just to see where he is, and who he’s talking to. He spent the afternoon talking to Coakley, if that’s what they were doing.”
“What if they weren’t talking?” Spooner asked. “What if they were in there fucking like bunnies? So what? They’re adults, and they’re allowed. But you’re sneaking around watching them, they’re gonna catch you at it, and that won’t be good. It’s time to lie low, Emmett. That’s all we can do.”
“Shooting Jim is what you call lying low?” he asked.
“If I hadn’t shot him, they’d have strung you up by now, and not by your neck,” she said. “You owe me, and everybody in the Spirit owes me. Jim was a loose cannon, and he was going to take us all with him.”
Einstadt scowled and said, “We’re not stupid, Kathleen. We’re already doing it. Lying low. There won’t be any spirit pools for a few weeks. Everything will stay private and quiet.”
“That’s all I wanted to know,” she said, pushing herself to her feet. “I will still be taking the Fischl brothers to school. I’m sure they won’t mind.”
Einstadt held up a finger. “About this Flowers guy. He’s stirring things up. Junior had an idea about that.”
“Oh, God help me,” Spooner said. “If that boy were any dumber, he’d have to be watered twice a week.”
“Shut up. He’s a good boy. Listen to this: what if Flowers walked into a holdup at Loren’s?” Einstadt peered at her. “What if he got a tip from one of his pals down at the Yellow Dog that Loren knew something, and he goes over there and walks right into a holdup and gets his ass shot dead?”
“Are you . . . you mean, by me? A fake holdup?”
“Well, since you’re the one with all the experience. Loren would say it was a couple of bikers in an old Chevy, and they took off, and that’s all he knows.”
Spooner sat down again, clenched her hands on the table, leaned forward. “I’ll say this as serious as I can, Emmett. When I turned myself in to Coakley, she called Flowers. He came down and they both asked questions, and they both knew everything that was going on. And there were two other cops listening in, and they all knew it, too. This isn’t one guy figuring everything out, like in a movie. They all know what’s going on. You’d have to kill the whole sheriff’s department to wipe out what Flowers knows. And if Flowers gets shot, they’ll be all over us, like red ants
. Just don’t do anything.
We’re okay right now. Stop watching them. Don’t do
anything
.”
Einstadt had finished all but a half pancake. He picked it up by its edge, sopped up all the loose syrup and bacon grease, rolled it, and stuffed it in his mouth, chewed for a while, then said, “It really ain’t what Flowers knows. It’s what he can figure out. He’s not some country cop. So, okay, for now—you got good points. But the situation could change.”
VIRGIL GOT UP a little later than he had been, took his cell phone into the bathroom. Davenport called, of course, just as he’d finished smearing shaving cream over his face. He wiped half of it off, answered, and Davenport said, “The call went to a Lenore Mackey in Omaha.”
Virgil got his notebook and wrote down the information that Davenport had, and said, “Lucy McCain, Lenore Mackey. That’s her. I’m going to Omaha. You want to call the Nebraska guys and tell them I’m coming?”
“I can do that,” Davenport said. “Drive safely.”
Virgil called Coakley and told her where he was going, packed up, and headed out. There was really no efficient way to get from New Ulm to Omaha. He went cross-country, over a web of state highways, until he got to I-29 outside Sioux City, Iowa, and then south, the time marked more by the music than by the terrain, which was all the same, country houses and snow, bare trees and rolling prairie; and Billy Joe Shaver, “Georgia on a Fast Train”; “The Devil Made Me Do It the First Time (The Second Time I Done It on My Own)”; James McMurtry, “Choctaw Bingo”; Don Williams, “Tulsa Time.” Like that, until he crossed the Missouri River bridge north of Council Bluffs and rolled down into Omaha.
In addition to singing along, he spoke to a Lieutenant Joe Murphy from the Nebraska Patrol’s investigative division, who told him how to get to Lenore Mackey’s house, which was northwest of Omaha’s downtown area. They agreed to meet at a pizza place off Saddle Creek Road, a half-mile from Mackey’s.
MURPHY WAS a chunky, black-haired, crew-cut guy with a skeptical cast to his face, maybe a bit annoyed to be on escort duty for a guy from Minnesota. They were sitting in a booth waiting for a pepperoni and sausage, and Murphy said, “So if she tells you to go away, you turn around and drive five hours back.”
“If I can talk to her for two minutes, I can probably get her to talk for half an hour,” Virgil said. “I didn’t want to call ahead, because I was afraid that she’d go on vacation somewhere.”
Murphy looked at his watch: “I cruised by her place and didn’t see anybody around. She might be working.”
“So, I sit,” Virgil said. “You could go on and do whatever you’re doing. I could give you a ring when she shows up.”
“Ah, the boss told me to stick with you. He’s pals with your boss up in St. Paul. So, we both sit—if she’s not there.”
SHE WASN’T.
Her house was an uninflected, rectangular white rambler with a one-car garage at the west end. They knocked on her door, without much hope—the afternoon was moving on, and there wasn’t a light anywhere in the house. No answer. On the other hand, there was a single letter in the mailbox, a bill, which meant that the mail hadn’t been turned off, and had been picked up recently.
They found a spot down the block and sat in Virgil’s truck, engine running, listening to the radio. Murphy liked Billy Joel and Paul Simon, which seemed Omaha-like, to Virgil, and was all right with him, for a while, anyway. Virgil outlined the problem in Homestead, and they talked awhile about their careers, and sports. Murphy’s father worked for an Omaha insurance company, and he’d lived in Maryland when he was in school, and had been a lacrosse player.