“Tricky,” she said. She looked at a bunch of nuts in her hand, selected one, and threw it in a bin. “So what do you want now?”
“I want to tell you a story, and then see if you could help me out.”
“Why should I help you out?”
Virgil said, “Because you’re a good person? Because it’d be a lot more exciting than sorting nuts?”
She looked at the nuts in her hand and said, “Let’s go get a cup of coffee.”
They wound up back at Doreen’s, sitting in a booth, and Virgil made his pitch, starting with a couple of questions, spoken quietly. “How much do you know about Lucy’s love life? When she was married to Roland?”
“Enough,” she said. “I know about the swapping and so on. And you said that they might be abusing children now.”
“Not just now . . . for a long time. Generations.” He told her about Kelly Baker and the evidence of multiple partners, and sadism. He told her about Bobby Tripp, and his murder of Jake Flood.
“I’m not a prude. I’ve been married and divorced a lot, and I like women a lot—but that’s not what we’re talking about here,” Virgil said. “And this isn’t some phonied-up sex ring where there’re a bunch of wannabe therapists manipulating the kids. . . . This is hard stuff, with hard evidence. And it may have been going on for a long time. Maybe a hundred years. Their grandparents might have brought it over from Germany with them, a long time ago.”
“So exactly what do you want me to do?” she asked.
“Lucy won’t help, because she doesn’t want to have to go to court and testify about her sex life,” Virgil said. He didn’t mention that Birdy was scared to death. “But: you look exactly like her, and you sound like her, even now.”
“We were always pretty identical. Nobody could tell us apart,” she said.
“And they haven’t seen her for years. Now. If we put you in a small town a hundred miles from here, if we can get them to bite, if we can get them to threaten you, we can hit them with search warrants. If we can just get inside a couple of their houses, if we can just get the kids by themselves, we can make our case.”
“What if they shoot me?”
Virgil grinned and said, “That’d certainly make the case for us.”
Her eyebrows went up, and he quickly added, “No, no, no. You’d be covered twenty-four hours a day. That’s why I want to stage it in a small town. Have you ever heard of Hayfield?”
“No. It’s in Minnesota?”
“Yeah, it’s up north of Austin. I got involved in a missing-kid case up there. People thought a kid had been kidnapped, but he hadn’t been—he’d drowned, actually. I mean, a tragedy. But I know a lot of people in town from the investigation. The thing is, we could put you in a house there, and talk to the neighbors, and when anybody unfamiliar went by, we’d get an instant alert. I mean, the town’s half as big as Sleepy Eye. Maybe less than half.”
“How long would it take?”
“If they didn’t bite in a few days, they wouldn’t,” Virgil said. “You could just come back here, and be done with it.”
“Would I get paid?” she asked.
“Sure, we could fix something up. Not a lot, but something.”
“The thing is, work is really slow right now,” she said. “Dave would be happy to see me take a couple of weeks off.”
Virgil said, “So. We got a deal?”
“Better’n sorting nuts,” she said. “Or bolts. I’ll do it.”
They talked about it awhile longer, and then Virgil walked her back to the Ace Hardware. “I’ll get back to you—but it’ll be in the next couple of days. Soon. I’ve got to run over to Hayfield and set up a house, get some guys to work it with me. Then we’ll go for it.”
VIRGIL CALLED COAKLEY: “She’ll do it. I’ve got to call my boss, get his okay, and then I’m going to run over to Hayfield and see if I can find a house. I know an old guy up there who I think will help us out.”
“Loewe is in the wind,” Coakley said. “He sold his truck yesterday up in the Cities, got cash for it. Went right to the bank with the buyer. I called his bank here, and he took everything but five dollars. That’s confidential, by the way, I got that on a friendship basis.”
“I think we let him go, for now,” Virgil said. “If we said anything publicly . . .”
“That’s what I think. You’re coming back tonight?”
“I think so. I’ll see what happens in Hayfield,” he said. “If we’re going to do this, we want to do it quick. I keep worrying that somebody will tell them about the young-sex angle, and those pictures go up in smoke.”
“So we hurry,” she said. “We hurry.”
17
V
irgil headed for Hayfield, and got on the phone with Davenport to tell him what he wanted to do. “I worry about bringing in a civilian,” Davenport said. “What if they walk through the door and pop her?”
“This isn’t about bringing in a civilian—it’s about bringing in the only person who could do the job, Birdy’s twin,” Virgil said. “I’ll put her in a vest, but I don’t think they’ll go right to guns. They’ll want to know what she said to me before they do that. I need a couple of guys, though. Del, Shrake, Jenkins, you, I don’t care, but at least two.”
“I can’t do it, but I’ll get you two. Do you have a house in mind?”
“Yeah, an old guy named Clay Holley, and some people in his neighborhood. I got to know them pretty good, and I think they’ll go for it.”
“When are you going to make the call?” Davenport asked.
“Tomorrow, or the day after, if Holley goes along,” Virgil said.
“All right, I’ll see who I can shake free. Stay in touch. And, Virgil . . . you’re sure about this sex thing?”
“I’m sure.”
“If you’re so sure, why can’t you just file on it, get a search warrant?” Davenport asked.
Virgil said, “That’s a sensitive issue.”
After a moment of silence, Davenport said, “I’ve had a few issues myself. Good luck with that.”
CLAYTON HOLLEY WAS eighty-nine years old and lived in the perfect house—perfect for a minimum-wage farm woman who’d fled her husband. The house was old and very small, white clapboard, two bedrooms, a narrow living room, a kitchen a little larger than the house deserved, a damp basement that smelled of mildew, rusting tools, sour drains, and clothes-dryer exhaust, along with the slightly musty alcoholic odor from five or six barrels of Concord grape and rhubarb wine that Holley usually had cooking in the basement.
Holley came to the front door when Virgil knocked, adjusted his glasses as he looked through the storm door window, then smiled and said in a frog’s croaking voice, “That effin’ Flowers, as I live and die.” He pushed the storm door open. “Come on in. What the hell are you doing here?”
Virgil kicked the snow off his boots and tracked into the living room, and Holley clicked off what looked like a new television and pointed Virgil at one of two purple corduroy La-Z-Boys.
Virgil sat, and said, “You gettin’ any?”
Holley scratched his crotch and said, “Matter of fact—”
“Okay, I don’t want to hear about it,” Virgil said. “How old is she?”
“A nice, crisp sixty-four,” Holley said. “She has an orgasm, the neighbors run for the tornado cellars.”
“Jesus, Clay, she’s a child. You’ve got kids older than she is,” Virgil said.
“Yup. Two of them, anyway,” Holley said. “Why are we talking about my sex life? It’s not all that interesting.”
“I was hoping you were shacked up with somebody so you could go away for a couple days,” Virgil said. “I want to borrow your house. And maybe a few of your friends.”
Holley studied him for a moment, then chuckled. “This is gonna be good, isn’t it?”
HOLLEY LISTENED to the story and said, “Marie lives two houses down, so I could stay there—I stay over every once in a while anyway, when I’m too fucked-out to walk back to the house. I’ll tell you what, that Viagra stuff can be the curse of old age.”
“Man, I
really
don’t want to hear about it,” Virgil said.
“Anyway, we definitely could set up a surveillance system. We’ve got the Johnsons down on the one corner, and the Johnsons down on the other corner—they’re not related—and the Pells, and the Schooners . . . they’re all retired, they’ve all got cell phones. I can call them up right now, we can meet over at Marie’s. She’s got the biggest house. These folks’ll all go for it.”
“So you’re ready to say ‘yes’?”
“Hell, yes. Goddamn interesting thing you got going here, Virgil,” Holley said. “I’ll call up the TV and give ’em an interview when you bust everybody. Be a hero.”
“You’re welcome to do that—I can even give you a name or two,” Virgil said. “All right. Call your friends. Let’s see if we can do it tomorrow.”
IT ALL WENT BETTER than Virgil had any right to hope, he told Coakley later that evening, when he got back to Homestead.
“His girlfriend slapped together a batch of oatmeal cookies, and we got all of these old folks there, having a party, and told them what we wanted to do, and they were all for it,” Virgil said. They were back in bed, covers up to their chins. “I called Gordon, and she’s up for it. I’ll go up there tomorrow, pick her up, truck her ass over to Hayfield. Davenport got me Shrake and Jenkins, a couple of thugs, perfect for this, and they’re coming down tomorrow. We’ll make the call tomorrow, noon or early afternoon. That’ll give Roland time to talk to other people, get organized, and get up there.”
“I think we’re putting a lot of weight on the idea that they’ll be able to trace the call,” Coakley said.
“Got to,” Virgil said. “They wouldn’t take any other kind of hook. They’ve got to work for it. They’ve all got computers, and it won’t take a genius to work the reverse directory. Clay’s in there, C. Holley. They’ll find it.”
“What if they don’t come?” Coakley asked.
“Well, I’m gonna put a bug in their ear,” Virgil said. “I’m gonna go talk to Alma Flood tomorrow, sometime when this weird guy isn’t there—the chicken plucker.”
“Wally Rooney.”
“Yeah. I’m going to let it slip that we’ve got information coming, and see if I can squeeze anything out of her. Talk the Bible to her for a while. There’s something going on with her; I don’t know what. But—I’m gonna let her know that we’ve got a source, and that we’re closing in on them. That’ll give them a push.”
“Can’t talk about child sex to her,” Coakley said. “Not yet.”
“Not yet. But I can talk about Kelly Baker, and how she was abused. I can wonder if more church members might have been involved. Leave the impression that I’m ignorant, but learning, and that we have this source—”
“What do I do?”
“If we snap the trap on these guys tomorrow evening or the next day, you gotta be ready to get a warrant and hit Rouse,” Virgil said. “Rouse is the key. There’re a lot of photos—that’ll bring down the whole thing. So we snap the trap, if we get one inch of info, from anybody we get, about Rouse, I call you, and you go with all the guys you can get.”
“Say I believe you when you say they’ll track her down. But what if the people who show up aren’t the people you know? But she should know? And she goes to the door, and she doesn’t know who Roland is—”
“She knows Roland,” Virgil said. “She saw him a lot, when Lucy was first married. And she can refuse to let him in . . . unless he’s the only one who shows. But I see what you mean.”
“Best shot would be to take Dennis and Gene with you. They might be able to pick out who they are.”
“Let’s talk to them,” Virgil said. “Too late tonight, but first thing in the morning. Damn, this is going to be interesting.”
Her hand slipped down his thigh, and groped, and found him, and she sighed and said, “I’m gonna miss you, Virgil.”
“Yeah? How much?”
THE NEXT DAY was a rush. Instead of picking up Gordon, which would have been a two-hour detour, he called her and she agreed to drive to Hayfield on her own. She was excited.
“This is a
lot
better than sorting nuts. I bought a new pair of shoes, I just, uh . . . I don’t know why I did that.”
Virgil said, “Take it easy; drive carefully. We don’t need you winding up in a ditch.”
Dennis Brown, the police chief, and Schickel agreed to go, and would drive over together. Virgil told them to take binoculars and be prepared to stay late, and maybe overnight. “We’ll pick up a motel tab, if you have to stay over. If they don’t come by the second day, they won’t be coming.”
Virgil was out of the motel at eight o’clock, heading west on I-90, to the Flood place. When he pulled in, one of the girls, dressed in work clothes, came out of the barn and took a look at him; went back in the barn and, a few seconds later, came back out with her sister, who was carrying a basket containing a half-dozen eggs.
“Whatcha want?” Edna asked.
“I need to talk to your mother again,” Virgil said. “Is Mr. Rooney around?”