“Oh, boy. Work it as hard as you can, Virgil, but put Coakley out front,” Davenport said. “These kinds of things generate a terrific smell. If you’re out front, you could spend the next two years of your life doing depositions, and I don’t want to lose you for that long.”
“All right. Push those DNA guys for me. I need to know, soon as they get it.”
“I’ve been doing that—and they say, noon tomorrow,” Davenport said. “No sooner, maybe a little later. I’ll be standing there, and I’ll call as soon as they tell me.”
“Thank you.”
“One more thing, Virgil. I’m going to brief Rose Marie on this, and I suspect she’ll want to have a quiet word with the governor. You know, so that if it really blows up, they’ll know what’s coming, and they’ll have had a chance to talk through the response.”
“Okay, but you gotta keep it close,” Virgil said. “These people don’t see us coming yet, and I don’t need them burning evidence.”
VIRGIL RANG OFF, took out his notebook, looked at it, then called Coakley: “I need the address of Greta and Karl Rouse, R-O-U-S-E. They live west of Battenberg somewhere.”
“Give me ten minutes. I’ll check their fire number.”
Virgil drove toward Battenberg, taking his time, thinking over his options. Coakley called back and said, “Okay, I’ve got them spotted. Starting at North Main in Battenberg, you go out on Highway 7 until County 26 splits off. . . .”
Virgil crossed 94 into Battenberg, trundled through town, took the turn west with Highway 7. It was ten minutes, more or less, out to the Rouse place, following the web of small roads through the countryside.
The Rouse farmhouse, like the Floods’, sat on a low rise, with a woodlot behind and a thick L-shaped wall of evergreens on the north and west. A little slough, frozen over, came down to the road, with brown broken cattails sticking out of the crusty snow. A mailbox at the end of the driveway said, “Rouse,” and Virgil went on by. Couldn’t see a kennel.
What to do? He could go hassle Loewe some more—he’d been nervous, and might be cracked—or the Bakers, or he could go socialize with Coakley. But what he really needed was the DNA report on Spooner.
He thought about it, yawned, turned back to I-94, went on down the highway to the Holiday Inn at Homestead, and took a two-hour nap.
UP AT FIVE, when Coakley called on his cell phone. “Where are you?”
“Just got back to the Holiday,” he said. “I’m colder’n hell, I want to stand in the shower for a while.”
“We’re all set here,” Coakley said. She was excited. “Gene Schickel’s on his way over to Blue Earth to get the plane. He should be off the ground in fifteen minutes. The Wednesday meetings are after supper, starting usually around six-thirty.”
“Okay. I’ll be over at your office in half an hour,” Virgil said.
“Better come to my house. I’m trying to keep this as hushed as we can.”
“See you there.”
AFTER SHOWERING, Virgil got his super-duty winter gear out of the duffel in the back of the truck and tossed it on the backseat—heavy, hooded, insulated camo coveralls of the kind sold to late-season deer hunters and musky fishermen, a pair of insulated high-top hunting boots, a full-face ski mask, and insulated downhill ski gloves. He got to Coakley’s in a half hour and found her stacking similar gear in the front hallway, along with a couple of sleeping bags.
Her three boys, in annual sizes from high school down, all with long, honey-colored hair and round faces, were watching with heavy-lidded teenage curiosity, and nodded politely to Virgil and said, “Hi,” when she introduced them.
She gave them last-minute instructions involving pizzas and a girl named Sue who probably should stay home and study that night, and went out the door, carrying her gear. They’d agreed earlier to go in separate trucks with one of the trucks ditched a mile or so from the worship service, as a backup.
“I got sleeping bags from the guys in case we have to lay out there awhile, and binoculars, flashlights, some granola bars to chew on,” she said, as she loaded it into her truck. She handed him a radio handset. “It’s all set to a command channel. Just key it and talk. Gene’s on the same channel up in the plane.”
Virgil nodded and said, “Okay. You lead, you know the maps better.”
“I printed out satellite and terrain maps of that whole area of the county. I’ll call you on the radio when we’re close. Might not be any cell service, depending on where they go.” She put the radio to her face, keyed it, and said, “Gene?”
“I’m here.” Schickel’s voice was clear as glass: Virgil realized he was probably very close by, but straight up. He looked for the plane’s wing lights, but didn’t see them.
“We’re heading out,” Coakley said. “Let me know . . .”
“Gotcha covered,” Schickel said. “Boy, it’s pretty up here, all the lights out on the lake.”
AN HOUR LATER, Virgil and Coakley were sitting inside Virgil’s truck seven or eight miles east of Battenberg—the meeting was apparently later than they’d thought—when Schickel called. “I’ve got the Platts moving out. More than one, but I couldn’t see how many. I think it could be all of them, but the truck’s parked outside the barn light.”
“Stay with them,” Coakley said.
“They’re heading south on 28. . . .”
“Got that.” Coakley bent over the map, marking the Platts’ movement with a highlighter pen. Schickel came back. “Okay, I got Floods. More than one, but I can’t see how many . . . in their truck . . . okay, they’re moving, they’re heading south. . . .”
After following the two vehicles on the map for five minutes, Coakley said, “They’re going to the Steinfelds’.”
She leaned across to show Virgil, said, “We’ll leave your truck . . . here. Or right around there. It’s a back road, no traffic, but it’s plowed.”
“I’ll follow you,” Virgil said. “Let’s go.”
They went, Virgil following Coakley’s taillights through the winter night’s gloom. The temperatures were in the teens, not too bad, but there was no traffic at all. They rolled along, alone, for nine minutes. Schickel called to confirm that the Platts and the Floods had gone to the Steinfelds’ farm.
They dropped Virgil’s truck on a narrow loop road away from the major routes into the Steinfelds’, and Virgil loaded his gear into Coakley’s truck. In another two minutes, they were down another small lane across a half-mile-wide cornfield, looking south, at the back of the Steinfelds’ barn, barely visible through a heavy woodlot.
They unloaded without speaking, got into the winter gear, picked up the sleeping bags and a pack with the binoculars, flashlights, and granola bars. Coakley was breathing hard, excited; Virgil said, quietly—the night was so silent he could hear his heart beating—“The one thing that could go really big wrong is if somebody’s sitting in that woodlot with a starlight scope. If we should take some fire, stay on the ground and scream for Schickel to start calling them. Don’t try to run unless we’re still way out.”
She stopped her preparation for a moment and asked, “What are the chances of that?”
“Small, and very small, but not zero. But I doubt they’d actually shoot somebody down without knowing who they are.”
THEY CROSSED a ditch and then a fence, crunching though the snow; hardly any wind, but deep, deep darkness, broken only by the lights around the farmstead. Schickel said that there were at least thirty cars around the barnyard and driveway.
Crossing the field took almost fifteen minutes. They were walking with the furrows, rather than across them, which made life easier, but not easy. At the edge of the woodlot, they paused to listen and heard, very faintly, somebody singing.
Coakley whispered, “It’s like a choir song.”
“‘ Lift High the Cross,’” Virgil whispered back. “Let’s get in the woods.”
The woodlot was a tangled mess, and after pushing twenty or thirty feet in, they gave up and sat down.
Watched the barn, heard more hymns. Watched the barn. Heard somebody speaking, but couldn’t make out the words. The rhythm of the speech, though, sounded like that of a sermon. They sat for half an hour, and then Virgil put his face close to Coakley’s and said, “It’s a bust. Let’s go.”
“What?”
“We’re not going to see anything—I’m feeling sort of dumb. Let’s go.”
“Just like that?”
“Lee, we’re not getting anywhere. Come on.”
She didn’t argue. They couldn’t see anything, couldn’t hear specific words, couldn’t get closer. They walked back out of the woodlot, running into stumps and downed limbs, then trudged back across the field, following their incoming tracks as best they could. They hadn’t even had a chance to eat a granola bar, or use the binoculars, Virgil thought. At Coakley’s truck, they pulled off the heavy gear and climbed inside, and Coakley fired it up and they headed back to Virgil’s truck.
“What a waste. Got the airplane and everything.” She got on the radio and told Schickel that they could head back to Blue Earth. He said okay, and she clicked off and grumbled, “I oughta dock my own pay.”
“Wasn’t your idea,” Virgil said.
“Ah, well.”
Virgil asked, “When you were a cop, were you pretty law-abiding?”
She thought about that for a full fifteen seconds, then said, “As much as possible.” Then, “What do you have in mind?”
“Karl Rouse is an amateur photographer. A guy in town told me he used to buy a ton of Polaroid film, and as soon as digital came in, he began buying a lot of digital paper. In other words, he wanted to make photos that nobody else would see. He has a young daughter, probably a year younger than Kelly Baker. They may have been friends.”
“And . . .”
“If you were to drop me off at their place, I’d make sure they aren’t home, and then take an unofficial look around.”
“You mean . . . inside the house?” she asked.
“If I can get in,” Virgil said.
“Oh, jeez, Virgil, I don’t know. What if they come back . . . what if they have a dog?”
“I don’t think they have a kennel, and if you were down the road with a radio, I could get out,” he said.
“But people lock their doors now,” Coakley said. “They don’t leave them open.”
“If they’ve got good locks, I couldn’t get in,” Virgil said. “I don’t know how to pick locks or anything. I’d just have to go up and try the door. . . . I mean, I’d knock first.”
“Just drive right up the driveway—”
“And knock, and leave me there if nobody answers, like you were looking for them, and then you left, in case anybody’s watching,” Virgil said. “And if somebody answers, we ask for the Rouse girl. Kristy. We ask her about Kelly.”
“What about a dog?”
“If there’s a dog, we leave,” Virgil said. “I don’t do dogs.”
“Ah, jeez, Virgil. I don’t know.” She looked at him anxiously. “If we get caught . . .”
“That would be a problem, but . . . I think it’s worth the risk. If what we think is happening, is happening.”
THERE WERE no dogs. There were two or three lights on in the house, but no answer to repeated, loud knocking. Virgil went back to the truck and said, “Take off.”
“You think you can get in?” she asked. She wanted him to say no.
“The door is loose. I think I can,” Virgil said. “I need my camera and my butter knife.”
“You carry a butter knife?”
“The Holiday Inn does. . . .”
He got his camera from the backseat, slung it over his neck, and she turned around, white-faced in the headlights reflected off the farmhouse, and took off. Virgil went to the door, rattled it a couple more times, then went to work with the butter knife. He needed a long, smooth curve in the blade, so he wouldn’t damage the wood around the old lock. He bent and re-bent the knife, finally got it right, felt it push back the bolt, and he was in.
He shouted, “Mr. Rouse? Mr. Rouse?” No answer. He whistled for the dog; no barking. He carefully wiped his feet, went up a short flight of steps, found himself in the kitchen, with a single fluorescent light over the stove. “Mr. Rouse?”
Up the stairs, into the Rouses’ bedroom. Stuck the flashlight in his mouth, began swiftly going through the bedroom drawers. Found a sex toy, a vibrator, a group of transparent negligees, but nothing else. Went quickly down the hall, more and more nervous, to another bedroom, the girl’s bedroom, checked her bureau, found more negligees. Negligees that were too old for her, negligees that might be worn by a woman in her forties.
Nothing else. Went back down the stairs, did a quick scan of the first floor, found a small office with a computer and two printers, one a small Canon photo printer along with a box full of blank 4x6 photo paper. Opened a closet and found a jumble of old photo equipment, including small 35mm film cameras and no fewer than three Polaroids, and a slide projector, but no slides. Pulled the drawers on four file cabinets.