3
Virgil checked into the Ramada across the street from Southwest Minnesota State University at a little after four o’clock in the morning, set the alarm for six-thirty, and was asleep as soon as he lay down. He’d slept on the plane from Miami to Minneapolis Saturday morning, had taken a nap after he got home on Saturday afternoon, and was still young enough that he could deal with a day on two hours of sleep.
Although, when the alarm woke him up in what seemed like an instant after he went to sleep, he would, he expected, be fairly cranky by early afternoon.
He sat on the bed for a minute, getting oriented, then picked up his cell phone and punched the menu item for “home.” His mother never slept past six o’clock on any one day in her life, and at that moment, he thought, would be looking into the kitchen cupboard and calculating how many pancakes to make that morning.
She answered immediately, an edge of horror in her voice. “Virgil: What happened?”
“Nothing happened, Ma, except some people got killed over in Shinder and I’m looking at them. Right now, I’m here in town, at the Ramada, and I thought I’d run over and get some pancakes if it’s not too much goddamn trouble to expect that from your mother.”
She was delighted: “Get over here, Virgil. Your father’s already up and raving in the study.”
“I gotta take a shower. I’ll see you in a half hour.”
Virgil’s father was the lead pastor of the largest Lutheran congregation in Marshall, a town with several species of Lutheran. Virgil had grown up in a redbrick house across the street from the church, and had gone to church services every Sunday and Wednesday of his life, until he went to the University of Minnesota. He’d since given up churchgoing, but not some fundamental belief in the Great Architect.
When Virgil pulled into the driveway, he was ambushed by his father, who’d been waiting by the back door, and who said, “I’ve been thinking a lot about the relationship between the Israelis and the Palestinians. . ”
His father was a tall man, also slender, like Virgil, with graying hair and round steel-rimmed spectacles. He’d played basketball at Luther College, down in Iowa, before going to the seminary. He clutched in one hand the printout of his sermon; he’d been a popular man all of his life, and a kind of sneaky kingmaker in local politics.
Virgil said, “Uh-oh.”
“I immediately thought of Genesis 16:11 and 12, ‘You shall name him Ishmael. .’”
Virgil continued it: “‘. . for the Lord has heard of your misery. He will be a wild donkey of a man; his hand will be against everyone and everyone’s hand against him. And he will live in hostility toward all his brothers.’”
His father blinked and said, “I knew if I beat it into your head long enough, it’d stick.”
Virgil said, “Where’s Mom?. . And yeah, some of it did stick.”
His father said, “In the kitchen. You know Ishmael is considered the father of the Arabs.”
“I know that you’ll be up to your holy ass in alligators if you go telling people that the Arabs deserve what they’re getting because the Bible says so,” Virgil said.
His father followed him into the kitchen, saying, “That wouldn’t be the point, not at all. I’d never say that.”
They sat in the kitchen and ate pancakes and his father raved and his mother chipped in with news of various high school friends, and they both behaved as though they hadn’t seen him for years, when, in fact, he’d been there only a month earlier.
His mother inquired about any new wives, a friendly jab, and he denied any new close acquaintances, and his father said, “But you have to admit, it is passing strange that something that was written three thousand years ago seems to have such a relevance for today’s world.”
Watching them bustle around each other in the tight little kitchen, sixtyish and very comfortable, Virgil remembered the time when he was seventeen and the folks had a little dinner party, three other couples plus Virgil. One of the couples was Darrin and Marcia Wanger. Darrin was president of a local bank, a tall, broad-shouldered man with an engaging smile. Virgil remembered how he had caught his mother and Darrin Wanger touching each other with their eyes, and how he thought then,
Old times in the rectory. . And who knows, maybe he was wrong.
But even thinking about it now, he thought not. His mother said, “You put so little syrup on those pancakes that it got sucked right down inside. Take some more syrup.”
Then it was the best part of an hour in church, Virgil sitting in the back; but twenty people, mostly older, stopped to say hello to him, and touch him on the shoulder. Good folks. His father did his rave, and it all seemed well-reasoned and kind.
At nine o’clock, he was on his way back to Shinder. Duke was just coming into town and Virgil turned in behind him and followed him down to the Welsh house. They got out of their trucks at the same time, and Duke nodded at Virgil and asked, “How was church?”
“Fine. My old man did his sermon from Genesis 11 and 12, and moved on to the Palestinians and the Israelis. . ” Virgil gave him a one-minute version, and Duke, though an asshole, proved a good listener, and when Virgil finished, he said, “Sounds like your father is a smart man.”
“He is,” Virgil said. The crime-scene van was parked in the swale in front of the Welsh house, and Virgil asked, “You know what time they got here?”
“About three hours ago. . around six o’clock,” Duke said.
He and Virgil went inside, where Beatrice Sawyer was working over George Welsh’s body. Sawyer was a middle-aged woman, more cheerful than she should be, given her job, and a little too heavy. She had bureaucrat-cut blond hair, went without makeup, and was wearing a lime-colored sweatshirt and blue jeans and boots. She saw Virgil and said, “Well, this one’s dead.”
“Thanks,” Virgil said. “He was dead last night, too. Are you going to get anything off them?”
“Too early to tell, but I doubt that it’ll be anything conclusive if it’s a domestic. He was shot from eight to ten feet away, judging from the powder traces-there is some, but not much. The shooter was standing where you are, these two were standing where they fell. We’ll recover both slugs, and they should be in reasonable shape-not hollow points, they look to be solids. We’ll be able to identify the gun, if you come up with it. There were no shells around, and I won’t know for sure until we pull the slugs, but it was probably a revolver.”
“If you get DNA, why won’t it be conclusive?” Duke asked.
“Because if it’s a domestic, there’s a lot of reasons for the shooter’s DNA to be all over the place,” Sawyer explained. “There doesn’t appear to have been a struggle-no defensive or offensive marks on George’s hands or arms, which means that the killer didn’t close with him. Shot him from a distance.”
“But you might get some DNA that would narrow it down,” Duke said.
“Possibly,” Sawyer said. “But juries don’t usually convict on the outside chance that somebody committed a murder.”
“They do if I tell them to,” Duke said. He didn’t smile.
Another man, wearing a surgeon’s mask and yellow gloves, came in from the back and said, “Hey-ya, Virgie.”
“Hey, Don.” Don Baldwin was a tall, thin man with a sharp nose who wore heavy black-plastic fashion glasses because he played in a punk-revival band on his nights off. Like Sawyer, he was wearing a sweatshirt and blue jeans. “What’re you doing back there?”
“Looked like somebody might have slept in the back bedroom. We’re working it,” he said.
Virgil said, “Um,” and then, “You look at their car?”
“Yeah, we’ll process it. . I won’t say that I expect much from it.”
“All right,” Virgil said. He turned to Duke and said, “Let’s run down the daughter. I need to talk to her
