'I take care of myself,' Virgil said. 'Stop worrying about it.'
They stopped for two minutes at the hotel, Virgil pulled on a plain olive-drab T-shirt that gave him a vaguely military look, and Gomez said, 'Not bad.'
Stryker said, 'Hell of a day.' He had three little pockmarks on his left cheek, showing blood. He wasn't cleaning that up, either.
A DEA INFORMATION specialist had flown in from the Twin Cities and set up the press conference at the courthouse, the same room where Virgil and Stryker had been after the killing of the Schmidts.
More media this time: a half-dozen trucks, including freelance network feeds going up from satellite trucks parked in the courthouse yard. Too late for the evening news, but the late news would get it, the cable channels, and the morning network shows.
Gomez led the way: gave a terse, five-minute briefing, using the satellite photo of the farm, an outline of the fight, starting with the attack of the dogs-compressed the time a bit between the first shots at the dogs, and the fire from the house-and ending with the shootings of Feur and the man they still called John. He showed off a gas can full of glass tubes of methamphetamine, and allowed the best-looking media lady to handle one of them, holding it up to the lights for the cameras.
While she was doing it, Virgil noticed Joan and Jesse at the back of the room, looking at him and Stryker with deep skepticism. They were standing next to Williamson, who turned repeatedly to Jesse, talking at her, teeth showing.
At the very end, Gomez pulled Virgil and Stryker in front of the cameras and said, 'We'd particularly like to thank Sheriff James Stryker, who as you can see was mildly wounded while suppressing the fire from the farmhouse, and Virgil Flowers, of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, who risked his own life to save the lives of two of our wounded men. Damnedest thing I ever saw, when Virgil backed that truck out of the yard. These are two good guys.'
Virgil was genuinely embarrassed, but the media were happy, given local heroes in what otherwise might have been interpreted as a fuckup, with six or seven people dead, and five in the hospital.
After the briefing, the questions started, a few of them hostile, but Gomez was a pro. He turned the hostility back on the questioners, pointing out that they'd seized enough meth to save several hundred lives, 'including that of young men and women; methamphetamine is one of the drugs of choice in our public schools.'
Williamson had one question for Virgil: 'Is this the end of the murder epidemic in Bluestem? Were the Gleasons, the Schmidts, Bill Judd Sr., were they all killed by Feur and his men? And what was the connection?'
'I'd like to answer that question, but I can't, because I don't know the answer,' Virgil said. 'As far as I'm concerned, the investigation continues.'
Davenport called on Virgil's cell as he was shouldering his way out of the press conference: 'You did good,' Davenport said. 'Now-when are you going to collect the nut job?'
JESSE AND JOAN were waiting on the sidewalk outside, along with Laura Stryker and a dozen people from the town. Joan said, 'What the heck were you guys doing out there?'
Stryker snapped at her: 'Our job. I'm the sheriff of this county. They didn't hire me to catch a bunch of dogs.'
There was a murmur of approval from the crowd, and Joan said, fists on her hips, 'So now there are dead people everywhere and you've got blood all over you…'
Jesse was as angry as Joan, and it occurred to Virgil that they'd make good sisters-in-law. Virgil said, 'I've got to go,' and he walked past them out to his truck, did a U-turn, and drove over to the hospital. A couple of sheriff's cars were still parked outside the emergency entrance, cops on the lookout for any further trouble. Inside, Pirelli was out of it, sound asleep, one arm and shoulder encased in fiberglass, one leg bandaged and elevated.
A DEA guy in the hall said, 'Virgil,' and Virgil asked, 'How are they?'
'Hangin' in there. I think…Doug made it this far, I think he's going to hold on.'
'Prayin' for them,' Virgil said, though he wasn't, because he didn't think prayer would help. He went back to the motel.
JOAN WAS COMING down the hall from the direction of his room, saw him, and asked, 'Are you pissed at me?'
'Mildly,' he said. 'I don't need to take any shit about what happened today. Either to Jim or me or even the dead guys. It just happened-it's nobody's fault but Feur's, and he paid for it.'
'We were scared,' she said.
'That's okay. I don't want to hear about it. Tomorrow, you can tell me all about being scared.'
She touched his hair, with the matted blood. 'I could wash your hair out for you. That's going to hurt.'
'You could do that,' he said.
THEY SNUGGLED UP on the bed, no sex, just snuggling, Virgil full of Aleve, his hair wet, and she said, 'In the press conference, when you said you didn't know if the killing was all done…what you meant was, it isn't.'
'I don't think so. In fact…'
'What?'
'We're looking for Bill Judd Junior. Got watches out for him, but he seems to be gone. The thing is, I think he might be dead.'
She rolled up on her elbow. 'You still think Williamson?'
'The Williamson thing freaks me out. When we braced him…I sort of bought it. He seemed as freaked out as I was, when I figured it out. He was screaming at us.'
'So…?'
'So I don't know. If you pointed a gun at my head and told me to spit out a name, I'd spit out his. You think a guy, he's in the Cities, he's a newspaperman, wouldn't he know who his real mother was? Just do a search? He says he didn't, he didn't care who she was. And I guess even if he did, he wouldn't necessarily know that Judd was his father.'
'If he'd ever gone for a birth certificate, to get a passport or something…'
Virgil rolled over on his back, felt the skin pulling around the cuts on his scalp and face. 'I got to think about him…What was he talking to Jesse about? I saw you guys together in the back of the room.'
'Well, he started out by shaking her hand, saying 'long-lost sister,' and then he started pushing her around. Where was she last week? When did she really find out she was Judd's daughter? Where was her mother?'
'Like he thought she might be involved?'
'He was unpleasant,' Joan said, 'But he's never been a real pleasant man.'
'I keep trying to think, who else?'
SLEEP PULLED HIM UNDER. He woke up at two o'clock, and Joan was gone. Went to the bathroom, and then back to the bed, went under again, thinking…Who else? Nobody had said a thing about the.357…
Of course, Jesse wouldn't; but he didn't think that Jesse was the killer, because that would be aesthetically incongruent. She was just too good-looking.
He smiled, and mentally wrote his little story, in which the best-looking woman would never be the guilty one:
Homer shook his head. The shoot-out with Feur, the death of Feur, had blocked up a lot of potential information.
Brilliant, though, the way Stryker had picked up that seam in the hillside. Homer would never have seen it. And thank God for Stryker's reflexes: he cut Feur down before he had a chance to open up on Homer himself.
Mmmm…
Anyway:
ARCHDUKE FRANZ FERDINAND of Austria got his ass shot in Sarajevo in 1914, touching off World War I. His wife was killed at the same time. A little less than ninety years later, a bunch of guys in Scotland formed a band called Franz Ferdinand, which was why Virgil was pulling a Franz Ferdinand T-shirt over his head the next morning at seven o'clock.
Find out what happened to the DEA guys. He stopped at a gas station across the street from the motel and bought a MoonPie and a Coke: sugar, fat, and caffeine, the breakfast of champions.
Pirelli was awake in a standard room, Gomez asleep on a couch under a window. Virgil asked, 'How're you doing?'
