' ' Cause I got you working for me, for one thing,' Davenport said. 'I talked to Doug; he'll be ready to fly at seven o'clock.'
Then he was driving fast through the starry night, past the hamlets and small towns and widespots, Blackberry, Warba, Swan River, Wawina, Floodwood, Gowan to the Highway 33 cutoff, south to I-35, then hammering down I-35, into Minneapolis by one o'clock. He crashed at the Radisson University, with a wake-up call for six-thirty.
Thought little about God that night; but, still, some.
WAYNE WAS IN HIS FLIGHT SUIT, reading a Walter Mosley paperback and eating a peanut butter cookie. Virgil came in, five minutes late, and Wayne said, 'We're rolling.'
They were in the air in ten minutes, heading for an airport south of Cedar Rapids. Hertz had promised to have a Chevy Impala waiting for him.
'So tell me about what happened after I dropped you off last time,' Wayne said.
Virgil told him about the shoot-out in International Falls, about who did what, and how they set up the ambush, and about the Vietnamese team coming in, about the firefight at dawn.
'Man, people were so proud of you guys,' Wayne said. 'Nobody was talking about anything else. Fucking North Vietnamese commandos, man, and you guys took them down.'
'Didn't feel proud at the time,' Virgil said. 'Still don't. And we missed their main operator.'
'That chick. Yeah. But man, that was something…'
ON THE WAY DOWN, passing from cell tower to cell tower, Virgil talked to the chief deputy for Johnson County, whose name was Will Sedlacek, and who said the sheriff was fishing in Minnesota. 'If you tell me he's in Grand Rapids, I'll kill myself,' Virgil said.
'I don't know where Grand Rapids is-I thought it was in Michigan, to tell you the truth-but he's on Lake of the Woods.'
'That's quite a way from Grand Rapids,' Virgil said. 'Look, I'll be down there at eleven, and I need to talk to somebody about the murder of Constance Lifry and this country-western bar you got down there-'
'The Spodee-Odee,' the deputy said. 'Tell you what: call me when you get here, I'll take you over and talk to Jud.'
'Deal,' Virgil said.
Two hours to Cedar Rapids, clear skies all the way. Wayne said he'd catch a movie up in Cedar Rapids. He'd brought a bag, and was prepared to stay overnight, if Virgil had to.
'I don't think we'll have to,' Virgil said. 'I mostly need to look at the case file and talk to a few people, and we're all set up on that.'
SEDLACEK WAS A BURLY, dark-haired man who pointed Virgil at a visitor's chair and asked, 'Have any trouble finding us?' and half listened to Virgil's reply as he poked a number into his office phone and said, 'He's here,' and hung up.
'Yeah, I got tangled up by the river and went the wrong way around the university… nothing to speak of,' Virgil said.
Another deputy stepped into the office, carrying a paper file, and Virgil stood up to shake hands with Larry Rudolph, and they all sat down and Sedlacek asked, 'What the heck happened up there?'
Virgil ran them through it, both men listening closely, and when he finished, Rudolph said, 'That's a hell of a coincidence, if it's a coincidence, but boy, it doesn't feel like our guy. Our guy did it with a rope, up close and personal. Gun's a whole different thing.'
'Both wound up dead,' Sedlacek said.
'Yeah, but I know what he means,' Virgil said. 'I'll tell you what: I've got all this stuff in my head, not much of it written down yet, so if it's okay with you, I'd just like to go through your file and see if anything pops up.'
'Okay with us,' Sedlacek said, 'but, there's not much there. I mean, all the reports and everything, but we never got the first hint.'
'Pissed off Jerry,' Rudolph said. 'He was good friends with Constance.'
'Jerry's the sheriff,' Sedlacek said. 'He was pushing us like dogs.'
'Did it look to you like somebody deliberately ambushed her?' Virgil asked. 'Did they rob her? Rape her? Anything?'
'Took her purse, so it could have been a robbery-especially outside her restaurant. Wasn't raped or anything. Wasn't beat up. Whoever did it jumped her with the idea of strangling her. Might have figured she was taking the day's receipts home,' Sedlacek said.
'But then they'd have to know about her,' Virgil said. 'They'd probably be local.'
'Pretty much,' Sedlacek said.
Rudolph added, 'The thing about Swanson is, it's this tiny little town halfway between Cedar Rapids and Iowa City and it's got seven businesses-one gas station, one restaurant, Constance's, and five bars. It used to be where the kids went to drink, but we cleaned that up. But still, it's a honky-tonk town, and a lot of folks still go up there for the atmosphere.'
'Is that where the Spodee-Odee is?' Virgil asked.
'Naw. That's in Coralville, out on the strip. That's right next door, here.'
THEY TALKED for a few more minutes, then they gave Virgil a table and chair, and he spent an hour combing through a thick but nearly information-free file. All of the technical work looked good, but the technicians simply hadn't found anything except one nylon fiber buried in Lifry's neck, and more under a couple of broken fingernails, which suggested that she'd been strangled with a nylon cord.
Which-except for one thing-was like discovering that the killer wore pants. Useless.
When he was done, he carried the file back to Sedlacek's office to ask about that one thing. Sedlacek asked, 'Crack the case?'
'I didn't even bend it,' Virgil said. 'One thing. The cord that Lifry was strangled with, nylon, I guess, but the ME says that it cut way into her neck muscles. You figure it was a guy?'
'Oh, yeah. That oughta be in there somewhere, but that was our operating assumption,' Sedlacek said. 'A guy with some muscle: she was not only strangled, she actually bled quite a bit.'
'Doesn't fit with us,' Virgil said. 'We found those tracks, women's boot or shoe…'
'You breed some big women up that way.'
'But none of the ones I'm looking at could do that,' Virgil said. 'They're healthy, but I don't see them cutting somebody's head off with a rope.'
Sedlacek flipped his hands up. 'Can't help you. Anyway, you had anything to eat today? We could get a sandwich and head out to Jud's. He'll be there at one o'clock…'
THEY GOT A BURGER, fries, and a shake at a student bar. Virgil was wearing a Breeders T-shirt under his jacket and a thin blond woman, standing in line for food, leaned toward him and asked, 'Are you a musician?'
He grinned at her: 'Nope.'
'I really admire the Breeders,' she said. 'Kim Deal is awesome.'
'I'd give you the shirt,' Virgil said, gesturing across the table at Sedlacek, 'but this guy's a cop, and he'd probably bust me for exposure.'
'Maybe I could give you a phone number, and you could drop it off,' she said. But she was joking, and she twiddled her fingers at him and moved up the line.
'I've been working downtown for ten years and I've never been hit on by a college girl,' Sedlacek said, looking after her. 'What have you got that I don't?'
'Good looks, personality… cowboy boots.'
'Fuck me,' Sedlacek said. 'I've been trying to get by on intelligence.'
'Well, there you go,' Virgil said.
THE CORALVILLE STRIP was a fading business/motel district outside Iowa City, motels, service businesses, insurance companies, a few clubs, and the Spodee-Odee, a big log-sided bar with an acre-sized gravel-and-dirt parking lot and a useless hitching post in front of the doors; and a life-size painting of a John Deere tractor splayed across one side wall, juxtaposed against a Sioux Indian on a pinto horse. A tangle of prickly pear cactuses climbed out of two pots on the front porch, and behind one pot was a sign that said, 'Pee on these plants, and you will be shot; survivors will be shot again.'
Virgil had followed Sedlacek out to the place, and they got out in a swirl of dust, hitched up their pants, and
