He opened it and found a single piece of paper, with a name, Barbara Carson, and an address in Grand Rapids, attached to the number that had been called once. The other number, which Constance had called three times, was for the Eagle Nest.
On the way out the door, he ran into the BCA's resident thugs, Jenkins and Shrake, coming through the door. They were both big guys, in sharp suits and thick-soled shoes, whose faces had been broken a few times. Jenkins said, 'It's that fuckin' Flowers.'
Shrake asked, 'Has he got on one of those fruity musical shirts?'
Jenkins looked at it and said, 'Hard to tell. It says, 'Breeders.' '
Shrake: 'Christ, if he's breeding, now, we gotta find a way to stop it.'
Jenkins: 'I read your stories in The New York Times, and I was wondering, could I have your autograph?'
'Envy is a sad thing to see,' Virgil said. 'But I suppose my proximity might bring a little joy into your humble lives.'
'Weren't you dating a little Joy a couple of years ago? Played sandlot beach-ball bingo or some shit?' Jenkins asked.
'She was a professional beach volleyball player and was highly skilled,' Virgil said. 'And her name was June, not Joy.'
'I believe the skilled part,' Jenkins said. 'She looked like she had all sorts of skills.'
'A maestro on the skin flute,' Shrake said.
'The old pink piccolo,' Jenkins added.
Shrake asked, 'So what's happening up north? You figure it out?'
'It's a little nuts,' Virgil said. He gave them a quick outline of the situation, and they all drifted over to a snack machine behind the atrium and rattled some coins through it, dropping out bags of corn chips. Virgil realized he hadn't eaten since lunch, and was close to starvation.
When he finished telling them about the two shootings, Shrake said, 'You know, you're right. It is nuts. You've got a nut. One of your problems is, none of this other stuff-the lesbians, the resort, the band, Wendy-might have anything to do with it. Even the murder down in Iowa. It might just be some weird high school kid with a rifle, getting his rocks off.'
Jenkins said, 'The first woman who got shot, in the canoe-shooting her like that was pretty unprofessional, you know? If he's four inches off at eighty or ninety or a hundred yards, on a moving target, he misses clean, and she's over the side and under water. He could have shot her in the chest, which is twice as big a target. So the thing is, he was either showing off, or… well, there isn't an or. He's proud of himself. Proud of his ability to do that.'
'So why'd he shoot the other woman in the back?' Virgil asked. Something was tickling at the back of his brain, a thought, but he couldn't catch it.
'We don't know, but I bet there's a reason. Bet the shot was longer. You said she was riding a bike. If she was moving fast, and it was a long shot-that might have been one hell of a shot,' Jenkins said. 'Not moving, between the eyes, eighty yards, is an easier shot than hitting something that's moving fast, bouncing maybe, at two hundred yards. We need to know how far away he was…'
'So you think he's a shooter. A marksman.'
'He thinks he is,' Jenkins said. 'Or he's like Lee Harvey Oswald-he's trying to prove something.'
VIRGIL HAD BEEN LEANING against a wall, and now he straightened and said, 'I've got to get my ass back up there.'
'She out in the car?' Shrake asked.
'Who?'
'Your ass,' Shrake said, and he and Jenkins faked laughs and bumped knuckles.
'Listen, boys, if I get to the point where I need to beat the answers out of somebody, I'll give you a call,' Virgil said.
'Always happy to protect and serve,' Jenkins said.
Virgil left, still trying to catch the thought that the two thugs had stirred up; still didn't catch it, but it was back there, and felt like it did when he went to the supermarket and forgot to buy the radicchio.
A thought that itched.
VIRGIL HEADED NORTH, up I-35, stopped more or less halfway at a diner called Tobie's. Hungry as he was, he didn't feel like diner meat, so he got a piece of blueberry pie and a cup of coffee, pushed on, north and then west, and pulled into his motel in Grand Rapids at ten minutes after ten. He carried his bag up to his room, and found the phone blinking. A message from Signy: 'I talked to Zoe a minute ago and she thought you might have a question for me, about Jan Washington. I'm always up until midnight, so come on over if you want.'
He thought about it for a minute-he was tired, but not too-and headed out, stopped at a supermarket and got a hot whole-roast chicken and a six-pack, and drove out to Signy's. He saw her shadow on the window when he pulled in, and then she pushed the door open, a wry smile on her face, saw the supermarket bag, and said, 'Oh, you brought me roses. You shouldn't have.'
'Bought you something better than roses-I bought you a roast chicken,' Virgil said.
He went through the door, and she said, 'You must think I'm sitting out here starving.'
'No, but I have the feeling that you're not much interested in cooking,' he said. 'Maybe that's why Joe left; he wanted a pork chop.'
'You could be onto something,' she admitted. She opened the chicken bag and the scent filled the room, and she said, 'You cut up the chicken, I'll open the beer.'
They ate at the little table, facing each other, and he asked her about her day, and she told him about the quilt group that couldn't talk about anything but the McDill murder, and how, halfway through the quilting bee, Zoe had called her to tell her about Jan Washington, and how the group had freaked out.
'They really, really couldn't figure that out. We all decided that there's a crazy man loose. You're going to start getting some pressure, I think. People want this guy caught right away. They don't want to hear how it's hard. And if you can't, then bring in more cops until everybody's got their own cop.'
Virgil told her about his day, and asked about the woman Barbara Carson, whom Constance Lifry had called before she was murdered. 'Barbara,' she said. 'Hmm. I know her, she used to work for the county in human services or something like that-welfare, I think. But she's an older lady… if you wanted me to swear that she's not gay, I couldn't. I couldn't swear that she was, either. Zoe might know.'
'How about Jan Washington?' Virgil asked. 'We think it's the same woman who shot McDill… or the same person anyway. The same gun. What's the connection?'
'Beats me,' she said. 'We all live in the same town. But Barbara… Everybody else involved in this, like Margery and McDill and this Constance woman and Wendy and even Zoe, are worker-types, and they're gay. Jan is a housewife who never wanted to work, but she had to, because her husband got hurt. I can't think of anything she really has in common with the others. She goes to the First Baptist Church, and she helps organize food-shelf drives, and I don't think any of the other ones go to any church. Not one of them.'
'Huh.' He looked at her, and she brushed hair out of her eyes.
'What?' she asked.
'Do you have a gun?'
'You think I shot them?' She was incredulous.
'No, no, of course not. I was thinking, you're out here alone, your sister is seen hanging around with a cop, and her house gets broken into,' Virgil said. 'Now the cop investigating the murders is hanging around you… I don't want you to be a target. If you already are, I'd hope you'd be able to defend yourself.'
'How do you defend yourself? He shoots you in the back when you're riding your bike, or when you're sitting in a canoe, bird-watching. He's a sneak.'
Virgil got up, rinsed his hands and face in the kitchen sink, and dried himself with a paper towel, and said, 'The Washington shooting could be the critical one that breaks this, because it'll bring light from an entirely different direction. Unless he's a nut…'
He went out and dropped on the couch, and she brought her beer along and dropped next to him, and he put his arm around her shoulders and she said, 'It's a little scary, all right.'
'It's a little scary when you think that somebody broke into Zoe's place.'
'Well, I do have a gun, a shotgun, a twenty-gauge that Joe bought me,' she said. 'It's under my bed. My windows are pretty good-I was thinking I could stack some beer cans behind the doors, and if they fall over…'
