how's she doing?'
The sheriff said to Virgil, 'This is Tom Morris. He's the one who found her and called the ambulance. He saw her just before she was shot.'
Morris told his story:
'I was driving up behind her on that stretch along the river, right outside of town, and I stopped to talk for a minute, and then went on my way. I went over this little hill and couldn't see her anymore, but then there's a little bigger hill and when I got to the top, I looked in the mirror and I thought I saw her layin' on the road. She was wearing this white blouse and she looked like she was on the road, so I stopped and looked out the back window, but I was a long way away, and it did look like she was down, so I turned around and went back…'
Virgil dug into the story and between the four of them, and knowing where the shot came from, they worked out a sequence: the shooter was waiting for Washington to get close on her bike, and probably planned to shoot her as she came up to his sniper's nest, or immediately after she'd passed him. But then Morris came along, and he couldn't shoot until Morris was out of sight. Then Morris went over the hill, and he shot Washington and probably ran down to his vehicle, and took off in the other direction, back toward town.
Morris said, 'I thought about it, and the guy was taking a hell of a risk. He had to be parked down on that canoe-landing, and then walk up on that hump. He could see a long way to the west, but he couldn't see no more than a half-mile to the east, and if he'd pulled the trigger and then a car had come around the curve to the east, he'd have been screwed. He'd have had to kill that guy, too. If I'd come around the corner one minute later, it'd have been me.'
'Not a lot of traffic out there, though,' Sanders said.
'No, but there's some,' Morris said.
'Could he have been in a boat?' Virgil asked.
The other three men looked at one another, then the sheriff said, 'We asked that question, but we don't have an answer. The thing is, if he was in a canoe, the river bends away from the road about right there, going west. It's really more like a big creek than a river right there… but he could have gotten lost pretty quick, and a mile or so upstream, another road comes along on the other side, where he could have left his car. There are places along there, back in the trees where it'd be completely out of sight… It could be done.'
'It'd take some serious stones,' Morris said. 'The problem is, in a canoe, he's moving slow. And if he's seen, he's got no way to run. It'd be a hard fifteen-minute paddle back to his car.'
'Or her car,' Virgil said.
'Doesn't feel like a woman anymore,' Sanders said. 'I could go with a woman on the McDill thing, but this doesn't feel like a woman to me.'
'The guys in Iowa think their killer is male,' Virgil said. He filled in Morris and Washington on the Iowa murder, and warned them that it might not have anything to do with McDill and Jan Washington.
BEFORE LEAVING, Virgil took Sanders off down the hall and asked, 'You know a woman named Barbara Carson? Lives here in Grand Rapids?'
'Sure… she's an older lady, she's about six blocks from here. Used to work for the county.'
'The woman who got killed down in Iowa called her before she came up here. I need to talk to her, I guess. Tomorrow.'
'I'll get you an address.'
'How about a kid named Jared Boehm? Works out at the Eagle Nest.'
Sanders pulled back a bit. 'Jared? Sure. His dad's a manager at the paper plant. Why?'
'I need to talk to him, too,' Virgil said.
'About this stuff?'
'Some people think that Erica McDill might have been fond of him,' Virgil said.
Sanders stared at him for a minute, then said, 'Oh, shit.'
'Hey, I don't know if it's serious-I just picked up a rumor, and he hasn't been back to work since the killing,' Virgil said.
'I'll run him down tonight,' Sanders said. 'Call me first thing tomorrow.'
'Good kid?' Virgil asked.
'Yeah. You know-he wears shirts like this.' Sanders tapped Virgil's Breeders T-shirt. 'He's got a funny haircut.'
'Girls like him?'
Sanders said, 'I never thought about it, but now that I think about it, I expect they do. Good-looking kid.'
'There you go,' Virgil said. 'I'll call you.'
VIRGIL WENT BACK to his lonely motel room, thought about Signy, lying unfulfilled in a lonesome bedstead in her rural cracker-box, and himself, lying unfulfilled in his concrete-block motel, and about God, and about how God was probably laughing his ass off. Virgil laughed about it himself for a couple of moments, then thumbed the switch on the motel lamp and went to sleep.
HE'D CRACKED HIS EYES in the morning, had thought about how the pillow smelled funny, and had considered the possibility of getting up, when Sanders called. 'Jared Boehm is at home, with his mother, who is an attorney. Susan isn't sure they'll talk to you, but you can go over.'
'When they say they're reluctant, does that mean they're reluctant because Jared might have been up to something? Or reluctant because it's a knee-jerk response from Mom?'
'I tend to think knee-jerk. She thinks she's smarter than anyone in Grand Rapids, including her husband and any cops, and she went into full oh-no lawyer mode when I told her you wanted to talk to her son.'
'Did you tell her why?' Virgil asked.
'Nope. I said you were talking to everyone who knew McDill.'
'Find Little Linda yet?'
There was a moment of silence, then Sanders said, 'No.'
Virgil laughed, though he knew it was wrong.
VIRGIL GOT THE BOEHMS'ADDRESS and directions on how to get there, and an address for Barbara Carson, cleaned up, got out a Stones shirt from Paris, 1975, his most formal T-shirt, suitable for talking with attorneys, and pulled it on. Gave his boots a quick buff, and headed out: another good day, a good fishing day, just enough wind to keep cool. He was officially on vacation. He had his boat, right down at Zoe's…
The Boehms lived out of town, on Lake Pokegama, in a tree-thick neighborhood of ranch-style houses, long driveways, and boats. Virgil pulled his truck into the Boehms' place, glanced at a beat-up sixties Pontiac sitting on a trailer-he wasn't a gearhead-and knocked on the front door.
Sue Boehm looked like an attorney: dark brown hair, dark brown suit, beige blouse, practical heels, panty hose. A real estate attorney, Virgil thought, as she asked, 'Could I see some ID?'
He showed her his identification, and she said, curtly, 'Okay,' as though she were still suspicious, and, 'Come in.'
Inside, no sign of Jared. Boehm backed off a few steps and asked, 'What's this about?'
'I need to talk to Jared about Erica McDill.'
'Is this informational, or do you see him as a suspect?' she asked.
'I'm interviewing a pretty broad group of people,' Virgil said. 'Is there any reason that I should treat him as a suspect?'
'Of course not,' she said. 'He's a teenager and a good kid. He graduated from high school near the top of his class.'
Virgil spread his hands in a placating gesture: 'Then… there should be no problem. But let me ask you, are you a criminal attorney?'
'No. I do mostly property law,' Boehm said.
Virgil nodded. 'My concern is, if you're not familiar with criminal procedure, you'll unnecessarily block the investigation, when a criminal attorney would recognize the questions as routine. And I have to treat Jared as a potential suspect: read him his rights and so on. I think… if you think an attorney is a necessity, that you'd be better off getting a criminal attorney. I could come back later, if you wish.'
'He doesn't need to be defended against a crime,' she said. 'He needs to be defended against somebody who's trying to pin something on anybody available.'
Virgil shook his head: 'We really don't try to do that, Mrs. Boehm. A criminal attorney would probably know
