all about…'
'Hot for Wendy. Is this a rumor, or something you know, or what?' Virgil asked.
'Just from school. He dropped out as soon as they'd let him, and they were happy to see him go. Didn't make any difference, he wasn't going to graduate anyway. He was a couple years behind me, so he must be about sixteen? People used to say, you didn't want to mess with Wendy or the Deuce would kill you. They meant it: kill you.'
'Tell me one person who said that.'
He thought a minute, then grinned and said, 'Tommy Parker. He's still here, he works at Parker Brothers motors in the summer, for his dad. He goes to the U. I saw him yesterday. You catch him, ask him what happened when he asked Wendy to go to the prom.'
Virgil made a note of the name. 'Anything else?'
Jared shook his head. 'No. Who are you going to tell about all this?'
Virgil stood and said, 'At this point, nobody. I'll tell you, Jared, I'll check your alibi for the time of the murder, but right now, I believe you. And if I were you, I'd keep my mouth shut about your summer job. You really don't want to be in the newspapers.'
'So you're not going to do anything?' he asked.
'Not at this point,' Virgil said, 'I was mostly concerned about whether there might be a sexual conflict involving the boys that led to the murder. You don't seem to think that there was.'
'I don't think so,' he said. 'She showed up, she let me know she was interested, I don't think any of the other guys were cut out, or anything. She didn't seem interested in a three-way… and that was about it.'
'Okay. Listen, you take care of yourself,' Virgil said. 'We don't know what's going on here, but… be cool. Watch TV. Go to Duluth. Don't go wandering around by yourself until we get this guy.'
AS VIRGIL WAS LEAVING, he heard Susan Boehm ask, 'A three-way?' and he thought to himself, I just said 'this guy.' That feels right. The killer's a he. So who made the Mephisto prints?
He was getting in his truck when Susan Boehm blew through the front door and shouted, 'Wait a minute! Wait!'
He got back out and she steamed up and said, 'Something has to be done.'
Virgil shrugged. 'I don't know exactly what.'
'But this is… sexual exploitation. This might be statutory rape.'
'It's prostitution, is what it is,' Virgil said. 'My problem is, I know one boy-your son, and he certainly wouldn't testify against himself-and one patron, Erica McDill, who was murdered. So who do I charge?'
'You mean…?'
'I thought about going after Margery Stanhope, but she denies knowing anything about it, and your son confirms it. I don't necessarily believe Margery-that she doesn't know anything about it-but if everybody agrees she wasn't part of it, what am I going to do? None of the women will testify against themselves, and none of the boys would. All we could do is send in a woman agent, get one of the boys to proposition her and mention a price, and then bust him for prostitution, but… I don't even know if that would work. Or if we could get a conviction.'
'So nothing's going to get done,' she said.
'If a group of parents had a quiet word with Margery, it might end. Or maybe not. You're talking about a bunch of horny college boys who need the money, and you heard what Jared said: three hundred dollars a time to have sex with her. Who knows? He might make thirty thousand dollars a year, tax free, if he works at it… Of course, he's a prostitute.'
She started to blubber and he patted her on the shoulder. 'Listen, talk to your husband. Figure something out. Tell me what you want to do, if anything, and I'll try to help out. But I'm not sure this is a problem the law is very well equipped to deal with.'
Still blubbering, she headed back toward the house.
VIRGIL BACKED HIS TRUCK out of the driveway and thought, The killer's male. What's this about the Deuce?
He thought about the Deuce, but then switched back to Susan Boehm, and for a moment felt very, very sorry for her, and for her son; not bad people, probably. And he hadn't been exactly diplomatic about it: Of course, he's a prostitute…
He drove to Barbara Carson's, suffering from the knowledge that he'd been an asshole. Maybe, he thought, looking for an excuse, the realization of assholedom was the beginning of wisdom.
But probably not.
14
BARBARA CARSON was a bust. An elderly widow who got around with a walker, she lived in a tiny rambler with a yard full of nasty-looking rosebushes.
'I did know her quite well,' she said. She looked like Santa Claus's wife, with curly white hair and pink cheeks. 'We corresponded regularly about our heritage roses.'
Virgil learned that heritage roses were old varieties no longer grown, but often found around abandoned farmsteads. A few thousand people scattered around the country were dedicated to saving them-Lifry had been one, and so was Carson.
'Everybody was shocked when she was murdered. She was the nicest lady, that's all we talked about for weeks, her murder,' Carson said.
'Who's we?' Virgil asked, one foot out the door.
'Well, the rose people, on the Internet. That's how I heard: I got an alert. Another one of our people down in Cedar Rapids put out all the information.'
She knew Lifry came to Grand Rapids to 'be with her gay friends at that resort.'
'So she made no secret about being gay?'
'Why should she?' the little old lady asked. 'Nobody would care but a bunch of stuffy old men.'
VIRGIL DROVE BACK to the sheriff 's department, tracked down Sanders, filled him in on Boehm without mentioning the whole prostitution snarl, and on Carson, and asked, 'You ever heard of Slibe Ashbach Junior? Call him the Deuce? About sixteen, has a reputation for being a little flaky?'
Sanders shook his head: 'Can't say that I have. We've got forty-five thousand people in the county, and I only know about thirty-eight thousand of them.'
'So he's not big on your felony list?'
'Not that I've noticed,' Sanders said. 'He live up there with Slibe?'
'I guess. I'd like to check your records.'
'We can do that-let me call the deputy who runs that area. He might know him.'
ITASCA COUNTY-the Grand Rapids police department, actually-had run into Slibe II on two occasions, after fights at the junior high school. There'd been no charges out of either fight, and nobody had been seriously injured. The police had been called because both of the fights had been on the school grounds, and the cops had written reports mentioning Slibe as one of the combatants.
Sanders said a dozen or so similar reports came in every year, either through the sheriff's department or the Grand Rapids Police-'Everybody's screaming at us to stay on top of the schools, ever since the school shootings at Red Lake. We don't let anything go anymore.'
When Virgil finished reading the reports, the deputy who might know Slibe II hadn't shown up, so he walked kitty-corner over to a coffee shop, and was sitting there, looking at a cup of coffee, and listening to an orchestrated, Muzak version of 'Hells Bells,' when the deputy came in and offered a hand and said, 'Roy Service.'
Service got a cup of coffee, and the waitress behind the counter said, 'Pretty fast service, huh, Service?' and cackled and went off with her coffeepot.
'Honest to God, she's said that to me three hundred times,' Service muttered to Virgil. 'One of these times, I'm gonna take out my gun and shoot her. Or myself.'
'Don't think I would have lasted this long,' Virgil said. 'Don't tell her my name is Flowers… So, you know a
