Slibe Ashbach Junior? They call him the Deuce?'
Service nodded. 'I've met him. You think he might be involved in these shootings?'
'I don't know. I've only seen him once… He seemed a little odd,' Virgil said.
Service chuckled. 'Yeah, you got that right. He's a little odd.' He stirred some nondairy creamer into his coffee, then said, 'You like movies?'
'Sure.'
'You know Jeremiah Johnson? Robert Redford as a mountain man?'
'Sure. One of my favorite movies, aside from The Big Lebowski.'
'Well, the Deuce is like Jeremiah Johnson. A mentally impaired Jeremiah Johnson. He goes sliding around the woods and the lakes up here, popping up here and there… don't know what he eats, if he always does… fish, I guess, squirrels, eats at home sometimes, I suppose. But he walks all over the place. I've seen him out twenty or thirty miles from home, on foot. Carries a gun. He sleeps out there, in the woods.'
'You know what kind of gun he carries?'
'Depends. Sometimes, a single-shot shotgun, when he's shooting grouse. Sometimes an old pump.22. A DNR guy told me once that he shoots deer with his.22-slides right up next to them and shoots them execution-style, ten feet, one shot to the brain.'
'A.223?'
Service shook his head. 'I've never seen him with anything like that, with a centerfire. He may have one. Probably could get one. But I don't think he really needs one-getting really close is part of his game.'
Virgil took a sip of coffee and thought about it, about the way the shooter found his way into the back-bay, the pond, off Stone Lake. 'Does he drive? Does he work?'
Service said, 'He did. He's got a Chevy pickup, and he used to work out at a junkyard on Highway 2, tearing down cars for salvage parts. He was the yardman for a few months, but then he quit. I don't know why. I guess he works for his old man now, at the kennels. His old man does septic-system excavation, and he helps with that.'
'You think he could hurt somebody?' Virgil asked.
Service said, 'Going back to movies. Have you ever seen Of Mice and Men?'
'Yeah.'
'Lennie, you know, who kills the guy's wife. The Deuce is like that,' Service said. 'He could get excited and kill somebody by accident, but I don't see him planning it out.'
'How about if he popped a couple of people because he got the urge?'
'Maybe,' Service said. 'He's had enough shit shoveled on him, all his life. He could be pretty angry under all of it. Kids gave him a hard time in school, old man gives him a hard time at home, doesn't have the brains to deal with it. He just heads for the trees.'
Interesting, Virgil thought, when he said good-bye to Service. A good suspect whom he had no good reason to suspect.
FROM HIS CAR, he called Mapes and asked him about Slibe's AR-15, and was told that they'd done test shots with it, and whatever it might be, it wasn't the weapon that had produced the shells at Stone Lake or the Washington shooting.
'Could you get that back to me? Is there some way I could get it back this afternoon?'
'Let me check around. We'll figure out something.'
The gun, Virgil thought, was an excellent reason to go back out to Slibe's place.
HE WAS ON HIS way to the hospital, to check on Washington, to see if she was awake and had anything else to say, to ask if she or her husband knew anything about Jared Boehm or the Deuce, when Sanders called. 'I got a woman who wants to talk to you. She says she might have some information.'
'Yeah? Who?'
'Iris Garner. She's Margery Stanhope's daughter.'
IRIS GARNER was a tall redheaded woman in her mid-thirties who lived not far from the Boehms, in another sprawling ranch house, but on the precise edge of town, off the water, with an actual ranch in the back. Not exactly a ranch, but a training ring for horses, with a small horse barn behind it, and a pasture that extended out to a tree line that marked the edge of the real countryside.
She smiled in a tired way when she answered the door, said, 'Come in,' and as they walked through to the living room, she said, 'I wasn't sure I should call you. I had to think about it. But after Jan Washington… I'm not even sure that this amounts to anything…'
'I take everything,' he assured her.
'Mother doesn't know that I called you,' she said. 'Please don't tell her, unless it's necessary. She'd be really upset.'
She sat down in a red armchair next to a flagstone fireplace, and Virgil settled onto a couch. 'That's not a problem. The only time the specifics of an investigation get out is when they get into court. At that point, of course, things are pretty serious.'
She understood that. 'All I want to say, that I think you should know, is that Mother told me that you were a little friendly with Zoe Tull. Is that right?'
'A little. She gave me a ride from the Eagle Nest to the airport, to pick up a rental-and she showed me the Wild Goose, so I could interview some of the people who hang out there,' Virgil said.
'Wendy and her band. I know about that.' Garner sighed, then asked, 'Did you know Zoe wants to buy the Eagle Nest from Mother? That she's been trying to do it for a couple of years? And that Erica McDill is… was… another possible buyer?'
A moment of silence, then Virgil said, 'Nobody mentioned it to me.'
'Here's the thing,' Garner said. 'Mother would like to retire. Earl and I-that's my husband-think she should stay on for a few years. The real estate market is falling to pieces, and five years from now, she could probably get a lot more. Unless we're in a depression, or something. Anyway, Zoe is pushing her to sell. Zoe would like to market the place more to lesbians. She thinks that lesbians are a rich specialized market. Mother has never really done that. We had lesbians, but we had a lot of straight women, too. Heck, when I was a kid, we were a family resort. My folks only started the all-women thing when every Tom, Dick, and Harry from the Cities started building fishing resorts.'
'About McDill…'
'Mother mentioned to Erica McDill that she might want to sell the place, and Erica right away said that she might be interested in buying it,' Garner said. 'Mother told me at dinner Sunday before last. I don't know how serious Erica was, and I don't know what became of it.'
'You're saying that Zoe might have had competition for the place,' Virgil said.
'Not just that… by the way, I do like Zoe, even if she is gay. What I'm saying is that Zoe works really hard, and saves her money, and really has her heart set on this. Then Erica comes along. A bidding war would push up the price, and Zoe can't afford that. A bidding war would be the end of her. Erica, as I understand it, has a lot of money. Had a lot of money.'
'When's the sale supposed to take place?' Virgil asked.
'Well, if it does, this winter. Usually, that sort of thing happens in the off-season. It would have happened last winter, but Zoe couldn't get the financing together, and asked Mother for another year.'
'Why wouldn't your mother have told me this? Or Zoe?'
'I suppose because… they didn't want you to suspect them,' she said. 'I'm only telling you because… well, what if it is Zoe? What if she's gone a little crazy? What if Mother's on her list?'
'Huh. All right. Interesting,' Virgil said. 'You did well to tell me. I will keep your name under my hat, but I will look into it.'
AT THE HOSPITAL, he found Jan Washington had been moved to Duluth.
'When did this happen?' he asked the nurse.
'About an hour ago. They think she might be bleeding again, inside, and they need better imaging equipment.
