Rough Country (13 page)

Ruth Davies was there with McDill's father, sitting on the floor in the living room, surrounded by twenty square feet of paper.

He took Davies first, and got nothing. She simply dithered, until it began to drive him crazy, and eventually she went into the kitchen and began baking something with peanut butter.

McDill's father, Oren McDill, looking down at all the paper that summed his daughter's life, was distraught, depressed, shaken. He was a tall, thin man with a gray buzz cut, simple gold-rimmed glasses, wearing a T-shirt and jeans. He said that McDill did have a will, and that he was the executor. I'll get you a copy as soon as I can get to my safe-deposit box, he said. He gestured at all the paper. It wasn't supposed to end like this. She was supposed to do this for me.

McDill's mother lived in Arizona with a second husband, and she and her daughter were not close, McDill said. It goes back to the divorce. We got divorced when Erica was in high school, and she couldn't believe that her mother would dump both of us. Mae wanted her freedom. Didn't want a husband at the time, anyway didn't want a kid. She told us that. Erica never got over it.

I don't want to . . . Virgil looked around; they were sitting in a four-seasons porch, alone, but he could hear Davies babbling on somewhere. Look, I don't want to be an asshole, is what I don't want to be. But I have to ask: If you've looked at the will . . . would Erica's mother be in line to inherit anything?

McDill shook his head. Not a penny.

Huh. How about Ruth?

Ruth will get a hundred thousand, McDill said.

That's not bad . . . she thought she'd get nothing, Virgil said.

McDill frowned at that: I think she knew. I think she knew the terms. Did you ask her?

I did, but maybe I wasn't clear, Virgil said.

It's been in the will for three years, McDill said. Erica had a new will made when she took over as CEO, and got a kick in salary. Hard to believe that they didn't talk about it at all.

THE CRIME-SCENE CREW, led by Stacy Lowe, had almost finished processing the house looking at phone records, calendars, computers, and anything unexpected that might point to a killer.

Virgil took Lowe aside and asked, Have you finished with Ruth Davies's room? He'd learned that the two women had separate bedrooms.

Yes. Looking for something in particular?

I'd like to look at her shoes. . . .

Lowe cornered Davies, to confer, and while they were doing that, Virgil slipped into Davies's room and checked the closet. Davies had a shoe rack, with nine different pairs of shoes mounted on it. He looked through the shoes and found no Mephistos. Went into McDill's room, found perhaps twenty pairs of shoes, including a pair of Mephistos. He found Lowe. Process the shoes. The guys up north say the killer might have been wearing Mephistos. Look for dirt. Swamp muck.

Okay. Cool. She bent close to them, then said, They look clean.

Do your best. He checked sizes: eight and a half. Back in Davies's room, he checked sizes: eight. Davies could have worn a pair of McDill's Mephistos. Even if those in the closet had never been in the swamp, he knew that McDill owned Mephistos. . . .

Lowe told him, There were no guns of any kind. No rifles.

Virgil held up a finger, to quiet her, as he tried to catch a thought: Ah. Yes. McDill wore Mephistos. Wendy was in McDill's room the night before the killing, where she might have had access to McDill's shoes. . . .

Something to check.

What? Lowe asked.

No guns, huh? Interesting.

DAVIES HAD NO ALIBI she'd been sick, she said had a monetary and maybe even an emotional reason to kill McDill, had access to Mephisto shoes. May have lied about McDill's will. She might well have an idea of what McDill did at the resort; might have heard about the solitary visit to the eagle's nest, might even have had it pointed out on a chart or on Google . . .

On the other hand, her behavior was simply too . . . unparsed. Davies hadn't thought of answers in advance. She hadn't calculated her behavior. Everything about her was raw and unrehearsed.

Unless, he thought, she was crazy.

He had, in the past, encountered a crazy serial burglar who seemed the soul of innocence because after the burglaries, he somehow forgot that he'd done them. Virgil didn't think that he was lying because of his peculiar psychological problem, he really forgot. Of course, that hadn't prevented him from selling the stolen stuff on eBay, America's fence.

WHEN HE WAS DONE with the talk, Virgil cruised one last time through the house, had a thought the walls weren't bare, but they didn't seem quite right, either. He walked through again, trying to be casual about it, and saw a couple of empty nail holes at picture-hanger height. He asked Lowe, Did you find anything in her paper about art that she owned?

There's a file of receipts somewhere. I could find it, Lowe said.

Do that, and check it off against the paintings here. He gestured around the room. Each wall was hung with either an oil painting or a print, and they didn't look like they came from a decorator's back room they looked like stuff he'd seen in galleries: col orful, idiosyncratic, even harsh. See if there's anything missing. I don't know how much it's worth, but . . . that's what I want to know. What it's worth, and where it is. If it's missing, I want to know what it could be sold for.

When Virgil left, Davies and Oren McDill were stacking Erica McDill's clothing in the hallway, preparatory to packing it; a dismal task, Virgil thought, and both of them stopped occasionally to cry. He left them like that, in a house of misery, and headed downtown to the agency board meeting.

THE AGENCY WAS HOUSED on the fifth floor of the Laughton building in Minneapolis, a fashionably international lump of blue glass and steel. Mann introduced him to the board, a group of well-dressed men and women who were snarling at one another around a maple table.

Virgil made a brief presentation of what he'd found, and one of the men blurted out, I was at a Twins game, and, one by one, without being asked, the other members provided alibis, most of which would be easy to confirm. One guy didn't have one, but he was six-five and his shoes must have been thirteens, Virgil thought. He made a note anyway. If any of them had done it, it was going to take a break from somewhere else, from somebody else, to prove it.

By four o'clock, he was on his way north again.

Kept thinking about what Owen had said: a backwoods gay basher making a point.

Could be, but he doubted it. It usually took something more specific to trigger a murder; not always, but usually. Money, sex, obsession, competition, alcohol . . . something. Something he was missing.

Chapter
8

ZOE TULL'S SISTER'S HOUSE was more like a cabin than a real house, and sat on a shallow bay down a dark dirt road on Fifty-Dollar Lake. Zoe'd talked Virgil back to the place by cell phone, and was standing in the yard when he pulled in.

The crime-scene guy who came to my house couldn't find any fingerprints but he said the door had definitely been forced, she said. And, Hello.

Hi. Yeah. I talked to him, Virgil said. He said your locks wouldn't have kept a small child out.

That situation will be fixed tomorrow. She wrapped her arms around herself and shivered. I don't like this. I don't know if it was a coincidence, or if it's because I'm talking to you, or if it's some goof who kills women.

An older woman pushed out of the house: Zoe's sister. She looked a lot like Zoe, slender but more weathered, with cool, distant green eyes and a nose that was a bit too long. She was wearing a plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up over her elbows, and jeans. She looked at Virgil for a moment, nothing shy about it, then looked past him for a minute, and said, Nice rig.

Works for me, Virgil said.

You all best come in before the bugs eat you alive, the sister said.

My sister, Sig. Signy, Zoe said. And to Signy, This is Virgil.

SIGNY'S HOUSE SMELLED like pine wood and maybe a hint of bacon and pancakes; had a tiny kitchen, a small living room with a couch and a couple of easy chairs on an oval hooked rug, a woodstove in one corner, and a hallway that apparently led back to a couple of bedrooms. Virgil took one of the chairs and Zoe asked, So what'd you find out?

Not much. Talked to a couple of people who didn't like McDill, but they didn't do it. Found out that Ruth Davies will inherit a hundred thousand dollars, and that she knew that McDill had had at least one affair, so I guess it's possible that she thought that their time was ending. Oh. She has no alibi.

Signy had gone to the kitchen and came back with three bottles, handed one to Virgil. Negra Modelo. Virgil took a swallow and said, I'm sorry, ma'am. I can't drink when I'm on duty.

That's a goddamn shame, Signy said. She handed another bottle to Zoe, and had one for herself. You don't think this Davies woman did it?

I didn't say that, Virgil said.

You sound like it, she said.

Okay. I don't think she did it.

Who do you think did? Signy asked.

I don't know enough of the players, Virgil said. I'll be up for a few days, figure that out.

Signy smiled at him and showed a chipped front tooth. Got an ego on you, I'll say that.

SIGNY'S HUSBAND was in Alaska. One time he went out for a loaf of bread and wound up in Churchill, on Hudson Bay. This time, it's Alaska.

Sounds confused, Virgil said.

He is confused. A nice guy, but confused. I don't believe he'll be back, she said.

He could come back, Zoe said.

I don't think so, Signy said. To Virgil. He keeps moving further north. Last time, he barely made it home. This time, he's over the horizon. I don't think he'll make it at all.

Life, Virgil said.

Show Virgil the picture he sent you, Zoe said.

Signy got up, went to a table in the front hall, picked up an envelope, and carried it back to Virgil; Virgil slipped out a photograph and tipped it toward the lamplight to see it better. It showed a thin, dark-haired man standing on the bank of a creek, looking at a bulldozer that had about sunk out of sight in what appeared to be a bog, or maybe quicksand. A chain led down to the dozer from a second bulldozer; the second dozer was apparently trying to pull the first one out of the muck.

Guess what he got a job driving, Signy said.

The bulldozer?

He has accidents, Zoe said.

Virgil gave the photo back to Signy, who asked, You want another beer?

I shouldn't, Virgil said. She went and got him another one, and said, I'd give you a sandwich, but I don't have anything in the house. I usually eat out.

Got a bag of sweet corn in the truck, Virgil said.

Signy's eyes lit up: I could do some sweet corn. That's just boiling water, right?

VIRGIL GOT THE CORN and she looked in the bag and said, Cucumbers. I could put together a salad. I've got some apples and lettuce. . . . Virgil got the impression that she wasn't big on cooking.

Signy wandered off to the kitchen and Virgil sat down again and said to Zoe, Tell me all about this band. Tell me about Wendy and Berni and whoever else. . . .

ZOE TOLD HIM that the band had been around for two or three years, but that Wendy had been something of a Grand Rapids celebrity since middle school. She's always been the best singer that anybody ever knew. When she was a little kid, she used to sing with a polka band, and even travel around with them. Around the Iron Range, I mean. Not all over.

Wendy and Berni became best friends in middle school, and Berni learned the drums because she wasn't any good at other musical instruments. Together they played in a high school rock band that later became a country band when Wendy decided that she had more of a country voice. She also decided that women got a better break in country music than in rock.

After high school, she worked for a while at a local convenience store, and then for her father, breeding dogs. Nasty hairy yellow-looking things, Zoe said. Though I guess they get a lot of money for them. They're some kind of rare dog, or something.

I wonder if she literally breeds them, Signy said from the kitchen. She breeds everything else.

Shut up, Sig, Zoe said.

All the time she was working, Wendy had a band. The band was getting better they were shedding the old high school part-timers, and were picking up some pros and Wendy's voice was getting richer. So was her love life.

ZOE SAID, and Signy agreed, between bouts of looking into the corn kettle, that Wendy was a heartless slut who played her lovers off against each other, and sometimes slept with men to demonstrate her independence.

But she's really talented. You heard her, Zoe said, her face alight. She's got this magnetism that pulls people in. Even McDill. That's what all the big stars have. You can't figure it out, but you can feel it.

Berni, on the other hand, was a below-average drummer, Zoe said. She can do it, but she's not so creative. Wendy told me that.

You think Wendy'll dump her? Virgil asked.

Signy said, If Wendy thought Berni could cost her a recording contract, she'd drop her off the bus on the side of the interstate.