Read Online Rough Country by John Sandford - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: John Sandford
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that for a moment, then said, “Ah, man. Well, I’ve got to get back and talk to Erica McDill’s friends from the Cities. I thank you for the tour. Maybe I’ll come back tonight, take a look at the band. See if I can figure out your type.”
“Wendy . . . Whatever. She’s a slut. But she turns my crank. If I had a crank.”
Virgil laughed and asked, “Why don’t you pay for the drinks?”
OUTSIDE IN THE PARKING LOT , she walked with him to the Trailblazer and asked, “You really don’t care if I tell some friends about this? About . . . that a woman did it?”
He shrugged. “No, go ahead. Something to talk about. Better than the Internet. But be careful about who you talk to—we are dealing with a nutcase.”
THE CRIME-SCENE CREW was eating dinner at the Eagle Nest, and Mapes said, “We think she braced the rifle across a four-inch log. Looks like she moved the log for that reason—to get a rifle rest. There were a couple of other logs she might have braced her hands or her arms on, and we’ve bagged all that and we’ll look for prints and DNA. Haven’t found any hair, but we did find some cotton fibers that may have come from her shirt. No more shells, so there might have been only the one shot.”
“Any possibility that more might have gotten thrown into the water?” Virgil asked.
“We checked with a metal detector. Never got a flicker,” Mapes said.
“So it’s basically prints or DNA and the Mephistos,” Virgil said.
“I wouldn’t count on prints—I took a long look at that cartridge, and it looked clean and a little oily. I should have been able to see a print. But, maybe not. Maybe the lab will bring something up. And I’ve got to believe that if she came through that swamp, and knew what she was doing, she was wearing gloves. It’s not so bad out in the open, but coming over the margins of the marsh, the mosquitoes were so thick they were clogging up our head nets. If she knew what she was doing, she would have covered up. Gloves, maybe even a head net.”
He left them to finish eating and went looking for Stanhope. A woman Virgil hadn’t met was turning off lights in the office. She said, “She took them up to the library.”
“Uh, who . . . ?”
“The people from the Cities. Miss McDill’s friends.”
LAWRENCE HARCOURT, whose name was on the agency, was a slender man with close-cropped white hair, quick blue eyes behind military-style gunmetal glasses, and a face that seemed oddly unlined for his apparent age—a face-lift? The second and third of McDill’s friends, Barney Mann, creative director for the agency, and Ruth Davies, McDill’s partner, always called him Lawrence, never Larry, and though neither deferred to him, they always listened carefully when he spoke.
Mann was a fireplug of a man with a liquor-reddened face and blond hair going white; he had an Australian accent. Virgil thought he might be forty-five. He was noisy and argumentative and angry.
Davies was stunned: not weeping, but disoriented, almost not-believing. A short, not-quite-dumpy woman with brown hair and wire-rimmed glasses, she looked like a church mouse. Her mouth was a thin, tight line: whoever had given McDill the lipstick note, it hadn’t been Davies.
All three, Virgil thought, after the introductions had been made and some questions answered, were intensely self-centered. They were not so concerned about the existential aspects of McDill’s death, but rather, what it means to me. They had also been concerned with image, Virgil thought, to the point of silliness. They could have driven up from the Twin Cities, individually, in three hours. Instead, they’d rented a floatplane, apparently to demonstrate the urgency of the matter, and after soaking up time in arranging the flight, and getting together, and making the flight, they’d taken six or seven hours.
Harcourt had checked Virgil quickly, eyes narrowing a bit, and he asked, “Have you had any
“Wendy . . . Whatever. She’s a slut. But she turns my crank. If I had a crank.”
Virgil laughed and asked, “Why don’t you pay for the drinks?”
OUTSIDE IN THE PARKING LOT , she walked with him to the Trailblazer and asked, “You really don’t care if I tell some friends about this? About . . . that a woman did it?”
He shrugged. “No, go ahead. Something to talk about. Better than the Internet. But be careful about who you talk to—we are dealing with a nutcase.”
THE CRIME-SCENE CREW was eating dinner at the Eagle Nest, and Mapes said, “We think she braced the rifle across a four-inch log. Looks like she moved the log for that reason—to get a rifle rest. There were a couple of other logs she might have braced her hands or her arms on, and we’ve bagged all that and we’ll look for prints and DNA. Haven’t found any hair, but we did find some cotton fibers that may have come from her shirt. No more shells, so there might have been only the one shot.”
“Any possibility that more might have gotten thrown into the water?” Virgil asked.
“We checked with a metal detector. Never got a flicker,” Mapes said.
“So it’s basically prints or DNA and the Mephistos,” Virgil said.
“I wouldn’t count on prints—I took a long look at that cartridge, and it looked clean and a little oily. I should have been able to see a print. But, maybe not. Maybe the lab will bring something up. And I’ve got to believe that if she came through that swamp, and knew what she was doing, she was wearing gloves. It’s not so bad out in the open, but coming over the margins of the marsh, the mosquitoes were so thick they were clogging up our head nets. If she knew what she was doing, she would have covered up. Gloves, maybe even a head net.”
He left them to finish eating and went looking for Stanhope. A woman Virgil hadn’t met was turning off lights in the office. She said, “She took them up to the library.”
“Uh, who . . . ?”
“The people from the Cities. Miss McDill’s friends.”
LAWRENCE HARCOURT, whose name was on the agency, was a slender man with close-cropped white hair, quick blue eyes behind military-style gunmetal glasses, and a face that seemed oddly unlined for his apparent age—a face-lift? The second and third of McDill’s friends, Barney Mann, creative director for the agency, and Ruth Davies, McDill’s partner, always called him Lawrence, never Larry, and though neither deferred to him, they always listened carefully when he spoke.
Mann was a fireplug of a man with a liquor-reddened face and blond hair going white; he had an Australian accent. Virgil thought he might be forty-five. He was noisy and argumentative and angry.
Davies was stunned: not weeping, but disoriented, almost not-believing. A short, not-quite-dumpy woman with brown hair and wire-rimmed glasses, she looked like a church mouse. Her mouth was a thin, tight line: whoever had given McDill the lipstick note, it hadn’t been Davies.
All three, Virgil thought, after the introductions had been made and some questions answered, were intensely self-centered. They were not so concerned about the existential aspects of McDill’s death, but rather, what it means to me. They had also been concerned with image, Virgil thought, to the point of silliness. They could have driven up from the Twin Cities, individually, in three hours. Instead, they’d rented a floatplane, apparently to demonstrate the urgency of the matter, and after soaking up time in arranging the flight, and getting together, and making the flight, they’d taken six or seven hours.
Harcourt had checked Virgil quickly, eyes narrowing a bit, and he asked, “Have you had any
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