Deep Freeze (Virgil Flowers #10)

by John Sandford

What did he love about her? Everything. He loved to watch her walk. He loved to hear her talk, he loved to hear her laugh. He loved the brains and the self-confidence . . . the whole . . . gestalt.

For the next couple of minutes, there was a lot of calling her name, pleading, and shaking—“Gina, come on, I didn’t mean it, get up. Come on, Gina, get up”—but the fact was, Gina Hemming was deader than the aforesaid deer, looking up at him with half-open blank gray eyes. Gina wouldn’t be coming back until she marched in with Jesus and all the saints.

“Well, Marv Hiners is first vice president over there. He’s ironclad for Thursday night and Friday—he was up at a Wild game in the Cities with his wife and kids, got back here about noon on Saturday. Anyway, the sister, her name’s Ann Ryan—her husband is Terry Ryan—says they’ll probably sell the bank off to Wells Fargo. Take the cash out. That’s been the plan for a while, she said, so Marv knew he wouldn’t be taking over the place . . .” “Still could wind up running the bank if Wells keeps him on,” Virgil said. “Yeah, but he’d be on a branch bank salary.

Even if he runs the place, he won’t be getting rich. Besides . . . he was in the Cities. This whole thing doesn’t look like a professional hit, which it would have to be if the Ryans or Hiners paid for it. To me, it looks like a domestic, and the killer tried to hide it.”

Janice Anderson

“Maybe those two could make cookies instead,” Virgil said. “Now, tell me about Jesse McGovern.” Purdy groaned. “Aw, shit, Virgil, don’t hassle me about Jesse. Please.” “Where is she?” Virgil asked. “I don’t know. I don’t want to know,” Purdy said. “You ever run for anything?”

“Okay, okay, not exactly, but I try not to piss off influential people any more than I have to, and pointing you at Jesse would probably cost me five hundred votes,” Purdy said. “So, I ain’t gonna do it. You want her, catch her on your own. To tell you the truth, if I were you, I’d catch whoever killed Gina Hemming and let Jesse McGovern slide. Catching her wouldn’t do nobody any good except some big corporation out in California. Which doesn’t have any votes in Buchanan County.”

He had a point, but somehow it didn’t seem entirely congruent with the American Way, the Rule of Law, and all that. But a job was a job, and times were bad in the small out-of-state towns. Virgil got the keys to Hemming’s house and headed for the door.

his head since high school. I once walked in on him necking with

“Here’s some of the good stuff: before she and Justin separated, Gina had an on-and-off affair with a brute named

Corbel Cain.”

A wrinkle appeared in her forehead. “I don’t . . . I don’t believe I know that name.” “Liar.” “You’re right, I am.” She rapped the table with her knuckles. “Stay away from her, Virgil. I know about this private detective who’s wandering around town. If you found Jesse, anything that happened would lead to a tragedy.”

“Corbel—” “Fuck it. I’m gonna kick some ass and take some names. If I find anything out, I’ll call you.” “Stay away from Justin Rhodes,” Virgil said. “That’s something I can promise you,” Cain said. “I’ll stay away from Justin Rhodes.”

“Fred Fitzgerald. He’s a biker guy. He’s got a tattoo shop out on Melon.”

“Don’t know him that well,” she said. “From a woman’s perspective, though, I can put him with Gina if she was sleeping

with Corbel. Fred’s good-looking, has got the same kind of rough-trade vibe that Corbel has. If bad boys did it for her, Fred would fit the bill.” “The duty officer at the BCA called him that,” Virgil said. “Bad boy.”

notes was from Hemming to Lucy Cheever,

Off the phone, Virgil thought about what Hiners had told him. Hemming was planning to turn down the Cheevers’ loan application, but Hiners hadn’t known that. The Cheevers hadn’t mentioned it, and Hemming’s successors at the bank were about to approve it. For the

Cheevers, Hemming’s death had paid off—big-time.

Joseph Anderson.

As he approached, he thought, Is this really necessary? It was only possible, perhaps not even probable, that Moore would tell Flowers what she knew.

“There’s all kinds of rumors going around, about who was at that party at Gina’s on

Thursday night and what time that broke up. Some people say it broke up at nine o’clock.”

“I don’t know if this will mean anything, but a friend of mine—honestly, a friend, not me, and not somebody involved with the Barbie-Os—said a GetOut! truck was parked outside Gina’s house ...

“Definitely not David. My friend said it was a blond-headed man. The man may have seen my friend looking out the window at him and turned his face away, ...

Virgil called the sheriff, asked him to round up Sandy Hart and Belle Penney, the two women who’d been playing Scrabble with Moore when she was murdered, and take them back to Moore’s house.

He and Pweters finished with the search, and Virgil lugged Fitzgerald’s computer out to his truck; they had nine names of possible B and D clients and had found ties both to Hemming and to Moore. Hemming had disguised herself by using a masked account name on Gmail but had slipped up by signing one of her emails with a lowercase “g,” and in another, from the same Gmail account, mentioning that he couldn’t come over at the regular time because she had a meeting that wouldn’t break up until nine o’clock.

Virgil sat in his truck, heater running full blast, getting madder and madder. He thought he knew what had happened: he’d told Margaret Griffin that he’d gotten a call from Jesse McGovern, and Griffin, as an experienced PI, had a hacker somewhere who could look at phone records.

They’d gotten into Virgil’s and had spotted the incoming call from the night before. He’d known that could happen—in theory, at least—and every PI he’d ever met had ways of

He shouldn’t have mentioned McGovern’s call to Griffin. He’d screwed up.

McGovern answered a moment later, and Virgil said, pitching his voice up and without identifying himself, “Your barn will be raided in the next couple hours. Somebody may be watching it right now. The phone you’re talking on is being tracked. Take the battery out. The main thing is, make sure nobody gets hurt.”

He’d check, but he was sure that neither Cambden nor Houston had killed Hemming.

On his way back to town, Jesse McGovern called. All

You gotta be a little careful with Bobbie.”

Bobbie made herself into the local expert on it, she’s heard every rumor there is. I didn’t know about her spotting the GetOut! truck until yesterday—I mean, a week after

she saw it. She never mentioned it before. So . . . anyway, there’s

possibilities—the person who killed Hemming and Moore, or the people who are involved with Jesse McGovern in this Barbie-O thing.” Cheever’s head bobbed up and down, considering, and said, “Look. Jesse gathered up a bunch of people who are really . . . backed into a corner. Can’t live on welfare. We’re talking people who might not have enough food to eat, even with the food shelf, not enough money to pay for heat. I’ve got a mechanic who’s supporting his brother and his brother’s family because his brother can’t find work. Telling that guy to move to Texas to find a job is like telling him to move to Mars.”

“Desperate.” “It’s all over, in small towns. Hell, Trippton is better than most. Anyway, Jesse probably has fifteen or twenty working with her, all of them people like that. To have somebody trying to take away what Jesse’s giving them . . . well, you want to talk about fear and anger and hate all stirred together,

Virgil broke into the open circle of patrons, pointed at Birkmann, and shouted, “Sit down! Sit on the stage.” Birkmann said, “He was going to kill me,” as Virgil passed. Cain was holding his left arm across his chest with his right hand and arm, and Virgil asked, “You okay?”

“Busted my arm,” Cain said. “Why? What are you doing?” “He killed Gina,” Cain said, and several pain tears leaked out of the corner of his eyes. “I can see it clear as day.” “How do you know that?” Virgil asked. “Process of elimination. When you know nobody else did it, it has to be whoever is left.” Virgil couldn’t believe it. “That’s it? You were going to beat him up because you’d eliminated all the other possibilities? In your own mind? Which is soaked in vodka?”

Virgil had calmed down by the time they got to the clinic, but as they walked to the door he told Cain, “You’re an alcoholic, Corbel. You’re a binge drinker, which is the worst kind, because you don’t believe that you’re an alcoholic. You’ll eventually kill somebody, either in a fight or driving drunk. Then you’ll dry

out, because they don’t serve drinks in prison. You want to visit Stillwater for a few years, keep on drinking.”

“You really turned into a Debbie Downer,” Cain said. He laughed. “That goddamn Birkmann. He broke my arm. I gotta give it to him, I didn’t see that coming. Not ...

Virgil lay in bed in the dark

but spent no time at all consulting with God. He spent it, instead, in contemplation. He’d never formulated exactly what he thought about contemplation except that it was superficially like meditation. You found a quiet, dark place—a bed would do fine—and worked with your brain. Instead of attempting to empty your brain, as you did with meditation, you filled it with a particular subject matter and stirred it around, making new connections, as ridiculous as those connections might be.

Virgil sat in his truck outside Hemming’s house, eyes closed, and tried to imagine the string of events if the killer was David Birkmann, as he now thought likely. Birkmann goes back to the house for some reason. He and Hemming have a quick and ultimately violent argument—money or sex, Virgil thought. Give them ten minutes for that. She slashes him with her nails, he hits her with something round or cylindrical, takes it with him when he leaves. Give him an additional ten minutes to react to her death, move the body, run out of the house. According to that time line, he’s probably out of the house by 9:30, down at the bar by 9:37. Fred Fitzgerald arrives at 9:40 . . . Tight, but workable . . . But he’d need more to get a conviction. A confession would be good.

The cherry on the cake arrived a few minutes later when Lucas Davenport called Virgil from the Twin Cities. Davenport was now a federal marshal, no longer working with the BCA, but he and Virgil still talked.

“Because he remembered something, despite being hit in the head a lot. He remembered that when I was doing the Black Hole investigation, that one of the guys involved in the murders had been a pest control officer.” “Yeah?” “Yeah. He had a silenced Ruger .22 semiauto pistol that was made especially for sale to pest control officers. I don’t know if Ruger still makes them, but they did for a long time.” “One of my suspects—the

leading suspect—runs a pest control company,” Virgil said. “Jenkins mentioned that. Now that we’ve solved your case for you, for which we plan to take full credit, I’d recommend that you go over and pick the guy up.” “I’ll do that,” Virgil said. Cherry on the cake.

“Don’t know about that. By nine o’clock, I was already down at Club Gold, doing the karaoke.” Moore frowned. “I thought you left after me. I thought your van was still there when I pulled out.”