But, no. It wasn’t.
—
He still had a few more people to check: Birkmann’s employees—the non-blonds. He had their names in his notebooks and he spent two hours that afternoon tracking them down. Because Hemming’s murder had been a sensation, all three men knew where they’d been the night of the murder.
Two of them had been at home with their families. The third had been with his girlfriend at the movies in La Crosse. Virgil checked on the La Crosse alibi with a phone call to the girlfriend, while he was still sitting with Birkmann’s employee, and the girlfriend confirmed it. That wasn’t airtight, but Virgil believed it anyway: all three said that they had little previous contact with either Hemming or Moore and had never done business with either of them.
—
Virgil was back in his truck when Jerry Clark, Club Gold manager, called. “I, uh, told my wife about talking to you. I figured when you said don’t tell anybody, you didn’t mean her...”
“Well... she can’t talk, Jerry. Honest to God, there’ve already been two murders, one in absolutely cold blood.”
“Yeah, okay. Anyway, she said that she’s sure she saw Dave come in from the parking lot with Cary Lowe. She said he still had his parka on. I don’t have Cary’s number, but he works at Home Electric and Appliance here on Main. You might check with him.”
“Great. But don’t tell anyone else.”
“I won’t. Promise.”
—
Virgil had seen the Home Electric store, did a U-turn, and went back to it. The store did both sales and small engine and electric repairs, and Lowe, the store’s assistant manager, was alone in the store’s workshop when Virgil arrived. Virgil asked about Birkmann.
“I do remember that,” Lowe said. “I didn’t see him come in from the parking lot, but I ran into him in the men’s can.”
“Was he still wearing his parka?”
“Yup. I remember that because there’s not a lot of room between the urinal and the sink, and your coats can kinda overlap. Dave was washing his hands, and I had to pee a little sideways to make sure I didn’t spray his coat.”
“Did you make a phone call around then? Something we could use to tell the time?”
“No, but it was probably... nine-thirty? Something like that?”
“Nine-thirty. Definitely after nine?”
“Oh, yeah,” Lowe said. “Thursday is store night in Trippton, and I was working until nine. There was no one in the store, so I locked up right at nine. The club’s only two blocks down, so I walked over, had a beer, was watching the karaoke, went back to pee, and ran into Dave in the men’s room. So that was probably... nine-thirty, give or take.”
“And he’d just come in from the parking lot?”
“I don’t know that; I didn’t see him come in. He had his parka on, though, and the club’s always warm.”
“Thank you,” Virgil said.
—
Virgil called Pweters, the sheriff’s deputy. “You working tonight?”
“Yeah, I’m three to eleven. You got something?”
“I’ll tell you about it when I see you. I’ve got some stuff to think about, so let’s plan to get together about five o’clock. You know where Johnson Johnson’s cabin is?”
“Yeah.”
“Meet you there at five.”
—
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.
