The doc said, “That’s the first thing everybody asks for when they wake up... Goddamn cell phones make me tired. Guy’s in cardiac arrest, he wants his phone... I’ll give it to you, but don’t use it any more than you have to—you really need the sleep.”
Virgil got the phone, called Johnson Johnson, and told him what had happened. “I need you to get my truck out from behind Shanker’s. You know where the backup key is. There’s guns and other stuff in there, and I don’t want anyone breaking in. Don’t take it to the cabin—take it up to your place, where you and Clarice can keep an eye on it. Then, get my iPad out of the seat pocket and bring it down here.”
Johnson: “Wait a minute. You say a bunch ofwomenbeat the shit out of you?”
Virgil said, “Johnson, get the fuckin’ truck, okay?”
When he had Johnson moving, he called Jon Duncan at the BCA and told him, and Duncan said, “Holy crap, Virgil. What are you into now?”
“It’s that goddamn Barbie doll thing you put me on,” Virgilsaid. “Doesn’t have anything to do with the murder. I’ll be moving again tomorrow. Do not tell Frankie about this or she’ll jump in her truck and come running over here, all worried. We don’t need that.”
“You need Jenkins and Shrake?” Jenkins and Shrake were the BCA house thugs.
“No. Not yet anyway. What I need is some sleep. I’ll call you tomorrow morning and tell you where I’m at.”
“Take it easy, Virgil. Don’t push it. Do what the doctors tell you. If you need more time to recover, take it.”
“Yeah. Call you tomorrow.”
—
While he was talking to Johnson, a woman in a sheriff’s deputy’s uniform stepped through the door. They spent five minutes talking: he gave her what details he had on the attack, and she said she was sorry, they’d try to find the truck. And she went away.
Virgil dropped back on the pillow, thinking about the women who’d attacked him, and about the mysterious Jesse McGovern. From the reactions he’d gotten from Trippton people, he’d begun to push McGovern further down his list of priorities.
As an experienced cop, he was completely aware of the tragedies that sometimes followed a too-slavish application of the law. His own girlfriend had lived on the edge of the law for years, sometimes tiptoeing over the border. But she was a good mother, maybe a great mother, with five kids and no husband. If she hadn’t supported them, if she’d been trucked off to jail, her kids would have been screwed.
What do you do about those situations?
He’d nearly decided to let McGovern slide; the women who had beaten him had convinced him otherwise. If he could find the four of them, they’d be trundling off to the Shakopee women’s prison, and Jesse McGovern could suck onit.
ELEVENJohnson Johnson walked into the hospital room with Virgil’s truck keys, stopped, and said, “You got a blue squid on your face.”
“Holding my nose together,” Virgil said.
“Yeah, well, the word’s out that you got beat up by a bunch of women, but I’m doing the best I can to squash it,” Johnson said. “I’m telling everybody you were once ranked third as a light-heavyweight fighter, and there’s no way...”
“Well, it’s all true,” Virgil said. “All except the light-heavyweight part.”
“You have your facts, I have mine,” Johnson said. “Virgil, I got to tell you, you look like a fuckin’ raccoon. A raccoon with a blue squid on its face.”
“Thank you.”
“It’s no big deal,” Johnson said. “Anybody who’s worth a damn has had his nose broken at least once... Though, how many is this for you? Three? That’s bordering on too many. Does Frankie know about it?”
“No, and she better not find out,” Virgil said. “In themeantime, I’m looking for somebody associated with Jesse McGovern, who drives a red double-cab pickup and has one of those family stickers in the back with a husband, wife, five kids, some dogs and a cat.”
“Huh. Ford, Chevy, or Dodge?”
“I don’t know. Could be a Toyota, as far as I know.”
“Not in Trippton, it couldn’t be. I’ll tell you what. I don’t want you messin’ with Jesse, but this doesn’t sound like her,” Johnson said. “She’s a vegetarian, and vegetarians don’t go around beating people up. Probably one of her contractors. I’ll check around. What else can you tell me about them?”
“They wear parkas.”
“That’s a great fuckin’ clue right there,” Johnson said. “Too bad it’s not August, you could pick them right out.”
“That’s all I got,” Virgil said.
