“You’re right. We’ll have to talk about how to handle him.”
—
David Birkmann knew Virgil Flowers by sight from Virgil’s involvement in the dog-snatching, meth-cooking, school board murders cases. Virgil had been on the witness stand down at the courthouse for parts of two days, an SRO crowd, and Birkmann had been there for the whole thing.
He’d gotten the distinct impression that Flowers was not a man to be fooled with. At the same time, he’d heard that Flowerswas going around town asking only the most routine questions and hadn’t a clue about what had happened to Gina Hemming.
Birkmann was on a stool at his Dunkin’ Donuts outlet when Virgil came ambling down the sidewalk on the other side of the street and went into Moore Financial. He was interviewing the reunion committee, Birkmann thought.
On the previous Sunday, with the murder three days in the past, Birkmann, nursing a vicious hangover, had driven into the Dunkin’ Donuts. His store was one of the few places in town that was open early on a Sunday morning, and he desperately needed a coffee and a sugar fix. When he pushed through the door, his counterwoman, Alice, was gawking at John Handy, who worked for the city’s buildings department. Alice pivoted toward him, her mouth still open in astonishment, and sputtered, “John... Tell Dave.”
Handy, with the intensity of a man delivering news that was bad, but moreinterestingthan personally bad, said, “Somebody killed Gina Hemming. Threw her body in the river. Ben Potter spotted her down by the sewage plant, snagged her with a Rapala, and pulled her up on the bank.”
Birkmann was astonished. “What?”
Handy had the details: half a dozen city employees had been involved in the recovery and transportation of the body, and sheriff’s deputies had spent half of Saturday evening checking out her house. There was now word that Virgil Flowers of the BCA was coming back to town to take charge of the investigation.
Birkmann barely registered the part about Virgil:She had been pulled out of the river? What the fuck?
At the moment, he’d staggered backward onto an empty stool and blurted, “But I saw her Thursday night.”
Handy said, “Oh, yeah—you were in the Class of ’92?”
Birkmann nodded dumbly.Pulled out of the river?
“Well, Flowers gonna be on you like white on rice,” Handy said. “Word is, she was probably killed that very night you all were meeting.”
Birkmann stood up and muttered, “I gotta go... walk around.”
Alice asked, “You all right, Dave?”
Birkmann ran his hands through his hair and said, “This is awful. I knew her since we were in grade school. Since kindergarten.”
Handy and Alice nodded sympathetically, and Birkmann wandered semi-blindly out the door.What the fuck?In the river?
—
On that Sunday, reeling from the shock of the discovery of Hemming’s body, Birkmann went back home and sat in front of the TV for most of the day, tried drinking some more, and fell into bed in a full-out stupor.
The next day, Monday, he steamed himself out in the shower, dressed neatly for work, chose a yellow hat from his box of GetOut! complimentary hats, and headed downtown.
His Dunkin’ Donuts store was Trippton’s epicenter of the latest news, rumor, and blind conjecture. There was a load of all of it, on Monday morning. Most of the medical examiner’s report was on the street by Monday, and Hemming reportedly had been beaten to death before she was thrown in the effluent stream.
He spent the rest of Monday on the routine chores of a small business operator—writing checks, approving invoices, worrying.
The news stream was even richer on the next day, Tuesday. Flowers had been badly beaten on Monday afternoon and hadbeen taken to the clinic and held overnight and might be out of it for good with permanent brain damage. There were rumors that the BCA was planning to flood the town with agents; that Flowers had been attacked by people who were making the Barbie-O dolls; that the attackers were all women; that Gina Hemming had planned to foreclose on the boot factory and that she’d been killed to stall the foreclosure; that Flowers’s friend Johnson Johnson had sworn to kill Flowers’s attackers; that one of the murderous school board members who’d gone missing had returned to town and had organized the attack on Flowers as revenge for her friends’ imprisonment; that Gina Hemming’s heart had been cut out of her body and placed on a satanic altar found near the sewage plant but that the sheriff was covering it up until the cult leader could be arrested, that the sheriff denied that, but was obviously lying, and might be involved in the cult himself.
“Jeff Purdy in a satanic cult? I don’t think so,” Birkmann said.
Alice said, “But wouldn’t it be the person you’d least suspect?”
Another donut eater jumped in to answer that: “Maybe, but Jeff is too damn dumb to be in a satanic cult. He has trouble starting his car.”
“You got me there,” Alice said.
—
Now, on Wednesday morning, here was Flowers leaving Moore Financial and heading straight across the street to the donut shop. Birkmann wasn’t ready for that and retreated to the kitchen, where he could hear what was being said but couldn’t be seen from the counter.
