Virgil hung up. Anal butt plug and prostate vibrator? What the hell was happening in the world? Somebody with a man bun and a skateboard in Portland, Oregon, might be able to explain how it was all very natural and healthy, but he wouldn’t find that guy in Trippton.
—
He called Johnson again and Johnson shouted over the whine of the circular saw, “She help you out?”
Virgil said, “Yeah. I need your expertise on the Hemming murder. You got someplace close that we can talk?”
“How about the Cheese-It? I could get a sandwich, and you could get a Diet Coke. I could be there in twenty minutes.”
“See you there.”
—
The Cheese-It was one of the lesser restaurants in a town full of them—lesser restaurants, that is. Virgil had once ordered a BLT at the Cheese-It and they’d forgotten to put the “B” inbetween the two pieces of soggy white bread. Johnson alleged he’d once sent an open-face roast beef sandwich back to the kitchen because it moved. On the other hand, there was nothing wrong with their Diet Cokes.
He got a Coke, and a table, and Johnson arrived a few minutes later, ordered a grilled cheese sandwich and a Sunkist Orange Soda, dropped into the chair opposite Virgil, and asked, “What’s up?”
Virgil said, “It’s Thursday night and it’s snowing, and you’ve killed Gina Hemming, maybe more by accident than by plan, and you decide to get rid of the body to delay the discovery of her death. Maybe to obscure the exact time of death... Maybe hoping nobody will ever find the body.”
“You dump her in the river,” Johnson said.
“Right. How do you do that in the first week of January with the river locked up tight? Who could carry her down to the effluent outflow at the sewer plant? It’s too far, and she was too heavy. The snow was really coming down, but there were also people working at the sewage plant—you, or your truck, could be seen.”
“I could have carried her,” Johnson said.
“Not many guys with your kind of strength,” Virgil said. “If you killed her and wanted to throw her in the river, would it even have occurred to you to park down there at the plant and walk a half mile with a body on your back and throw it in... and not expect somebody to see either you or your truck?”
Johnson shook his head. “No. It wouldn’t occur to me. It could be the guy wasn’t half bright and so he did it and got lucky. It was snowing like hell, so from his point of view, that might have been a good thing. If he thought somebody might have been coming, he could have stepped a few feet off the trail and not be seen...”
“True,” Virgil said.
Johnson scratched his neck and said, “I don’t believe it. He’s kinda frantic, he’s kinda panicked, he wants to get rid of her, he thinks of the river. Why? He could haul her up in the woods and stick her in a snowdrift and nobody would find her until the end of March.”
“You ask the right question: why?” Virgil said.
Johnson slapped the tabletop and said, “Because he knew the river. It was the first thing that popped into his head.”
“Why would he think that? The river’s locked up.”
“Because he’s a river rat. Because he’s got an ice-fishing shack out there, and a ten-inch auger. Cuts a couple three holes, hooks them up with a chisel, shoves her under. Like a hole you cut when you’re pike fishing. Hopes she doesn’t show up until spring, down in Dubuque. Or maybe never.”
“If you did that, somebody might still be able to see that big hole, right?” Virgil asked. “If somebody looked? Like us?”
“If I were doing it, I’d cut nice clean holes, the smallest that would take the body. I’d shove her as far down as I could, so the body wouldn’t get stuck under the ice right away. You could do that with the ice chipper, do it right, not afraid to get your arm wet, you could get her eight feet down. I’d let the holes freeze over. The river water wouldn’t come right to the top of the ice, so you’d have to pour more water in after the first freeze. Scuff some broken ice over it, drill another hole or two...”
“Probably still see where it was,” Virgil said.
“Not after you scuffed it up a little, packed some snow on it, got some fish blood on it. Drag some fishing stools over it...”
Virgil thought about it for a couple minutes, then asked, “You still got those sleds?”
“Absolutely. When do you want to go?” Johnson asked.
“This afternoon? I’m gonna have to get some warmer gear on. How many shacks out there?”
“Maybe fifty, in two groups, and a few scattered,” Johnson said. “Some of them will be locked up. Most of them not. Won’t be too many people out there in the afternoon—things don’t really get going until after dark.”
“Let’s do what we can. I gotta think if the guy’s a river rat, and if he has a shack, he’d have used his own place...”
