“Yes. You must be Virgil Flowers.”
“I am,” Virgil said. “I need to speak to you about Gina Hemming.”
“I was expecting you,” Birkmann said. “Come on in.”
They walked up a short flight of steps into a kitchen, with an old linoleum floor, that smelled of fried eggs, grease, and maybe oatmeal. Birkmann asked, “You want a beer or a Pepsi?”
“Thanks, I’m good,” Virgil said, he being a Coca-Cola snob.
Birkmann led the way out of the kitchen through a squared-off arch into the dining room and through another arch into the living room, where a couple of easy chairs faced an oversized television. He pointed Virgil at one of the chairs, which turned out to have a revolving base, and he took the other, and they rotated toward each other.
Birkmann said, “Ask away, but I don’t think I can help you much.”
“You last saw Gina Hemming Thursday night?”
“Yeah. I left there about eight forty-five. I sat in my truck for a minute, wrote down some stuff from the meeting—when we were supposed to meet again; what I was supposed to do, exactly;the deadlines and stuff. There were still a few people there when I left...”
“Then you went home?” Virgil was checking Birkmann, saw no signs of any fingernail damage to his bare face or arms.
“No, not right away. I went down to Club Gold—that’s a bar downtown. They have karaoke on Thursday. I drank a couple beers and sang a couple of songs. I was there for a while... I don’t know exactly how long. I walked out with Bob Jackson, he’s a post office clerk. He might have a better idea about the time, but I’d say... it must have been close to eleven. From there, I came straight home and went to bed. I never even heard about Gina until Sunday morning, down at the donut shop. I couldn’t believe it.”
“What’d you do on Friday and Saturday?”
Birkmann shrugged. “The usual. I have two businesses, and most of my job is keeping the books, making appointments, making sure the guys are on time and are doing the work, and ordering stuff. I take complaints, if there are any. I’ve got an office on Main Street—actually, it’s in a building on Main Street, but I’m in the back. I did the usual stuff on Friday, I guess, because I didn’t know that anything had happened to Gina, and nobody told me. I worked a half day Saturday, came back here, plowed the driveway, and, later in the day I ran up to La Crosse. Went to a bookstore, bought some movies, got back late, got up early Sunday, went downtown to the donut shop, and that’s where I heard about Gina. Freaked me out, man. I mean, really. I’ve known her since we were both five years old.”
“Did you see anybody you knew at the bookstore?”
“No... but I did charge the movies on my Visa card. That’d give you a time and date, I guess, if you wanted to check.”
Virgil nodded. “Of the people on the committee, who’d be most likely to have killed her?”
Birkmann leaned back in the chair. “What? None of them. Listen, Officer... Agent...”
“Virgil,” Virgil said.
“I have a hard time believing any of this, Virgil,” Birkmann said, waving a hand to indicate “any of this.” “If you want to know what I think, I think she went out somewhere after we were all gone, maybe got hit by a drunk driver, and the guy panicked, and, you know... put her in the river.”
“Her car was still parked in her garage and it was really cold—not much place to walk to from where she lived. She had some boots, but they were sitting by the back door.”
“Maybe somebody...” Birkmann trailed off in thought. Then said, “You know what? I don’tknowwhat happened. I don’t have any idea. I can’t even guess.”
“Do you have a ten-inch ice auger?” Virgil asked.
“I don’t have any auger. I don’t do that... ice fish. Or regular fish. I don’t have a boat or a snowmobile, or anything. Before I got divorced, I used to deer hunt, but I don’t do that anymore, either. Mostly what I do is work.”
“Dating anyone?” Virgil asked.
“No. To be honest, I’d like a few years of peace and quiet,” Birkmann said. “I’ve had some of the local gals flirting with me, but I’m not making another mistake like the last one.”
“You wouldn’t know anyone involved in bondage and discipline, that kind of sexual practice?”
Birkmann chuckled—a dry, tired sound—rubbed his face, and said, “You know what, Virgil? I talked to Margot Moore and she said you had asked her about B and D. That’s what she called it,and I had no idea of what it was. The initials. I knew people tied each other up and played with whips and so on—I’m not stupid—but I didn’t know what you called it. I was kinda embarrassed she had to explain it to me. I mean, the sexiest thing I ever looked at was aPlayboymagazine. This tying people up... I didn’t know.”
“Just had a similar experience,” Virgil said. He felt sorry for Birkmann: as Johnson had suggested, he was a bit of a schlub. “I asked a woman if there was a place you could buy B and D stuff in Trippton and she told me no there wasn’t because anybody with any brains would order straight from Amazon, where they’ve got everything anybody would ever want.”
Birkmann made the same tired chuckle sound again, his head dropped, and he rubbed his forehead, shook his head, and said, “That’s not entirely... true.”
“It’s not?”
