Johnson considered and then said, “No. It would have been an accident. He wouldn’t have thought about it.”
“I can buy that,” Virgil said. “She was probably hit only once, in the head. Like somebody got mad, swatted her with a bottle.”
“You know, I can’t even see him doingthat,” Johnson said. “He’s been in enough fights that he’d know that he’d hurt her bad. I can see him twisting her arm, maybe choking her a little, slapping her... Not hitting her with a bottle. Not cracking her skull.”
“You’re not helping here,” Virgil said.
“I’m telling you the truth, though.”
They gnawed through a few slices of the pizza, which turnedout to be tougher than it looked. Clarice asked Virgil, “So... you found a place that sells sex stuff?”
“Back room at Bernie’s Books.”
Her eyebrows went up. “Really? I didn’t know that—but I guess I’m not surprised. Jimmy’s always been a sleaze dog. A friend of mine told me he was coming on to her daughter when the daughter was fifteen. He was thirty-four.”
“That’s called statutory rape in Minnesota,” Virgil said.
Johnson: “You can’t rape statues anymore?”
Clarice ignored him. “They hadn’t slept together before the mom found out. He might have introduced the daughter to reefer madness, though. My friend went down to the sheriff’s office and talked to Jeff Purdy and Jeff had a word with Jimmy. That ended that.”
Johnson asked, “When are you going to talk to Fred?”
“Tomorrow morning,” Virgil said, “if I can get out of your driveway.”
“Well, if you can’t, Fred’s place is on Melon, right where it comes down to the highway. You could ride one of the sleds down there, if you aren’t ascared to walk across the railroad tracks.”
“We’ll see what happens,” Virgil said.
Johnson looked at Clarice. “What do you think?”
“Don’t know him that well,” she said. “From a woman’s perspective, though, I can put him with Gina if she was sleeping with Corbel. Fred’s good-looking, has got the same kind of rough-trade vibe that Corbel has. If bad boys did it for her, Fred would fit the bill.”
“The duty officer at the BCA called him that,” Virgil said. “Badboy.”
FIFTEENCorbel Cain didn’t drink every day, or even every week; but once in a while, when the weight of the world grew too heavy, he’d go off on what he called a run and what his doctor called a binge. During the run, Corbel told the doc, he’d likely get screwed, stewed, and tattooed—and, more than likely, correct some grievous wrongs.
He didn’t win all the fights, because he tended to pick on even larger brawlers, but he won most of them.
“The problem with that is,” his doc said after the last run, “somebody will eventually kick you to death. Or cripple you. Or you’ll forget to stop sometime and you’ll hurt somebody bad and wind up in prison. You got to cut this shit out, Corbel.”
Cain thought about it, and seriously, but hadn’t gotten there yet.
—
As Virgil was getting ready for bed that night, Cain was disturbing the peace at George Brown’s bowling alley.
After Brown cut him off, Cain struggled out into the parking lot, where, with his oldest pal, Denwa Burke, at his side, theymutually agreed that they needed more excitement in their lives, because, honestly, when you thought about it, too much was never enough.
Driving drunk usually provided solid entertainment. Because bars were such a large part of Trippton’s economy, the cops generally stayed away from drivers who might have an extra cocktail under their belts as long as they didn’t run into anything too expensive or uninsured.
Cain got in his Jeep Rubicon, fired that mother up, and five minutes later launched himself and Burke onto the frozen Mississippi River. Once clear of the first ice village, he aimed the truck north and dropped the hammer. The Jeep bucked and thrashed and occasionally went airborne off the windrows of snow, Burke screaming his approval—and chipping a tooth on a bottle of Stoli—until they hit the main channel, where the wind had cleared most of the bumps.
There, running the Jeep up to fifty, Cain cut sharp left, and the Jeep spun down the ice like a top. He did it again and again, then the snow came, and they were essentially flying blind, but still working the ice, until Burke shouted, “Stop, stop!” and Cain yelled back, “You pussy!” and Burke shouted, “No, stop, stop!” Cain got the Jeep stopped, and Burke popped open his door, got out, and barfed most of several beers, a pint of Stoli, and four or five hot dogs onto the ice, got back in the truck, wiped his chin with his parka sleeve, and said, “I’m good.”
“’Preciate that,” Cain said, and, “Pass the bottle.”
Denwa passed it, Cain took two long swallows, passed the bottle back, and dropped the hammer.
