“We’re usually looking for bodies.”
—
When all the equipment was stowed, the three men got back in the truck and took off for St. Paul, and Virgil and Johnson rocketed back to the cabin on the sleds. When they got there, they found Griffin sitting in her car, the engine running, reading theRepublican-River.
As they pulled in and killed the engines of the sleds, she got out of her car, walked over, and said, “Well, I’ve now read theworst newspaper in the country, from top to bottom and end to end. The most important thing I found was that if you act now and buy one turkey at full price, you can get a second turkey of the same size or smaller at half price.”
Johnson said, “For real? At Piggly Wiggly?”
“I thought the name was a joke, but that’s what the paper said.” She turned to Virgil. “You’ve got to help me out. The guy who owns the ice-fishing house, or tent or whatever it is, this Duane Hawkins, where you found the voice recording, has gone on vacation to Florida. So his neighbor says. I don’t believe it.”
Virgil said, “You know, Margaret, I’ve got a murder case...”
“You’ve also got a governor who told my boss at Mattel that you’d make it a priority to help out, and you’ve got a case of assault on an officer of the law that needs to get solved. That would be your case. You could probably solve it all at once by driving out to CarryTown and talking to the guy in trailer 400. Besides, tell me what you’d do on the murder case if you didn’t spend a half hour round-trip-driving out to CarryTown?”
Johnson said, “She’s got you there, Virgil. You ain’t got shit on the murder.”
Griffin said, “See? Even this lunk thinks you ought to help out.”
Johnson: “‘Lunk’? I represent that comment.”
Virgil: “Jesus, Johnson. The line is either ‘I resent that comment’ or ‘I resemble that comment,’ but it’s not ‘I represent that comment.’ Could you try to keep that straight?”
“Okay,” Johnson said. “I’m sorry.”
“You only say you’re sorry to make me feel bad.”
Griffin said, “You sound like teenage girls.”
—
They all went in the cabin, Johnson and Virgil stripped out of their snowmobile gear, and Johnson said, “I like that diving shit. I did a few tanks down in the Virgin Islands one winter. I’d be more interested in looking for sunken boats, though. Not so much bodies.”
“I believe if you’d asked him, he’d tell you that you can see about four feet down there. It’s not the Virgin Islands,” Virgil said.
“Yeah, well. You might be right. Did it help you at all?”
“Might,” Virgil said. “It’s another place and time that I know the killer was at.”
“As an experienced big-city police officer, I can tell you that what you found doesn’t mean anything unless you have a specific sighting of the guy driving out there with a body on the back of his snowmobile,” Griffin said. “Since you wasted that time, why don’t you take a few minutes to drive out to CarryTown? I’ll not only be out of your hair, I could be out of Trippton entirely.”
“Okay, okay. Let me call my crime scene crew and see if they need me for anything. If not, I’ll drive out there and see what’s what,” Virgil said.
“I’ll follow you,” Griffin said. “And please—please!—put a gun in your pocket.”
—
Virgil called Bea Sawyer and found that she had been trying to call him, but he hadn’t heard the phone ring or felt it vibrating through the thick snowmobile gear. When she answered, she said, “Virgil. Bill has the computer open. And we have an anomaly.”
“You know how I like those, Bea,” Virgil said.
“Then you’ll like this one. You want to come by? It’s easier to see than it is to explain.”
“Ten minutes,” Virgil said. He hung up and turned to Griffin and said, “Clue.”
“Ah, shit. Well, I’m still coming with you. After you look at this so-called clue, we can still go out to CarryTown.”
—
