She didn’t see the body immediately because it was in the dark space below the storm door and a streetlight was shining in through the glass in the door. She stepped farther into the hallway and saw the lump on the floor, like a rolled-up rug...
“Margot? Margot?”
—
After the shooting, Birkmann ran for a half block, seeing nobody in the storm. He slowed, found himself panting. She had to be dead, because she recognized him, he thought, in the split second before he pulled the trigger, and if she wasn’t dead, then he was. So she had to be dead. He hurried down the second block, got in his truck, and, as he was about to pull the door shut, heard the first of the sirens.
What? Had he missed her? No, he hadn’t; he’d actually seen the bullets impact her forehead and her legs failing as she slumped toward the floor. Another witness? My God, they might be right behind him.
Birkmann, near panic, rolled up the hill and around the corner and headed for home.
—
The cops didn’t come for him, so Moore must have been dead. Although, he supposed, she could simply be so injured that she couldn’t speak... at least, not yet. The Dunkin’ Donuts opened at seven o’clock, to catch the going-to-work crowd, and he’d be there right at seven, to see what the latest news was.
In bed that night, Birkmann remembered what Virgil had suggested about talking with God. He tried it. He tried confession, as he’d heard the Catholics did it. He contemplated the meaning ofthe two deaths: in the world, in the town. He never got an answer to anything. It didn’t make him feel better. There was no peace to be had.
When he closed his eyes, he didn’t see anything but the little orange things he always saw when he closed his eyes.
Talking to God. Might work for Flowers, but for the Bug Boy it was just more nerve-jangling horseshit. Better to sit up and watch the lateshow.
EIGHTEENVirgil had spent the late afternoon processing Carolyn Weaver through the Trippton Clinic and filling out arrest forms when, he thought, he should have been raking the Cheevers over the coals.
The doc said Weaver’s injury was only superficially like Virgil’s. Weaver’s injury was much worse. She would need surgery to realign the nasal bones at the top of her nose, which had been broken, and to reestablish the contour of the nasal cartilage at the tip. To get that done, she would have to be shipped up to Mayo in Rochester.
When the doc had finished evaluating her, he put her to bed, and a sheriff’s deputy put a cuff around one of her ankles and locked it to the bed to keep her from running off. The doc took a look at Virgil’s face, said that he was doing fine, and that the squid could be removed... “But don’t hit anything else with your nose.”
Virgil promised to not do that, and the squid came off. He checked himself in a mirror and said, “I’ve lost my luster.”
“If you had any in the first place, it’ll come back,” the doc said. “You can talk to the admission clerk about insurance.”
While he was doing that, Griffin sidled up to Weaver’s bed, dropped a sheath of papers on her stomach, and said, “You’ve been served.”
On the way out, Virgil asked if serving Weaver would be good enough. Griffin said, “I’m talking to our lawyer about that, but I think I’m still gonna have to find that goddamn McGovern. I’m going back with a deputy to Weaver’s place, and we’ll seize those dolls and the parts. I’d like to get that done tonight, if I can.”
“Stay in touch,” Virgil said.
—
As Virgil was driving over to the Cheevers’ Chevrolet dealership, Johnson Johnson called to find out what had happened in CarryTown.
“I know Carolyn,” Johnson said after Virgil filled him in. “Her old man ran off to Canada a couple years back. She’s a tough old bird, and she needs the money, so I’m not surprised she was working with Jesse.”
He asked if there was anything new about the murder, and Virgil said there wasn’t, but he was planning to talk to a couple more people who’d been at Hemming’s party. “I’ve got to tell you, Johnson, I don’t expect much. I still think Fred Fitzgerald had something to do with the murder, but I’ve got nothing to pin him with.”
“Do what you can until seven o’clock,” Johnson said. “Clarice is making Norwegian lasagna.”
—
Virgil went over to the Chevrolet dealership to talk to Lucy Cheever about the loan problem she’d had with Gina Hemming, but a salesman said that she and her husband had gone to La Crosse to do some shopping and catch a movie and wouldn’t be home until late.
Virgil still had a name on his interview list, a divorced guy named George Brown, who owned and operated the town bowling alley, with a summer-only beach volleyball court in back.
Virgil talked to him in his office at the bowling alley, and Brown, a lazy-looking blond guy with a chunk, claimed to have been behind the bowling alley bar after the meeting at Hemming’s house. He’d been there until closing, at one o’clock. He did have a snowmobile but said he didn’t ice fish and didn’t have an ice auger.
Virgil pushed Brown about a possible relationship with Hemming, but Brown said, “She was far too good for me back in high school, and she was still too good for me. I run a bowling alley, Virgil, where I allow people to illegally smoke cigars, and I’ve got a minor but persistent drinking problem. In the winter, I sit in the back and drink beer, and, in the summer, I watch twenty-one-year-old girls in bikinis playing volleyball. Sometimes I hit on them. Sometimes they say yes.”
“You never dated Gina? Never asked?”
