When he got off the phone, Virgil went into the bathroom and checked his face in the mirror. He still looked beat up, and, from experience, thought he’d look that way for another three weeks or a month. He was pleased that none of his teeth were loose: dental work was a whole different problem, and way more unpleasant.
When he was done with his inspection, he undressed and got in the shower and steamed himself off, carefully washed as much of his face as he could get to. The air was so cold and dry that the humidity of the bathroom felt terrific. He got out of the shower and was toweling off when somebody began banging on the door.
Johnson’s cabin was a full-service establishment—Johnson had somebody staying in it half the weeks of the year, he’d said—and Virgil pulled a robe off a hook, wrapped it around himself, and hurried out to the front door, pausing only to open his gun safe and put his main pistol, a Glock, in the pocket of the robe.
At the door, he flipped on the porch light and peeked out a window to the left side of the porch. Margaret Griffin was standing there, and as he looked out the window, she knocked on the door again.
He went over and opened the door and motioned her inside and said, “You caught me in the shower.”
“Sorry. I stopped to tell you that I papered Duane Hawkins down at the Kubota dealer. He didn’t go to Florida at all. Everybody’s lying to me. Anyway, he says he didn’t know that anybody was putting together the dolls at his fishing shack.”
“It’s actually a tent, and since it’s transparent, and since he supposedly goes out there almost every night, that sounds like a fib,” Virgil said. “Not that I could prove it without some surveillance.”
“That won’t happen—this is a townwide conspiracy,” Griffin said. “I need to know whether you’re making any progress on the murders. I don’t want to get involved there; I just want to know if you’re going to be able to get me some time to run down Jesse McGovern.”
Virgil considered for a moment, then said, “Listen, Jesse calledme tonight, out of the blue. I don’t know how she got my phone number, but lots of people in town have it. She actually had a tip on the murder investigation—but she also told me that sales of the dolls are dropping off, and they’re getting ready to move to a new product that has nothing to do with Mattel. A few more weeks and there’ll be nothing to investigate, no reason to serve papers on anyone.”
“That’s not the entire point here,” Griffin said. “We don’t only want them to stop, we want people to see that they get punished. Jesse McGovern especially. We don’t want people messing with the Mattel product lines.”
Virgil said, “Margaret, I’m sorry, but I’ve got two murders on my hands. I don’t have time right now to mess with Jesse McGovern. If I break these murders in the next day or two... I’ll do what I can.”
Griffin left, still grumpy.
She might have to look elsewhere for help, shesaid.
TWENTY-ONEThe next morning, Virgil met Pweters at Ma and Pa Kettle’s. They both ordered pancakes and link sausages and extra syrup, and Virgil told him about an anonymous phone call from the night before, with the tip about a blond guy in a GetOut! truck.
“You gonna talk to Birkmann about his employees or hit Fred Fitzgerald’s place?” Pweters asked. “I’ll tell you, Fitzgerald will be back on the street before noon.”
“Then let’s do his place first—maybe he’s got something about this B and D ring he had going. Maybe there were more people involved than Hemming and Moore.”
They talked about that, finished breakfast, and headed for Fitzgerald’s. On the way, Virgil called Jeff Purdy and asked, “You know that we’re gonna search Fred Fitzgerald’s place this morning?”
“Yes. Pweters has the warrant.”
“I know, we just had breakfast. Anyway, Fitzgerald’s got a computer up there, and the warrant covers it. Could you sendsomebody down and ask him what the password is? So we don’t have to break into it?”
“Get back to you in five minutes.”
He did, and Virgil wrote the password—Tatooine—on a piece of paper and put it in his pocket.
—
The day was dark and cold, the wind whistling down the Mississippi from the northeast, but there was no snow. Fitzgerald’s place was right across the street from the railroad tracks and the river, and a squadron of snowmobiles went by on the river as Virgil was pulling up.
Pweters had the warrant and Fitzgerald’s key ring, which had been confiscated at the jail, and they let themselves in. They spent twenty minutes on the first floor—the work area—not expecting to find much, and didn’t, except for a gun safe. The safe was keyed, and the key was on the key ring; when they opened the safe, they found no guns but, instead, a collection of action figures.
Virgil took out an eighteen-inch-high Joker figure, shook it a few times to see if something might be concealed inside, but it seemed solid. Pweters pointed him at the comic-book posters on the shop walls: Star Wars stormtroopers, Wonder Woman, Serpentor, Aquaman. “He’s a comics guy.”
They climbed the stairs and took in Fitzgerald’s living quarters more carefully. While Virgil scanned the bedroom, Pweters looked at an aging Apple iMac. He tried a couple of passwords but nothing worked. “I got no ideas,” Pweters said. “I’ve tried one, two, three, four, five... his initials... his name... tattoo...”
Virgil said, “Let me in there.”
Pweters moved, and Virgil tapped in a few letters into the password space, and the machine opened up. “Look at his emails, see who he’s talking to,” Virgil said.
“Holy shit, how’d you do that?” Pweters demanded.
“Password was Tatooine—you know, the Star Wars planet, and a pun on ‘tattoo.’ Couldn’t miss it, with those posters on the wall downstairs.”
