“Hey, I’m fuckin’ impressed, man.”
“Routine, when you know what you’re doing,” Virgil said.
—
Virgil found a collection of B and D equipment, including some crappy handcuffs, in a box in a living room closet; also a folding massage table and several books on massage. Fitzgerald appeared to have a variety of sidelines, but that wasn’t unusual in an isolated small town.
“Got something here,” Pweters called.
Virgil went over to look as Pweters clicked through a list. “I put ‘spank’ in the search field, which would cover ‘spanking’ and other variations, and I got seventeen emails up. Looks like four or five different women... although, some of the emails could be guys, I guess... Jeez, I bet that’s Janet Lincoln, the JLinc one.”
“You know her?”
“Yeah, everybody does. She runs the Sugar Rush; it’s a candy store downtown. And ice cream and so on. She’s a little chubby...”
“Guess chubby people like to get spanked, too,” Virgil said.
Pweters laughed. “I was hoping to find McComber on the list.”
“Didn’t seem to go all that well last night,” Virgil said.
“Ah, I got her,” Pweters said. “She pushed me and I pushed her back. Now she’s worried that I’m not interested. So she’ll flirt with me next time and I’ll be cool. A little distant. Eventually, I’ll get her. I mean, she doesn’t have a lot of choice down here—last night she was out with a guy who does satellite TV installations.”
“You’re walking a thin line there, Pweters. Womendo notlike rejection.”
“Oh, I won’t reject her—I’ll make her work for it. I know she basically wants my body.” Pweters tapped the computer screen. “Say, look at this one. Cripes, I wonder if that’s Lucille Becker.”
“Looks like a Lucille Becker to me. What else would LuBec be? You know anybody else in town whose name would crunch down like that?”
“No, I don’t. Huh.”
“What does she do?” Virgil asked.
“She’s a fiftyish English teacher up at the high school. Had her my senior year, gave me an A. I could see her in black vinyl.”
“Let’s try to stay professional,” Virgil said. “By black vinyl, you mean the kind with cutouts over the butt?”
“Exactly,” Pweters said. He looked up and said, “I’m starting to feel a little dirty doing this. Violating their privacy.”
“Really?”
“No, not really.” He went back to the computer.
“Attaboy,” Virgil said. “Part of the job. Get those email addresses, check the letters for anything that might apply to the case, and put ‘whip,’ or something, into the search field.”
“I can do that.”
—
Virgil continued to prowl the apartment, stopped periodically to suggest new search terms for Pweters, but they found nothing that would tie Fitzgerald to the murders—nothing like a club that would match the one that must have been used on Hemming. And no guns at all.
He would have gotten rid of the gun, of course... The gun. He had to think about the gun. What had the witness said? The gunshots sounded like Moore had been clapping her hands? Twenty-two CBs, both shorts and longs, were quiet, but Bea Sawyer had recovered.22 long-rifle shells. If the inner door had been closed, or mostly closed, when Moore was shot, the sound might have been muffled.
“Hey, Pweters?”
“Yeah?”
“You know anybody who has a.22 pistol?”
