“Hey, congratulations.” He flagged down Alice, said, “Give him another bottle of cow piss. He got the killer.” To Virgil: “He was a kid, right? I want to hear the whole story.”
“No, he was a grown adult,” Virgil said.
“The way you said that makes me suspicious,” Harry said. “How old was he in years?”
“Not certain yet.”
“Was he going to high school or college?”
“Maybe,” Virgil said.
“Ha! He’s a kid,” Harry said to Alice. “I was right. Had you met him before?”
“Only briefly,” Virgil said. “Not really long enough to make much of an impression.”
“Ha! Youdidmeet him. He was part of the cast, like I said,” Harry crowed. “With that kind of insight, I should have been a cop. Or a psychiatrist. Anything but a McDonald’s owner.”
“Maybe a bartender,” Virgil said. “You want another one? To celebrate your insight?”
“Sure.”
“That’d be five,” Alice said. “I dunno.”
Harry shook a finger at her. “‘There are strange things done in the midnight sun / By the men who moil for gold.’”
“Oh, no,” she said.
Virgil: “Go for it, man.”
—
The governor called Virgil early on Sunday morning. “I just heard from Bunny Quill, and she told me you got the killer. I wanted to thank you personally. I would even suggest you might apply for a spot on my personal protection detail.”
“Ah, thank you, but no, I have a farm to tend, Governor, and I...” He was tap-dancing at a ferocious rate and managed to stave the man off.
Dipshit.
When he got off the phone with the governor, he called Davenport, who was still in bed, and asked him to tip off his media connections about the chase and the arrest. “Emphasize that Margaret Trane shot Krause when he got out of the car with a knife and was about to attack her. Get some cameras over to her house.”
“I can do that.”
Trane called two hours later. “Did you have anything to do with the crowd of TV assholes that turned up on my lawn an hour ago?”
“Mmm, maybe.”
“We had a nice talk,” she said. “Virgil, thank you. I’d like to find a more substantial way to thank you.”
“I’m open to that as long as it doesn’t involve sex,” Virgil said. “I’m already committed.”
“You know, you’re not always as funny as you think you are,” Trane said.
Virgil said, “Okay. When I get my ass in trouble down south, I may give you a ring. Get some cow manure on your Louboutins.”
“I’ll look forward to it,” she said.
—
Krause would get a public defender, who eventually suggested, after several long interviews, that his client would plead guilty to a second degree murder charge in the death of Quill. He said that Krause denied killing Brett Renborne and had an excellent alibi: he’d been in Faribault without a car.
