Lucas snickered and Virgil said, “Shut up.”
—
For the nexthalf hour, nothing happened; Virgil kept the evidence bag with the knife, and most of the women had gone to their vehicles to post to their blogs and Substack newsletters, although a few hung close to Lucas and Virgil, and several others trampled through the dump scene with cameras. Then two members of the BCA’s crime scene crew drove up in a Mustang convertible with the top down. When the driver got out of the car, he lingered by the front fender, admiring the mirror shine on the fire-engine red finish. Virgil walked over and said, “The car looks like your wife licked it.”
“She does. I make her lick the entire car before breakfast every morning and then polish it with Q-tips.”
“Good for you, happy to see that toxic masculinity still has a place in the world,” Virgil said. “Here’s the bag.”
The crime scene guy held the bag up, then passed it to his companion, who pressed the plastic around the knife, squinting at it. After a minute he said, “What you have here is your basic Oneida cafeteria- or restaurant-grade stainless steel table knife. I will tell youmore after I look at it through some glass, but it appears to have been crudely sharpened, possibly on a red rock. Or a brick. I can see little red grains in some of the sharpening grooves, and blood would have leached out a long time ago, so it’s not blood. Whoever did it sharpened the edge fairly well, but mostly put a point on it. It fits our description of the murder weapon.”
“So…it was intended as a stabbing weapon?” Virgil asked.
“Looks like, but it could cut, too.”
Dahlia Blair, armed with her camera and microphone, had been standing behind Bud Light, twenty-five feet away, shooting over Light’s shoulder. Lucas only noticed her when she broke away from the bushes, heading for the cars.
“We’ve been busted again,” he said.
The crime scene guy with the bag said, “What?”
“You’re gonna be in a movie,” Lucas said.
Virgil wandered away, working his phone as Lucas explained about the true-crimers, and when Virgil came back, he looked around for cameras and microphones, then said quietly to Lucas, “Bee Accounting has a cafeteria. It ain’t much, but that’s what I got.”
“We should go there,” Lucas said. “It’ll at least get us out of this shit show.”
—
They drove separatelyto the Bee building, found street parking, and when they were both on the street, Lucas looked around, then said, “Your big mouth is gonna get you in trouble, Virgie.”
“What? What’d I say?”
“For one thing, you referred to that fuckin’ nickel as a fuckin’ nickel, on camera. And then that Blair woman was hiding behindLight with her camera and microphone when you were talking to the crime scene guy. You know, about having his wife lick the car and making her polish it with Q-tips, how it’s a good thing there was still toxic masculinity in the world.”
“Aw, that won’t…”
Lucas interrupted. “You really do live out in the sticks, don’t you? You ever hear of social media?”
“You say cruder stuff than that…”
“Not on camera,” Lucas said. “Listen: these people are dangerous, if a guy wants to keep a job.”
“Fuck it. I’m gonna quit anyway,” Virgil said.
“Don’t do that. You’re too good at this.”
—
Bee Accounting waslocated in a remodeled early-twentieth-century warehouse, complete with worn limestone grotesques carved into the building’s frieze. As they walked up to it, Lucas said, “Red brick. With tiny red grains.”
“You plucked that observation right out of my brain.”
The lobby was guarded by a friendly older man who sat behind a wooden counter to one side of a locked glass door that led into the interior. He was watching a Twins game on a computer.
Lucas and Virgil showed him their IDs and asked to speak to whomever was in charge of the cafeteria. The man, who was wearing a silver metal name tag that read “Terry,” suggested that they speak first to the office manager, whom he paged. “You gonna bust somebody?” he asked, after making the call.
“Probably not,” Lucas said. “That today’s Twins game?”
