Lucas: “Worse for the wear?”
Brady nodded: “You could say that. Especially if she’d been out on Wednesday or Thursday, and had to go to work the next day, and then went out Friday and Saturday. On Sunday mornings she’d look like she’d been in a wrestling match. That ‘Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down’ song…”
“Johnny Cash,” Virgil said. “Kris Kristofferson.”
“Yes. Those. I could see that song in her.”
“Did you know she might have been getting paid for sex?” Lucas asked.
She shook her head: “It never occurred to me. She was like theclassic good girl. She’d even go to church sometimes. I thought she was having a good time, and if she slept with someone, it was part of that, having a good time.”
Lucas: “You didn’t think much about it.”
“It’s not like we were living in the 1950s,” Brady said.
“Huh.” Lucas picked up the photos and said, “We’ll let you know about the camera.”
—
Outside, Virgil said,“You know, there’s probably a fast way to find out who the guys are, in those photos.”
“I don’t like what you’re about to say,” Lucas said. “But I agree.”
“I don’t like it either,” Virgil said. They walked farther along the sidewalk, until they were under a streetlight. “If we post the pictures to the true crime sites, or if somebody does…we’d crowdsource their identities. I don’t know any other way to do it. We’d probably know some of them by noon tomorrow.”
“We’d take some shit,” Lucas said.
“So what? The people who’d be giving us shit are the same ones who twisted our arms to do this.”
Lucas thought it over, then said, “We could give them to Dahlia Blair, if she’s still here. With Bud Light dead, she could use the break.”
—
Dahlia Blair answeredthe phone, but said she was planning to go back to South Dakota in the morning. “I can’t deal with this. I’m kind of scared—if they murdered Bud, are they coming after me? I’ll take your pictures and post them, but I’msounhappy I can barely get off this bed. I shouldn’t have come. We shouldn’t have come.”
“You can’t predict what will happen when you start messing around in situations like this,” Lucas told her. “None of us could have predicted this.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Blair said. “It’s all fun and games until somebody gets hurt. I’ve heard that phrase a hundred times. My dad would say that when me and my brothers would be fooling around on the farm. I never thought about what itreallymeant. This was supposed to be fun and maybe some money.”
—
In Virgil’s truck,Lucas put the photos on the center console one at a time, illuminated with his iPhone flashlight, and Virgil used his iPhone to take pictures of them and texted them to Blair. She called back to say that she’d have them up on her website in half an hour and they’d be everywhere by morning.
“People will do screen shots, trim them, and put them up as their own,” she said.
“Dahlia, you know we’re sad about Bug, but…there’s a good chance that the BCA and the St. Paul cops will track down the killer,” Virgil said. “Maybe it’ll be Doris Grandfelt’s killer, and there’ll be some money in it.”
“I don’t know if I’d want it anymore,” Blair said.
When they ended the call, Lucas said to Virgil, “You called him Bug.”
“No, Bud.”
“I know it’s Bud, but you called him Bug.”
“Ahh…shit. I think a cop called him Bug and I picked up on it. I’m tired of this. Why don’t we both quit and do something else?”
“I’ve thought about it, and I know why I won’t quit. I still get athrill out of chasing assholes,” Lucas said. “Of course, I’m not chasing buck-toothed shitkickers around pig farms for banging their sisters. Like you.”
