a rush or anything.”
“LET ME ASK you about the church,” Virgil began.
John Baker interrupted: “What religion are you?”
Virgil evaded a direct answer: “My father’s a Lutheran minister. Over in Marshall.” He paused, then asked, “Is it possible that Kelly was meeting, or was flagged down by, members of the church? Why would she stop for strangers, or go with strangers?”
“Because we do that around here,” John Baker said. “If somebody has a problem, we don’t expect them to be crazy killers. We stop and help out.”
“That’s nice,” Bill Clinton said. He fished a piece of Dentyne gum from his shirt pocket, unwrapped it with one hand, and popped it in his mouth. “But I thought you were standoffish.”
“That’s what people say, but we help as much as anybody,” John Baker said. “We’re just private in our beliefs. This whole country is dying from a lack of good morals and proper behavior, and we don’t want no part of it. We keep ourselves out of it, and we keep our children out of it, and we tend our farms.”
“You don’t know any church members who might have run off the tracks, or had a reputation for being a little wild . . . ?”
“It’s not the church,” John Baker said. “It’s not. You’re barking up the wrong tree. You know who killed Jake Flood. That boy is the one who did it—he’s the devil. He’s the devil in this. I heard that you think Jim Crocker killed him, and maybe he did, but if he did, it was because that boy attacked him. I think Jake found out something, and the boy killed him, and then maybe Jim asked him something, and he went after Jim—”
“Then Jim was murdered—” Virgil said.
“By the accomplices,” John Baker said. “It’s as plain as the nose on your face.”
Virgil pushed them on the church, but got nowhere. A bit of history: the church members had been a branch of a fundamentalist movement in Germany that began in the 1830s, and had immigrated en masse to the U.S. in the 1880s. After arriving here, the group split up. Most of the various branches had eventually merged with other churches and movements around the Midwest and, finally, except for the Minnesota branch, had disappeared.
“We’re the last of them,” John Baker said. “The last who know the old ways.”
They talked for a while longer, but got no useful information—Kelly Baker had arrived, had sat in the kitchen and chatted, had looked at a Christian computer game with the children, and had left, moving quickly but not rushed, to go to the locker. That was all.
BACK IN THE CAR, they rolled out the driveway, and Virgil asked Bill Clinton, “What do you think?”
“Not much,” he said. “That thing about the Muslim medical examiner . . .”
“You see that a bit out here. People have ideas about Muslims and Jews,” Virgil said.
“Yeah, but . . . not like that. Not like some giant conspiracy,” Clinton said. “Then there was that whole thing about morals and good behavior. I’m not sure exactly . . . I’d like to know what their definition of ‘moral’ is. I mean, you smell that place?”
“You mean the soup? It smelled pretty good.”
“I mean the smoke. The dope. The spliff, the ganj. As these good Germans would say, the dank.”
Virgil put a hand to his forehead and rubbed. “That’s what it was. I was thinking it was some kind of herb in the soup.”
“It is some kind of herb, but I don’t think it was in the soup,” Clinton said. “I think it was in the curtains and the couch and the rugs. I think she was cooking up that soup to cover the odor. Those people are Christian fundamentalist stoners. I was sitting there grinning the whole time, listening to them. They were totally full of shit . . . depending on how you define ‘moral.’”
“What is it with these guys?” Virgil asked. “These church people . . . I talked to one today who was carrying a gun in her pocket. I think some of them know a lot more about Kelly Baker than they’re saying. I think—”
“I’ll tell you what it is,” Bill Clinton said. “What it is, is, something is seriously fucked. I wish you luck in detecting what it is.”
10
Virgil called Coakley, who suggested that they meet at the Holiday Inn restaurant, away from the office and “not at the café, where half the town is, waiting for you to show