hard stuff, with hard evidence. And it may have been going on for a long time. Maybe a hundred years. Their grandparents might have brought it over from Germany with them, a long time ago.”
“So exactly what do you want me to do?” she asked.
“Lucy won’t help, because she doesn’t want to have to go to court and testify about her sex life,” Virgil said. He didn’t mention that Birdy was scared to death. “But: you look exactly like her, and you sound like her, even now.”
“We were always pretty identical. Nobody could tell us apart,” she said.
“And they haven’t seen her for years. Now. If we put you in a small town a hundred miles from here, if we can get them to bite, if we can get them to threaten you, we can hit them with search warrants. If we can just get inside a couple of their houses, if we can just get the kids by themselves, we can make our case.”
“What if they shoot me?”
Virgil grinned and said, “That’d certainly make the case for us.”
Her eyebrows went up, and he quickly added, “No, no, no. You’d be covered twenty-four hours a day. That’s why I want to stage it in a small town. Have you ever heard of Hayfield?”
“No. It’s in Minnesota?”
“Yeah, it’s up north of Austin. I got involved in a missing-kid case up there. People thought a kid had been kidnapped, but he hadn’t been—he’d drowned, actually. I mean, a tragedy. But I know a lot of people in town from the investigation. The thing is, we could put you in a house there, and talk to the neighbors, and when anybody unfamiliar went by, we’d get an instant alert. I mean, the town’s half as big as Sleepy Eye. Maybe less than half.”
“How long would it take?”
“If they didn’t bite in a few days, they wouldn’t,” Virgil said. “You could just come back here, and be done with it.”
“Would I get paid?” she asked.
“Sure, we could fix something up. Not a lot, but something.”
“The thing is, work is really slow right now,” she said. “Dave would be happy to see me take a couple of weeks off.”
Virgil said, “So. We got a deal?”
“Better’n sorting nuts,” she said. “Or bolts. I’ll do it.”
They talked about it awhile longer, and then Virgil walked her back to the Ace Hardware. “I’ll get back to you—but it’ll be in the next couple of days. Soon. I’ve got to run over to Hayfield and set up a house, get some guys to work it with me. Then we’ll go for it.”
VIRGIL CALLED COAKLEY: “She’ll do it. I’ve got to call my boss, get his okay, and then I’m going to run over to Hayfield and see if I can find a house. I know an old guy up there who I think will help us out.”
“Loewe is in the wind,” Coakley said. “He sold his truck yesterday up in the Cities, got cash for it. Went right to the bank with the buyer. I called his bank here, and he took everything but five dollars. That’s confidential, by the way, I got that on a friendship basis.”
“I think we let him go, for now,” Virgil said. “If we said anything publicly . . .”
“That’s what I think. You’re coming back tonight?”
“I think so. I’ll see what happens in Hayfield,” he said. “If we’re going to do this, we want to do it quick. I keep worrying that somebody will tell them about the young-sex angle, and those pictures go up in smoke.”
“So we hurry,” she said. “We hurry.”
17
Virgil headed for Hayfield, and got on the phone with Davenport to tell him what he wanted to do. “I worry about bringing in a civilian,” Davenport said. “What if they walk through the door and pop her?”
“This isn’t about bringing in a civilian—it’s about bringing in the only person who could do the job, Birdy’s twin,” Virgil said. “I’ll put her in a vest, but I don’t think they’ll go right to guns. They’ll want to know what she said to me before they do that. I need a couple of guys, though. Del, Shrake, Jenkins, you, I don’t care, but at least two.”
“I can’t do it, but I’ll get you two. Do you have a house in mind?”
“Yeah, an old guy named Clay Holley, and some people in his neighborhood. I got to know them pretty good, and I think they’ll go for it.”
“When are you going to make