We know the Tripp boy killed Flood, and now we know that Deputy Crocker killed Tripp. We’ve got that nailed down with DNA, and I expect we’ll get some DNA off Crocker’s body, from the woman, so if we can find her, we’ll nail that down, too.”
“DNA from the woman—what, like a hair? Blood?”
“Saliva traces,” Virgil said.
Jacoby leaned forward and dropped his voice. “Saliva? How’d you know where to look?”
“Crocker was . . . his dick was sticking out,” Virgil said, pitching his voice down below Jacoby’s.
“You mean . . . ?”
“I do.”
“Oh, jeez. Maybe I ought to try to find her before you do,” Jacoby said.
“Think about it, Bill. What happened to Crocker.”
Jacoby scratched once, in the general area of his groin, and muttered, “Might be worth it. I’m so goddamn horny the crack of dawn ain’t safe.”
7
Virgil hadn’t known exactly what a surface sealer did, but when he found the small dealership and showroom, he discovered that Son Wood used a variety of paintlike substances to seal concrete or wood floors from whatever might get poured on them—like cow or pig urine, gasoline or oil, or grease.
An auburn-haired woman was sitting behind the reception counter, typing into a computer screen and, when Virgil walked in, took off her reading glasses and asked, “Are you Harvey?”
“Nope. I’m Virgil. Flowers. I’m an agent for the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, looking into your murders. Is Mr. Wood around?”
“Well, yes, he’s in the back, talking to Roger. Can I tell him what it’s about? Specifically?”
“He was a friend of Jim Crocker’s, and we’re talking to all of Crocker’s friends.”
“That was just terrible,” she said. “Let me get him.”
WOOD CAME OUT a moment later, followed by the woman. He was a tall man, thin, weathered, with flinty blue eyes and a three-day beard. He was wearing a red flannel shirt and pipe-stem jeans, and cowboy boots. He and Virgil shook hands and Virgil said, “We’ve been interviewing people around town, and a couple have mentioned that you knew Deputy Crocker. We know that he’d been intimate with a woman shortly before he died, and we’d really like to talk to her. Do you have any ideas?”
“Well, you know, I don’t,” Wood said. “As a matter of fact, I can tell you right out front that I’m surprised there was a woman with him, because he never seemed that much interested.”
“In women?”
“Well, not so much women . . . as any particular woman.” Wood scratched his head, just above his left ear, and said, “I don’t know how to put it. He was interested in women, okay? He was married for a while, but I never knew him to date. You see what I’m saying? He didn’t seem interested in particular women. He didn’t go out with anyone.”
“Would there have been any takers?” Virgil asked. “If he started looking?”
“Oh, yeah. There’s not a big surplus of women around here, but he had a good job. You know how it is.”
Virgil nodded. “So you guys hung out, had a few beers . . .”
“That was pretty much it. We’d go fishing a couple times a year,” Wood said. “We weren’t all that close. I’m married and he’s single . . . but, yeah, we go back a way.”
“Can you think of anything . . . ?”
“Well, you know he was tight with Jake Flood. They knew each other since they were kids. There must be something in there . . . something in that whole mess. Jake getting killed, then Jim.”
Virgil said, “That’s what we think, too. We’re looking for the connection.”
“Maybe you ought to talk to his ex-wife,” Wood suggested. “She’s over in Jackson, her name’s Kathleen Spooner. Kate. Changed her name back to her maiden name after they broke up.”
“Bitter breakup?”
“Well—no. He told me he didn’t know what the hell happened. He came home one day, and she said she was moving on, that she’d filed for divorce that day at the courthouse, and did he want pork chops for dinner, or meat loaf?”
The woman chipped in: “I talked to her for a minute, downtown, and she said she just got tired of his act. She said she didn’t much want to marry him in the first place, and she’d been right.”
“So she just went on down the road,” Wood said.
“You know if he went for the meat loaf?” Virgil asked.
“More of a pork chop man,” Wood said.
They talked for a few more minutes, but nothing else came up—Wood didn’t know Kelly