“Works for me,” Virgil said. “I’ll see you in twenty.”
MOST SHERIFFS in Minnesota wore uniforms; a few didn’t. Virgil hadn’t seen Coakley in a uniform until she showed up at the Holiday Inn. When she took her parka off, she was wearing a star and had a pistol on her hip.
Virgil had gotten to the restaurant a couple of minutes earlier, and already had a booth. When she came up, he said, “You look like a cop.”
“Feels weird, wearing a uniform,” she said. “I wore one for five years before I became an investigator, and never did like it. But since I was working with the girls today . . .”
“Show some solidarity,” Virgil said. “They come up with anything?”
“Nothing that we didn’t know. Crocker and Jacob Flood were close. They all belong to a fundamentalist church that goes back to the Old Country, meaning Germany. They homeschool their kids, church services move around from one home to another.”
“Services are held in barns,” Virgil said.
“Nobody seems to know much about the religion, except that it’s conservative,” Coakley said. “They’re all farmers, or come from farm families. Some people say they’re standoffish, but other people say they know members of the church who work in town and are like anyone else. Which sounds like Crocker.”
A waiter came up, and they ordered hamburgers and fries, and Coakley got coffee and Virgil got a Diet Coke, and when the waiter went away, Coakley asked, “Did Spooner have anything to contribute?”
“Not much,” Virgil said. “She kept trying to get around the questions. But I expect she’s the one who killed Crocker.”
Coakley’s eyebrows went up. “What?”
“She let me sit on her couch, and using a special BCA investigatory technique, I got some of her hair,” he said. “I need to get it up to our lab. Then I’m going to use unfair tactics to get the lab to do some rush processing on it, so we ought to know for sure by day after tomorrow.”
“Virgil, how . . . ?”
Virgil told her about it: about the gun in Spooner’s pocket, about the lipstick, how nobody knew of anyone Crocker was seeing. “On that basis alone—somebody familiar enough with him to get involved with oral sex—she’d be a suspect. The gun thing is big. She’s a member of the church, born to it. I’ve got a feeling that the church could be involved here. Or maybe there’s just something going on with this tight little knot of people, coming down through the generations. Most of them are related to each other, if I understood Spooner right. Lot of intermarriage.”
“If she’s the one, that’d be a pretty amazing clearance,” Coakley said. “It’s like you plucked her out of the air.”
“Nah. All you do is, you look around,” Virgil said. “Everybody says Crocker didn’t have much to do with women, and the woman we know that he had something to do with, happens to carry a gun in her pocket. So she knows how to use one, and is maybe prepared to do it. Plus, she wears lipstick, which most women out here don’t, except on special occasions. It’s just . . . obvious.”
“What if she killed him for some personal reason that has nothing to do with Flood or Tripp?” Coakley asked.
Virgil was already shaking his head. “Too big a coincidence. I’ll tell you something else. I led Spooner on a bit . . .”
“How unlike you . . .” But she said it with a smile.
“. . . and she told me that Einstadt gave a nice talk at Kelly Baker’s funeral. Einstadt and the Floods and the Bakers know each other very well, and they’re lying about it. Why would they do that?”
“They . . .”
“They’re covering something up. Maybe Kelly Baker’s death,” Virgil said.
She looked at him for a long time, then said, “Maybe. But it’s a jump.”
THE FOOD CAME, and Virgil asked if she could send one of her deputies up to the BCA, in St. Paul, with Spooner’s hair samples. She nodded. “Most of them would be happy for the chance, on the county’s dime. Do some shopping.”
“I’ll give you the sample when we leave,” he said.
SHE WAS PICKING at her food without much interest, and then she said, “I was talking to a friend up at the BCA. She said you’ve been married so often that the judge gives you a discount.”
Virgil nearly spat out his hamburger. “What? Who told you that?”
“A friend. She’s anonymous,” Coakley said. “She said she thought