of the snow. When he couldn’t risk running any farther down the drive, he went sideways into the ditch, behind one of a line of arborvitae.
Tried not to think of the car: he believed that if you thought of somebody, they could pick up the vibration, and they would see you. The idea was nuts, of course, but he’d seen its effects on any number of surveillances.
Held his breath, tried not to think of the car . . . and the car went on by, down the road. Not the Rouses, but there was no way he’d go back in the house.
“Ah, Jesus,” he said to the radio.
Coakley said, “I’m coming.”
WHEN HE WAS BACK in the truck, she said, “This was awful. We were crazy to even try this.”
Virgil nodded. “You’re right.”
“Nothing, right?”
“Wrong. Just about everything, maybe.” He dug in his pocket, pulled out the photos. “Let’s get someplace where we can look at these.”
ON THE WAY back to Virgil’s truck, her cheekbones seeming to stand out with the stress, she said, “That fuckin’ Flowers. That’s what they said. I paid no attention. This . . . I mean, I dunno. I dunno. I mean, I really don’t know.”
“I know what you mean,” Virgil said.
“Maybe I should turn us in,” she said. “That’d be the right thing to do. I’d inform the court, then resign—”
“Ah, for Christ’s sakes, don’t be a child,” Virgil said.
She was quiet for a while, then asked about how he’d found the photos. He explained about the printer, and about finding them in the closet. About the vibrator and the negligees. “Nothing illegal about a vibrator,” she said. “Or a negligee.”
“Shut up,” Virgil said.
They came up to his truck, and she followed him back to the Holiday Inn. In Virgil’s room, they spread the photos out on the desk and pulled a desk lamp over them.
Twosomes, threesomes, foursomes, two-on-one, three-on-one. “I went on an Internet porn site, once,” she said. “My oldest boy was looking at it; I found it in his history. This is like those pictures.”
“What’d you do about your kid?” Virgil asked.
“Nothing. I was too embarrassed. And I suppose the curiosity is normal enough . . . as long as it doesn’t get out of control. He’s a good kid.”
“This is Rouse, I think,” Virgil said, tapping one of the photos. “He’s in almost half of the pictures.” He tapped a woman in another of the photos. “I wouldn’t be surprised if this is Mrs. Rouse, because she’s all over the place, and that’s the style of the negligees in the chest of drawers. That kind of black lacy Playboy look from the sixties. And I would not be surprised if this is Kristy Rouse, because she looks like a combination of the other two. Look at her face. And the negligee.”
“But she’s . . .”
“Having sex with her father and another man,” Virgil said. “This is the kind of sex that Kelly Baker was involved in.”
“This girl, if this is Kristy, she can’t be fourteen in this picture,” Coakley said. “She looks more like eleven or twelve. If the FBI came through the door right now, they could arrest us for child porn.”
“So now we know,” Virgil said, sitting back. He pulled the photos together in a pile, tired of looking at them. “That’s all I wanted. We burn these pictures, we never tell another soul about them, as long as we live. If anyone found out what we’ve done, it’d break the case. The evidence would be thrown out.”
She nodded. “And you say there are more where these come from?”
“A few hundred in the one box. I didn’t have much time, but I tried to take a representative sample. I doubt they’ll be missed. Even if they are, who are they going to complain to?”
They burned the photos in the shower, washed the ash down the drain, turned on the ceiling fan to get rid of the odor.
“So we know,” Coakley said. “Now what?”
“Now we wait until tomorrow. If we can get Spooner, I think we can break the whole thing out. I’d trade the whole murder charge for a full story of the World of Spirit—call it self-defense or whatever she wants, if she talks to us. She talks, we get a pile of search warrants, call in a whole bunch of BCA guys from the Cities, and hit them all at once. The Rouses alone will hang them. . . .”