she said. “When she ran away, she just disappeared. I can’t find a single sign of her. Social Security stopped—they still have her farm address as her address—driver’s license expired, no new driver’s license anywhere I can find. Anywhere in the U.S. No income tax returns, U.S. or state. Her husband divorced her six years ago for abandonment, and she never responded to the court in any way, and she probably had some alimony coming if she’d wanted it. She’s so gone that I suspect she’s dead. That one of your suspects down there killed her and buried her out in a field somewhere.”
“Ah, man,” Virgil said. “What all did you check?”
Sandy took a minute to lay it out, and then said, “I ran the whole search again under her maiden name, Lucy McCain—Birdy was just a nickname, Olms was her married name—and that came up dry, too. Lots of Lucy McCains, but she isn’t one of them, as far as I can tell.”
“Wait a minute,” Virgil said, “Her maiden name was McCain?”
“That’s right.”
“Do you know where she was from originally? I mean, was it down here in Warren County?”
“Nope. She was from Sleepy Eye.”
“Sleepy Eye. Does she have any family there?” Virgil asked.
“Parents, both alive, Ed and Ruth, brothers Robert and William, twin sister Louise.”
“Louise McCain?”
“Louise Gordon, now. Married Ronald Gordon, divorced three years ago. She works at Charles Winston, Auctioneers.”
“Still in Sleepy Eye?”
“Yes. You want the address?”
VIRGIL TOOK DOWN addresses, then hung up and put his arm around Coakley’s back, cupped her right breast in his right hand, and twiddled her nipple while he thought about it. “What?” she asked.
“Birdy dropped off the face of the earth. Our researcher could find Hitler, if he was still alive, and she got nothing on Birdy. Her name was Lucy McCain, by the way. Not a German name, and she’s not from Warren County. She was born in Sleepy Eye, and still has a twin sister living there.”
“If they were close . . .”
“That’s what I’m thinking,” Virgil said. “If anybody would know where she is, it’d be her sister, or maybe her folks. Or maybe all of them. I better run up there.”
“What about Spooner?”
“Think about her. Threaten her. Tell her we know there’s something else going on, and she’ll get no mercy if she doesn’t talk to us about everything. Tell her we’re taking her down for murder, we’ll put her on the stand, we’ll make her perjure herself, and send her to prison for that, when we finally break it.”
“In other words, rain all over her,” Coakley said.
“Exactly. I don’t think it’ll work, but if things start to crumble, she might want to get out in front of it.” He gave her nipple a final twiddle and said, “I’m outa here.”
SLEEPY EYE WAS roughly seventy miles straight north, a little more than an hour on the two-lane state highways. Night was falling by the time he drove into town, past the implement dealer and the car dealer and a Lutheran church where his father once substituted for a sick pastor, taking a right on Burnside, then slowing, looking for house numbers.
Louise Gordon lived in a brown-and-white bungalow with a covered porch and a one-car garage down the back. Both the living room window and the back, kitchen window showed lights; he pulled into the driveway, killed the engine, and walked up the porch, which had been cleared of snow, and knocked and rang the doorbell.
Gordon was a slightly heavy, middle-sized woman of perhaps thirty-five, with curly reddish-brown hair. She came to the door holding a half-eaten raw carrot, peeked at him through the glass, opened the inner door, the storm door, just a crack, and said, “Hello?”
Virgil held up his ID. “I’m an agent with the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. If you’re Louise Gordon, I’d like to speak to you about your sister, Lucy. Birdy.”
“Lucy,” she said, and, “Pardon me, but you don’t look much like a police officer.”
“Well, mmm, you could check with my office. . . .”
“What if I called the police here?” She said it in a challenging way, to see if he’d run.
“Good idea,” Virgil said. “Go call them, I’ll wait in my truck.”
She nodded, pulled the door shut, and Virgil went and sat in his truck. Five or six minutes later, a Chevy Tahoe parked across the end of the driveway, and a man in civilian clothes hopped out. Virgil climbed out of his truck, and the man came up and said, “Charlie