John Sandford - Bad blood

"I thought he committed suicide," the older man said.

Virgil said, in his polite voice, "I'm sorry, who are you?"

"Emmett Einstadt. I'm Alma's father."

"Okay… An autopsy was done on Tripp, and the medical examiner believes that he was murdered."

"That's nonsense," Einstadt snapped. "We were told by the sheriff herself that there was nobody there but Jim Crocker."

Virgil nodded. "That's correct. The autopsy turned up indications that Tripp may have been killed by Crocker."

"Oh, no, that's not possible. Jim Crocker is a righteous man," Alma Flood said.

"When we went to talk to Deputy Crocker this afternoon, we found him dead at his house. He'd also been murdered."

They were astonished. Not faking it at all, as far as Virgil could tell. Alma's hands went to the sides of her head: "Jim Crocker is dead?"

"Somebody shot him," Virgil said. "There are indications that it may have been a woman." VIRGIL GOT ALONG okay with animals-dogs, horses, chickens-but his relationships with them were nothing special. Cats were different. For some reason, which he didn't entirely understand, cats liked him.

He'd come from a cat family, of course, and that might have had something to do with it. They'd supported numerous cats over the years, ranging from the conservative red tabby Luther to the radical black Savonarola, with a dozen in between, all named for religious figures by Virgil's minister father. Now a cat walked into the Floods' living room and sniffed at him, and Virgil reached out a hand.

Alma Flood and Einstadt exchanged exclamations about Crocker-"Can you believe that? How could that happen? What's going on?"-and then Edna Flood said to Virgil, about the cat, "Don't try to pet her. She'll bite your fingers off."

Virgil nodded and pulled his hand back, and he gave them a short summary of the findings at Crocker's place, then asked, "Do you know any reason Jim Crocker would want to… take revenge on Tripp, because of what happened to Mr. Flood?"

"Well, they were friends all their lives," Einstadt said. "If they weren't hanging around here when they were kids, they were hanging around the Crocker place. Started rabbit hunting together when they were ten, when we gave them their first.22s."

"So there might be something," Virgil suggested.

"There might be, but I can't see Jim killing because of that. He'd let the law take its course," Einstadt said. "If justice didn't get done, then he might… well, as a matter of fact, I doubt he'd do anything. He wasn't that kind."

The cat sniffed Virgil's pant leg, then hopped up on the arm of the chair, sniffed his ear, and then crawled up on his shoulders and settled down behind his neck. He could hear her purring.

"That's the darnedest thing I've seen in years," Helen Flood said, as though she were forty.

Virgil reached back and scratched the cat under the ear, and asked, "Did any of you know, or did Mr. Flood know, a girl named Kelly Baker, who was killed a year or so ago down by Estherville? She came from down south of here, a few miles…"

Flood and Einstadt looked at each other, and then both shook their heads. "We know them," Einstadt said. "They belong to the same church we do. But we don't know them well. We're not close. We know about what happened to Kelly Baker, of course. Everybody was talking about it."

Alma Flood asked, "Do you think they are connected? Kelly Baker and what happened to Jacob? That the Tripp boy did it?"

Virgil had been considering the possibility, but hadn't worked through it until Alma's question clocked a new scenario into place: what if Tripp and some other kids had been using Baker, and Flood found out? What if Tripp had confessed to Crocker, and Crocker had killed him because of some relationship between himself and the Baker family? And that the other person involved in the murder of Baker had killed Crocker…

But that didn't work well: Crocker had been involved with a woman. Could there have been some kind of teenage sex ring, that included females, and something went wrong with Kelly Baker? But why wouldn't Crocker simply have alerted the sheriff, rather than murdering Tripp?

There was no logic to it-though that didn't always mean much. But Virgil shook his head at Alma Flood and said, "No, we can't make that work. Although Tripp did know Kelly Baker."

"Then you've got one boy you know for sure is a cold-blooded killer, who killed Jake. And he knew another girl who was killed, somehow. I won't tell you how to do your business, but that looks like a solid connection to me," Einstadt said. "How many murderers do we got in this county, anyway? Looks to me like the Tripp boy and one of his friends might have been up to something here."

Another scenario flashed: suppose Kelly Baker had been gay, and they had a three- or four-way thing going, involving the other woman? Too far-fetched…

"Well, we'll sure look into it," Virgil said. "Like I said, we think Crocker was murdered. We'll know for sure soon enough, and we'll probably get some DNA from the killer." The cat made a snogging sound behind his ear, and he reached back and scratched her again.

They talked for a while longer, but on the central issue-what Jacob Flood might have known, or said, that triggered his murder-they came up empty. "I'd never heard of this Tripp boy before we were told that they arrested him," Alma Flood said.

When they were done, Virgil stood up and said, "I may come back, if I find more questions. I'm not familiar with this corner of the county. But if you talk to your acquaintances around here, you might ask if anybody knows of a connection between Deputy Crocker and Kelly Baker. Or Crocker and Tripp, for that matter."

"We'll do it," Einstadt said. "We're just buckling down for winter, so we'll be coming and going-we'll see a few folks."

Virgil gave them a business card, carefully removed the cat from his shoulders, scratched her head, and put her back on the floor. "I appreciate all your help," he said.

When he was gone, Einstadt looked at Alma Flood and said, "You know who killed Crocker?"

"I was thinking Kathleen."

"I was thinking the same thing," he said. "I'll get Morgan and we'll go have a talk with her."

He stood up and said, "Rooney will be over tomorrow."

Alma Flood whined, "We can get along all right. We don't need Rooney."

"Rooney's a good man and you'll knock some edges off him. The thing about it is, you leave a bunch of women alone in a house like this, you can't tell what they'll get up to. Rooney'll handle that, and take care of the farm, too."

"He's rougher'n a cob," Alma Flood said.

"Like I said: you'll knock some edges off him."

"Be happy if he took a bath," Alma Flood muttered.

"I'll tell him that," Einstadt said. He looked at the two girls, standing in a corner. "You girls get your asses upstairs. I'll be up in a minute."

One of them said, "Yes, Grandpa," the other one said nothing, and they both headed for the stairs.

Einstadt said to his daughter, "When Rooney gets here tomorrow, I want you to make him welcome. I don't want any trouble about this. But-don't tell anyone that he's moving in. That's private business."

He turned away and followed the girls toward the stairs. He hadn't had any sex for two days, and he needed it, and the last time he'd bent Alma over the kitchen table, she'd been dry as a stick.

The girls, though…

He left Alma sitting in her chair, with her Bible, and hurried up the stairs, the hunger upon him.

The Floods were unusual, Virgil thought, as he drove away. Reticent. The daughters looked morose, as might be expected, but had never mentioned their father. Neither had Alma Flood or Emmett Einstadt, except in direct discussion. There was no hand-wringing or remembrance or tears: they spoke of him almost as though he were a distant acquaintance.