John Sandford - Bad blood

And he thought about the commonality of comfort, stretching back over the centuries and millennia, a guy lying alone in a warm space, listening to a clipper just outside the cave, igloo, hut, teepee, motel, whatever, a long thread reaching all the way back to the apes.

Then he went to sleep.

In the morning, he'd just gotten out of the shower when his cell phone rang, and Coakley said, "Why don't we hook up at the Yellow Dog? Get some pancakes."

"Half an hour," Virgil said.

He got dressed, checked e-mail, packed up his computer, and put on his parka. The clipper had slipped away, and the day would be sunny but cold: he brushed the light, fluffy snow off the truck and, by the time he was done, could feel the sharp near-zero temps on his cheekbones.

He pulled into the cafe just as Coakley did, and she asked, as she got out of her truck, "Any more ideas?"

"I think you had the best one-go out to Battenberg and stir around, see what happens."

They went inside, got a booth, peeled off their parkas. Coakley was wearing a plaid wool shirt over a black turtleneck, with just a hint of lipstick. They discovered a common interest in blueberry pancakes and link sausages, and after they ordered, she said, "Kelly Baker-it has to be local. I mean, local-local. Here, not Estherville, not Iowa."

"Close to here," Virgil agreed. "The killers weren't travelers."

The pancakes arrived with the cafe owner, who introduced himself as Bill Jacoby, and asked if there was anything new in the case. "Maybe," Virgil said. "We think whoever killed Deputy Crocker was a woman, and we're looking around for whoever may have had an ongoing sexual relationship with him."

"He was killed by somebody he was sleeping with?"

"We think so," Virgil said. There were a couple of dozen people in the cafe, and the nearby tables had gone quiet. "We're kind of looking around for someone who knows who that might be."

"Well, I don't," Jacoby said. "Be an interesting thing to know, though."

"And something else," Virgil said. "You know that Kelly Baker girl who was killed down by Estherville a year ago? We think that murder is tied into the new ones."

"Really," Jacoby said. "Man, that's freaky. That's a lot of dead people."

"Sure is. We're looking for all the connections we can find," Virgil said.

A grizzled, rancher-looking guy in the booth behind Coakley said, "You know, you should talk to Son Wood. He used to hang around with Crocker, some, and they go back a ways. He might know who Crocker was going with."

Virgil leaned sideways so he could see the guy past Coakley: "Son Wood. S-O-N? Where's he at?"

"He's got Son Wood's Surface Sealers out on 15 South," the rancher-guy said.

Coakley said, with a little razor in her voice, "Virgil, eat your pancakes. They're getting cold."

Virgil said, "Hey. I'm just trying to be a friendly guy."

"Come in anytime for a cup of coffee," Jacoby said. "We don't have doughnuts, but we got twelve kinds of pie."

"I'll do that," Virgil said.

When Jacoby had gone, Coakley leaned into the table and said, "What? You're a talk-show host?"

He said, "What good does it do to keep the information private? The killers know everything we do. Why shouldn't the taxpayers know it?"

She said, "Well." Thought about it, then said, "It doesn't seem law enforcement-like."

"That's a problem for law enforcement," Virgil said. "You can get a lot more done if you ask around, and spread the joy."

"I'm still a little annoyed," she said. "Sitting here in a cafe, blabbing to every Tom, Dick, and Harry."

"Your eyes sparkle when you're annoyed," he said, giving her his second-best cowboy grin. His first-best grin was so powerful that he reserved it for places where the woman had her back against something, for support; like a mattress.

"For God's sakes, Virgil, try to keep your mind on what you're doing…"

"Slender, yet firm body," Virgil said, wiggling his eyebrows at her.

She showed some teeth. "I'm gonna stick this pancake up your nose, in about one minute."

"All right. All right," he said, holding up his hands, palms out. "I'll suppress my feelings, if you say so. You're the sheriff."

"I'm going to talk to the girls, then send them out to Battenberg. I'll go with them. I've got John Kraus talking to that list of kids on Bobby's phone. What are you doing?"

"Well, I developed one solid lead since last night," Virgil said.

"Really?" Her eyebrows popped up.

"Yes. There's a guy named Son Wood on Highway 15 South who hung out with Crocker, and who might know what women he was hanging with. I'm gonna talk to him."

"Virgil…"

"Then, I'm going to go talk to Kelly Baker's parents."

"Good. That's a plan. Maybe I'll meet you there-I've never talked to them, myself."

They finished their pancakes under the eyes of the cafe patrons, Virgil telling her about the strangeness of the Floods, and about this and that. Coakley looked at her watch and took a last hit of her coffee and said, "Call me."

She left, and Virgil watched her go. Slender, yet firm body. And she gave him a hard time, but she sort of liked it. It was, Virgil thought, drifting toward the philosophical, a truism that no woman was really upset when somebody suggested she was attractive.

Jacoby came over with a carafe: "More coffee?"

"Thanks, Bill-maybe a half cup."

"Anything more that Lee didn't want us to know?" Jacoby asked as he poured.

"Well, not really, not much that wasn't in the paper this morning. 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."

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."