"Virgil, I'm not up for any small talk, right now," Jensen said. "These guys are friends of mine."
Virgil said, "Don't worry about it. If they did do something wrong, we can always cover it up."
That made Jensen laugh, once. Then he shook his head and said, "I'll remember that. You know, when they have me on the witness stand, and they're puttin' the screws on my thumbs."
"Listen," Virgil said, "does anybody in town teach CPR? You know, where you practice on one of those dummies?"
Jensen was confused: "Yeah. The fire guys do that. They go around to the schools…Why?"
"Small talk, just keeping you occupied," Virgil said. They heard footfalls outside the courtroom, and Virgil lowered his voice. "Here comes one, now."
MERRILL CAME IN, looked at Virgil, and said to Jensen, "You called?"
Virgil said, "When you talked to me in the men's room, about Jesse Laymon, and her car not being there, at the Judd fire…Where were you? I didn't see you there."
"I was up the hill, trying to keep people from doing an end run to the fire. I saw you go by."
"So, you said you didn't see Jesse's truck. Did you look at all the trucks?"
"No…"
"Then why pick on Jesse?" Virgil asked.
Merrill hooked his thumbs over his gun belt, which, in a cop, is defensive: "I heard talk that nobody had seen her. And since I hadn't either, I thought you should know."
"Who'd you hear that talk from?" Virgil asked.
Merrill's eye went to Jensen. "What's going on, Larry?"
"Not a big deal," Jensen said. "We're just trying to track down where you might have heard that."
"It's sort of confidential…"
"It's not confidential from us," Virgil said. His voice was mild, and quiet, so Merrill had to concentrate on him. "If I need to immunize you, and put you in front of a grand jury to get it, I'll do that. Of course, you'll lose your job. If there are any subsidiary entanglements, you could be going to Stillwater for a few years."
"What are you talking about?" Merrill barked. "I was giving you a tip."
Virgil looked at Jensen. "Better read him his rights. Do we have to do that with police officers? I think maybe we should."
Merrill said, "What the hell?"
Virgil said, "We really need to know where you heard that. That's all. No crime at this point. Could get to be a crime. Depending. So where did you hear it?"
Merrill looked at Jensen, then back at Virgil. "Jesus…I mean, it's no big deal, I guess. I heard it from Little Curly."
Virgil smiled. "See? That was easy enough. We thought you probably had. So, take off. Keep this to yourself. And I mean, Deputy, keep it to yourself. We're right in the middle of a complicated thing here, and you best keep your head down."
THE CURLYS CAME in together. Jensen had called Little Curly, told him to find his father, bring him in. Little Curly was wearing his uniform, Big Curly was off duty, wearing red shorts and a T-shirt that showed off his gut.
"Sit down," Virgil said.
They sat, and Big Curly asked Jensen, "What's going on, Larry?"
Virgil said, "You're talking to me. Not to Larry. He's more of a witness."
Big Curly looked at his son, then asked Virgil, "What the hell are you talking about?"
"I need to set some quick ground rules," Virgil said. "You don't have to talk to me. If you don't, then the chips fall where they may. One or both of you have done things that helped out the killer of the Gleasons and the Schmidts and the Judds…"
"What? That's bullshit," Big Curly said. He looked at his son, shook his head, then said to Jensen, "Larry, are you putting up with this shit?"
Jensen said, "You should listen to him."
Virgil continued: "Whether you knew it or not-but if you bail on me now, like I said, a prosecutor could take a fairly harsh view of it. Or we can handle it privately, and maybe, if I think it was all innocent, we let it go. Though I'll have to talk to Jim about it."
Little Curly: "I still don't know what you're talking about."
VIRGIL ASKED, "Who went into the Schmidts' house and erased e-mails from Roman Schmidt's computer?"
The Curlys looked at each other, then Big Curly, his face gone grim, said, "I did. But it had nothing to do with the killings. It was a personal matter."
"I know-about the election," Virgil said. "We've got the computer sequestered, and we can recover the e-mails if we need to. Keep that in mind. Now, did you walk anybody through the house after the killings?"
Little Curly shook his head. "Not me. Why would I?"
Big Curly said, "Me neither."
"How about the Gleasons' house? After the murder?"
Little Curly shook his head, but Big Curly hung his, groaned, and said, "That fuckin' Williamson."
"Why?" Virgil asked.
"Because of the election," Big Curly said, looking up at Virgil. His eyes were wet, as though he were about to start crying. "I was getting on Todd's good side-the newspaper's about the only way to campaign here, that anybody can afford. His articles can set the whole tone of the election, and you don't even have to pay for them. Jim is getting in trouble with these murders, somebody was going to take the job away from him…"
Virgil turned to Little Curly: "You had Merrill suggest to me that Jesse Laymon might have had something to do with the killings-that her truck wasn't at the park the night of the Judd fire. It was there, so why'd you suggest that it wasn't?"
Little Curly shook his head: "I didn't see it. I saw her, but not the truck. I was talking with Todd, and he brought it up."
"Did you ever see Todd up there?"
The Curlys looked at each other, then Little Curly said, "Well, not actually. I assumed…"
"WHY DIDN'T YOU tell me yourself?" Virgil asked. "About Jesse?"
"Because…Ah shit, because I didn't want to get involved with you. I didn't want to talk to you."
"Because of the election? Because Jim was seeing Jesse, and if you tarred Jesse, you'd get Jim, too?"
Little Curly shook his head: "Look. Todd said she wasn't there. I didn't see her. We thought you should know."
"And smearing Jim was just a side benefit?"
"Fuck you," Little Curly said.
"All right," Virgil said. To Big Curly: "When you walked Williamson through, was he ever alone? For even a minute?"
"Well…maybe for a few seconds, here and there-he'd be looking at one thing, taking some notes, I might be looking at another."
VIRGIL TURNED to Jensen: "Did Jim give you a hard time about not spotting that book of Revelation?"
Jensen shrugged. "Not a hard time. He got me and Margo in his office, said we should have seen it. Said it was embarrassing that you picked it up first. Wasn't the most pleasant five minutes of my life."
"You didn't pick it up, because it wasn't there," Virgil said. "Williamson planted it when Big Curly walked him through. He was trying to point us at Feur. He did the same thing with that Salem cigarette by the Schmidts' stoop. He knew we'd pick it up. I knew that Feur smoked, and I thought they were Salems. I'm sure it would have come up at some point, if there was ever a question. A trial."
"Why? Why would he do all this?" Little Curly asked. "Judd's money?"
Virgil shook his head. "Nope. Basically, he did it because he's nuts. Nuts, but careful, and he thought he was smart enough that he could get away with it. I don't think he could really help himself on the killings-not on the first five, anyway, the Gleasons and the Schmidts, and Judd Senior, Judd Junior might have been a cleaning up.
"But after he killed the Gleasons, I think he decided to try to pin it on Feur. Just in case. And maybe, because his office was right there with the Judds', he knew that Judd Junior and Feur were involved with each other, and he could throw enough suspicion on Feur to create doubt, even if we did tumble to him. So he started by planting the Revelation. Then the Salem. And to tell you the truth, those documents we found in Judd's computer: there wasn't a thing in Judd's own machine, but they were right there in his secretary's."