Virgil poured the pennies on the floor and found nothing but lots of pennies. He scooped them back into the jar. On one of the tables he found a half box of .38 shells; both the box and the shells looked new.
That was interesting, because it suggested that Conley had bought the shells for a new threat, but what Virgil really needed was a more substantial account of the story that Conley was working. There was nothing at all in the printouts — and he couldn’t find any reporter’s notebooks. He’d seen some at Laughton’s place, with spiral binding at the top, like narrow steno notebooks.
After an hour he gave up, but left with the feeling that the place had been cleaned out by somebody. Who might have access to Conley’s keys? The landlord, for sure, but…
He liked Vike Laughton for it. If Conley had ever left his keys on his desk, Laughton could have walked down to the hardware store and duplicated the key. If he ever came up with more evidence, Virgil would talk to the people who ran the store.
Outside, he looked down into the valley for a minute or two, looking for deer. Saw squirrels, but no deer. He gave a push to the tire swing as he went by, got in the truck, and headed back to town.
On the way, he called a friend at the state attorney general’s office and asked about the possibility of a surprise audit of the Buchanan County school system, based on a limited amount of evidence of embezzlement.
His friend said, “We could do that, but it’ll be a while.”
“How long is a while?”
“A few months. The department that does that kind of a thing is always jammed up. Not a lot of money for investigating politicians. If you know what I mean.”
“It could be tied to a murder,” Virgil said.
“How strong is the tie?”
“Somewhat strong.”
“Give me a call back when it’s really strong, and I’ll go talk to the AG.”
He called Johnson, who said, “I’m in the office. Come on by.”
He went on by, and found Johnson sitting on a battered leather couch, feet up, watching a Moonshine Bandits video called “Dive Bar Beauty Queen.” Johnson pointed a longneck Leinie’s at the TV screen and said, “This is the future of American music, right here.”
“Certainly explains your attachment to a band called Dog Butt.”
“So you’re telling me that this isn’t the future of American music?”
Virgil watched the rest of the video and then said, “No, I wouldn’t tell you that. You may be right. You ought to go out and buy some Moonshine Bandit stock.”
“Would if I could,” Johnson said. Then, “What about the dogs?”
“I was gonna ask you — what about the dog guys? I hope they’re not pushing my luck.”
“Something’s gonna happen there, Virgil. I’ll keep you up on it, best I can, but they know we’re friends. They might stop talking to me.”
“Do what you can. I’m gonna go jack up the sheriff, see if he’ll put another guy on it.”
Purdy was reluctant. “What’s one guy going to do? You went up there this morning and didn’t find anything.”
“I’m just hoping to keep the posse from going freelance.”
“Well, if you hear anything like that going on, give me a call and we’ll get on it. I’ll have Bongo keep an ear to the ground, too. He knows all those guys.”
By the time he left the sheriff’s office, it was getting late. He decided to swing past Buster Gedney’s house, to put a little more squeeze on him. When he got there, the house was dark: nobody home. The squeeze was going to have to wait.
The town was closing down for the evening, and there wasn’t much more he could do. He went to Ma & Pa’s Kettle for a light dinner, and then Johnson called and said that he and Clarice were going to an art film at the Masonic Lodge; Virgil went and it turned out to be Mulholland Drive.
At nine o’clock he felt his phone vibrating against his leg. Purdy was calling. Virgil left as quietly as he could, and had just gotten to the vestibule when the message chime went off. He looked at it, and it was from Purdy and said: “Call me. Urgent.”
He called.
“Virgil. Goddamnit, you and those dog guys. You know that guy Zorn that you say was cookin’ that meth? And probably had something to do with the dogs?”
“Yeah?”
“He just got ambushed and shot to death on his driveway up on Orly’s Crick. Get your ass up there. I’m on the way.”
11
Virgil was at the crime scene fifteen minutes after he went running out of the Masonic Lodge. Zorn’s body was lying at the bottom of his driveway, head aimed up the hill, feet down toward the street. An oval pool of blood on the pale cracked concrete extended down past his feet. The blood was black in the headlights of the cop cars. Zorn’s arms were folded beneath his body: it appeared that he may have been attempting to crawl up the driveway, and then collapsed on his arms.
Alewort, the crime-scene guy, was taking pictures with a big black camera and a flash, the flash flickering up the valley like heat lightning.
A half-dozen rubberneckers stood out at the rim of the circle of light from the cars, neighbors, and a stout woman stood in the driveway itself, ten feet above the body. She was wearing a dark sweatshirt and jeans, and had her arms crossed. As Virgil got out of his car, he picked up a flicker of gray outside the lit area, a watcher who didn’t want to be seen. Muddy Ruff, he thought.
The sheriff came over and said, “He was dead by the time he hit the ground. I have two theories: he was shut up by one of his meth customers, or we have a nutcase who’s going around shooting people.”
“Not the dog guys?”
“Definitely not. Come look.”
Virgil walked over and looked at the body, which showed a hand-sized bloody patch in the center of the back. Purdy shone a light on the wound, and Virgil picked out three holes in a circular pattern not more than four inches across. “Uh-oh. Same shooter as the one who hit Conley,” Virgil said.
“That’s what I thought. And Conley was a pill head, with a preference for amphetamines.”
“You find brass?”
“Yup. A .223 shell, and I bet your tool-marks guy will tell you it’s the same firing pin as in the Conley killing. We got us either a nutcase, or a drug link.”
“Who found him?”
Purdy tipped his head toward the woman up the driveway: “His wife. She heard the shots, and came running out to see what it was. Found him, and called for help. We had a car here in four or five minutes, and the ambulance a minute after that, but there was never a question of transporting him. He was gone.”
Virgil looked up at Zorn’s wife: she looked like a chunk of stone. “What’s she say? She got any ideas?”
“She says not. She says she has no idea of what happened.”
“You ask her about the meth?”
“Virgil, I got here about three minutes before you did.”
“Let’s go talk to her.”
They walked up the driveway and Purdy said, “Miz Zorn, I know this is a bad time, we need to get you up to the house and talk a bit.”
“I knew it was gonna happen sooner or later,” she said, without moving. She had a nearly rectangular face, black hair and eyebrows, a small nose and a small tight mouth that made a natural down-turned new-moon shape. “I told him to quit fuckin’ around with that meth, he was way out of his league. Did he listen?”