“You told Clancy about all of this.”
“What I did was, I waited until Dick was out again, and I xeroxed a bunch of the usage slips, and then I watched people filling up, and wrote the actual amount on the slips and gave them to him.”
“Wouldn’t the amounts change from day to day?”
“No. Oh, they might change a little from season to season, but not from day to day. That’s because it’s the same people, driving the same bus, exactly the same routes, every day. Never goes more than a gallon, one way or the other. Every one of the slips jacks up the usage.”
“How do you know Dick isn’t just taking the money?”
“Oh, I don’t doubt old Dicky gets paid to do it, but I don’t know by who. Because, see, he just runs the garage and makes out the slips. He never touches the money. There are only two ways Dick could get paid. The wholesaler delivers us short, and Dick overstates the use, and the wholesaler pays him. Or Dick overstates the use, but only orders from the wholesaler when the tank gets empty, and Dick collects from the school. Either way would work, but I think it’s from the school.”
“Did anybody ever ask about it?”
“Davey Page did — and that’s why I think it came out of the school, because Kerns—”
“The school’s hired gun…”
“Because Kerns came around and whispered in Davey’s ear, and Davey came to me that night and said, ‘We don’t talk about this anymore.’ He was scared. He said, ‘You want to keep your job, you stop snooping, and keep your mouth shut.’ I need the job. I don’t have this job, I don’t eat.”
“Your job is okay,” Virgil said. “Your job isn’t going anywhere.”
“That’s fine, but I just as soon you don’t tell anybody about me until they’re all in jail. Especially Kerns.”
“I’ll see to it,” Virgil said. “Now, tell me about these usage slips. What do they look like? Where does Dick keep them? And tell me about Dick.…”
She told him about Dick, and then she added, “Something else. I really, really shouldn’t tell you about this… but you seem like a good guy. I mean, for a policeman.” She put a twist on the word “seem,” a little extra skepticism.
“I try to be a good guy,” Virgil said, as earnestly as he could manage.
“The dog boys said you seemed okay. I’ll tell you this last thing, and you can see where it gets you. The school janitor’s name is Will Bacon. I suspect he lives at the school. I suspect he was probably there last night when the fire started.”
“What do you mean, he lives at the school? You mean, he lives at the school? Secretly?”
“That’s what I think. He’s supposed to come to work around two in the afternoon, and leave around ten o’clock at night,” she said. “But I’ve seen him there before the school opens — and I once thought I saw him there at midnight, when I got back from a basketball trip. I know where he used to live, but he doesn’t live there anymore. Usually, in a town this size, you know where everybody lives, everybody that you know. I don’t know anybody who knows where Will lives.”
“How would I find him, if he never goes out?”
“You’re the cop. Shouldn’t you be able to figure that out?”
Virgil drove to the high school, parked in the student lot, next to a fire-engine-red Toyota van. The van was fire-engine red because it belonged to the Trippton fire department, and the parking lot entrance to the school was standing open.
Virgil went inside, heard people talking, and followed the noise to the burned-out district offices. Henry Hetfield was there, talking to three people in civilian clothes, and two uniformed firemen, and a deputy sheriff that Virgil didn’t recognize. They all turned when Virgil walked in, and Hetfield said, “Agent Flowers…”
Virgil said, “Hello,” and, “Wanted to check to see if there’s any new information.”
“Pretty much what we thought this morning,” Hetfield said. He added, “People, this is Agent Virgil Flowers from the BCA. He’s investigating the murders of Clancy Conley and that Mr. Zorn, apparently because of some drug tie-in.… Agent Flowers, this is Bob Owens and Jennifer Barns and Jennifer Houser, three of our school board members.”
Virgil said, “Actually, I think Zorn was killed to create an apparent tie between him and Conley that didn’t really exist. After we busted those meth cookers up there, everybody in town knew we were looking at Zorn.”
“If Clancy wasn’t killed because of drugs, why… what happened to him?” one of the Jennifers asked.
“Don’t know yet, but I’m beginning to assemble some pieces,” Virgil said. “When I get enough, I’ll stick them together and call the attorney general’s office. I think this fire could be part of the puzzle.”
“This fire?” Hetfield’s hand went to his throat. “How could this fire be involved?”
“Part of what I’m working on,” Virgil said. “I see the school’s mostly empty — I’d like to walk around it for a while, get a sense of it.”
“I could show you around…” Hetfield began.
“No, that’s okay. I’ll just walk around on my own. You’ve got more important business here, I’m sure.”
He left them looking at each other, and wandered away, hands in his pockets, peering into classrooms and checking open lockers.
The high school was three stories high, built around an open square. Originally the square must have been designed as a park-like area for sitting or eating lunch. Now it was filled in with a one-story later addition that housed the district offices. The offices had a series of pyramid-shaped skylights of hazy glass. The fire had broken all of the skylights at the back of the addition.
Starting from the first floor, Virgil walked most of the way around the square, to get a sense of the building, then took a set of wide steps to the second floor and walked around that, and looked out some windows into the square, and down to the district offices. He could see a guy in yellow fireman’s gear through one of the broken skylights, but couldn’t tell what he was doing.
The second floor showed a lot of soot and smelled of smoke: somebody was going to make a lot of money on the cleanup.
At the next set of stairways, he could hear a hammer working on the third floor, so he went up, and found Will Bacon working in a smoke-stained hallway. He was using a hammer and chisel to knock broken glass and old hard putty out of a big window, one of a line of windows that looked out over the roof of the district offices. A half dozen of them were broken or cracked, apparently from the heat of the fire. Bacon was tall and too thin, but with the hard thinness of a man who worked with heavy tools, and had spent his life lifting and carrying. Virgil thought he was probably in his fifties, his close-cropped hair going gray.
He saw Virgil coming and asked, “You lost?”
“Not if you’re Will Bacon.”
“That’s me. Who are you?”
Virgil identified himself, and asked, “Were you here last night when the fire started?”
Bacon answered with a question, frowning as he did so. The frown was supposed to look bewildered or surprised, but it came out looking guilty. “Here? Why would I be here?”
“Because you live here?”
“You think I live here?”
“Mr. Bacon, I don’t care if you live here,” Virgil said. “And I won’t tell anyone, unless I absolutely have to. Did you see anybody here? Do you know anything about the fire?”