Virgil looked at Bacon’s bookshelves: mostly young adult fiction and textbooks, probably from the school library. “I’ll tell you something, Mr. Bacon. I believe those people are stealing a lot of money from the schools. A lot. Hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. I think they’re taking enough to pay every one of them four or five times what you get, and they’re not doing a thing, except stealing taxpayers’ money.”
“That ain’t right, either,” Bacon said. “Lots of bad people in this world, that’s for sure.”
“Yes, there are,” Virgil said. He returned to the chair and sat down. “With this fire down in the offices, how long you think it’ll take before they can meet here again?”
“Oh, the meeting room didn’t get burned,” Bacon said. “They meet in the little auditorium, where the choir practices and they have the student council. I think they were talking about meeting tomorrow night, about the fire.”
Virgil nodded. “Good. If I brought you a court order, and some video equipment and a microphone, do you think you could fit that in there where nobody could see it? Close enough to record everything?”
Bacon scratched the back of his head, then said, “I could probably fit it up among the stage lights. I don’t know how you’d turn it off and on.”
“Remote control. You’d have to step inside the room just for a moment, like, when the regular meeting ended,” Virgil said. “I can’t do it, because it might spook them if I showed up.”
“I could do that,” he said. “I usually go in right when the meeting ends and pull out a trash basket. Then Randy runs me off, and I bring the basket back later at night.”
“Let me see if I can get the equipment and the court order before tomorrow,” Virgil said.
“You could bring it in tomorrow afternoon, late, when everybody’s eating dinner,” Bacon said. “Shouldn’t take more than a few minutes to stick it up there. Black duct tape, make sure the remote works. Might need some help getting the ladder up there.”
Virgil said, “Okay. I’ll call you — but you don’t have a cell?”
“No, but there’s a message machine on the custodial phone down the basement. Just say that you either have, or don’t have, the plumbing equipment I ordered. If you got it, show up about five o’clock at the back door. I’ll let you in.”
“That’s a deal,” Virgil said, and he stood up.
Bacon asked, “How’d you find out about me?”
“A certain person has noticed that you sometimes seem to be at the school when you shouldn’t be. Late at night, early in the morning. This person said that normally, everybody in town that they know, knows where the other person lives. Not you. Nobody knows where you live.”
“Since you said it was a ‘person,’ I guess it was a woman?”
“Could be,” Virgil said. “But then again, maybe not.”
“I’ll have to think on that,” Bacon said. “Makes me nervous, somebody knowing.”
“I don’t think the person will tell,” Virgil said.
Bacon showed just the hint of a smile. “You almost said ‘she.’”
“Did I?”
16
Virgil called his friend in the attorney general’s office about getting a court order for the surveillance equipment. “You don’t need a court order for a public meeting,” the lawyer said.
“I’m told they kick everybody out, saying that that meeting concerns personnel action,” Virgil said. “I was told that was an exception.”
“Hmm. Yeah, it probably is. You got anything on which we could base a court order?”
“Got two witnesses,” Virgil said. He explained, and possibly polished the potential testimony. “The fact is, if we don’t get anything with the camera, we’ll never mention it. If we do, then people won’t care what prior testimony we had — anything will work.”
“Okay, let me talk to the big guy, see if he’s up for a court order. Is this gonna come back to us anywhere?”
“Only if you prosecute some people for stealing a few million bucks from the state, taking full credit for cleaning up public corruption and stopping the theft of taxpayer funds, on your way to the governor’s office.”
“You do know how to present a concept, I’ll give you that,” the lawyer said. “Okay. I’ll push it, call you back tonight. You got the gear?”
“I can get it.”
“Stay by the phone.”
Virgil wound up the day by backtracking to the Gedneys’ house. Jennifer Gedney wasn’t home, so he knocked on a neighbor’s door and asked the woman who answered where Gedney worked, and was told that she was the manager at the Woolen Mill, on Main Street. “Can’t miss it: looks like a windmill.”
Virgil drove out to the edge of the business district and found a two-story replica of a Dutch windmill, with two cars in the parking lot. One, he remembered, was Gedney’s; the other belonged to the customer with whom Gedney was talking when Virgil went inside.
Gedney did a double take when Virgil walked in; Virgil busied himself with some balls of yarn in a bushel basket, and Gedney hurried her customer along and when she’d gone, asked, “What do you want?”
“Heard anything from Buster?”
“Not a word. He’s run away, and it’s your fault, with your threats. I’m talking to a lawyer.”
“Good luck with that,” Virgil said. “I’ll tell you what, Mrs. Gedney. Buster was about to give me the whole bunch of you. I guess he couldn’t stand the stress. But we’ll find him. One of the two of you is going to prison — if you want to talk to me first, it’ll be Buster. If not, well, like I said, we’ll find him. It’s only a matter of time.”
“Get out of here.”
“You know who the last guy was, who told me to get out of here? Roy Zorn. Two days later, he was shot in the back. So, take care of your back. People see me coming around to your place, they might think you’re making a deal.”
She pointed at the door: “Get out.”
Moderately pleased with himself — adding another log to the fire — Virgil called Shrake.
“We’re on it. We looked over the whole place, and set up on the bank right behind the cabin. Nobody’s coming through there without us picking them up, especially if we leave the yard light and that back wall light on. We’ll take four-hour shifts, starting at seven-thirty. Probably be best if you took the first shift.”
“Lots of mosquitoes,” Virgil said.
“Got that covered, too.”
“See you at seven-thirty.”
Virgil went to dinner, and halfway through, got a call from the lawyer at the attorney general’s office. “You got your warrant. You can put up a camera only for tomorrow’s meeting, and we’ll have to file a return on it within ten days, although we can probably get an extension on that, if you need it.”
Virgil called Davenport and asked about a camera and recording equipment. “No problem about the gear, but there might be a hitch getting it down to you. Could you meet somebody halfway?”
“I could check and see if Johnson could meet somebody in Rochester.”
“Do that,” Davenport said. “Then I can just have a guy run down with it, won’t have to worry about overtime.”
“You know, I’m working a double murder down here, why are we sweating the overtime?”
“Come work here sometime,” Davenport said. “The Black Hole case ran our overtime budget into the middle of next year. I can pretty much fuckin’ guarantee that if you put in for one minute of overtime for chasing dogs, Rose Marie will personally come down there and shove the overtime chit up your ass.”
Rose Marie was the commissioner of public safety.