He was thinking, What a pile of shit, when Zoe said over his shoulder, "She keeps her car pretty neat."
Virgil stood up, said, "I was hoping for a blackmail note. You all done?"
"Yes. Getting more numbers."
Virgil glanced over at the Latino, who'd gone back to working on the weed whip. "He illegal?"
"Would you arrest him if he was?" she asked.
Virgil laughed. "If I started arresting illegal Mexicans, I wouldn't have anyplace to eat."
"Well, he's not-I think Margery runs a few illegals in and out, paying them off the books, but since Julio's name was right out there, I wanted to get his green card number," Zoe said. "That way, the feds'll think we're on the up-and-up."
"I don't want to disillusion you, but the feds don't think anybody is on the up-and-up."
"And they wouldn't be wrong about that," she said. "I know a judge who deducted a wife and daughter as dependents for three years after the divorce and they moved to California."
"He do time?" Virgil asked.
"He never got caught," she said, adding, "He wasn't a client of mine. I heard about it from an accountant friend who was reviewing his returns. He was like, 'Well, I didn't know.' Idiot."
"Seems to be the excuse du jour when you've committed a major crime," Virgil said.
"My," she said, "he knows French."
ZOE DROVE A RED HONDA PILOT with a metal file box behind the driver's seat, and a clutter of empty water bottles and ice cream wrappers in the passenger-side foot well. She put the file folder in the metal box, snatched up the ice cream wrappers and bottles and threw them on the backseat, and they took off.
"So-who did it?" she asked. "Any ideas?"
"Some," he said. "But let's not talk about the murder-let's talk about you. Your life and your boyfriends, and all of that. Say, those are nice shoes. Are they Mephistos?"
She glanced at him, puzzled, and said, "What?"
"Just trying for a little friendly conversation," Virgil said. Sitting shoulder to shoulder with Zoe, he could smell a floral scent, light and vanilla-y.
"Virgil, are you on drugs? Is this something I should know about?"
"They're not Mephistos, are they?" She glanced at him again, then lifted her left foot off the floor so he could see the Nike logo. "I wouldn't know a Mephisto if one bit me on the ass," she said.
"Now there's a war crime for you," Virgil said.
She smiled and said, "Bob Sanders told me that you were sort of full of it."
"I'm shocked," Virgil said, the uninterest set deep in his tone. "Shocked."
"You don't seem like somebody who would have perpetrated a massacre," she said.
"I didn't."
THEY'D GOTTEN TO THE END of the driveway, and when Virgil looked left, he saw the crime-scene van rolling toward them. He said, "Hold on for a second, will you? I want to see if these guys got anything else."
He hopped out of the car, and when the van driver saw him, he pulled off onto the shoulder of the road. Mapes climbed out of the passenger seat carrying a small plastic bag, which he handed to Virgil. Virgil held it up to the sky, to get some light on it.
"A.223," he said. The shell's brass was still bright.
"Hasn't been there long-I could still smell the powder burn," Mapes said. "It was caught in some logs, a couple inches above the water. The shooter couldn't have looked for it long-it was right there."
"Off to the right? Like it was thrown out by an autoloader?"
"Ah, yes-off to the right, but the extraction marks look like they came from a bolt action. I'm sending Jim"-he jabbed his thumb back toward the truck-"back to Bemidji with it, see what we can see. The other guys are still working the beaver lodge."
"Good going, man."
"Well, it was right there-even you could have found it," Mapes said. Pause. "Maybe."
Virgil handed him McDill's car keys and said, "I knew you were going to insult me, so I carefully contaminated the car. See if you can find something anyway."
VIRGIL GOT BACK in the Pilot and told Zoe about the shell. "Now all I have to do is find a rifle and some Mephistos, and we've got it."
"You'll be able to tell the rifle from just one shell?"
"Not me, the lab. But, yup. Extraction marks. And if we're lucky, she pushed the cartridge down in a magazine with her thumb, and there'll be a big ol' thumbprint. Brass takes good prints."
"Mmm. Well, I for one have no Mephistos," she said. "Why'd you ask?"
"Because the woman who killed Erica McDill may be local-she knew exactly when and how to get into the pond to catch McDill alone. And she may wear Mephistos."
"You thought I did it?"
"You've been sort of hanging around. A psychopath might do that," Virgil said.
"I've been hanging around because I'm curious," she said. "Also, I'm not a psychopath. I'm an obsessive-compulsive."
"That's what a psychopath would say," Virgil said. "The case of the curious accountant-a woman for whom blood was just another cocktail."
She brushed the chatter away, as though it were a fly. "You know for sure it's a woman?"
"Pretty sure," he said.
"And local."
"Possibly. You could make a good argument that it comes from the lodge, too," Virgil said. "Would you like to suggest a name or two?"
"No, no. But it makes you think," Zoe said.
"It does make you think," Virgil agreed.
After a moment, she asked, "Should you be telling me all of this?"
"Why not?" Virgil asked. "I've got nothing to hide."
"Well, God. What if I blabbed to everybody?"
Virgil yawned, tipped his seat back a couple of inches, leaned back, and closed his eyes. "Go ahead," he said. "I don't care."
AT THE AIRPORT, Zoe pointed him at a metal building; inside, he found a guy with a pilot's hat half asleep on a couch, who got grog gily to his feet and asked, "You the state trooper?"
"Close enough," Virgil said. He rented a Chevy Trailblazer, got his duffel from Zoe's car, and threw it in the back of the SUV.
"How come you don't have a gun?" she asked, through her open car door. "Aren't cops required to carry guns? I read that somewhere."
"In my experience, bad things can happen if you carry a handgun," Virgil said. "For one thing, it causes your shoulder to slope in the direction of the pocket you carry it in. Over the years, that could cause spinal problems."
"I can't tell whether this is some hopeless attempt to be charming, or if you're just being weird," she said.
"Can you tell me where the Wild Goose is? I want to take a quick look."
"Well, follow me. I'll take you over," Zoe said. "It's mostly a women's bar. You might feel a little odd being there by yourself. Lonely."
THE WILD GOOSE was a mile or so north of the Grand Rapids city limits, a standard North Woods country bar-orange-stained peeled-pine logs set on a rectangular concrete-block foundation, a pea-gravel parking lot, a tin chimney, a low wooden porch outside the front door, and a carved wooden upright black bear guarding the front door, an American flag in its paw.
There were four other cars in the front lot, and two more that Virgil could see around the side. Probably the bartender's and the cook's, around to the side-at most country bars, the employees tried to park where their cars wouldn't get hit by drunks.
Inside, the bar was a little softer than most, with lots of booths and only a few freestanding tables, four stools at the bar, and a small stage on the other side of a dance floor; a jukebox. Three of the booths were occupied by women, two in one, three in another, four in the third. One of the bar stools was occupied by an elderly man who was peering into a half-empty beer glass.
They stopped at the bar, and Zoe said, "Hey, Chuck," to the bartender, who took a long look at Virgil, not unfriendly, and Zoe ordered a beer and Virgil got a Diet Coke. Zoe asked, eyebrows up, "Little problem with alcohol?"
"No, I just don't drink much," Virgil said.
The old man at the bar said to Virgil, "If you gotta ask, it's half empty. Not half full."
"Looks more like four-fifths empty to me, partner," Virgil said. The drinks came, and they carried them to a booth. Virgil checked out the women, and the bar in general, saw the bartender watching.