Virgil stood up, stretched. "You're right. I need to break this thing down. I need to know who killed those people. Not so you can convict them; so I know."
"Then get your ass down to the Cities," Phillips said.
Virgil thought about Sig, and thought about going out there, and thought about the Deuce waking up in a hospital without an attorney right there.
He needed to go to Sig's.
He had to go to St. Paul.
25
VIRGIL CALLED SIGNY and told her that he had to go away for one more night, and though there might have been a thread of skepticism in her voice, she said, "You've got to get this done, Virgil."
He said, "Sig, honest to God, there's no place I'd rather be than up here."
"I believe that…"
A CRAPPY, mindless drive down I-35 to the Cities; not much to look at in the afternoon, without even the romance of the nighttime stars.
He caught Jimmie Dale Gilmore, with "Dallas," one of his favor ites, and Lucinda Williams's cover of AC/DC's "It's a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock 'n' Roll)," and the music smoothed the flow, but when he drove into the parking lot at Regions Hospital in St. Paul, he hadn't thought of a single thing that could help.
BUT HE THOUGHT OF SOMETHING when he stepped into the room and saw the Deuce. The boy's slack face was a dark island in the middle of a lot of white sheets and white pillows and white bedcovers and electronic equipment that showed red and green numbers, and bags of clear stuff that flowed into his arms through plastic tubes, and flowed out of him through more plastic tubes. His eyes were closed, his breathing light and thready.
Virgil asked the nurse, "Has he been awake?"
"Yes. He was awake an hour ago, but he's in bad shape," she said. "He hasn't said anything coherent. He doesn't know where he is. He's got painkillers running, I don't think he'll be back tonight."
"Is he going to make it?"
"Eighty-twenty," she said. "They had to repair his rectum, there were some bone fragments that went through. His legs and pelvis are gonna be held together with metal plates. His spine didn't get involved, but he's got a lot of damage in his legs. One of the surgeons said they might have to go back in a half-dozen times to get it all fixed. As well as it's gonna get fixed. And then there's infection. If that turns bad, it's all up for grabs."
Virgil said, "Thanks," and went down to the cafeteria and got a Coke and sat down to think about what he'd just seen. After a while, he looked at his watch and called Sandy, the researcher. She was getting ready to go home. "I need a bunch of information. I need to get it in the next few hours. I can get you the overtime. You up for it?"
"Nice of you to ask, instead of ordering me around like your personal slave," she said.
"Sandy-"
"Shut up, Virgil. What do you want?"
"Okay, in order. There's a woman named Janelle Washington in a hospital in Duluth. I need to know which one. Her husband's name is James, they live in Grand Rapids… I need to get a car registration…" He gave her the rest of the list, which she said shouldn't be too much of a problem.
"Where are you going to be?"
"I'm heading up to Duluth. Goddamnit, I was up there two hours ago, down here for fifteen minutes, now I gotta go back."
"A little rain has gotta fall in every life," she said.
"You've got such a soft heart," he said.
"Lucas is just leaving. Do you want to talk to him?"
"Naw. He'd probably piss me off. Call me as soon as you get the information on Washington."
When he got off the phone, he went out to the truck, dug out his Nikon D3, carried it back up to the Deuce's room. The nurse wasn't happy about it, but Virgil got harsh, and she backed off. He stood on a chair and took several pictures of the Deuce, checking them on the LCD screen for sharpness, was satisfied and stepped down.
The nurse showed up with the nursing supervisor, and Virgil told them, "All done-and some things gotta be done. Screw the rules, and you can quote me."
HALFWAY TO DULUTH, as it was getting dark, he pulled into a roadside diner, parked in the side lot, and went to sleep for half an hour. Sandy woke him with the phone call, and told him where Washington was, and that she was awake and waiting, and then said, "You're right about the car. It was never registered, anywhere."
"Thanks, Sandy. See you in a couple of days."
He went into the diner and got a sticky bun, and headed north again.
JAN WASHINGTON WAS SITTING up in the hospital bed. He hadn't known her before she'd gotten shot, but she had the look of a woman who'd lost a lot of weight in the past few days.
"James is here someplace," she said.
"How are you?" Virgil asked.
"I hurt-all the time. They give me painkillers, but they're not working very well. Either that, or they knock me out. They can't seem to find a middle ground."
"I need to show you a photograph," he said. He took his laptop out of his bag, turned it on, loaded the Adobe Lightroom program, and brought up the best of the Deuce photos, the one that focused on the boy's face, and cut out the hospital gear. It looked almost like a driver's license photograph.
"Do you know this man?"
She looked at the photo for several seconds, then her forehead wrinkled and she said, "Oh-from a long time ago. That's Hector. What's his last name? He only worked there for a couple of years before they went off… Hector Avila. That's it. He went off to Arizona with Maria Ashbach. They ran away together."
THEY SAT AND TALKED about it.
Hector Avila worked for the county as a civil engineer in the public works department, while Washington worked there as a clerk, before she quit to have kids. They were friendly, and she'd been around when Avila met Ashbach.
"Hector used to do the inspections on the septic installations out in the county. Maria handled the paperwork for Slibe's business. She was the office manager while Slibe did the excavation. I knew something was going on. I warned Hector about it…"
"You warned him?"
"Well, you know… Slibe is a country guy, and this was his wife. You go messing around… there are a lot of dark country roads out there. You could get… shot. Like me."
"How long was the affair going on?" Virgil asked.
"Quite a while. A couple of years, at least," Washington said. "They were sneaky about it-after it got going good, they'd never talk to each other. I knew, because I knew Hector… He'd get a motel room somewhere, usually up at Hibbing, and she'd sneak up there. I don't know… it started out as pure sex, and then I think they fell in love. I hope they're happy, wherever they are."
VIRGIL CALLED RON MAPES, the crime-scene chief, at home, and told him what he needed. Called Sanders: "That search warrant out at Ashbach's was good for what, three days?"
"Yup. After that, we've got to go back. But we weren't required to finish the search the first day. What's going on?"
"If I tell you, you're gonna make fun of me when I fall on my ass," Virgil said.
"No, I won't-"
"See you tomorrow," Virgil said.
"Wait, wait-what about the Deuce?" Sanders asked.
"He was asleep. I never talked to him."
"John Phillips is going to be pissed. He needed that statement."
"Ah, the Deuce didn't do it," Virgil said. "You can tell John that for me."
"Virgil-"
"I'm going to need a couple more of your deputies. About nine o'clock," Virgil said.
VIRGIL GOT BACK to the motel at two in the morning and dropped facedown on the bed, and was gone.
Mapes called at eight o'clock and said, "We're down in the lobby."
"Go get a cup of coffee somewhere," Virgil moaned. "I'll get up in a minute."
"You don't sound like you'll be up in a minute," Mapes said.
"Ah… all right. I'm getting up."
THE MORNING was cool and quiet, with a sniff of rain in the air, and when Virgil got out to the parking lot, he found it wet: it had rained overnight, but not much-there were dry rain shadows under the cars. He walked across to the lobby, past the crime-scene van, and found Mapes and an assistant, Herb Huntington, looking at travel brochures.