“Shhhh . . . Don’t even ask that question, and for God’s sakes don’t use words like ‘cupcakes.’ Or ‘peaches.’ Or any small, round objects at all,” Wood muttered.

Virgil said, “Or any members of the melon family?”

“Oh, Jesus, no,” Wood said, glancing sideways at Easton, who was thirty feet away, talking with Skinner. “Tell you the truth, I’m almost afraid to work with her. She’s an excellent cop, but she’s too good-looking, and that ain’t good, if you know what I mean. I don’t joke with her. I don’t walk too close. I won’t even buy her a cup of fuckin’ coffee. Or even non–fuckin’ coffee.”

“Very strange,” Virgil said.

“It is, and she doesn’t like it any more than us guys. But it’s not up to her. Somebody else could say I was walking too close to her, and, the next thing you know, there’d be an inquiry and we could both have career problems,” Wood said. “The world is getting goofier by the minute, Virgie.”

“I will be talking to you,” Virgil said. And to Skinner: “We’re outta here.”

* * *

—

Skinner was silent for the first ten minutes of the ride back, but shortly after they crossed the Minnesota line, heading north, he said, “I kinda liked that.”

“What? Being a cop?”

“It’s embarrassing,” Skinner said. “All I ever knew about cops was that they’d hassle you for having a beer.”

“When you were twelve,” Virgil said.

“Minnesota and Wisconsin are to beer what wine is to France, and, in France, kids can drink a little wine,” Skinner said.

“Okay. Now, let me tell you about cops,” Virgil said. “There are a lot of good ones, but I couldn’t claim that they’re in the majority. Maybe a third of them are pretty good, another third are just getting through life, and the last third are bad. They’re poorly trained or burned-out, not too bright, have problems handling their authority. You got cops who’ll hassle women for sex, use drugs, steal stuff . . . basically, criminals. But you get a job like mine, it’s interesting. And you’re doing some good.”

“I don’t know if I could handle making people feel bad, like Jill and Billie,” Skinner said. “Of course, there’s the money thing. Cops don’t make any.”

“There are some downsides,” Virgil said. “The money thing, and, then, crooks are human. They cry. They get sad, they apologize. But you know what? All that comes after they fuck somebody over. You gotta keep that in mind. The money thing . . . I have a hard time worrying too much. I got enough.”

“Stealin’ Legos? Is that really fuckin’ somebody over? Bet it all got covered by insurance.”

“Probably. But people who steal and don’t get caught, they don’t stop until they do get caught. They do all kinds of damage along the way. If Van Den Berg hadn’t gotten caught, and if he’d gotten rid of all those Legos, he’d be looking for another score,” Virgil said.

They rode along in silence for a minute, then Virgil added, “A few weeks ago I busted a guy about five years older than you, over in Owatonna. He was burglarizing houses. He’d stalk housewives, who’d leave their house to pick up their kids at school. He knew when they’d be gone, and he knew what their husbands did and that they wouldn’t be home. He’d ransack the house, looking for anything small and valuable. Wasn’t all that much money involved, and most of it was covered by insurance, but some of those women? They didn’t want to live in their houses anymore. There’d been a criminal inside, somebody had been watching them, and it scared them. That guy’s going away for a while, but he did a hell of a lot of damage before I got him. The damage won’t go away, because the damage was done to those women’s heads.”

Skinner said, “Huh.”

Virgil said, “A smart guy like you, Skinner, you could do four years at the U and maybe get a graduate degree in something. From there, you could get a job with the cops, do two or three years on the street, which is fascinating in itself, and then move into investigations. It’s an interesting life, if you’re the kind of guy who likes to think.”

“You know I do.”

“That’s why I said it,” Virgil said.

* * *

—

Virgil, Jenkins, and Shrake rendezvoused in Skinner & Holland’s back room to try to rekindle the investigation into the shootings. With the church still closed, there wasn’t much movement around town.

Jenkins said to Virgil, “We can’t operate on the theory that the shooter’s a nut, because if he is, we can’t do anything but wait until he gives himself away. If he quits now and throws that rifle into a river, we’ll never get him. We’ve got to assume there’s a motive.”

“If he’s got a motive, it’d almost have to involve Miz Osborne,” Virgil said. “The other two victims weren’t from here, didn’t know each other, didn’t have anything in common that we know of, other than they were both shot.”

Skinner, who was sitting in, said, “What if the real target in this thing was Glen Andorra, and this guy’s done these other shootings to divert attention away from Glen?”

They all thought about that for a while, then Shrake shook his head. “It’s possible, but I don’t think so. The three shootings here in town were too carefully thought out. He planned all this before he went after Andorra.”

“We have to go back to Andorra, though—and Osborne, too,” Virgil said. “We’re getting late in the day. Let’s think about it and pick it up tomorrow.”

* * *

—

   Jenkins and Shrake wanted to get something decent to eat, which meant going out to a larger town. They invited Virgil to go along, but he decided to drive back to Mankato and spend the night with Frankie.

“I’ll be back by nine o’clock. We’ll go back on Osborne and Andorra. Something has to be there, with one of them.”

15

   After Larry Van Den Berg and his brother were arrested, they were taken to the Lewis County Sheriff’s Department and processed. Bell Wood came by later with Katie Easton, but Ralph Van Den Berg had called a local lawyer, who’d told them not to make any statement at all until he could talk to them the next morning, so they didn’t.

The Van Den Bergs were put in separate cells at the county jail, far enough apart that they couldn’t talk. There’d be a bond hearing the next morning, the lawyer told them, and they’d need to put up either cash or something of serious value if they wanted to get out. Ralph could put up his house; Larry could put up either his house or his truck, or, if he needed to, both.