9
The deputy was sitting in his patrol car, reading a John Connolly novel, Every Dead Thing, when Virgil pulled in beside him. Darren Bakker got out of the car, carrying the book, and said, “Good thing we’re going to talk to heavily armed Nazis ’cause now I can quit reading this book. It’s scaring the hell out of me.”
“That’s a good one. I gotta say, reading it in a patrol car is the right way to do it,” Virgil said, as they shook hands. “You don’t want to read them at night in bed.”
Bakker was a tall, thick man, with rosy cheeks, a blond brush mustache, close-cropped blond hair, and small blue eyes. He had a U-shaped scar on one cheekbone about the size and shape of a pull tab on a beer can. He was wearing a radio with a shoulder mic.
Virgil had gotten the impression that there were only two Nazis, plus spouses or girlfriends, but Bakker said that there might be three. “Which is a problem,” he said. “The third one is a guy named Woody Garrett, and there are a couple of warrants out for him for assault and ag assault. Beating up his wife and daughter. He used a two-by-two on his daughter, told his friends he spanked her because she’d snuck out at night, but he managed to bust her pelvis. He’s got a substantial track record, too.”
“Charming guy,” Virgil said. “Why’s he hanging out with the Nazis?”
“He’s a cousin to one of them. We don’t know that he’s there for sure, but a farmer called in this morning and said he saw him in Jim Button’s yard last night, in the rhubarb patch. Button’s the cousin. And a Nazi. The other Nazi is Raleigh Good.”
“Raleigh? It’s not pronounced ‘Really’?”
“Nothing really good about Raleigh Good,” Bakker said. “He is an asshole of major dimension, believe me.”
“Hate assholes,” Virgil said. “You can’t even put them in jail for that.”
“That’s pretty hateful. I sometimes think we’d be better off if we put the assholes in jail and let the criminals go,” Bakker said. “Now, Jim and Raleigh are mean guys. Mean! They like to start fights in bars with guys they know they can beat up. They made a mistake with one old boy a couple of years ago; he just about beat Raleigh to death, and was starting in on Jim Button, when some people pulled him off. Jim and Raleigh—they usually know their limits, though. Black eyes and bloody noses. I don’t think they’d kill anybody, not on purpose anyway. The whole idea of prison scares them. The ‘Don’t drop the soap in the shower’ thing.”
“Glad to hear it. Too many guys look on it as free health care,” Virgil said. “You want to lead the way?”
Virgil followed Bakker down eight miles of blacktop highway, three miles of blacktop side road, and a half mile down a dead-end gravel road. Jim Button lived in a decrepit clapboard farmhouse that a Midwestern cartoonist might have drawn: it appeared to be taller than it was wide or deep, like an inhabited silo, and it had all gone crooked, as if the two floors had rotated in different directions. Virgil could see eight windows, none of them matching. The last flakes of paint were peeling off the boards, and the front steps had collapsed into the weeds beneath the porch. The only new-looking thing anywhere was a silver propane tank next to a stand-alone machine shed.
A too-heavy blond woman was in the backyard, hanging clothes, and a red-and-black Nazi flag, on a clothesline. She stopped to look at them, and instead of running for the house, she took a cell phone out of her pocket and made a call.
Virgil parked beside Bakker, who had gotten out of his car and was talking into his shoulder microphone. When Virgil came up, he said, “I let the boys in the office know that we got here alive.”
As he said it, a man in a black wifebeater shirt came out a side door, looked them over, called something back inside, and started toward them. Behind him, another man and two women came out of the house and trotted after him to catch up.
Bakker nodded at the leader—a thin, muscular man, with a fuzzy black beard and mustache—who displayed a variety of Nordic symbols tattooed on his arms, but nothing that would have impressed the average NBA player. Bakker said, “How you doin’, Jim? . . . Virgil, this is Jim Button.”
“What’s up, Darren?”
As the others came up, Bakker said Virgil was a BCA agent, and Virgil said, “You heard about those people in town getting shot, right? Apparently with a .223, and we’ve been told that you folks have a bunch of .223s, and a grudge against the town. I’m checking to see if you can tell me where you were on Saturday around four-fifteen, and about the same time the Saturday before that.”
“Wouldn’t you fuckin’ know it?” Jim Button asked the air. “Somebody gets shot, so who’re you gonna blame? The National Socialists.” He turned to his friends. “Can you believe this?”
Both the women who’d come out of the house had dark hair, but only one had swastikas on her earlobes. The other was prettier and had a dime-sized black rose tattooed on one side of her neck. She said, “I can tell you where I was the day before yesterday. I was at work, from three ’til nine, over in Austin. Raleigh dropped me off at three, and then he hung around for a while, bullshitting with my boss.”
“Trying to get a cleaning job over there, after closing,” Raleigh Good said. “You can call up Bob and ask him.”
“So what time did you leave there?” Virgil asked.
“About four.”
“You were bullshitting with the boss for an hour?” Bakker asked. “That’s a lot of bullshit.”
“Wasn’t all bullshit,” Good said. “We were talking about how I wouldn’t be an employee, I’d be my own business, and I’d have to provide my own equipment and supplies; we also talked about what needed to be cleaned every day and what needed it once or twice a week. There was a lot of bullshit, but it wasn’t bullshitting, if you see what I mean.”
“About four o’clock, then.”
“At least. No way to get back to Wheatfield and set up and shoot somebody. And I didn’t have a gun with me—ask Rose.”
“He didn’t have a gun,” Rose said. “They got two of them, and I saw both of them, in the rack, before we left.”
Raleigh said, “See?”
Virgil asked Rose, “Where do you work?”
“Bob’s Spinners and Bells,” she said. “It’s a gym. I’m a spinning instructor.”
Button said, “I was at an assembly plant over in Albert Lea, looking for work.”
“On a Saturday?”
“Weekend work. You can call and ask.”
The clothesline lady said, “They had both cars. Me’n Marie stay home when they’re all gone.”
Virgil asked, “Do you have WiFi out here?”
Good, a short, wide man who seemed to consist mostly of tangled black hair and who undoubtedly had a broken-down Harley somewhere, snorted. “We’re lucky we got runnin’ water out here.”
“You don’t like it, you could always move,” Button snapped.
“We got WiFi at the gym,” Rose said. “Why?”
“Because you’re all talking about reasonable alibis, but I need to check. If you could email the names of people who saw you around those places, who you’d talk to, I’d appreciate it. If everybody backs you up, then we got no problem.”
The five of them eye-checked one another, and then Button said, “Sounds okay. We’d appreciate it if you could skip over the National Socialist stuff when you talk to them. Hard to find jobs, with all the bigots out there.”
Virgil nodded. “I can do that. Though I gotta say, this being Minnesota, you’d have been better off to pick Communism. If you know what I’m saying.”
“Got that, all right,” said the unidentified, clothes-hanging blond woman. “I’m thinking about switching over.”
Bakker gave Virgil a tap in the ribs with an elbow, and said, “Give me a minute, Virgil.” He walked a dozen steps away, and when Virgil came over, he whispered, “If you look behind the machine shed, you’ll see the back end of a black Chevy Camaro. Woody Garrett drives a black Camaro.”
Virgil nodded, and said, “You want me to lead or you?”
“You got a gun on you?”
“As a matter fact, I do, at my back,” Virgil said. “You know, heavily armed Nazis.”
“Right. I don’t think these guys are dangerous, but Garrett could be a problem.”
They walked back to the group, and Virgil said, “Could you ask Woody to come out here?”
Button did an astonishingly bad imitation of a confused man. “Woody who?” He scratched his head and looked at the others. Rose rolled her eyes.
“Woody Garrett, who drives that black Camaro parked over there behind the machine shed,” Virgil said, nodding toward the shed.
The group all turned to look, and Rose said, “Oh, that Woody Garrett. Jim thought you meant some other Woody.”
Virgil was getting the impression that the group lacked cohesiveness. “Could you ask him to come out?”
“What’d he do?” the clothes hanger asked.
“Beat the heck out of his wife and daughter,” Bakker said. “Busted the daughter up real bad, using a two-by-two the size of a baseball bat. Broke her pelvis.”
“What! He beat up Anna? She’s nine years old!” Rose turned to Button. “You said he had an argument with Sandy and needed a place to sleep for a couple of days.”
Button said, “Well . . . he did. He didn’t mention the beating-up part.”
“You dumbass,” Rose said. To Virgil: “He was sleeping in the back bedroom, first floor, when you showed up. He was drunk last night, so I believe he’s still asleep.”
“Are we invited in?” Bakker asked.
“No,” said Button.
“Harboring a fugitive from the law is a felony,” Virgil said.
“Like I said, you’re welcome to come in,” Button said. “Don’t go shooting the place up.”
“Yeah, we don’t need any home improvements,” Rose said.
The entire group moved to the house, but Button, Good, Rose, and the others waited in the kitchen, after pointing Virgil and Bakker to a door at the back of the house. Rose whispered, “The lock’s broken.”
Virgil tiptoed across a worn carpet, with Bakker a couple of feet behind, and tried the doorknob. It creaked, and Virgil gave it a fast twist and pushed the door open. The room contained an empty, two-tier bunk bed, a dresser supported on one side by a two-by-four that was replacing a broken leg, and an open window whose curtain was blowing gently into the room.
“He’s run off,” Bakker said, and he turned to sprint to the front door. As he took his first step, Virgil hooked his arm, put a finger to his own lips, and pointed beneath the lower bunk. Bakker stooped and looked under the bed; he could see two jean-clad knees.
“What do you want to do?” Bakker asked.
“Ask him to come out of there. Be careful, though, he could have a gun.” Virgil stooped, and said, “We can see your knees, Woody. Don’t make us drag you out.”
A couple of beats later, “Fuck you.”
Rose had walked up behind them. “What a dimwit,” she said. “Woody, did you beat Anna with a board?”
“Fuck you, Rose. Did you tell them I was here?”
“No, dumbass. Your car was sticking out from behind the shed,” Rose said.
“You got a gun?” Virgil asked.
“Fuck you.”
“You go shooting at a cop, you’re gonna die right here,” Bakker said. “Keep that in mind.”
“Fuck you.”
Virgil walked to the end of the bed, noticed that it was bolted to the wall, and peeked under the lower bunk. He could see the soles of a pair of cowboy boots a couple of feet back. “I’m going to pull him out,” Virgil muttered to Bakker. “Get your gun. If the motherfucker shoots at me, kill him.”
“Happy to do it,” Bakker said.
“Fuck both of you,” Garrett said.
Virgil reached deep under the bed, grabbed one of the boots, and began pulling. Garrett kicked at him, and Bakker shouted, “Okay, there’s another felony—assault on a police officer.”
The boot came off, and Virgil fell back on his butt. The boot stank, and he threw it in a corner. “Come out of there.”
“Fuck you.”
Virgil reached back under and grabbed Garrett’s sock-covered foot and pulled. He could get Garrett stretched out, but couldn’t move him. Bakker peered under the bed, and said, “He’s holding on to the inside leg, over in the corner . . . Give me some room.”
Bakker knelt and grabbed Garrett’s leg just above where Virgil had him by the foot, and they both pulled. Garrett kicked at them with his other, booted foot, hit Bakker’s forearm, and Bakker fell back, and said, “Goddamn, that hurt.”
Rose, in the doorway, said, “This is better than clowns at the circus.”
Virgil said to Bakker, “Keep him stretched out. I’ll be right back.”
Virgil got up and jogged into the kitchen, where he’d seen an aging gas stove. Sitting on a shelf above the stove was the usual box of wooden kitchen matches. He carried the box back to the bedroom, broke one of the matches in half, said to Bakker, “Hold him tight,” and then jammed the match through the sock between Garrett’s big and second toes.
“What the fuck you doing?” Garrett demanded.
“I stuck a match between two of your toes,” Virgil said. “I figure that when I fire that mother up, you’ll let go of that bed.”
“That’s gonna hurt,” Bakker contributed. “Only got a hotfoot one time, in high school. If I had a choice between getting my nose broken again or a hotfoot, I’d take the nose every time.”
“Hold him tight, here we go,” Virgil said. He scratched a match on the ignition strip on the side of the box and it fired up with a puff of smoke. Virgil blew a little of the smoke under the bed.
“Wait, wait, wait—I’m coming out,” Garrett said. He let go of the bed’s leg, and Virgil and Bakker dragged him out from under the bunk. Then Virgil tossed Garrett his boot.
“I’ll put him in my car,” Bakker said. To Button he said, “I’ll be sending somebody to tow that Camaro. Don’t go putting it on Craigslist.”
Garrett to Button: “Better not fuck with my machine . . .”
The group followed behind Bakker and Garrett, who now had his hands cuffed at his back, out to the driveway. Virgil said to Rose, “Your friend’s got swastikas tattooed on her earlobes.”
“Yeah, well, she thought it was the thing to do at the time,” she said. “We were up in the jug at Shakopee, and this chick offered to do it for free . . . I said no. Shirley decided to go with it.”
“Bad life choice.”
“No kiddin’. She went to one of those tattoo doctors to get it erased, but they can’t do it. The doctor suggested she get her lobes cut off. He said trying to laser them would hurt worse than getting her tit caught in a wringer.”
“Ouch. A doctor said that?”
“Yeah. Not that much of a doctor, though. We’re still not sure what he was a doctor of.”
“How come you guys were in Shakopee?”
“We borrowed some cars,” she said.
“A lot of them? They don’t usually send you to Shakopee for car theft.”
“Two or three, and the people got them back. Not a scratch on them. But, the last one we borrowed belonged to a judge. We didn’t know that. A new Corvette. Red. We drove it over to Sioux Falls and back. The judge wasn’t the one who sent us to Shakopee, but judges hang together, you know?”
Virgil nodded. “I do.”
“Sad story, huh?”
“Shouldn’t borrow cars, Rose. At least, not from judges. By the way, do you know a guy named Clay Ford? Over in Wheatfield?”
“I know who he is.”
“He kinda likes your looks,” Virgil said.
Rose stopped and turned toward him. “Where’d you hear that?”
“From Clay. He’s consulting with me—guns, these shootings. Kind of a shy guy, though. I don’t think he’d come right out and hit on you.”
“He’s a great shot . . .” She thought it over. “Not a bad-looking guy, either, I gotta say. You’re sure he was talking about me?”
“He said Rose, a dark-haired woman who won a turkey shoot up at Madelia, living out here with the Nazis.”
“That’s me, all right,” Rose said. “Huh. I’m gonna look into this. These fuckers . . .” She waved toward Button and Good. “They were lame to start with, and they’re getting lamer by the minute, but I needed a free place to stay after I got out of Shakopee.”
Bakker put Garrett in the back of the patrol car, and he came over to Virgil, and said, “Good bust. That’ll keep old Zimmer off my back for a couple of weeks. He’s always talking about ‘quality arrests.’ . . . Can you find your way out?”
“Right, left, right.”
“That’s correct. Take it easy, Virgil,” Bakker said, and he got in his car and rolled away.
Virgil turned back to the group, and said, “Okay. I’m willing to believe that none of you are involved in these shootings if you send me those names of people who can confirm your alibis. If any of you do know something, you better get in touch with me. If I bust you for being an accessory . . . You know, being a Nazi in front of a Minnesota jury isn’t exactly a place you want to be . . . Email me those alibis. Names and dates.”
They all nodded, and Rose followed him down to his truck, and, when they got there, Virgil said, “Get a cup of coffee with Clay. He’s a little goofy about guns, but he’s got a decent job and seems . . . calm.”
She gave him a thumbs-up, and he backed out of the driveway.