her eyes and rubbed her forehead. “Okay. What else?”
“The guy was full of soybeans. The goddamn things are like ball bearings, Lee. He had them up his nose, he had them in his ears, he had them in his throat, he had them in his navel, he had a few where the sun don’t shine. But he didn’t breathe any in. I should have found some in his lungs, like water in a drowning man, but I didn’t. When the beans hit him, he wasn’t breathing.”
“Ah, shoot,” she said. “No chance that some of the other damage got done when Bobby hauled him out of the bean pile?”
“No. The sequence is clear. A heavy hit, followed some time later—minutes later—by impact on the grate, a very heavy, deliberate impact, on exactly the same site as the original impact. To me, that suggests intention. And then the beans. The very least the kid did was fake the accident. It didn’t happen the way he says it did.”
“He says he didn’t witness the actual accident—”
“Lee, I’m telling you. It’s not right. I believe Flood was murdered, with maybe a one percent chance of an accident of some weird kind.”
“All right. I hear you, Ike,” Coakley said. “I’ll get my guys together, we’ll work it over. Damnit, he really is a good kid.”
2
Virgil Flowers was winterizing on his boat: time to get it done, since there was almost a foot of snow in the yard. Despite the cold, he worked with the garage door open, for the light. He added stabilizer to the remaining gas, checked the grease levels in the Bearing Buddys, yanked all three batteries, hauled them into the house, into the mudroom, and stuck them on the auto-conditioners.
He was back in the garage, removing the bow and stern lines—best to buy disposables in the fall, when the sales were on, than in the spring—when a white SUV pulled into the driveway. A tall blond woman got out of the driver’s side; she was thin, with a bony face and nose, and the nose looked like it had been broken sometime in the past. She wore her hair pulled back in a short ponytail, and plain gold-rimmed glasses, a hip-length canvas car coat, black gloves, and cowboy boots that pushed her total height to six feet.
She had a wintry look: a few unhidden strands of gray showed in her hair. Her face was a bit weathered around her pale eyes. She walked up the driveway and took off her gloves and asked, “Are you Virgil Flowers?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said.
She said, “You don’t look much like a law enforcement officer.”
“Just because you’re a cop, doesn’t mean you can’t be good-looking,” Virgil said.
She cracked a thin smile, then stuck out her hand and said, “I’m Lee Coakley, from Warren County.”
“Oh, hey, Sheriff, pleased to meet you,” Virgil said. He wiped his right hand on his pants and shook. “I’ve been meaning to get down there to talk to you, but I’ve been busier’n heck.”
“I’ve come over to ask for your help. Or to find out who I talk to, to get your help,” she said. She had a dry, crisp voice, something you’d expect from a green apple, if green apples could talk.
“I’m the guy you talk to,” Virgil said. “Come on in. I’ll get you a cup of coffee or a Diet Coke. I’m about done here.”
“Pushing the season a little,” Coakley said, looking at the boat.
“I was,” Virgil agreed. “I’d be back out there tomorrow, if it wasn’t fifteen degrees out.”
“Tomorrow’s a workday,” Coakley said.
“Well, except for that,” Virgil said. He thought she might have been joking, but her tone was flat, and he wasn’t sure. “Come on in.”
SHE TOOK COFFEE, and instant microwave was fine, she said, but she could use an extra shot of coffee crystals: “I’m so tired I can’t see straight.”
Virgil got her the coffee and dug a Diet Coke out of the refrigerator. He was a tall man himself, tall enough that he could still look a bit down at her eyes, cowboy boots and all. He had unruly blond hair that hung down over his ears, and was slender enough that, except for her red hair, people might mistake them for brother and sister.
“So what’s up?” he asked.
She’d been sleepily checking out the house—bachelor neat, not fussy, furnished for comfort. She sighed, brushed a vagrant lobe of hair from her eyes, turned back to him and said, “I’ve been in office for less than a