“We’ve been called to a meeting up in Mankato; we’ll be back this afternoon. You got something?”
“A headache and a big bill. And, I have to say, our friend is in worse shape than we thought. I can’t prove it, because it doesn’t have anything to do with numbers, but he has extra money coming in. Quite a bit of it. I’m going to bed. Call me when you get back.”
“Be careful. Keep your mouth shut,” Virgil told her.
THE GUY from Chicago was Ronald Pirelli, who’d called that morning. He was a short, dark man wearing a black linen jacket, black slacks, a French-blue shirt, and six-hundred-dollar sunglasses. He had three other agents with him, all casually dressed, and all with the wary look of the DEA.
FBI agents, Virgil thought, usually looked sleek. DEA guys usually looked like they’d just driven a Jeep back from Nogales, with the windows down.
Pirelli had arrived a couple of minutes before Virgil and Stryker. They followed him down to the room rented by another of the agents, and they all introduced themselves and Pirelli asked Virgil, “What’s with the T-shirt?”
Virgil said, “I thought my Sheryl Crow shirt might piss you off.”
“Hey…”
Pirelli was affable, the other agents skeptical, watching Stryker carefully, and Virgil even more carefully: One of them said, “You’ve got kind of a weird reputation, dude. Everybody in Minneapolis calls you ‘that fuckin’ Flowers.’”
Stryker laughed and said, “You wanna know something? He’s been seeing my sister, and just the other night, honest to God—she’s a farmer; she’s got no contact with Minneapolis—I asked her what she was doing, and she said, ‘Goin’ out with that fuckin’ Flowers.’”
The agents all laughed, and the skepticism receded a little, and Pirelli said, “Give us what you’ve got.”
WHAT THEY HAD was mostly conjecture, with a few names and background. They sketched in the story of the Jerusalem artichoke scam, and the general belief that Bill Judd Sr. had a hidden account somewhere. That Judd Jr. was in desperate financial straits, and the death of his father would make them worse, not better. That Junior might be embezzling from the hidden fund.
“Why didn’t he just keep that money, instead of doing this ethanol thing?” Pirelli asked.
“Maybe a couple of reasons,” Virgil said. “First, there might not have been enough money left in the account—not enough to take care of all his debts and provide him with some security. He’s getting to be an older guy. Second, it’s coming out of a bank account, somewhere. There’ll be a paper trail. It’s not that easy to do things in cash anymore…people want checks and wire transfers and financial controls. The way they did it, it looks like old man Judd put up some starter cash for an ethanol plant. They actually make some ethanol, and sell it, probably, but we think they’re also running this little chemical factory on the side.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if they own some land around the plant, to grow corn for processing,” Stryker said. “Then they’d be on the up-and-up ordering all the chemicals they’d need. The smell of the meth processing could be passed off as just another stink from the ethanol plant.”
“But basically, there’s no indication whatsoever that this ethanol plant has anything to do with meth,” one of the agents said.
“I suppose that depends on how imaginative you are,” Virgil said. “We’ve got a bunch of dead people. We’ve got a nutcase preacher who’s tied to the Corps. We’ve got a guy desperate for cash. We’ve got them buying anhydrous ammonia by the tanker truck, and they’re making alcohol by the tanker truck, and we’ve got hard guys coming and going in the night, with five-gallon cans of gas. These are the same guys who could act as a collecting system for the hard-to-get chemicals. You get one dumb-ass driving around a metro area buying a package of diet pills at every possible store, and you can get pounds of the stuff every day. You get ten dumb-asses driving around doing it, in ten different metro areas, and you can get a ton of it in a week. We know that they’re connected into a distribution system, through the Corps. That could also be a collection system for the other stuff they need. I mean, maybe they’re selling the ethanol as moonshine at five dollars a quart; but I doubt it.”
“So if these are small-town guys, how does he afford an ethanol plant?” another agent asked.
“You ever seen one?” Stryker asked. “Ethanol plant?”
The DEA guy shook his head. “Not that I know of.”
“There are some ethanol plants that look like grain elevators. In fact, most of them do. And the newest ones look like little refineries. But some of the older ones, going three-four-five years back, look like a big garage. Basically, an ethanol plant is a still. What they’re making is moonshine; that’s all it is.”
Pirelli said, “For the past two years, there’s been an ocean of crank flooding the area between the Mississippi River and the Rockies. Most of it’s going down to Dallas–Fort Worth, San Antonio, Houston. Heavy stuff, pure white, not that brown stuff you see out of coffeepots. We’ve been going crazy trying to find the source. One possibility we have is that it has something to do with the Corps. The guys who are dealing more than a few ounces are all tied in.”
“What about Dale Donald Evans?” Stryker asked. “He ought to be home by now.”
Pirelli’s eyebrows went up. He took a cell phone from his pocket, scrolled, and punched. A minute later he asked, “Get him?” He listened, and then said, “Stay just like that. He didn’t take the gas cans out of the truck?” He listened some more and then said, “Call me.”
To Stryker: “He got home forty-five minutes ago. Doesn’t have a garage. Parked the truck.”
“He’s got a bad taillight,” Virgil said. “You could stop him on a violation, have the cop check the gas cans…It’s a little thin, but it’d hold.”
“Lucky thing about the taillight,” one of the agents said.
WHEN THEY WERE DONE with the briefing, Pirelli said, “Okay. What we’d really like is, for you two to take the day off. Enjoy your Saturday afternoon, enjoy your Sunday. I’ll call you Monday. Or Tuesday.”
“Monday,” Virgil said.
“Or Tuesday. There’s this Sioux Indian guy about to drift into Madison, South Dakota, where his car is gonna break down. He’ll be there for a while, watching that plant, talking with the locals. In the meantime, we’re gonna be on Dale Donald Evans like yellow on a Chinaman. If this turns out to be what you think it is, we’ll give you a call. We appreciate the help of local authorities, and when we take down the Reverend Feur, you’ll be right there with us.”
Stryker slapped his thighs, and said, “Sounds like a deal.” To Virgil, “Sound like a deal to you?”
Virgil said, “Okay with me, if it’s okay with everybody.”
One of the agents said to Virgil, “You know, Modest Mouse music is really sorta gay.”
15
ON THE WAY back to Bluestem, Virgil said to Stryker, “I don’t want to bring you down, but I don’t think Feur killed Schmidt or the Gleasons. Might have killed Judd, using the Gleasons as cover.”
“That brings me down,” Stryker said.
“Thing is, the Gleasons and the Schmidts…that has the smell of craziness about it.”
Stryker: “Let me share something with you, Virgil: George Feur is pure, one hundred percent, grade-A high-test bat shit.”
“In the wrong way,” Virgil said. “If we’re right about him, if they’ve been pumping meth out of that ethanol plant, then you’ve got a guy who believes in organization and networks and conspiracies. He sets up cover companies. He raises start-up funding. The guy who killed the Gleasons, and the Schmidts…this guy believes in chaos and oblivion. He believes he’s the only real soul in an ocean of puppets.”
“Ah, fuck.” Stryker peered out his side window, watching the summer go by. “Ah, fuck me.”
“Speaking of fuckin’ you, how are things on the Jesse front?”
“Shut up.”
THEY WENT STRAIGHT to the house
of Chris Olafson, the accountant. Stryker banged on the door off and on for three or four minutes, before she finally came to the door in a dressing robe. “Come in. I’d just finally gotten to sleep.”
“We haven’t been to sleep yet,” Stryker said. “What’d you find?”
She shook her head: “Junior’s goose is cooked.”
“How cooked?”
“Very cooked.”
Junior had gotten all the tax-free gifts he was entitled to, some two million dollars. That meant the total estate was taxable. But the total estate was less than anyone had expected, at a little more than six million, and that included “assets” of two million in loans to Junior.
“The state and federal government are going to want roughly four million. That means that Junior won’t get anything. He just won’t have to pay off the loans. But the fact is, if Jesse Laymon is entitled to half of the estate, Junior is going to owe her a million. If you look at his earnings from the Subways at face value, he might just be able to do it. However…”
“However…” Stryker repeated.
“If you look at the tax returns, everything seems okay. But I know the kind of money you make from a fast-food place, because I do all the McDonald’s and Burger Kings and Arby’s around here. A Subway does not do a McDonald’s business, but Junior’s places do, according to his tax returns. They are selling sandwiches as fast as they can make them—which is strange, because if you go into one of Junior’s stores, there’s hardly anyone in there.”
Virgil said, “He’s reporting more than he’s earning?”
“Yes. I think so. He’s piping in money from somewhere else, running it through the Subways, paying taxes on it—and then it’s clean. He’s running a money laundry.”
“Ah,” Stryker said.
“The downside of that is…” She hesitated, and then peered over the top of her glasses at Stryker. “The downside is, your friend Jesse Laymon could make a claim for half of the loan assets—half of the Subway franchises—and then find out that there’s nothing there. The most successful Subways in Minnesota suddenly can’t sell a sandwich.”
“So he’s broke?”
“Not as long as he keeps running those Subways. But without the extra money…he’s in trouble.”
“Is he sticking it someplace? Like his old man?”
“Can’t tell you that,” she said. “But I can tell you, he owes taxes and penalties on all his illegal earnings, so after the IRS gets finished with him…” She shrugged.
VIRGIL SAID, “Chris, I want all the paper back. I don’t want you to mention to anybody that you talked to us. I don’t think you’re in danger, but I can’t promise that you’re not. Some people have probably seen us come in here…”
“…I’m sure.”
“…so word will get around town. You want to be very careful for the next couple of days.”
“Then what?”
“Then we’ll see,” Virgil said, grinning at her.
AS THEY were leaving, Virgil asked her, “You mentioned Jim’s friend Jesse Laymon. Would you have any more specifics on that friendship?”
She shrugged and smiled at Stryker. “Word was, you were seen heading up toward the dell.”
Stryker said, “I’m moving to California.”
“She’s a very pretty girl,” Olafson said. “Too bad about her inheritance.”
AT THE COURTHOUSE, Stryker got out of the truck and said, “I’m running out of gas. Too old for this overnight shit.”
“Yeah, I’m gonna take a nap,” Virgil said. “Gotta call Joanie. Maybe you should call Jesse, the four of us could go out somewhere.”
Stryker yawned. “I’ll ask Jesse. Give me a call when you get up, but not too early. Like, six-thirty or seven.”
JOAN’S CELL PHONE kicked over to the message service. Virgil said, “I’m just going to bed. Jim and I were talking, maybe the four of us could go out tonight, later on…”
He took a while going to sleep; went down deep when he did. His cell phone rang five times before he realized what it was. By the time he got to it, it’d stopped ringing. He punched up the number: didn’t recognize it, but it was from the Twin Cities. He redialed, and Shrake came up.
“Hey, Flowers. It’s me and Jenkins. We’re looking at your old guys. You want us to run them in?”
“Jeez, Shrake, where are you?”
“In their living room. Their daughter’s living room,” Shrake said. “You want us to take her, too?”
“Shrake, what are you doing? Where are you?”
“Okay, then,” Shrake said. “We’ll leave her. I don’t think she’d last too long with all the muffin crunchers down at Ramsey.”
“They can hear you,” Virgil said. “You’re scaring them, right?”
“You got that right,” Shrake said, and he laughed.
Virgil said, “Okay. You tell them to glue their asses to the couch and I’ll be there in four hours. Tell them if they go anywhere, I honest to God…Wait. Let me talk to them. Let me talk to Gerald.”
A moment later, Gerald came on the line, and Virgil said, “Gerald, you motherfucker. You know something about that picture. I’m going to put your ass in jail and your wife’s ass in jail, for murder, if I don’t find out what it is. You sit there: I’m leaving Bluestem right now and I’ll be there in four hours. Now: gimme Shrake.”
Shrake came back up and said, “Yeah?”
“Take the rest of the day off,” Virgil said.
“It’s Saturday, dickweed. This was my day off.”
“Then take tomorrow off, too. I don’t think Gerald’s going anywhere. Gimme the address. The daughter’s name is, what, Jones?”
“Cornelia Jones, that’s correct. DOB six eighteen forty-seven. We’re at her house in Apple Valley, get off at Cliff Road…”
VIRGIL HAD grille-mounted LED flashers on the 4Runner, and a removable roof-mount flasher that plugged into his cigarette lighter. He’d never used them for criminal inquiries, but occasionally did use them when he felt like driving fast.
He called the highway patrol district office in Marshall, told them that he was making an emergency run back to the Cities east on I-90 and north on I-35, as part of a murder investigation, and asked them to advise the other districts; and told them that he’d be using the flashers.
He got Joanie as he left town. “I didn’t think you’d be up yet…” she began.
“I’m heading for the Cities in a hurry,” Virgil said. “Back tomorrow, I hope.”
“What happened?”
“Got the Johnstones and they know some shit. Tell Jim when he gets up—he’ll be getting up in an hour or so.”
“I will. Be safe, Virgil.”
THE 4 RUNNER would do an honest ninety, but at one hundred, it was breathing hard, and starting to move around the road. Virgil backed off to ninety-eight, put it on cruise control, turned on some music, and made it into the south end of the Cities in two and a half hours, got off at the main Apple Valley exit, drove in circles for a while, finally cut Roan Stallion Lane, which was half a block long, and pulled up in the driveway of Cornelia Jones.
The house was suburban-comfortable; its distinguishing characteristic was that the lawn was essentially a field of hosta plants. Thousands of them, like a midget army from Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
VIRGIL DRAGGED a rocking chair halfway across the living room so that he could plant his face a foot from Gerald Johnstone’s, and said, “Gerald, you are a bad man. You are covering up for a guy who’s murdered at least five people. You were lying to me the other day and I knew it and now you’ve dragged your wife and daughter into it. This is a criminal conspiracy.”
Gerald started to blubber, which wasn’t attractive in an elderly man. Carol Johnstone patted his thigh and said, “Tell him, Jerry, tell him, and it’ll be all right.”
The daughter, a stolid woman with a skeptical look on her face, said, “Maybe we ought to get a lawyer. We don’t know what we’re doing here.”
Virgil didn’t want any of that, and said to her: “You can call a lawyer. Then we’ll all go down to jail, and I’ll have them booked for obstruction of justice and abetting a murder after the fact, and you can put up your house as bail, to get them out. Now: I need the information. I’ll get it one way or another, but if we screw around for three days and somebody else is murdered while Jerry sits on the information I need to catch the killer, then I’ll put his aging ass in prison, and your mother’s too, and they’ll stay there until they die. All right?”
That got Gerald going again, and Virgil hardened his face, and when Gerald got it under control, he said, “It was the man-on-the-moon party…”
Virgil closed his eyes, feeling like he’d just crossed a mountaintop, and said, “Ah, shit. A party, not a man.”
ON JULY 20, 1969, the day that Apollo 11 landed the first men on the moon, Johnstone said, Bill Judd Sr. had a party at his house on Buffalo Ridge, to watch the crescent moon come up. The state park had not yet gone in, and the road up to the house was nothing more than a long gravel driveway, coming over the back of the hill, to the back of the house.
The party was right in the heart of the Bill Judd tomcatting days, seven or eight women and four or five men, some of the women local, two or three of them “entertainers” from the Cities.
“I honest to God don’t know what happened up there,” Johnstone said. “All I know is what I heard through the back door. They supposedly had some cocaine, maybe, and plenty of liquor, of course, and were generally up there raising hell. They also had a cookout going.
“So late that night, one of the girls—but maybe not one of the girls, this is what’s crazy, because you’re not going to get a bunch of guys, you know, having sex relations with a woman who’s nine months pregnant. I don’t even know if she could…”
He looked at his wife who said, “It’d be uncomfortable.”