“I’ll do that,” Virgil said. “You heard about my murder?”
“Yeah—does that have anything to do with the Orly’s Creek boys?”
“Don’t know. I hadn’t really thought about that possibility. But the victim was a pill head, according to the sheriff. His boss thought that he might have another source of income. I’ll keep it in mind.”
“Well, if you’ve got a local source, and you have a pill head who might be dealing . . . that’s a pretty interesting coincidence, if it is a coincidence.”
“I’ll stay in touch,” Virgil said.
He rang off, told Johnson about Gomez’s end of the conversation, then called up Alewort, who was still at Conley’s trailer. “I’d be interested in any trace of any street drug. Deeply interested,” Virgil said.
“We’ll look,” Alewort said.
When Virgil was done with Alewort, Johnson asked what he was most thinking about—the murder, or the dogs.
“I gotta juggle them,” Virgil said. “The murder’s the main thing, but I won’t forget the dogs.”
6
VIRGIL NEEDED TO TALK to Bill Don Fuller, who owned the trailer where Conley had lived, and to the other people suggested by Purdy. He recited the list to Johnson, who said that Fuller ran a welding service down by the river port, and that he’d be driving right past Wendy McComb’s house on the way to Fuller’s place.
“Is she gonna be a problem?” Virgil asked.
“Not if she’s sober,” Johnson said. “She tends to drink a little.”
“By ‘a little,’ you mean ‘a lot,’” Virgil said.
“Well, yeah. She had a pretty hard life before she started screwing for money.”
“I suspect this isn’t news to you, Johnson, but screwing for money is a hard life,” Virgil said.
“Tell you what,” Johnson said, “she used to work as an aide down at the River View nursing home, changing old folks’ diapers and colostomy bags for the minimum wage, drinking every night, and screwing for free. Now she just drinks and screws, for ten times as much money, and that’s about a thousand percent improvement. So don’t get your feminist panties in a knot about what she does for a living.”
“You got a colorful town here, Johnson.”
“Could get more colorful in two days,” Johnson said. “Two days and there’ll be a bunch of boys going up to Orly’s Creek with guns.”
—
VIRGIL LEFT JOHNSON at Jones’s place and drove back toward town. Just short of the city limits, Thunderbolt Road veered off toward the river. A dirt track with a scattering of gravel snaked through a swampy swale and across a short concrete-slab bridge to the levee, then along the land side of the levee toward town, eventually winding past a weathered white cottage with green shutters and a floodwater stain just below the first-floor windows.
Virgil pulled into a dirt parking area and walked around to the front porch. He could hear a TV inside as he knocked on the screen door.
A woman called, “Who is that?”
“Police, state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension,” Virgil said.
McComb was a completely ordinary-looking woman, a bit heavy, wearing a white blouse buttoned to the neckline, and black Capri pants and flip-flops. She had dishwater-blond hair, pale green eyes, and a few freckles. She had a white plastic bowl of cornflakes in her hand, and a spoon in the other.