She took them, thumbed through the stack of prints, and said, “Yes, this is the school. What you’re looking at here is the specific line-item list of everything they buy. The budget itself is not so specific—but the title headings are the same for each section. Look here . . .”
She pointed out that the names for the various sections were identical, and in the same order. “Of course, it’s possible that this is a standard form, so every school in the state would use the same section names . . . but I don’t think so. I think this is the Buchanan County budget.”
“You know who the auditor is?” Virgil asked.
“Fred Masilla. He’s with Masilla, Oder, Decker and Somebody Else up in Winona.”
“You know how long he’s been working for the schools?”
“Nope. But a pretty long time,” Anderson said. “You think he’s a crook?”
“Do you?”
“I wouldn’t rule it out,” she said. “If there’s something funny going on with the school money, he’d pretty much have to know about it.”
“Then he sounds like the guy to talk to,” Virgil said.
“Shouldn’t you have something to hold over his head before you do that?”
“I already do. It’s called selective immunity—he pleads guilty and turns state’s evidence, and we give him a break on the sentence.”
“What if he tells you to take a hike?”
“They don’t usually do that,” Virgil said, “because by the time we ask them, we’ve already got enough to hang them with. We don’t negotiate, and we don’t give them a second chance if they turn us down the first time.”
“Sounds like a nasty business, but not uninteresting,” she said.
“Thank you for the uninteresting,” Virgil said. “Too many people would have said disinteresting.”
“Do I look like a fuckin’ moron?”
—
WHEN VIRGIL LEFT ANDERSON’S, he was confident that he’d found at least a piece of the story that Conley had been working on. Thinking about Conley got him thinking about the crime-scene work at Conley’s trailer, and he called Paul Alewort, the sheriff department’s crime-scene specialist, and asked if he was done processing the trailer.
“Yeah, we finished late last night. Got nothing for you. The only thing that’s not quite right is that missing laptop—didn’t find anything that might suggest where it is. Was he killed for it? Beats me.”
“Could I get in to take another look at the place?”
“Sure. Are you in town?”
“Yes.”
“I’m at the office. Stop by and I’ll give you a key.”
—
VIRGIL PICKED UP the key and drove up to Conley’s trailer, let himself in. The place was a mess: Alewort had warned him that they’d torn it apart. Everything had been taken from every drawer and closet, and piled on every flat surface: tables, countertops, bed, and floor. Virgil poked through the detritus of Conley’s life: dozens of movies, including a half-dozen girl-on-girl pornos, a hundred music CDs, mostly grunge and punk, stacks of paid bills and newspaper clippings of stories he’d written, a two-foot-high stack of printouts of stories, a shelf of science fiction novels, all in paperback. A tangled mass of computer cables and accessories had all been stuffed in a plastic box. A jar of pennies sat on the floor next to the bed.