“Oh, boy,” Holland said.
“He’s got no proof,” Skinner said.
“He doesn’t need proof. All he needs to do is start running his mouth, and we’re in trouble,” Holland said.
They all looked at one another, and Fischer said, “Well, we can’t just shoot him.”
“Of course not,” Holland said.
They looked at one another some more, and Skinner said, “We really can’t.”
“I know we can’t,” Holland said. “But we gotta do something.”
“When’s he get back?” Skinner asked.
“He makes the Des Moines terminal tomorrow night. He could try to sneak home and fake his logbook later, but he’s been caught doing that before. I expect he’ll stay there overnight.”
“We’ve got some time,” Skinner said. “Let me think about it.”
* * *
—
Ten minutes later, Holland snuck out the back door. As he was leaving, he said to Skinner, “I got one word for you.”
“Yeah?”
“‘Blackmail.’ Larry’s always been a little sleazy. See if Jennie knows what he’s been sleazy about.”
* * *
—
An hour later, with Fischer’s head in the hollow between his chest and shoulder, Skinner said, “I don’t know Larry all that well. I kinda stayed away from him, because, you know . . . Is he a straight guy? Has he ever been in trouble on anything?”
She couldn’t meet his eyes—she was about to betray her fiancé. She said, “He was investigated last year. By Iowa.”
“Yeah?”
“Somebody stole a trailer full of Legos at the terminal down in Des Moines,” Fischer said. “The Iowa cops were up here to talk to him because they knew his tractor unit was down there at the time. He denied it all, but one night, later on, he hinted that he knew where the Legos were. I think he’s still got a lot of them.”
“At his house?”
“Oh, I don’t think at his house,” Fischer said. “We’re talking about thirty-eight hundred cubic feet of Legos. That’s the size of the inside of a fifty-three-foot trailer. I don’t believe his house is that big.”
“Huh. You know a lot about it,” Skinner said. “Trailer sizes.”
“Well, he tells me about it, even though it’s pretty boring. His idea of pillow talk,” she said. “Something else: he knows a lot about eBay. I’m pretty sure he has, like, a bunch of different accounts there. I think he sells the Legos under fake names.”
“Huh.”
“You think you could . . . use that?” she asked.
“Blackmail might be the only way to shut him up,” Skinner said. “But first, you gotta have something to blackmail him with.”
“Are we turning into criminals, Skinner?” She was twisting her hands. She’d been worried about events in the town since the appearance of the Virgin in December; and even more since the shootings.
“No. If he stole those Legos, he’s a criminal. If we could find them, all we’d be doing is . . . Well, we’re not cops,” Skinner said. “We don’t have to investigate somebody to see if he committed a serious crime. I mean, if he knew that we knew, if he knew that we had evidence . . . then he might not want to piss us off.”
“Okay. But we’re not criminals because of the Virgin Mary thing, are we?”
“Who have we hurt?” Skinner asked. “Nobody. All we’ve done is saved a town and made a lot of people happy.”
“Okay.” She shivered. “I think we should have some more sex to take our minds off all of this.”
“Fine, but before we do that . . . do you have a key to Larry’s place?”
“Of course.”
“I need to borrow it,” Skinner said. “I need to investigate him myself. I’m probably smarter than the Iowa cops.”
“I’ll get it for you. After this, I think I’m going to stop sleeping with him.”
“Good idea,” Skinner said. “There are other fish in the sea. Larry just isn’t that much of a catch, you know? Besides, he hangs out at gentleman’s clubs.”
“That’s true,” she said. She sighed, and said, “Speaking of more sex, you think we should get the toys out?”
* * *
—
At 3 o’clock in the morning, Fischer led Skinner through Van Den Berg’s backyard, unlocked the door, and took him through the kitchen and down to the basement, where Van Den Berg had built his man cave.
Fischer hadn’t wanted to go along, but Skinner patiently explained that if neighbors saw lights and knew that Van Den Berg was on the road, they might call a deputy. If the deputy found Fischer there alone, it’d be okay, because everybody in the county knew her and Van Den Berg were engaged.
“I’m still a little nervous,” she said, as she showed him around. “I don’t lie so good.”
“You’re not lying. You’re his fiancée. You have a key, you’re over here all the time. You check the house for him,” Skinner said.
“At three o’clock in the morning?”
“If somebody knocks, run upstairs and mess up a bed,” Skinner said. “You were sleeping over because you missed him.”
“Oh. Okay. If somebody knocks, I will.”
“If you hear his tractor pull in, for God’s sakes warn me.”
* * *
—
The man cave was decorated with mixed martial arts and Vikings posters, plus the centerpiece, a sixty-five-inch LG television that had fallen off a truck in North Platte, Nebraska, where Van Den Berg had been lucky enough to catch it.
To one side, next to a urine-scented half bath, were a beer refrigerator, plus two filing cabinets, as well as a homemade desk, constructed of two sheets of three-quarter-inch plywood cut in half lengthwise, glued back-to-back to make a thick, two-foot-wide plank, then painted black and screwed down to two carpenter’s sawhorses as legs. Sitting on top of the desk was an older Macintosh Pro computer with two screens and an ancient dot matrix black-and-white printer.
“Didn’t know Larry was into computers,” Skinner said.
“Well, he was going to be one of those day traders,” Fischer said. “He got some how-to CDs on day trading and he played them in his truck until he had them memorized. He borrowed five thousand dollars from me that I’d saved up for the wedding, and then he had another five thousand in savings and he put that in. He spent half of it on computer equipment and lost the other half five years ago. Lost it in two months.”