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“Because they’ve used them in court when I got in fights,” she said.
Virgil was amused: “Jerry hasn’t banned you?”
“And lose fifty dollars a week in beer sales? I don’t think so. He knows better than to fuck with me, anyway. I’ll fight him. I’ll punch him right in his fat fuckin’ Swede nose.”
Lucas said, “Cheryl, Ms. Lundgren, I don’t want you angry with me, but I want to ask... you seem to have anger control issues. You’ve been arrested...”
She put her hands to the sides of her head and shouted, “Because nobody listens to me. I know all kinds of shit, but nobody listens.”
“The anger...”
“Yes, I have meds, but the meds fuck me up,” she said, still shouting. “Everything feels dim, my brain goes dim, fades out. I go off them here, because all I got here is my goats. Goats listen to me. People don’t listen to me. I take my meds when I go to court, and then they treat me like I’m an idiot because my brain is dim.”
Lucas: “Okay. I think I understand that...”
“You don’t understand shit...”
“I understand you make some pretty good goat cheese,” Virgil said, a little obsequiously. “Love goat cheese, myself.”
“Go get your own fuckin’ cheese,” Lundgren shouted.
“Well, we’ll talk to Jerry,” Lucas said, taking a step backwards toward the Cayenne. “If it doesn’t pan out, we’ll be back with a warrant and tear the ass off your house.”
“Go check with him. If you get a warrant, you better bring more posse, because I won’t put up with it,” she said. “Now get the fuck off my yard. Don’t run over any of my goats.”
Virgil glanced at Lucas, who nodded, and they stepped toward the car and got in. As Lucas backed down the driveway, Virgil, watching Lundgren, who stood with one hand on her gun, said, “Her life won’t end well.”
“No.” Lucas told Virgil about Duane Kowalska’s comment, that Lundren had pulled him in. “I felt that.”
Virgil nodded: “She’s ill, but she’s working through it. Or trying to, anyway, trying to keep it together. Wonder how much cheese she makes. And who buys it?”
“Maybe neighbors...”
Virgil: “Goat cheese has anti-inflammatory and antibacterial qualities...”
“Shut up.”
“I can’t help it if I work out in the countryside,” Virgil said. “This stuff rubs off on you.”
Lucas: “That’s fine, but you don’t have to rub it off on me.”
—
They drove backto Paynesville, found the Bottle Cap, and found Jerry, who did have a fat nose, Swede or not, who got on his computer and called up the canasta game from the night of the Sandmurder. There were eight tables and Lundgren had a seat at the middle one, facing the video camera. She played right through the moment of the killing.
Virgil bought some peppered elk jerky on the way out the door, and said, as they headed back toward the Twin Cities, “The thing about elk is, some guy imported a bunch of them from the Rockies, where chronic wasting disease is endemic. They spread the disease to the Wisconsin deer herd, and now it’s all through the Midwest. Could wipe out the whole whitetail population. I believe all the Cervidae are susceptible, and there are forty-seven species around the world...”
“Shut up.”
“You’re a little testy, and not in a particularly funny way,” Virgil said.
“I know,” Lucas said. “I can’t help it, because Lundgren told me something important about who killed Sand, but I don’t know what she told me.”
“What? I didn’t pick up a single thing from her,” Virgil said. “We should go back and ask her.”
“That’s the problem,” Lucas said. “I heard it, but I don’t know what it is, and I don’t think she’d know, either.”
“Something about cheese? About goats?”
