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“In the morning,” Virgil said. “Maybe if there’s nothing else.”
“Where’s the climax you think is coming?”
“It’s coming, one way or another,” Virgil said.
In a borrowed office at the BCA, they looked over the latest reports from Durey and his agents on interviews with Cooper’s students. There was a note that Durey himself would interview Cooper again about what the two boys might have known.
They were still looking through the interviews when Durey showed, leaned in the office door and said, “Can’t find Cooper. Her phone goes to voice mail and she’s not at home. The babysitter says she’s at the university, but she doesn’t have a class today. So...”
“We’ll try her tomorrow, early,” Lucas said.
“Okay, but I got a call from Russo. He said the feds are looking at a search warrant for Heath’s house. He got his ass out of there before they could ask too many questions.”
Virgil: “Holy shit. They’re going for it?”
“Could happen,” Durey said. “They’re supposed to be providing support on the case, but they haven’t done much. This looks like a spot they could jump into.”
“Jumping into the hole in an outhouse,” Virgil said.
Durey straightened up. “My grandpa’s farm had a three-holer. One for each of us: St. Paul, BCA, FBI.”
“Gotta say, I like the metaphor,” Lucas said to Virgil. “Maybe you could use it in the novel.”
18
Cooper had a new child-care helper, a young Mexican woman named Fatima Diaz. As Virgil and Lucas were driving to Stillwater to confront the Carters, she left the baby with Fatima and the ex-cop, Binky Pelz, and met Melton at a Starbucks on the University of Minnesota campus. They wedged themselves in a corner with their lattes.
Melton asked, “Where’s Binky?”
“Still at the house. I told him I wanted him to keep watch, in case the killer showed up again. That I’d be okay in the car and in crowds, and I wanted him with Fatima and Chelsea. I’ll call him when I’m close to the house, so he can cover the garage area.”
“Okay. This man... Don Hess? You’re sure?”
“Almost positive. Not quite a hundred percent. Everything fits, though. He’s the right size and shape, he was around the kids...”
Hess, she told Melton, worked at the Silver Star, a boxing gym that had a special class for younger kids. Hess did the kids’ classes, with special equipment including the softest gloves, helmets, rhythm bags.
“I went there and talked to him. I didn’t want my kids getting concussions or beat up or any of that. I didn’t even want them to take the classes, but Alex pushed it really hard. He wanted the kids to be able to stand up for themselves, not be afraid about physical confrontation. Hess showed me what they did. Actually, let me box. Then I was okay with it, because it felt confrontational, but wasn’t really rough. Nobody was going to get hurt.”
“Still sounds crazy to me,” Melton said. “Men hitting each other. Boys.”
“It’s hormones,” Cooper said. “The boys actually liked it. But. There was something about Hess. This kind of... seminary student thing. That sounds bigoted, but you know what I mean?”
“He was a seminary student?”
“No, no. But he had that well-groomed, kind of unctuous, I don’t know...thing,” Cooper said. “He had the kids doing all kinds of exercises, you know. Push-ups, sit-ups, they had some little dumbbells. Squats. Then they’d put on their gloves and helmets and either hit these big mitts that were supposed to be like somebody’s head...”
“I’ve seen those in movies...”
“Or they’d box with each other,” Cooper said. “There’d be these taped squares on the floor mats, instead of a ring...”
“Were there other adults around?” Melton asked.
“There was a whole adult area. The kids had their own space, and a little locker room with showers. They’d pick up a towel whenthey came in, just like the big guys, the adults,” Cooper said. “Art and Blaine were in the nine-to-twelve group, then there was a thirteen-to-fifteen, and a sixteen-to-seventeen. Older than that, they worked out with the adults. The different kids’ groups worked out on different days, once a week. There was a girls’ group, but I’m not sure who ran that.”
“So the kids would be alone with this Hess guy.”
“Well, there was another guy there, an older guy. The kids called him The Wiz, and he had a ‘The Wiz’ name tag. But he wasn’t the killer. He was built like a concrete block, and short. Maybe a little dumb, or punch-drunk. He seemed okay to me. Hess, though... It stuck in the back of my mind that I kind of didn’t want him alone with the boys.”
