AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Lucas plucked Virgil’sshirt sleeve and said, “We gotta move.”
“What?”
“We need to talk to the guy who does your dirt for you,” Lucas said.
Virgil: “Are we in a big hurry?”
“Yes, we are. We need to have this done before two-thirty.”
—
The dirt guy,whose name was Yin, was at lunch when they left downtown Minneapolis. Virgil asked the duty officer to find him and get him back to the BCA. He was waiting when Virgil and Lucas walked through the door, and he was not happy.
“I have not finished the analysis. I should have that done in the next few days, but...”
“Do you know anything? Anything at all?” Lucas demanded. “Forest, farm, ditch...”
“I’ve seen algae in it,” Yin conceded. “Under a microscope.”
“Algae?”
“Yes. It’s very dark, floodplain muck,” Yin said. “Not from a lake, from a river. That’s one thing. And the algae.”
To Virgil, Lucas said, “You’ve got to have your guys scrape the dirt out of the tread of Hinton’s van. See if it’s floodplain. See if it matches the shovel.”
“Because Hinton’s buried in a floodplain,” Virgil said. “And if the warrant’s quashed, we won’t be able to use the shovel dirt to develop more evidence, but if it hasn’t been quashed yet...”
“Exactly. We can still use it. Maybe.” Lucas checked the time again. “Okay. I’m gonna make the call.”
“You worry me sometimes,” Virgil said.
—
Virgil and Lucaswere back in Virgil’s Tahoe. Lucas made the call to Daisy Jones, the talking head ofJonesing for News.He got a receptionist, then a producer, and finally Daisy herself.
Virgil said, “So Daisy, what kind of boring bullshit are you putting up this afternoon?”
“Flowers. You’re selling something, aren’t you?”
“I’m sitting here with Lucas—we’re on the truck speakers—and he said, ‘Why don’t we go on thatJonesingshow and give Daisy an exclusive?’ I said, ‘Why, do you have something going on with Daisy? ’CCO has a lot bigger audience.’ Maybe we should go to them...”
“I can put you on right at the top of the hour if you can get here by ten-to-three. Tell me what you might say...”
—
Jones was asexy chunk of woman whose brain could slice open a guest like a watermelon if he or she didn’t take care. Lucas and Virgil had known her for years, from the time she was a young cop reporter working the streets in her off-hours, looking for the sensational or, failing that, the touching.
She’d once done a story that involved a fluffy white street puppy with one blue eye and one silver that had gone national, making heralmost famous; Virgil had once alleged that she’d stolen the puppy for the story, the only time he’d ever seen her lose her cool. With her long nails, he’d feared for his eyes.
They arrived at the studio at two-forty, plenty of time for Jones to push them into the makeup chair. “I’m going to start with a brief couple of lines about the other guests, then I’m going straight to you. Who wants to go first?”
“Virgil’s a better bullshitter than I am,” Lucas said.
“Virgil it is,” Jones said.
With the makeup on, they walked down to the broadcast studio where they were hooked into lavalier mikes. The floor manager sat them too close together on a couch, while Jones took the red chair facing them and looked at a heavily scrawled legal pad and muttered her opening lines a couple of times. That done, she looked up and said, “You’ve both been on before. Remember to talk to me. Don’t talk to the cameras.”
The floor manager counted off the time and fifteen seconds out, Jones shouted, “Ray, I’m going straight-faced serious...” and to Virgil and Lucas she said, “Don’t smile, I won’t. Be cops.”
