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She laughed, and said, “No, that’s not what I heard. What I heard is that there’s only one urinal in the men’s room and when he has to go, he has to go, so he heads out back by the dumpster and takes a whiz. They called him ‘the whiz’ for a while and then it got changed to ‘The Wiz’ and he kinda... stuck with it.”
“Nice story,” Virgil said. “So, what’s up?”
“It’s about Don Hess. You were asking about him around boys. I got a boy in middle school and I wouldn’t let him alone around Don. There’s something about him.”
“Just a feeling?” Lucas asked, looking at her in the rearview mirror.
“You know... do you have a pencil and a notebook?”
Virgil: “Yes.”
“Write this down. There was this boy named Kerry Blackburn...” She spelled both the first and last names. “He was with the older boys when I’d see him, the sixteen-to-seventeen group. I’d see Don around him, and there was something between them. Kerry kindaseemed willing to hang out and box, but later on he kinda shied away from Don in a funny way. I thought something might have happened... But what do I know?”
“You might know something useful. How old is Kerry now?” Lucas asked.
“Mmm, he must be twenty? He stopped coming to fight club—that’s what we call the Silver Star, among us—a couple of years ago. He got accepted to college over in River Falls. Somebody told me he lives over there now, maybe in a dormitory.”
“Okay. Will Hess be working tonight?” Virgil asked.
“He works every night but Friday, when it’s a girls’ class.”
“He doesn’t work with women? How about The Wiz?”
She shook her head: “The girls work with a woman named Cheryl. I’m a bartender, I work evenings so I don’t know her much. I think... Cheryl Payton?”
She had nothing else. They thanked her and asked her not to discuss their conversation with anyone else. She said she wouldn’t. “I’d like to know if anything happens, though.”
“We’ll call you, if we can—if anything works out,” Virgil said.
She checked the street, hopped out of the car and went on her way, her duffel bag on her shoulder.
—
Virgil got onhis phone, with Lucas watching, to work the phones at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls. The university was a few miles east of the Minnesota border and was popular with Twin Cities residents because of tuition reciprocity agreements between the two states.
Virgil identified himself as a member of Minnesota’s BCA, whichgot him further into the bureaucracy. After assuring several bureaucrats that Kerry Blackburn was not suspected of any crime, he was told that Blackburn was enrolled in Data Science and Predictive Analysis. He was currently living at the George R. Field South Fork Suites residence hall.
Lucas said, “Tsk. They have suites now. I had a top bunk bed above a guy who ate nothing but cheese.”
“You’ll have to tell me about that some other time, like when we’re old,” Virgil said. “River Falls is a half hour from here. Crank up this piece of shit and let’s go.”
They went.
—
Rather than tryingto locate Blackburn on campus, they took a shot at finding him at the residence hall, reasoning that even if he wasn’t there, somebody else who lived in the suite might know where he’d be.
The dorm was a modern four-story reddish brick apartment building with a massive parking lot across the street. Lucas put a U.S. Marshal’s card on the dashboard, and they crossed the street, encountered more bureaucrats, or perhaps bureaucrats-in-training, and eventually made their way to Blackburn’s co-ed suite.
They knocked, and the door was opened by a young woman who didn’t want to tell them that Blackburn was asleep in his room, but eventually did.
“Is he in trouble?” she asked, looking troubled.
“No. Not at all. Not in any way. He may have some information we need, and he may not even know he has it.” Virgil put his hand over his heart. “I swear to God.”
She went to get Blackburn, while Lucas and Virgil stood in the doorway, looking around. Blackburn came out a minute later, a slender, thin-faced man with brown bed hair sticking out in all directions. He wore narrow blue-rimmed glasses, a tee-shirt, and sweatpants. He was barefoot, and did not look like a boxer, although his nose may have been broken sometime in the past. The woman tagged along behind him, still looking troubled.
Blackburn: “Have I done something?”
