Bad Blood Read Online Free PDF Page B

read through them again myself.”
     
     
    VIRGIL STOPPED at the Yellow Dog Café in downtown Homestead, got a California burger and home fries, with a Diet Coke, and thought about the three killings. Had to be tied. He didn’t know how often Warren County had a murder, but he’d guess one about every ten years or so, if that often. To have three, in a week, all cryptically linked, was pressing coincidence.
    They had no reason for Tripp’s murder of Flood; no reason for Crocker’s murder of Tripp; no reason for an unknown killer to murder Crocker, especially when Crocker was lying on a couch with his penis sticking out. Crocker hadn’t been surprised; everything in his old house rattled, so he must’ve known that he wasn’t alone in the house, must’ve known the person who killed him. And he hadn’t feared that person; probably had some sexual relationship with her. Or him.
    Hmm. Or him. A few months earlier, Virgil had worked a case in the North Woods in which a bunch of lesbians had been involved. Didn’t seem right that he’d go right on to another case involving homosexuals.
    On the other hand, Tripp may have been gay, active or inactive. He had wanted to talk to a newspaper reporter about the Flood killing, and the only fact known to Virgil about the reporter was that he was gay.
    On the third hand, he did only know one fact about the reporter, and taken with all the facts he didn’t know about him, his sexual orientation was probably irrelevant.
    Maybe.
    He took out his cell phone and called Coakley. She answered on the third ring, and he asked, “Are you at Crocker’s folks’?”
    “Yes.”
    She didn’t say anything else, and Virgil realized that she was sitting there with them, and they were listening. “Is there any possibility that Crocker had homosexual inclinations?”
    “Very, very unlikely. But nothing’s impossible, as I’m sure you know,” she said.
    “You gonna come with me when I talk to this newspaper reporter?”
    “Absolutely. I’ll see you in an hour.”
    Virgil hung up, toyed with his home fries. Unless the crime-scene crew came up with something that definitely pointed at a particular person as the killer, or somebody came forward with information, it would be tough to get into the Crocker killing . . . though it would be interesting to learn more about friends and relatives of Tripp, to see if they blamed Crocker for the death.
    And with Crocker dead, it’d be tough to get into the Tripp killing, as well. Had to be some private motive. Some motive that involved Tripp and Crocker and almost certainly Flood.
    Tripp had wanted to talk to somebody about Flood, so that killing can’t have been on impulse. Tripp planned it. Took the T-ball bat with him. Could be an entry there . . .
     
     
    HE WAS ABOUT to leave the café when a man in a dark suit and close-cut silver hair came through the door, followed by a pretty, dark-haired woman carrying a briefcase and dressed in a gray lawyer suit. He looked familiar, and the man did a double take when he saw Virgil.
    “Virgil Flowers,” he said, and, introducing himself, “Tom Parker—I cross-examined you in the Larson case.” He said it with a friendly smile and Virgil remembered him. Good attorney, he thought, though he’d been on the other side.
    “Oh, sure,” Virgil said. “Nice to see you again.”
    They shook hands, and Parker said, “This is my associate, Laurie . . . and I bet you’re not here on a social visit. There’s a hot rumor going around the courthouse that Jimmy Crocker’s been murdered. That true?”
    Virgil said, “I can’t really talk to you about it in detail. But, yeah. I’m just in from his place. The sheriff’s out telling his folks.”
    “Better her than me,” Parker said.
    Laurie asked, “You know who did it?”
    “No idea, yet.”
    “When you find out, let me know,” Parker said. “I want to rush out there with my card.”
    “Maybe not. That didn’t work for me the last time,” Virgil