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Cheryl Lundgren didn’tlive in Paynesville, but a dozen miles southwest of town, in a four-square house probably over a hundred years old: a cube with a pyramid on top, two residential floors, a basement, and an expansive attic. A wide front porch with swing hangers, but no swing, faced the road. The main entry was on the side toward the back, next to the driveway.
The house must have been nice during its first fifty or seventy-five years, the headquarters for a prosperous farm. Now it was a lonely place with most outbuildings gone, barren soybean fields pushed close on the east and south sides, a blacktopped farm-to-market road in front, and a woodlot on the west side.
The woodlot had likely been there since the house was built, serving both as a windbreak and a source of firewood. The ground under the woodlot was a rough, well-creased mound left over from the glaciers. Covered by red oak and underbrush, except for a clearing of three or four acres, it was occupied by four small sheds and surrounded by a fence.
As they drove up to the house on a gravel-and-dirt two-track, they could see goats wandering around inside the fence, then gathering in the clearing to watch Lucas’s car go past. Three more goats stood on the ragged dirt-scarred lawn, staring.
“Abraham Lincoln kept two goats at the White House, named Nanny and Nanko...” Virgil began.
“Shut up.”
—
They were justgetting out of the car when Lundgren came out the side door. She was dressed in a gray sweatshirt, blue jeans, and black Doc Marten lace-up boots. Her hair was an unkempt Einstein-like heap of dry blond strands, her eyes as pale blue as a bottle of Fiji Water, and piercing. Her face looked more than clean; it looked scoured raw.
And though she probably wasn’t fifty, her cheeks were stitched with stress lines. She had a semi-automatic pistol in a black nylon holster on a gunbelt and Virgil, who was closest, said, “Please don’t touch that pistol.”
“And if I do?” she asked.
“My partner will shoot you. He doesn’t have a retention strap on his gun, so he can get it out a lot faster than you can.”
“Want to bet?” she asked.
“No, I don’t, because then we’d have to get the local deputies out here, and the coroner, and figure out who’d take care of the goats,” Virgil said.
“And fill out all kinds of papers,” Lucas said, as he came around the nose of the car, right hand inside his sport coat. “I’m a U.S. Marshal, my partner here is with the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. We need to talk to you about the murder of Judge Alex Sand, three weeks ago down in the Cities.”
She didn’t quite do a silent-movies double take, but it was close. “Somebody killed Sand? How...?”
“He was shot in his home, with his two young sons...”
“The kids were killed?” She seemed genuinely puzzled and appalled.
Virgil nodded. “We’re talking to you because your friend Larry Brickell was sent to prison by Sand. You have a reputation for violence and the marshals who came here to arrest Larry believe it may have been you who opened fire on them.”
The anger seemed to start somewhere in her chest, flow up through her neck to her head, and for a moment, Virgil thought she’d go for the gun. Instead, her hand came away from it as she poked a finger at him and screamed, “Did not! Did not! Larry confessed! You assholes know that! He confessed!”
“We have a witness—”
“I don’t care what you got, dickhead,” she swore through nicotine-colored teeth. “It was Larry that done the shooting! He’s the criminal! He was always dropping me in the shit! He brought that little Carlson girl home and he was fuckin’ her while I was down to Worthington. He’s the dope-dealer child-fucker cop-shooter, not me!”
She took a step toward Virgil and Virgil took a step back, held up both hands: “Keep it together, Cheryl. We’re here to talk. Where were you on Wednesday the—”
“Who said you could use my first name like you know me?”
“Easy...”
She’d shouted through Virgil’s question, and her hand moved down toward the gun, then past it. She suddenly stopped screaming, saliva slicking down one corner of her mouth, and she wiped it away and said, “On Wednesdays? I play canasta at the Bottle Cap. Starting at seven o’clock. Jerry has video cams good for thirty days. How’s that for an alibi, federal assholes?”
“If you’re on the video you’re good,” Lucas said.
“I’m on it. Ask Jerry.”
“Where’s the Bottle Cap?” Virgil asked. “And who’s Jerry?”
“Paynesville, of course,” she said. “What the hell else is out here? Jerry owns it.”
“We’ll check with Jerry,” Lucas said. “How do you know he’s got videos for thirty days?”
