Free Deadline by John Sandford

Johnson said, “she used to work as an aide down at the River View nursing home, changing old folks’ diapers andcolostomy bags for the minimum wage, drinking every night, and screwing for free. Now she just drinks and screws, for ten times as much money, and that’s about a thousand percent improvement. So don’t get your feminist panties in a knot about what she does for a living.”
    “You got a colorful town here, Johnson.”
    “Could get more colorful in two days,” Johnson said. “Two days and there’ll be a bunch of boys going up to Orly’s Creek with guns.”
    —
    V IRGIL LEFT J OHNSON at Jones’s place and drove back toward town. Just short of the city limits, Thunderbolt Road veered off toward the river. A dirt track with a scattering of gravel snaked through a swampy swale and across a short concrete-slab bridge to the levee, then along the land side of the levee toward town, eventually winding past a weathered white cottage with green shutters and a floodwater stain just below the first-floor windows.
    Virgil pulled into a dirt parking area and walked around to the front porch. He could hear a TV inside as he knocked on the screen door.
    A woman called, “Who is that?”
    “Police, state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension,” Virgil said.
    McComb was a completely ordinary-looking woman, a bit heavy, wearing a white blouse buttoned to the neckline, and black Capri pants and flip-flops. She had dishwater-blond hair, pale green eyes, and a few freckles. She had a white plastic bowl of cornflakes in her hand, and a spoon in the other.
    “What have I done?” she asked through the screen door.
    “Nothing, as far as I know,” Virgil said. “But I understand you’re a friend of Clancy Conley.”
    “Who? I’m not sure I know that name—”
    “Conley was found dead today. He was shot to death.”
    “Oh, Jesus!” she said, taking a step back. She sputtered a few soggy cornflakes onto the screen. “What happened? Where was this? Are you sure it’s Clancy?”
    She asked all the questions that Laughton should have, Virgil noticed; and she’d popped the hook on the door, almost unconsciously, to let him in. She backed across the living room and dropped into a chair, pointing him at a couch. The house was furnished like any middle-class suburban home, except the television was smaller.
    “What happened?” She seemed to notice the bowl in her hand and set it on an end table.
    Virgil told her about Conley, and as he did, the blood drained out of her face and she put both hands on her cheeks; no tears. When he finished, she asked, “How can I help?”
    “Do you know . . . Everybody who knows him says he didn’t have much going for himself. Drank too much, probably did some dope. Maybe dealt a little? Sound right?”
    “No. He quit drinking. Quite a while ago, and he said he wasn’t going back. He was working out, he was running, he was getting in shape. He was working on a story, he was all excited about it. In fact . . . Okay, he might have known he was in trouble. He once told me, we were in bed, and he said if a cop comes asking about me, tell him to look up the songs of some singer.”
    “Some singer?”
    “Yeah, but this was like a month ago. I can’t remember her name, but . . . Wait, I think she was the chick singer for the Mouldy Figs.”
    “The Mouldy Figs?” The Figs were a local jazz band in the Twin Cities. “The Mouldy Figs don’t have a chick singer—they’re a jazz band.”
    “Well, that’s what he said. And he said, their chick singer,” McComb said.
    “Huh. Do you know what his story was about?” Virgil asked.
    “No, I don’t—but he said he had a great story, he was working on it, but then he shut up and said he didn’t want to talk about it, really.”
    “Did he say when he was going to publish it?”
    “No, nothing like that, but I feel like it was pretty soon,” McComb said. She got up, took two or three quick steps around the living room, and sat