Rough country

"I don't think she had a will," Davies said. "She was pretty sure she'd live forever."

"She had a will somewhere," Harcourt said. "She was too… not calculating, but rational… not to have a will."

"Oh, for Christ's sakes, Lawrence, the woman was calculating," Ma

Virgil asked Ma

"Oh, fuck no," Ma

"Barney runs our major accounts and they're pretty happy with him. If he were to leave, he might take some of them with him," Harcourt said. He added, "I had reason to believe that Erica was pla

Ma

Virgil threw his hands up. "So? What happens now? With the agency?"

Ma

Harcourt said to Ma

"What's going to happen to me?" Davies asked. "What's going to happen?"

Again, Harcourt and Ma

VIRGIL GOT OUT his notebook and jotted down a few thoughts, then talked to Harcourt, Ma

Davies, on the other hand, had no alibi. She'd been sick the morning before, she said, and when she finally got out of bed, it was almost noon. She went grocery shopping at a chain supermarket where they'd be unlikely to remember having seen her. Still feeling logy-"I think I ate something bad"-she'd spent the day cleaning, watching a movie on DVD, and then had gone to bed early, with a book. Neither a DVD nor a book would leave an electronic trace.

She picked up on the direction of the questioning and protested, "I wouldn't ever do anything to hurt Erica-I love Erica. She was the love of my life. We've been together for six years… I don't know anything about guns. I've never been here. I didn't even know exactly where it was…"

"Did you or Erica have outside relationships? Was your relationship, uh, an open relationship?"

"No. No, it wasn't open," she said. "I mean, back at the begi

"I know what you mean," Virgil said.

"… but once I moved in, we were committed."

Virgil nodded. "Okay. I believe you when you say you wouldn't want to hurt Erica, but I had to ask-you know, if there had been another person, if there was a sexual tension, if she'd started pulling away from the other person, to stay with you."

"Why wouldn't the other person have shot me?" Davies said. "Why would you shoot the one you want?"

"Because you shoot the one who rejects you," Virgil said. "Hell hath no fury…"

Davies slumped. "Oh, God. You know, there might have been one fling. She might have had one relationship, but she broke it off a year ago."

"With who?"

She shrugged. "I don't know. I was afraid to ask. I was afraid if I asked, it would precipitate something. Instead, I just went out of my way to… attach myself more firmly."

"You must at least suspect a person, a name…"

She said, "Look. I only suspect a relationship. I'm not even sure there was one. It could have been a bad time at work. We didn't talk about her work. She didn't want to. Our relationship was her way of getting away from work. So it's possible that what I thought was a distracting relationship was actually something else. So, no. I don't have a name. Or a suspect."

SHE LOOKED SO TIRED and beat-up that Virgil let her go. Ma

"Mr. Ma

Ma

At the bar, the bartender looked at him and said, "Sir, this bar is basically ladies only-"

"Just give me a goddamn drink, honey," Ma

"Sir-" Still apologetic.

Ma

"Relax," Virgil said. The bartender, anger on her face, stepped away, picked up a shaker, and scooped up some ice.

"Relax, my ass. As soon as I get a couple drinks under my belt, I'm go

"You'll take Miss Davies with you?"

"Yeah, I guess, if she wants to go," Ma

The bartender pushed the martini across the bar and said, "Choke on it, motherfucker."

Ma

The bartender, a bottle-redhead with dark-penciled eyebrows, with a name tag that said Kara, looked at the money, then at Virgil, and said, "You're the police officer. People said it was the surfer-looking guy."

"Yes," Virgil said.

Ma

"Cute, for a cop," the bartender said, softening a bit on Ma

"He is cute," Ma

"Guys," Virgil said. "Shut up."

The bartender looked at him for a beat, then another, then made a tiny dip of her head toward the back of the bar, and wandered away. Ma

"When you're on the way back, and I expect either Miss Davies or Mr. Harcourt will be driving, because you'll have done this drinking…"

Ma

"… so when you're on the way back, make up a list of the people who would have been fired. Especially the ones who'd be most bitter, and the women."

"You really think a woman did it?"

"At this point, it's the best bet," Virgil said. "Though I take you seriously about those people down at the agency. I've been thinking about it, and looking at Google Earth, and the maps, and the fact that people down at the agency knew where Erica was going, and when, and she probably talked about what she did up here. I've recalculated. It might be fifty-fifty on whether the killer was from up here or down there."

"You think?" Ma

"Which brings me to ask, who did McDill have that affair with, last year? Ended about a year ago. Somebody at the agency?"

There was about one long suck of alcohol left in the martini glass, and Ma