Deadline

12

The night was losing its grip, and the early morning steam was hanging off the river’s surface, when they pulled into the parking area near the dirt ramp. A pickup followed them in, towing a trailer that carried a twenty-foot-long jon boat.

The truck driver swung in a wide circle, backed up — fast — toward the waterline at the ramp, hit his brakes, and the boat slid off the trailer into the water. The fisherman jumped out of the truck, walked around to the trailer, untied the line that kept the boat from floating away, tied it to a pole stuck in the ground next to the ramp, got in the truck, and pulled it up beside Virgil’s SUV.

He hopped out, nodded at Virgil, and said, “Johnson, morning,” and Johnson said, “Syz, how they hangin’,” and they all went their separate ways. By the time Virgil and Johnson got to the highway, Syz was roaring out into the river.

“He’s a Polack from Chicago, a carp fisherman,” Johnson told Virgil. “They like their smoked carp, the Polacks do. Smoke it almost till it’s brown. Kinda nicotine-colored.”

They walked up the highway, dodged across when they got a break in the high-speed traffic, and began climbing the hill. They were both carrying their packs; Virgil’s pistol was in his, with a couple bottles of water and the large-sized Payday peanut candy bar. At five-twenty they were at the top of the ridge at the far eastern end of the valley. They found a grassy mound inside a clump of sumac, made sure it wasn’t an anthill, and sat down.

Johnson took a beer out of the pack and popped the top.

They were waiting, and didn’t have much to talk about, so Virgil said, “I’m starting to worry about your drinking.”

Johnson said, “Me, too.”

“Then why don’t you quit?”

“I don’t know. I’ve thought about it, but never got around to it,” Johnson said. “I talked to Clarice about getting married, you know, but she said she won’t do it, if I keep drinking.”

“How many beers are you up to?”

“Don’t really count, but I pretty much do a six-pack a day, I guess. Give or take. Mostly give.”

“Jesus, Johnson, you gotta quit,” Virgil said. “You’re hanging around a lumber mill, for Christ’s sakes. Circular saws. Chain saws.”

“Yeah, I guess. All right.”

“All right, what?”

“All right, I’ll quit. I’ll drink these two, and that’ll be the end of it,” Johnson said.

Virgil told him about the murder of Zorn, and the scene the night before, and his encounter with Muddy Ruff. “That kid knows more than he lets on,” Johnson said. “You ought to get close to him. If he thinks you’re a friend, he’d talk.”

“You mean, exploit him.”

“Well, yeah.”

They didn’t talk for a while. Johnson popped the top on the second beer, took a long swig, then tossed the nearly full can over his shoulder and down the hill. “Good-bye, old friend,” he said.

“I’ll believe it a year from now,” Virgil said.

Johnson: “Say, this whole stop-drinking thing… it doesn’t include margaritas, does it?”

Virgil was checking the time on his cell phone—6:50—when they first heard the dogs, like a distant pack of foxhounds off in the English hills, somewhere. The barking got louder, over the next couple of minutes, and faster than a dog could run, Virgil thought. He took his weapon out of his pack, with its holster, tucked it into the back of his pants, and said, “Let’s go. I don’t want to see your gun unless I’m shot.”

They came down off the hump and walked through the neck-high sumac, into the oak forest, following a thin game trail that led them below the emerging bluff line, toward the sound of the dogs. They’d gone three hundred yards when the sound of the dogs grew sharper, with some canine shrieks, and suddenly the barking began to diminish. “They’re moving them,” Johnson said. “We’ve got to run.”

They began to jog toward the sound of the dogs, which suddenly stopped altogether, cut off as cleanly as the flick of a switch on an amplifier. Virgil said, “Faster,” and they broke into a full run. A minute later, they could see the pen they’d found during the first search. The pen was empty. Johnson was running behind Virgil, but he suddenly sped up, reached out and caught Virgil’s shirt, yanked him to a stop. He said, “Shhh!”

Virgil went quiet, and then he heard it: other people running, at least one downslope, and far away, the other closer, and upslope. Virgil said, “They spotted us coming. You watch the pen. Don’t shoot anyone. I’m going.”

Johnson jogged on toward the pen, as Virgil cut uphill, running hard, now. He couldn’t hear the other runner when he was actually running, so he had to stop, and listen, and then follow on. He’d run four or five hundred yards, tough going all the way, when he came out at the edge of a bean field that stretched away to the west, on the narrow valley crest.

He stopped to listen, and a moment later saw a man break out of the trees, run along the fence for a few yards, then dodge back into the trees, probably three or four hundred yards ahead. Virgil doubted that he could catch him, but ran on as hard as he could, trying to follow game trails as best he was able, but much of the time, busting through the underbrush. When he reached the corner of the bean field, where he’d seen the other man, he understood why the man had broken into the open: there was a notch in the valley wall right there, and the man had run around it.

And had vanished.

Virgil listened, but didn’t hear anything. He went on another hundred feet, and then saw a more-used path, leading toward the edge of the bluffs. There, he saw a pathway down, with recently scuffed yellow dirt.

Good place for an ambush. He took his pistol out and slid cautiously down the trail, through the bluff line, down probably fifty feet, where he found another trail that followed the line of the bottom of the bluffs. That trail went in both directions; he was thinking about which one to take when he heard the other man again, running down to his right, then the sound of a truck, and as he ran that way, a truck door slamming, and then the sound of the truck accelerating away on the road below.

He thought about continuing down the hill, but there was no hope: the truck would be long gone before he got there, and then he’d have to re-climb the valley wall to get back to Johnson.

He thought about the choices, then jogged back along the bluffs to the pen. Johnson was waiting there, inside the pen.

“Nothing here,” Johnson said, scuffing around inside the wire. “The feeding tubs, that’s all. But I can smell dogs.”

Virgil sniffed: “So can I. They must have them hooked together, somehow, and must’ve taken them off somewhere.”

“Why did they stop barking?”

“I don’t have a dog, so I couldn’t tell you… maybe they’re all hooked into choke chains or something? Would that do it?”

“Maybe,” Johnson said.

Virgil walked around the pen, and it looked as though a lot of dogs had been in residence for a long time. The bluff had some overhanging places, with hollows beneath the ledges, where it looked like dogs had lain when the sun got hot. One little dirt run followed the fence line then actually went up the bluff a few feet, but then hit a dead-end wall.

“All right,” Virgil said finally. “Let’s go. Tonight you can drop me, and I’m going to sneak all the way back up here to the pen.”

“They might be planning to do the same thing,” Johnson said. “Sneak up here early, before you do.”

“I’ll think of something,” Virgil said.

“The boys have already thought of something,” Johnson said. “They thought about catching Zorn out somewhere, and beating it out of him.”

“But not shooting him.”

“No — I mean, what good would that do? You couldn’t find your dogs if you killed him.”

“Good point,” Virgil said.

“So maybe they’ll catch Mrs. Zorn, and beat it out of her,” Johnson said. And, “Mrs. Zorn. Wonder what her first name is.”

“Bunny,” Virgil said.

Though he was feeling sleepy, Virgil drove back through town to Buster Gedney’s house. Gedney wasn’t home, but there was a coffee shop a couple blocks back toward the downtown area, and he stopped, thinking he might get a bagel or a scone. He took his laptop with him, and when he got his scone and a Diet Coke, saw some umbrellas on a back deck and went that way. Where he found Gedney sitting at a café table.

Gedney looked shocked when Virgil came over with a bag and bottle: “You’re following me?”

“Not exactly, but we are… mmm… aware of where you’re at,” Virgil said. He glanced quickly up at the sky, then brought his gaze back down.

Gedney caught it and asked, “You’ve got a drone?”

“Oh… of course not,” Virgil said. He dragged a chair from a nearby table to where Gedney was sitting, and made himself comfortable. “Why would you be important enough for us to… to task a drone with keeping track of you?”

“I’m not,” Gedney said. “I’m not.”

Virgil said to the air, “You hear that, Spike? He says he’s not important enough.”

Gedney: “You’re making fun of me — that’s not right.”

Virgil unscrewed the cap on the Diet Coke, keeping his eyes on Gedney as he did it, took a sip, and said, “Tell you something, Buster. You heard what happened to Roy Zorn?”

“Everybody’s heard,” Gedney said. “He got shot.”

“He got shot by the same guy who shot Conley, and he did it with your burst kit.” Gedney opened his mouth to object, but Virgil cut him off: “I know you made those kits. You’re a terrible liar, Buster, and I could see it in your face. Sooner or later, I’ll prove it, and then you’ll go to Stillwater prison for thirty years, no parole. That’s the penalty in Minnesota for murder-one.”

He took a bite of the scone.

“I didn’t—”

“Yes, you did,” Virgil said. “Buster, maybe you need to talk to a criminal lawyer about this. Or maybe you should just take my word: you are part and parcel of a vicious pair of crimes. In most other states, you’d qualify for the needle. Here, we just pack you away forever. You’re what, in your forties? You’d be in your middle seventies before you get out. At the earliest. You’ve got exactly one chance: Turn. Talk to me.”

“But I… but I…”

“We think the shooter is killing people to cover up another set of crimes. I even kind of think you might know what those crimes are, which gets you even deeper in the shit. It also gives this guy a solid reason to kill you. In fact, that’s why we’re keeping track of you — in case you get shot. Sooner or later, he’ll know that we’ll be looking for those burst kits, and where they came from, and when that happens, Buster… he’s gonna kill you, man.”

“I… I gotta think,” Buster said, running his hands through his sparse brown hair.

Virgil leaned forward: “See, Buster, right there you told me that you’ve got something to think about. We need to talk to the county attorney, and right quick — so I can close this case out and lock up the killer. Right now, if you help us, you might even qualify for a free ride. Can’t promise you anything, but I think there’s a good chance, unless you’re the one who actually pulled the trigger.”

“No! I’d never do that!” he said. “But… I gotta think. Give me your phone number.”

Virgil said, “I’ll give you the number, Buster, but this coupon has an expiration date. If you talk to me five minutes too late, you’re going to the joint. The pen. The big house. The Minnesota Correctional Facility at Stillwater. You get up there, a nice-looking guy like you… Well, you know that old country saying, ‘Butter my butt and call me a biscuit’? Well, they’ll be buttering your butt, but not because they think you’re a biscuit.”

“That’s disgusting,” Buster said.

“Sure wouldn’t want it in my future,” Virgil agreed.

Virgil scrawled his phone number on a napkin and pushed it across the table. Buster snatched it up, stood, and said, “You’re a…” He groped for a word. “… a jerk.”

Virgil watched him trot out of the place and, suspecting he might look back, squinted up into the sky; when Buster was gone for good, he sat for a while, wondering what he should do next, and finally opened his laptop and looked up the Mouldy Figs.

He didn’t find much that seemed to apply to the case, but then he thought, Why would Conley drop that hint about the Mouldy Figs if it was meaningless, or hard to figure out? He went back to the Figs’ main site and saw that they’d made a number of CDs. Virgil had a Mac laptop, like Conley, and he also had a SuperDrive. What if Conley had dumped his story on a CD and put it in a Mouldy Figs CD case?

He had nothing better to do, and still had the key to Conley’s trailer, and it was only five minutes away… And if what he’d said about the Figs was actually a tip…

He finished the scone, threw his bag in the trash can, and took the Diet Coke and laptop with him. Ten minutes later, he was looking through Conley’s CD collection. There were no Mouldy Figs albums.…

There were two by Moldy Peaches.

“What?”

He got on the phone to Wendy McComb, who picked up on the fourth ring but couldn’t hear what he was saying because, she said, she was in a supermarket and the music was too loud. He shouted at her to go to a quieter place, and when she had, he said, “Mouldy Figs? Or Moldy Peaches?”

“Oh, Jesus! Moldy Peaches! That’s what it was. I knew about the Mouldy Figs, and I just… just… said the wrong thing. He said the chick singer for the Moldy Peaches.”

“Thank you,” Virgil said, and clicked off.

Chick singer for the Moldy Peaches. He had no computer link for his laptop, but he did for his phone, and quickly figured out that Kimya Dawson was the singer he needed to find. When he punched her name into Google, he instantly came up with a song called “Tire Swing.”

His eyes snapped to the window that led out to the side yard, and the swing that hung over the valley. He turned off the phone and, hardly daring to hope, went out to his truck, got a flashlight from the door pocket, and carried it over to the tire swing.

The flash drive was duct-taped into the top part of the swing, just to the left of the rope tie, where nothing could get at it, where it would be nice and dry and safe. Like a mosquito, it was going to sting somebody.

Virgil held it in the curl of his hand and smiled.

Back at Johnson’s cabin, Virgil got a Diet Coke, plugged in his laptop, and brought up the flash drive, where he found a half-dozen Pages files and a couple hundred photographs.

He started by checking the files. All but one had cryptic titles, meaningless to Virgil but presumably not to Conley. The non-cryptic one was entitled “To Whom IMC,” which to Virgil meant “To whom it may concern,” which certainly included him.

He opened it and found a rambling note:

Conley’s note went on for a while, outlining a scheme, which, if it was actually occurring, would be one of the biggest public embezzlements in Minnesota history, Virgil thought. The photographs, Conley wrote, were taken from the system’s computer system, which he said he had hacked into. Virgil suspected he was lying about that, because the computer screens in the photographs looked nothing like Conley’s laptop screens. What he had done, Virgil thought, was find a way to break into the school system offices at three o’clock in the morning.

Virgil spent three hours going over all the material on the flash drive — skimming some, because there was just so much, and some of it would take an accountant to untangle.

One thing: he found no mention of Buster Gedney, although Buster’s wife, Jennifer, was mentioned frequently. Conley seemed to think she was one of the ringleaders in the scheme.

Virgil checked the time: he’d read into the late afternoon. He had to do several things — one was to get some backup. If not real-time, in-person backup, he at least needed to tell Davenport what was going on, and where he was headed. And he had to copy the flash drive and send the copy to Davenport for safekeeping.

Davenport was in California, delivering his adoptive daughter to Stanford University. Pacific time was two hours ahead of Central time, so Davenport should be up and moving around.

Virgil called, and Davenport answered: “I’m on vacation.”

“I know. I just want to tell you, I’m going to the post office and I’m mailing a flash drive to you. This is in case I’m shot to death or I disappear.”

After a moment’s hesitation, Davenport said, “You’re serious now.”

“Yeah. Tell you what, Lucas, I’ve come up with the damnedest thing.…”

Virgil described the contents of the flash drive, and when he finished, Davenport said, “First, send me the drive. Then, you’re going to need to harden up the information. Nail down what is what. Interview the people you can, without getting back-shot. Then find the weak sister—”

“I think I’ve already done that,” Virgil said, thinking of Buster Gedney.

“Good. I’ll ship Jenkins and Shrake down there, they’ll be there tomorrow morning. The three of you can squeeze him. Or her. Or whatever. In the meantime, this is going to be a big enough stink that the AG—”

“I’ve already talked to one of his guys.”

“Okay. I’ll talk to him about providing a lawyer and a forensic accountant. We’ll keep them on tap, until you need them.”

“That sounds right,” Virgil said.

“And hey,” Davenport asked, “what about the dogs?”

“That’s a whole ’nother problem,” Virgil said.

Virgil went out to Blackbeard’s Steak & Brew for dinner. BS&B was a roadhouse a mile south of town, and probably the best place around, if you liked meat and beer. He was thinking about a second beer, and was picking at the remnants of a New York Strip, when Johnson called and said, “Darrell and Bill called, they were in the tent tonight and said that a truck pulling a horse van just busted out of Orly’s Creek and headed north on 26 at about a hundred miles an hour. The thing is, there’s no horses up Orly’s Creek. They called Ben and Winky — Ben lives up north of Orly’s Creek, and Winky’s down south — and they both hauled ass up and down the highway and they met up and didn’t see a horse trailer. Whoever it was, cut up through the hills.”

“Goddamnit. Maybe they spotted the tent.”

“That’s what we’re thinking,” Johnson said.

“What are they doing now? Your dog guys?”

“They got a couple more of the boys and they’re running all over the place looking for the trailer.”

“What if it was a decoy?”

“Well, Darrell and Bill moved out to the road,” Johnson said. “They, uh, they’ve maybe got some guns with them. They’re not gonna let anybody out Orly’s Creek without checking them out.”

“Aw, for Christ’s sakes. Johnson, somebody’s gonna get killed,” Virgil said.

“It’s got me worried.”

“I don’t want to go up there and bust your friends. You gotta get them to back off.”

“I already told them. They think the truck is owned by a guy named D. Wayne Sharf, who was pals with Zorn. Sharf wasn’t there when you guys hit that cookery. But we know he’s sold off dogs in the past.”

Virgil: “What do you want me to do?”

“Well, you’re not going to keep the guys from looking for Sharf and his truck, but if you could talk down Darrell and Bill, that would be good. I’d meet you up there.”

“I’ll see you there in twenty minutes.”

Johnson got there faster than Virgil, because Virgil had to get out of the restaurant and then head north through the entire town. When he arrived, the three men were standing behind Johnson’s truck. They didn’t show any weapons.

Virgil got out of his truck and said, “Guys, I know you love your dogs, and I really don’t want to drop you in the county jail, but if you go shooting at somebody, that’s probably what’s going to happen. The county attorneys around here don’t want to hear about dogs, if somebody gets shot. They got no patience for guns.”

“Not gonna shoot anybody,” Darrell said.

“Yeah? You’re standing here with your dicks in your hands, looking to stop cars coming out of Orly’s Creek. What are you gonna do if somebody does come out with a load of dogs? Throw rocks at him? Wave good-bye? What?”

“Talk to him…”

“Yeah? Want me to give you the dialog? ‘Get out of the truck, you motherfucker.’ ‘Fuck you.’ ‘Yeah? Fuck me? I’ll pull your ass out of that fuckin’ truck…’”

Bill started to laugh, and when Virgil stopped talking, said, “That’s pretty much how it’d go.”

Darrell nodded.

Johnson said, “Tell you what, guys. Virgil’s got an idea for tomorrow morning. If you want, we’ll just sit here in my truck, right on the road. I don’t think they’d try to run past us with a load of dogs. So, that’d probably keep them up the valley, at least until Virgil can get something going again.”

Darrell said, “I guess that sounds okay.”

Virgil slapped Johnson on the shoulder and said, “You oughta be secretary of state.”

Bill: “Maybe not.”

Virgil took Johnson aside and said, “Keep talking to them. Keep them calm. Don’t go jumping into anything yourself.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to bed. I gotta be out here before first light.”

“Probably still be here,” Johnson said.

“Call me if there’s trouble.”