"So there's nobody-nobody ever talked to Charlie."
She looked away from him for a moment, her forehead wrinkling. Then, "You know, there was them brothers from over by Hill. He was talking about them on the Fourth, maybe they'd have a summer job for him. He didn't like hauling garbage… What was their name? I can't think…"
"What about them?"
"They're farmers. They got these big gardens, Charlie says. They live in the country somewhere by Hill, they sell tomatoes and corn and cukes and stuff down on the highway somewhere," she said. "One of them vegetable stands. They use to hire Charlie to work in the gardens… you know, pickin' shit and pulling weeds and they had one of those machines, like a lawnmower, but it plows…"
"A tiller?"
"That's it. They taught him how to run it and he'd help with the gardens. He did that for a couple of summers. He liked it."
A little tingle: "This was where? By Hill? That's a town?" Lucas asked.
"Yeah. Hill."
"You don't know their names?"
"No… I mean I used to. I seen one of the boys, once, he had one of those things on his face and neck, a raspberry thing, I think they call them? Or a strawberry thing? One of those like birthmarks, great big one on the side of his face…"
"A port- wine mark?"
She snapped her fingers: "That's it. A port-wine stain. Right on the side of his face."
He pushed her, but that was all she had. He left a card with her and said, "I need to tell you two things," he said. He crowded her a little, let her feel the authority. "If Charlie gets in touch, you call us. He's dangerous, and he's dangerous to you. He's completely run off the rails this time. You understand?"
"Yup. I'll call you, don't you worry." But her eyes slid away from his.
He got right back in her face. "You better, or you'll go inside with him, Mrs. Pope. You wouldn't like the women's prison. We're talking the worst kind of murder, now and if you help him, you'll be an accomplice. So you call."
"I will." She looked at the card this time.
"Second, you don't talk to anybody about what you told me," Lucas said. "I need to go look up these garden guys, and we don't want anybody to know we're coming. So you just keep your mouth shut, okay?"
"Okay."
"I'm not fooling, Mrs. Pope. You mess with us on this, we'll put your ass in jail."
LUCAS FOUND HILL in his Minnesota atlas; more a crossroads than a town. The map showed two streets where a creek crossed a county road; the place might have a bar, maybe a gas pump. Still in Mower County, northwest of Austin. The sheriff had been at the meeting that morning…
LUCAS HEADED EAST out of town, on his cell phone as he drove. The sheriff was still in his car somewhere, and the Mower County dispatcher wouldn't give Lucas his phone number. "Then give him mine, call him and tell him to call me back," Lucas said.
Larry Ball got back five minutes later. Lucas could hear noise in the background, music and voices. The Rochester Mall?
"I just talked to Marcia Pope," Lucas told him. "There are a couple of guys just outside of Austin who hired Charlie Pope to work their gardens. They're truck gardeners, out by a place called Hill. You know a couple of brothers, one's got a port-wine mark on his face?"
"Huh. Yeah, I sorta know the guy. Don't know his name, but I talked to him once when I was campaigning. He was working at a roadside stand, mmm, I think where I-Ninety crosses Highway Sixteen near Dexter."
"Dexter. I saw that on my map,"
"Yeah, listen, I'll tell you who'd know, is Bob Youngie," Ball said. "He's one of my deputies. He's working, I'll call him, and have him call you right back."
LUCAS COULD SEE the interstate up ahead. He was fairly sure he should go east but wasn't positive, so he pulled off to the side of the road, waiting. Youngie called a minute later. He had a gravelly voice, a whisky voice, and sounded like an older guy. "You're looking for the Martin brothers, Gerald and Jerome," he said, when Lucas answered the cell-phone call. "You going out there now?"
"Yeah. I'm just coming up on Ninety-four."
"You want to go east, to Exit One Ninety-three. I'm in my car now, I'm a little closer, so you'll see me when you come off. I'm calling another car, he'll be a couple minutes behind you. He's just leaving town."
"The Martins… they're trouble?"
"No, I couldn't say that," Youngie said. "They stay to themselves, they don't like having people on their land. They've run some hunters off, and we've had to warn them about carrying guns when they do it. And they got dogs. I think it's best if a couple of us came along."
"The sheriff told you what we're doing?" Lucas asked.
"Yup. That's another reason."
"Glad to have you," Lucas said.
YOUNGIE WAS AS TALL as Lucas, maybe sixty, gray haired with a Marlboro-man mustache. He was leaning on the front fender of his car, smoking a cigarette, when Lucas came off the interstate and pulled in behind him.
"Nice truck," he said, when Lucas got out. Youngie had cool blue eyes like Lucas's own, and they seemed slightly amused.
"I got it for the Magic Fingers seats," Lucas said, looking back at the blue Lexus. "Keeps you company on the long hauls."
Youngie glanced at the truck, biting just for a second, then back at Lucas, amused again. "You gonna catch Charlie?"
"Yeah. Or else kill him."
"I heard that about you," Youngie said. "The or-else part."
"Just the job I had," Lucas said.
"I hear you." Youngie put out his hand and Lucas shook. Youngie's hand was like a wood file. "Here come the kids…"
Another sheriff's car was coming off the interstate. Lucas could see two cops inside. "The kids?"
"They got three, four years between them," Youngie said. "I'll have them come in last."
"You really think…?"
"If we ain't ready, why're we going out there at all?"
"That's a point," Lucas said.
YOUNGIE BRIEFED THE TWO young cops on the visit to the Martin farm. He would lead the way in, Lucas would follow, and the kids would come in and block and watch. "If there's trouble, you call in first, help us later," Youngie told them.
One of the kids, who was trying to hide premature baldness by shaving his head, hitched up his pistoclass="underline" "We're cool," he said.
THE MARTIN PLACE was an aging farmhouse that sat foursquare at the top of a hill. A gravel driveway, badly humped in the middle, led up the hill to the side of the house and then behind it. Halfway up the driveway, a barn emerged from the umbra of the house.
The house was a turn-of-the-twentieth-century structure of two stories, gray shingles on the top, with twin dormers over a front porch. The porch had space for a swing, but no swing. The house, barn, and lawn were on a quarter section, a hundred and sixty acres, a square a half mile on a side.
To the left of the house was a cornfield; to the right, at the bottom of the hill, was an untended apple orchard, with knee-deep weeds growing up around a few dozen old apple trees, all crabbed over like aging crones. Farther up the hill, beyond the apple orchard and to the right of the drive, was a fallow field, deep in weeds. It had, in the not-too-distant past, been cultivated; Lucas could see the tangled yellow dead vines in what was once a squash or pumpkin patch.
Lucas pushed the Lexus up through the cloud of dust thrown up by Youngie's car. As they topped the hill, coming up to the space between the house and the barn, Youngie suddenly juked left.
Lucas went right and hit the brake and saw what Youngie had seen a half second sooner:three men had burst from the barn and were running toward the cornfield. A second later, a fourth man ran out of the farmhouse, headed down the hill, then slanted toward the cornfield like the Others. One of the first three was oversized, and not fast.