Finally Grace eased away from the tractor and moved quickly down the right side of the paddock fence toward the barn, with Annie and Sharon trailing her silently. They all kept their eyes averted from the ghastly things rising like a crop of horrors from the paddock's soil.
Annie glanced toward the open barn door once, caught a glimpse of moonlight laying a dirty glow on the oblong steel collars of the stanchions inside.
Horrible things, she thought, imagining what it would be like to be a cow and hear that brace snap closed around your neck for the first time, to try to back up and find to your amazement that what you'd put your head into, you couldn't pull your head out of. Probably not a whole lot different than what we're feeling right now, she decided.
They stopped at the corner of the barn. The setting moon washed the farmyard in a sickly crust of light that seemed bright after the shadowy recesses by the lake.
A few stones in the driveway reflected a dull gleam. Beyond that, the black windows of the house seemed to stare like the hollow sockets of a dead man's eyes. Shade trees stood in the yard like weary black sentinels, their leaves drooping and motionless in the still air. There was nothing to see, nothing to hear, as if someone had pushed the pause button on the world.
And apparently, they had pushed the pause button on Grace as well. She'd stopped moving in mid-stride, scaring Annie to death.
Suddenly Grace turned toward her, her face clouded with an emotion that was impossible to read. She was frantically digging into her jeans pocket, pulling out her tiny cell phone, flipping it open. Annie's mouth dropped open when she saw the screen, miraculously aglow, the phone shaking a little as it vibrated in Grace's hand.
WHEN BONAR FOLLOWED Harley up the steps into the RV, a big, wirehaired Slinky was creeping up the aisle on his belly. It took Bonar a second to realize it was a dog, and then he was all over him. He hadn't had a relationship with a canine since his boyhood dog had tangled with the wrong end of a badger, but it only took sixty seconds for Charlie to remind him what he'd been missing all these years.
"I get the copilot's seat; I get the dog." It was Gino's voice, right behind him.
Bonar kept his arm around Charlie's neck and grinned as the big, wet tongue scraped at the blond stubble on his cheek. "You can have the copilot's seat. I'll fight you for the dog. Where'd everybody go?"
"Halloran went in the back with Magozzi and Roadrunner. You ought to take a look. They got an office back there right out of a James Bond movie."
Bonar found a seat on an upholstered silk sofa right behind Harley in the driver's seat. "I'm good here. Besides, this is my neck of the woods. I'll be the navigator."
Gino slid into the shotgun recliner and buckled up. "Hell, we don't need no stinkin' navigator. We got a GPS that'll knock your socks off."
Harley gave him a look. "You sure you got a handle on that thing?"
"Damn right. I spent the last two hours learning how, and I've got it down. You want to get out of the parking lot?" He pushed some buttons and peered at a screen. "Straight ahead sixteen-point-three-seven feet, turn right, bearing north-northeast oh-point-one-one-eight-four .. . Jesus Christ, where'd you get this thing?"
"Took it off a nuclear sub," Harley grunted.
"Seriously?"
"For Chrissake, Rolseth, of course not. They don't have anything this good. Now pull up Missaqua County and point me toward the center."
"Hold on a minute." Magozzi came striding up from the back with Halloran and Roadrunner. He looked paler than he had under the mercury lights in the lot, and his voice sounded like someone had wound it too tight. "Roadrunner just ID'd your three sinkers from those prints you sent."
Bonar, Harley, and Gino all turned to look at him.
"They didn't pop up on any of the databases because the Feds made sure they wouldn't. Those bodies were their boys-so far undercover they didn't even have names, just numbers."
Bonar had the kind of sigh that could make a grown man ache just listening to it. "Undercover agents. Damn me. It's the one thing that makes a little sense-why they snatched the bodies so fast, took over our crime scene, and shut us out-and it never once occurred to me."
"Or me," Halloran said.
Magozzi was standing rock-still, all his body parts quiet except for his brain. "You said it looked like an execution, right?"
Halloran nodded grimly. "Looked like they were lined up in a row, nearly stitched in half. Doc Hanson was thinking an M16."
Magozzi tried to pace but couldn't find enough room with five big men cluttering up the place. "So they were undercover and into something big-something worth killing three Feds over-and got caught." He was thinking out loud now. "Probably just dumped in Kingsford County, a good distance away from where they were operating, since all the Feds want there is the crime scene at the quarry. Missaqua has to be the source."
"Which is where we were headed for anyway," Gino complained. "We may have another piece of the puzzle, but it doesn't tell us a thing about where to start looking. Doesn't do us a damn bit of good at all."
Magozzi almost smiled. "It might. It might make all the difference. Roadrunner?"
"Right here."
"I need an off-the-books FBI number. Far as I know, it isn't listed anywhere. Think you can manage that?"
Roadrunner's grin was his answer.
Gino was on his feet in a second, brows cocked at Magozzi. "You old dog. Don't tell me. You're going to call Plastic Paul."
"That I am."
"Who's Plastic Paul?" Bonar asked.
Gino was already following Roadrunner and Magozzi toward the back. "That would be Special Agent in Charge Paul Shafer, back in Minneapolis. He and Magozzi have a special relationship."
Halloran stumbled behind them, frowning. "That guy we met when we were in Minneapolis on the Monkeewrench thing? I thought you hated him."
"That's the special nature of the relationship." Gino smiled as the four of them clustered around a communications console. "Come on, Leo, have a heart, you gotta put this on speaker."
It took Roadrunner thirty seconds to find the number. A sleep-thickened voice came through the speaker before the first ring was completed. It was the kind of phone the owner answered instantly, twenty-four-seven. "Shafer here."
"Paul, it's Leo Magozzi, MPD."
There was silence for a moment. "How the hell did you get this number?"
"Information."
"Bullshit. This is a closed Federal line, Magozzi, and you just bought yourself a world of hurt. I'm hanging up now."
"Good idea. After you hang up, you can write your letter of resignation, or shoot yourself in the head. Your choice."
Silence again. And then, "You have thirty seconds."
Magozzi took a quick breath. "One of your agents is missing in an area where three other agents were found murdered."
There was a lot of noise coming through the speaker then-covers being thrown aside, feet hitting the floor, a little static. "Okay, you got my attention, Magozzi, but if this is bullshit, I will personally see to it that you get your first glimpse of sky in about forty years."
Gino watched Magozzi's face redden and his chest swell, and wondered if he'd just blow up. You could almost smell the testosterone shooting right up to the satellite. "Bullfight." He nudged Harley.
But Magozzi's voice was deceptively calm when he spoke. "Sharon Mueller's missing."
"Oh, for Christ's sake, Magozzi, she's not missing. Is that what this is about? She went to Green Bay with those Monkeewrench women to do some profiling on her own time."