Bongo said, “Looks like they moved them.”
One of the men said, “Those dogs… don’t know those dogs, but they look like they’re starving.”
The fence had a gate, but no lock. Virgil flipped the latch and they all filed inside. Two of the dogs tried to get away from them, backing away to the far edge of the fence, tails between their legs. The third one sidled toward them, licking his muzzle nervously, head down, tail between his legs. They were dogs of no identifiable breed: mutts. All three of them were about knee-high.
“We waited too long, we moved too slow,” somebody said.
“How’d they get them out? Looks like there were a lot of dogs here, and nobody’s gone out of here in the last week, with a truck big enough for a lot of dogs.”
“Took them out one or two at a time… people coming and going all the time. Somebody must’ve tipped them off that we were watching,” Bongo said.
“That doesn’t sound right,” Virgil said. “They knew somebody was watching, but a whole crew of professional meth dealers goes in anyway, and has no clue?”
“I want to know where they went, the dogs,” one of the men said. “What we need to do, is figure out who had them up here, and then beat the information out of him.”
Johnson said, “We know they were here. I say we send one guy back to the trucks with the three dogs we got, and then the rest of us walk back to the end of the valley. Maybe there’s more than one place.”
They decided to do that. The three dogs they found were leashed up and taken back down the hill, while the rest of them spread out over the hillside again and began walking. An hour later, tired, hot, and mosquito-bit, they walked down the hill to the spring.
Virgil said, “I’ll tell you what, boys. The feds heard the dogs up there yesterday afternoon, so I don’t know exactly how we missed them. But I’ll be working the road down here, starting today. I’ll find out what happened. I promise you. Pisses me off.”
“We’ll ask some questions around,” one of the posse members said. “See what we can find out. Maybe they took them over the top, and out some other way. Maybe the meth raid scared them.”
“We’ll find out,” Virgil said.
The people at the trucks brought two trucks up to haul the posse back to the parked caravan. There wasn’t quite enough room for everybody, so Johnson went to get the truck, and Virgil sat on a rock at the edge of the pool and watched the water, and after a couple of moments saw a dimple of the kind made by trout. He pulled a long stem of grass out of a clump next to the rock and chewed on it for a moment, thinking about the dogs, and then a boy’s voice said, “Find them?”
Virgil turned and saw the kid they’d met the first day they’d come up the valley. He was standing on the other side of the fence, with his rifle slung across his shoulder, holding it in place with one hand. “No, no, we didn’t,” Virgil said. “Well, we found three dogs in a big pen up next to the bluff, looking pretty beat up, but not the big bunch of them we were looking for. You know where the rest of them went?”
“No, I don’t. I watched those federal agents pull off that raid last night, and I heard the dogs early this morning, but… if you couldn’t find them, I don’t know where they might’ve gone.”
“You’ve seen that pen up there?”
“No, my dad told me to stay away from there. Plenty of places to walk out west, and more interesting,” the kid said. “Funny thing was, I heard them this morning, and now you say, no dogs.”
“Huh,” Virgil said. “When you say you watched the feds pull off that raid… you were up there?”
“Oh, yeah. I saw the feds sneaking in there, every day, and then last night I saw the drug guys going in, so I figured the raid would be coming, and I went over to watch. Were you up there?”
“Yeah. Sort of out on the end of things, down the road. Saw a guy running away, and we never did catch him.”
“Yeah, that was probably Roy Zorn. I saw him take off as soon as the lights came on and you-all started yelling at them.”
“You know for sure it was Zorn?”
“Well, yeah. I mean, I couldn’t see his face, but he moved through the woods like Roy does.”
“Okay.”
Virgil stood up and dusted off his pants and asked, “Your folks up at the house?”
“My dad is. My mom died.”
“Sorry about that. Mind if I talk to your dad?”
“He was asleep when I left.” He looked up at the sky and said, “Probably awake now, though.” Virgil thought, Holy shit, he looked up at the sky to see what time it is.
The kid pointed out a driveway that came off the road down fifty yards or so. “You walk right up the drive, it’s a way, but it’s easy. Or you can drive up, when your buddy gets back.”
“He oughta be here in a couple of minutes,” Virgil said. “We can wait.”
“I’ll see you up there,” the kid said.
“What’s your name?” Virgil called after him.
“McKinley,” the kid called back, as he faded into the brush. “McKinley Ruff.”
Johnson Johnson showed up three or four minutes later, driving Virgil’s truck. Virgil took the wheel, and told Johnson about the kid as they bounced up the gravel driveway, past a mailbox that said “Ruff.” The driveway came off at right angles to the street, but then took a left turn and led straight west, past the pound, and four hundred yards deeper into the valley.
At the end of the track was a rambling house with a brown-stained rough board siding, a wide covered front porch, and a low-pitched roof covered with cedar shingles. A garden spread off to one side, heavy with the vine plants — squash, cucumbers, watermelon — and a half-dozen fruit trees were spotted around the side yard. A metal shed, which would probably take four cars, was set well back from the house and partly obscured by trees.
“Not bad,” Johnson said. “I could live here.”
McKinley Ruff was waiting for them on the porch, his rifle still cradled in his arm. “Reminds me of myself, when I was his age,” Johnson said. “If it wasn’t a gun, it was a fishing rod. Three whole summers like that, and then I discovered women. Which was a lot more dangerous than any gun. As you would know.”
“Not a bad-looking place, but speaking of peckerwoods, I have a feeling that the Ruffs could qualify.”
“We’ll see,” Johnson said.
They got out of the truck and walked up to the house and Virgil noticed that Johnson’s shirt was hanging loose, which meant that he was probably packing. Not a good time to object, Virgil thought.
McKinley Ruff said, “Dad’s inside, transposing. He said you should come on in.”
Virgil and Johnson glanced at each other: transposing?
They followed McKinley through the screen door and the heavy front door behind it, where they found the elder Ruff sitting at a plank table with a pile of paper in front of him. Standing in ranks along one wall were eight or nine guitars on guitar stands, two keyboards, and an older upright piano, a bunch of amps and other electronic music equipment, including a drum machine.
Ruff was a scruffy-looking man, a little overweight, wearing silver glasses. His hair fell almost to his shoulders, and he wore a short but poorly trimmed gray beard. When they came in, he looked up and said, “Hey, there. I understand Muddy’s been talking to you. You’re the cops, right?”
“Right,” Virgil said. “You’re a musician?”
Ruff’s eyebrows went up. He looked around the room for a few seconds and then said, “Jeez, I hope so, since I got thirty thousand dollars’ worth of guitars and fifty grand worth of other shit.”