“And you could get your ass killed,” somebody added. “Fuckin’ peckerwoods are all carrying .223s. Pick you off like sittin’ ducks.”
Another big man stood up, and everybody turned to look; his face was red, and it appeared that he’d been weeping. He took off his camo cap and said, “I’m Winfred Butterfield. Winky. They took my two Labs last night. Right out of the kennel. My dogs’re gone, sir. Snatched right out of my yard. Knowed what they was doin’, too — left behind some pork chop bone and a cloth muzzle, used to keep them quiet.”
He told the story, until he got to the part where he “let off some shots in that direction.” He paused and then said, “Maybe I shouldn’t have said that.”
“You hit anyone?” Virgil asked.
“Naw, I wasn’t trying. I mean, I wouldn’t mind shooting that miserable motherfucker, if I had a clear shot, but I was afraid I might hit one of the dogs.”
Somebody said, “You got that right.”
“Okay, just a note here. Let’s decide right now that we’re not going to shoot anybody over a dog,” Virgil said. “Let me handle this the legal way.”
The men all looked around, and then one of the women said, “Kinda afraid we can’t do that, Virgil.” And they all nodded.
“Well, goddamnit, people.”
“This is organized crime, Virgil,” she said. “If we don’t shut these people down, no dog will be safe.”
Virgil was worried. Everyone at the meeting seemed stone-cold sober, and they talked about shooting the dognappers with the cool determination of people who might actually do that, given the chance. They didn’t seem anxious to do it, like a bunch of goofy gun nuts — they sounded more like farmers planning to eliminate a varmint that had been killing their geese.
Virgil asked them about the hillbillies on Orly’s Creek, and a dozen people gave him bits of information — sightings, rumors, incidents — that made him think they were quite possibly right.
One of the men said, “I saw this old gray truck going by Dan Busch’s place, two or three times over a week. Driving slow, looking around… Couple days later, Dan’s beagles got ripped off.”
“Four of them,” another man said, who added, “I’m Dan.”
The first man said, “Anyway, a couple weeks later I was driving up 26, and I see this old gray truck coming out of the Orly’s Crick Road. Same truck. Couldn’t prove it, but it was.”
Another man said, “There’s this guy called Roy, I think his last name is Zorn, he lives up there. Tall red-haired guy, skinny, got about nine million freckles on his face. They got his picture in all the animal shelters and humane societies, telling them NOT to give him any dogs or cats, because he was going around, getting them, and then he’d sell them off to animal bunchers.”
Virgil said, “Excuse me? What’s a buncher?”
“That’s guys who collect animals for the laboratories, for experiments. He’d go around and get these free animals, saying he was looking for a pet, and then he’d sell them off to the bunchers,” the big man said. “We know damn well, he’d get kittens that way, too. You know, somebody’d put an ad in the paper, saying, ‘Free Kittens,’ and he’d take as many as they’d give him, sayin’ he needed mousers for his barn. The animal people caught on, and somebody took his picture, and now he can’t go into those places.”
“I’ll go talk to him,” Virgil said. He turned to Butterfield and asked, “Winky — how much did you pay for those Labs?”
“These were top dogs, partially trained. I paid fifteen hundred for one, twelve hundred for the other,” Butterfield said. “But I don’t give a damn about the money — they’re my best friends.”
“The money makes stealing them a felony,” Virgil said. “It always helps to have a felony backing you up, when you talk to people.”
“I’ll tell you what,” said one of the women. “Most everybody here has had dogs stolen, which is why they are here. The rest of us are worried. If you took all the dogs stolen, they’d be worth twenty or thirty thousand dollars, easy. Maybe even more.”
Virgil said he’d look into it: “I’ll be honest with you, this is not what I usually do. In fact, I’ve never done it before. I can see you’re serious folks, so I’ll take it on. No promises. I could get called off… but if I do, I’ll be back. You all take care, though. Don’t go out there with guns, I don’t want anybody to get hurt.”
When the meeting broke up, he and Johnson drove over to the law enforcement center, which housed the Buchanan County Sheriff and the Trippton Police Department, which were one and the same, and a few holding cells. In the parking lot Johnson said, “I’ll hang out here. Jeff don’t appreciate my good qualities,” and Virgil went in alone.
Entry to the sheriff’s office was through a locked black-steel door, with a bulletproof window next to it; there was nobody behind the window, so Virgil rang the bell, and a moment later a deputy stuck his head around the window and said, “Virgil Flowers, as I live and die.”
“That’s me,” Virgil agreed. The deputy buzzed him in, and Virgil followed him down the hall to the sheriff’s office. The sheriff, Jeff Purdy, was a small, round man who wore fifties-style gray hats, the narrow-brimmed Stetson “Open Road” style; he had his feet up on his desk and was reading a New Yorker magazine. When he heard the footsteps in the hallway, he looked over the magazine and saw Virgil coming.
“I hope you’re here to fish,” he said.
“Not exactly, though it’d be nice to get out for a couple hours,” Virgil said. “I just came from a meeting down at Shanker’s.…”
Virgil told him the story, and the sheriff sighed and said, “You’re welcome to it, Virgil. I know those people have a complaint, but what the hell am I supposed to do? We patrol up Orly’s Crick, but we never see a thing.”
“You know a guy named Roy Zorn?”
“Yeah, yeah, we’ve been told he cooks some meth up there, but we never caught him at it. Basically, he’s a small-time motorcycle hood, rode with the Seed for a while, over in Green Bay, before he came here. And I know all about that thing he used to do with cats and dogs, him getting banned from the Humane Society. But we got nothing on him. Can’t get anything, either. If I had ten more men…”
“You don’t mind if I take a look?”
“Go on ahead. Keep me up on what you’re doing,” Purdy said. “If you find something specific, I could spring a couple guys to help out on a short-term basis. Very short-term, like a raid, something like that.”
“That’s all I wanted,” Virgil said. “There’s a good chance I won’t find a thing, but if I do, I might call for backup.”
“Deal,” Purdy said.
The deputy who’d taken Virgil back to the sheriff’s office returned and said, “Sheriff, Sidney Migg’s walking around naked in her backyard, again.”
The sheriff grunted and boosted himself out of his chair. “I better handle this myself.”
Back outside, Virgil took a minute to call Davenport’s office. He didn’t actually want to talk to him, which was why he called the office: Davenport was out working a multiple murder that everybody was calling the Black Hole case, in which a BCA agent had been murdered.
Virgil hadn’t worked the case, and was happy about that, because the killing of Bob Shaffer would have preyed on his mind for weeks, or years, whether or not the killer was caught. He left a message for Davenport, which might possibly cover his ass, if worse came to worst.