Virgil said, “Okay — Muddy, you stay there at your house. Don’t go fooling around with this guy. We’ve been looking for him, federal agents are looking for him. He could be seriously dangerous.”
“I’ll tell you, he doesn’t seem to have a car with him. He’s either sneaking over the hills, or somebody’s going to come pick him up. If you go crashing in there, he’ll take off in the night, and you won’t see him again.”
“Right. Tell you what, we’ll come up to your house and walk down. It’s an old car, not a truck. We’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
Jenkins: “What happened?”
“We gotta get back to your car. You guys are gonna need to get out of those suits, and we gotta do it in a hurry.”
They made a flying stop at Johnson’s cabin. On the way, Virgil explained the dog situation and the DEA interest in the case, and Sharf’s fugitive status. After a quick change of clothes, Virgil got two flashlights from his truck, including the jacklight, and Jenkins got his six-cell Maglite, and then Jenkins drove far too fast north up Highway 26, slowing only when they were a mile south of Orly’s Creek. At that point, Virgil and Shrake slumped over in their seats, so only Jenkins was visible at the wheel, and they took the turn on Orly’s Creek Road.
“Rough road,” Jenkins said, as they bounced past the first trailer, the one Johnson had called the lookout. “Good thing we took a well-sprung car.”
“Good thing we’re driving a piece of shit, so we don’t have to worry about breaking it,” Virgil said from the backseat.
As they came to the end of the road, Jenkins said, “I haven’t seen a single soul. Hope the guy didn’t split.”
They made the Ruffs’ house in a little over twenty minutes, rather than the fifteen that Virgil had promised. Muddy was sitting on the porch, in the dark; the only light was from the back of the house, through a window onto the porch.
“Virgil,” Muddy said.
Virgil introduced everybody and asked, “You see any cars?”
“Nothing. D. Wayne is about as lazy as a man can get, so there’s no way that he’s going to walk if he can ride. He’s still there.”
Shrake looked back down the valley and said, “Dark out there. I’m more of a snatch-him-off-the-barstool type.”
“I’ll take you down,” Muddy said. And quickly, to Virgiclass="underline" “I’ll get you there and then I’ll come right back here. Promise.”
Virgil said, “All right. You just get us close.”
Instead of taking the road, they went through the woods. Virgil passed around the insect repellent before they went in — Muddy said, “This stuff still stinks”—and then they followed Muddy along a game trail that paralleled the creek, on the opposite side from the road. The going was slow, with Muddy whispering warnings at two shallow ravines and a fallen tree trunk, and ten minutes after they left Muddy’s house, they were behind Sharf’s place, looking down the hill.
There were at least two people inside, because they could see the light from at least two flashlights, one on the bottom floor, one in the upstairs bedroom. Virgil sent Muddy back home, and after he disappeared, he, Jenkins, and Shrake began easing down the hill.
They were fifty yards away when somebody came out of the house. Whoever it was had turned off his flashlight before leaving the house, but turned it on briefly, two or three times, as he crossed the bridge to the road. They could see that he was carrying a bundle, which he left by the road. Then he hurried back to the house, and Jenkins, leaning close to Virgil, said, “That looked like a woman.”
Shrake: “Yeah. If your Sharf guy is in there, he’s the one upstairs.”
As they closed on Sharf’s cabin, they could hear what sounded like a dresser drawer opening and closing, and then a man’s voice calling: “Get the TV.”
At that moment, a dog started barking. Not a big dog, a small, yappy dog, starting inside, and then, from the sound of it, moving out on the side stoop. They couldn’t see it, but it sounded like it was barking right at them, and a woman called, “Wayne! There’s somebody out there. Wayne!”
“That’s our guy,” Virgil said. “Let’s go.”
Virgil turned on his jacklight, illuminating the entire cabin and a good piece of the woods around it. Jenkins went right, and Shrake went forward, as Virgil shouted, “Police! Police! D. Wayne Sharf — you’re under arrest!”
Shrake, who’d run ahead, called, “I’ve got the front door, watch the side door, Virg—”
A woman screamed, “Don’t shoot, don’t shoot! We give up.”
Jenkins came in from the dark, into the lighted circle, gun out, to the side door, where a Chihuahua was jumping up and down and barking its tiny heart out. Jenkins peeked in the door and shouted, “Come out of there, keep your hands over your head. Come out of there!”
The woman shouted, “I’m coming, I’m coming, don’t shoot me. Don’t hurt my dog.”
The dog was still yapping and the woman appeared at the screen door, hands over her head. She was a large woman, with shoulder-length brown hair, wearing jeans and a long-sleeved man’s shirt. Behind her, they heard a POP! and she half-turned and screamed, “Wayne! Wayne! Come out of there.”
From the front, Shrake shouted, “Fire! There’s a fire!”
Virgil saw the flickering lights of a fire, and the woman bolted out on the porch, stumbled off the side, and fell flat on her face, screaming for her dog. Her hands were empty, and Jenkins grabbed her by the collar of her shirt, and the small dog launched itself at Jenkins’s ankle. Jenkins shook it off and the woman screamed, “Don’t hurt the dog, don’t hurt the dog…” and wrenched free and crawled toward the dog, trying to catch it. The dog eluded her and went after Jenkins again.
Jenkins shook it off again and the woman scooped it up as Virgil pushed through the screen door and shouted, “Sharf. Where are you? Sharf?”
From the front of the house, Shrake was yelling, “Get out of there! Virgil, get out of there.”
Virgil took one more step, holding his shirt to his nose and mouth against the smoke, and saw that the living room had become a furnace, six-foot-high flames eating through the old knotty-pine walls. Both Shrake and Jenkins were screaming at him, and he backed up, decided that running was better than walking, and ran out of the place.
The woman was shouting, “Get Wayne, help Wayne, get Wayne.”
She’d moved to the edge of the yard and was peering in horror at the tiny one-room upper floor, and windows began popping around the house. No sign of D. Wayne Sharf. Shrake ran around to the far side of the house, and a second later, shouted, “Virgil! Virgil! Here!”
Virgil ran that way. The upper floor had a window in it, which was open, and dangling from the window was a thick bright-yellow nylon rope, the kind sold to apartment dwellers as fire escapes.
“He set it on purpose,” Shrake yelled.
Jenkins shouted, “Give me some light,” and dashed into the woods, to the east of the cabin. Virgil still had his jacklight and lit the place up again, and at the farthest extreme of the light’s penetration, saw the back of D. Wayne Sharf rapidly fading into the trees. Virgil ran after Jenkins, hoping to give him enough light to keep up the chase. Jenkins was a fast and nimble runner, and was pulling away from the light when he suddenly broke left, toward the creek, and Virgil pivoted that way. Then Jenkins burst through some trees and fell into the creek, with an impact like that of a breaching whale.
Farther down the road a set of headlights swung off the highway and accelerated toward them, suddenly braked, swerved, and did a three-point turn. Virgil had a clear-enough sight line to see D. Wayne Sharf break from the tree line, run alongside the car for a few steps, yank open the door, and throw himself inside.