“We’re all gonna stink,” Jenkins said to Virgil. And to Judy, “Nice to see you again. Your dog bit me. Twice.”
“He thought you were attacking me.”
“I was standing on the porch, I—”
“Okay, okay, okay,” Virgil said. “The thing is, Judy, I don’t know, it looks like you might have been involved in a bunch of crimes. Theft, arson, harboring a fugitive, breaking the federal seals off the house. I mean, we’ve got some stuff to talk about.”
Judy began to weep, what appeared to be honest tears, and Shrake said, “Hey, Virgil, take it easy. She looks like a pretty nice lady.” He turned to Judy and said, “You know, you’re entitled to a lawyer, you don’t have to tell Virgil a single darn thing.”
Virgil said to Jenkins, “Read her rights to her, huh?”
Jenkins did the Miranda, and then Shrake said, in his most kindly voice, “Did you understand that? You don’t even have to pay for a lawyer.”
Jenkins said, “Jesus, Shrake, you trying to get a date? Let’s put the cuffs on her and haul her ass down to the Buchanan County jail, get her processed in, throw the mutt in the pound or whatever they’ve got down there, and get some sleep.”
Judy began to cry again, and Shrake said, “C’mon, I’ll walk you down to the road.” To Virgiclass="underline" “Get the car, pick us up.”
They started down the hill, and when they were out of earshot, Virgil said, “Makes me feel bad.”
“’Cause you’re Mr. Softy,” Jenkins said. “Let Shrake empty her out, and then, you know… whatever.”
“Still makes me feel bad.”
“Not as bad as I feel. My ankle burns like fire. That dog has jaws like a fuckin’ alligator.”
“It’s a fuckin’ Chihuahua,” Virgil said. “It’s practically a fuckin’ hamster.”
“I don’t care if it’s a fuckin’ chickadee, it bit me on the fuckin’ leg.”
“Ah, fuck it,” Virgil said.
Jenkins and Virgil walked back up the valley to the Ruff house, and found Muddy inside, tootling on a black electric guitar, a complex version of Creedence’s “Lookin’ Out My Back Door,” on which he was playing two separate guitar parts. “You gonna play in a band?” Virgil asked.
“Maybe. I’m good enough,” Muddy said. “But… my old man says it’s a tough way to make a living, if you’re not one in a million.”
“Probably right about that,” Jenkins said. “On the other hand, you may be. If you are, it’d be a shame to miss out on it.”
“Dad says if I get really good at it, the discipline will let me be good at anything.”
“I wish my dad had told me that,” Jenkins said. “My old man told me to stay away from Lone Star beer. Which he was drinking at the time.”
Virgil told Muddy to have his father call. “I need to talk to him about what happened tonight. I have a feeling he might be a little pissed.”
“Probably. But it goes away pretty quick. He told me he thought you were a good guy, considering the T-shirt you had on.”
Virgil nodded: “Good to know. But tell him to call.”
They took the car back to the fire scene, where Shrake was waiting with Judy Burk. When they came up, Shrake gave Virgil a wave, so Virgil parked at the side of the road and he and Jenkins got out into the lights of a dozen vehicles.
“Judy is really torn up about all of this — she didn’t know what Sharf was up to,” Shrake said. “He told her that the landlord had kicked him out and was going to take all of his stuff, and she just came down here with him and another friend to help get his clothes. Then, all of this, and he wound up ditching her and Brutus.”
Jenkins flinched: “The dog is named Brutus? Why? Because he stabs people with his teeth?”
Judy backed into Shrake, and Shrake said, “Hey, listen to what I’m telling you. She didn’t have anything to do with all this. I think we just give her a ride home — she lives in CarryTown, just on the other side of Trippton — it’s an extra two minutes for us.”
“How do you know she didn’t have anything to do with this?” Virgil asked. “Looked to me like she was involved.”
“I wasn’t—”
“How did that fire start? Looked like more than a match. Smelled like gasoline. Did D. Wayne carry a gas can in there?”
Her lip trembled and she said, “No, no, he didn’t have a gas can.”
“A bottle?”
“He had a backpack… maybe there was a bottle in it.”
“Maybe?”
“I think I saw a bottle,” she admitted. “I didn’t know what was in it.”
“Molotov cocktail,” Jenkins said to Virgil. “He went in knowing he was gonna torch the place. Probably afraid that the DEA was going to process the house and come up with about a million of his fingerprints.”
“Which they would have,” Virgil said. “In fact, I’ve got to call Gomez and tell him the house went to heaven.” He looked back at Judy, pursed his lips. “He might be interested in talking to Judy here.”
Judy choked a little, then said, “I’ll tell you anything you want.”
After a while, they loaded into the car, with Jenkins in the back with Judy and the dog, so he could lean on her, if necessary. Shrake was still friendly from the driver’s seat, and Judy told the whole thing: D. Wayne Sharf was a hanger-on, one of life’s losers who’d never been allowed to ride with the Seed. They wouldn’t even make him an associate member. But Roy Zorn used him to haul ingredients for his meth, and D. Wayne helped him cook it.
The dogs, she said, were D. Wayne’s own sideline, which she didn’t much care for, since she was a dog lover herself. At the moment, all of D. Wayne’s dogs were in a makeshift pen somewhere in western Buchanan County, she didn’t know exactly where. Wherever it was, she said, was where D. Wayne would be.
“The guy who drove us here, his name is Lee, I don’t know his last name, he and Wayne are gonna put the dogs in these crates and drive them over to this dog-trading sale.… The good ones go down south to hunt, the bad ones and the mutts and the puppies get sold off to these bunchers, they call them.”
“I know what bunchers are,” Virgil said.
“Yeah, well, they sell them to medical laboratories—”
“I know that,” Virgil said.
“In fact,” said Jenkins, leaning over her, “you really haven’t told us much that we didn’t already know.”
“I know one thing you don’t,” she said.
Jenkins: “Yeah? What’s that?”
“I know where the dog sale is gonna be, and when. And I know D. Wayne is gonna be there with all his dogs and his flatbed trailer — that’s what I know.”
Jenkins leaned away from her, taking off the pressure, and said, “Babe — you should have said something earlier.”
22
They continued to push and pull on Burk, arguing among themselves, for her benefit, whether they should drop her in jail or take her home, and finally Virgil asked her, “Are you going to find D. Wayne Sharf again and tell him that we’ll be waiting for him Saturday?”
“No. I will not. Cross my heart.” She pulled the Chihuahua off to one side so she could cross her heart with her index finger.
“If you’re lying to us, we won’t be talking about jail — we’ll be talking about the women’s prison up in Shakopee. You stay away from him,” Virgil said. “If he calls, tell him you ran away in the woods and had to walk home. Or hitchhike. Yell at him a little.”
“You don’t have to encourage me,” she said. “D. Wayne left me in a burning house and never looked back.”
“Remember that, if he calls,” Virgil said.
CarryTown turned out to be a cluster of aging mobile homes built in no particular place south of Trippton, around a convenience store called the Cash ’n Carry. Burk pointed out her trailer and Shrake pulled up next to it, and Burk said, “Let me ask you all something, before you blame me for hanging out with D. Wayne.”