Virgil told him about their hasty export of Vike Laughton from Wisconsin to Minnesota. “Well, that’s something,” Dave said, brightening a bit. “Those Cheeseheads can get a little testy about such things. Gonna have to look up the precise Latin phrase that means ‘Fuck off.’”
The roundup started at one o’clock. Dave had spent some time talking to the attorney general, who’d sent down a stack of warrants specifying a list of crimes that included murder, conspiracy to murder, attempted murder (the ambush at the cabin), a variety of charges involving assault on police officers and conspiracy to do the same, embezzlement, and a bunch of other stuff, including, as a garnish, charges of misprision of a felony against everybody. “That’ll get them an extra two weeks on top of the thirty years,” Dave said with satisfaction. “We’ll go for consecutive sentences.”
Jennifer Gedney wept. “I don’t have any money, I don’t have any money. How can you say I took money, when I don’t have any money.… Is that a TV camera?”
Bob Owens also wept, and kept saying, “Everything I worked for. Everything I worked for. Who’ll take care of the kids?”
“You were stealing from the kids, you miserable ratfucker,” said Shrake, who was putting on the cuffs. “Excuse me — I mean, you miserable ratfucker, sir.”
Larry Parsons shouted at them, ran back through his house, and tried to squeeze out the bedroom window, but a couple of deputies got him by the feet and pulled him back in, so Virgil could arrest him. Shrake had gone with a couple more deputies to serve the arrest warrants on Jennifer Barns, at the hospital in Rochester, who screamed, “You can’t do this, I’m wounded. I’ll sue everybody. Those criminals shot me last night. I’ll sue!”
Vike Laughton hadn’t said anything. He’d just waved his free hand at them, from his hospital bed, and turned his face away, the cuff on his other hand rattling against the bedframe. He had a bad case of sand-burn on his face, and especially his nose.
Henry Hetfield and Del Cray were calm enough: they’d known since the night before what was coming, and since Virgil had arrested them and stuck them in the Buchanan County jail, they’d had time to think about it. Both of their houses were raided for evidence. Cray’s wife and two children were gone, and so were quite a few things in the house, including the memory foam cover on the king-sized bed. A neighbor said they’d rolled out of their driveway the evening before, towing a large U-Haul trailer behind the newer of the Crays’ two trucks.
With a little speed to keep her going, she could be in Canada or Alabama or Montana or Pennsylvania. Dave said they’d look for her.
Jennifer Houser was simply gone.
Davenport called and said, “You still on vacation? Or are you ready to go back to work?”
“I will be on Monday,” Virgil said. “I got one more thing to do on Saturday.” And, “How’s Del?”
“Messed up. He might need another op, there were some bone splinters from his pelvic bone that bounced all over the place.”
“Maybe he’ll retire.”
“His wife wants him to,” Davenport said. “We’ll see. I can’t believe he could get through life without hanging out on the street, talking to assholes.”
“It’s like a curse,” Virgil said.
“Listen, do what you’re gonna do on Saturday, but don’t get hurt, and don’t get anybody else hurt. Then on Monday, a kind of peculiar thing has come up out in Windom.… “
28
Saturday morning dawned bright but humid; there’d been just enough rain overnight to create a few muddy spots outside the cabin door. The river was looking as dark as it usually did, snaking along toward New Orleans, but the sun was coming up orange over the rain clouds, which were drifting across to Wisconsin.
Virgil was up at seven, and at seven-thirty, met Johnson Johnson at Shanker’s for breakfast, which they shared with four couples and a bald old man who’d be following them over to Dillard’s farm. The farm was twenty-odd miles directly west, as the crow flies. If the crow was driving a 4Runner, the distance was around thirty-six miles, right on the border of Buchanan and Fillmore counties.
Noting that as they worked out a route on a paper map, Johnson said, “Two of the worst presidents in the history of the United States, Buchanan and Fillmore.”
Virgil said, “I didn’t know you read history, Johnson.”
Johnson said, “Well, that was in the ‘local information’ in the old Buchanan County Yellow Pages. But, you know, I’m not a complete ignoramus.”
“I told somebody that, recently, but she disagreed, and eventually talked me around.”
“Thanks, old buddy,” Johnson said. He yawned, stretched, and said, “I probably lost five pounds this past couple of weeks, running around with you. Maybe I ought to write a diet book: The Virgil Flowers Weight-Loss Plan. Start by leaving your gun in the truck.…”
Virgil leaned across the table and asked, in a near-whisper, “When you said a posse was coming with us, you meant four couples in four trucks, and one old guy with a missing tooth?”
“Maybe somebody else will show up,” Johnson said. His eyes slid sideways, and Virgil detected a likely prevarication.
“You lying motherfucker, Johnson, what have you done?”
“Not a fuckin’ thing,” he said. “I’m completely innocent.”
“Your mom told me that you were a difficult baby,” Virgil said. “You haven’t been innocent since you were a half hour old.”
“Fuck you. And Mom,” Johnson said. “She always liked Mercury better.”
The word was that the dog roundup was scheduled to start at eight o’clock, when bunchers from Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota would open for business at Dillard’s farm, which also held occasional farm equipment auctions. Johnson had learned that to prevent disputes, no dogs would be sold even a minute before nine o’clock, although the dogs would be available for survey before then. Dillard was expecting upwards of three hundred dogs. A few would be sold as hunting dogs, most as lab dogs, and “trash” would be handled by Dillard.
“That’s what he called them,” Johnson Johnson said. “Trash. Is that anything to call a dog? They’re man’s best friend. And when he said ‘handling them,’ you know what he’s gonna do? He’s gonna shoot them, is what I think.”
A little after eight, they were in their trucks. Virgil was alone in his, because Johnson wanted to take his own truck in case he had to haul some dogs back, and Virgil, with any luck, would have D. Wayne Sharf handcuffed to the steel ring in the backseat of the 4Runner. The little caravan stretched out over a half-mile, with Virgil in the lead.
The drive was pleasant enough, rolling along the back highways, none of them straight, listening to country music on satellite radio. They were still in the Driftless Area, with heavily wooded hills overhanging small farms and narrow farm fields that twisted up the hillsides, the small farmhouses neat and usually white, with gardens and fruit trees and older cars parked in side yards.
They arrived at Dillard’s farm at eight forty-five. There were three larger trucks and a dozen pickups, some with trailers, already parked in a field that stretched along the gravel road, between the road and a dry creek a hundred yards downslope. Except for the barking of several hundred dogs, it might have been the beginning of some low-rent hippie music festival.
A few pickups and SUVs were parked on the shoulder of the road. Virgil pulled off behind them, and his caravan pulled off with him. He’d already asked them not to get out of their trucks until he’d spotted D. Wayne Sharf, just in case Sharf should recognize any of them. They’d all agreed, with a little bitching from the Bald Old Man with One Tooth, who, Virgil had been told, was looking for a stolen dachshund named Dixie.