Deadline(116)

            Jenkins said, “Oh . . . yeah.”

            Virgil looked past them, down at the road, where a dozen neighbors had gathered to witness the festivities, and as a lone fire truck turned the corner at the end of the valley, saw Muddy ambling along, looking up at them.

            “Talk to the fire guys,” Virgil told the other two. Then he stared at Muddy until he was sure Muddy was looking back at him, and tilted his head toward the woods. Muddy nodded, and drifted back up the road where he’d come from.

            The fire truck arrived, and another one turned the corner at the end of the valley, and a fireman ran up the hill, and Jenkins and Shrake went to meet him. The cabin was more than fully involved—the fire was actually beginning to slow, from lack of anything more to burn, and smoke, and the stink of burning insulation, suffused the air.

            Virgil nodded at Shrake and backed away from the fire into the woods, until he was out of sight of the road, then hurried deeper in. A hundred feet from the cabin, Muddy stepped out of the dark, and Virgil said, “There was a woman with Sharf. When the cabin caught fire, she must’ve run into the woods. I’d like to find her.”

            Muddy said, “All right. You think she went deeper into the valley, or out toward the highway?”

            Virgil had to think about it for a moment, then said, “If she’s like everybody else, she’s got a cell phone, and once she can get some damn reception, she’ll be calling somebody to come get her. I expect she’d either go higher, or toward the highway. She was a pretty big woman, and didn’t look like she was in that good of shape.”

            “So she probably walked up a ways, to get around the cabin. . . .”

            —

            MUDDY KNEW THE TRAILS around the place, took them up a hundred feet or so, behind the cabin, and then along the valley wall. The light wind was in their faces, and after they were clear of the cabin, they were also clear of the smoke. They moved slowly, stopping to listen, and eventually were out of range of the voices around the burning house, but not out of range of the sound of the heavy engines on the fire trucks.

            Four hundred yards down the valley, and maybe two hundred from the highway, Muddy stopped so abruptly that Virgil nearly bumped into him. They stood for a moment, then Muddy whispered, “Smell it?”

            Virgil closed his eyes and smelled, very faintly, an odor somewhere between roses and violets. Perfume. He whispered, “Yes.”

            Muddy moved on another twenty or thirty feet, and then stopped again and whispered, “We’re close now.”

            Virgil cleared his throat and said, in a normal speaking voice, “I’ve got a gun, and I don’t want to shoot you, but I can see you, and I’m not sure if you have a gun or not, so if you move suddenly, I’m going to have to use my gun.”

            Two or three seconds later, the woman said, “Don’t shoot me.”

            “Then come out of there.”

            She’d been huddled behind a tree, clutching the dog, which yapped once at Virgil and then shut up. Virgil turned on the jacklight, aimed over her head, but still lighting her up: she put up a hand to shade her eyes, and Virgil whispered to Muddy, “Better take off.”

            The boy slipped away, and Virgil said to the woman, “What’s your name?”

            “Judy. Burk.”

            “Let’s go down to the road, Judy. We need to talk this over.”

            —

            VIRGIL WALKED JUDY and the dog down to the road, where an elderly white-haired man named John seemed to be having some kind of seizure. Somebody said something to him as Virgil and Judy came up, and he spun around, saw Virgil, and asked, “Are you the man in charge of this disaster?”