Deadline(119)

            “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.