“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.”
“Ask,” Virgil said.
“When you were eighteen years old, wearing your blue graduation robe, sitting in a folding chair with your funny hat, listening to some old guy telling you about Oh, The Places You’ll Go!, did you ever think you’d wind up being forty-eight years old and living in a shithole like this one?”
She got out of the car, slammed the door, and walked up to her concrete-block stoop, and Jenkins said, “Well, that sort of pisses on the evening’s festivities.”
Shrake backed the Crown Vic in a circle, and they drove back to Trippton. On the way, Virgil asked Shrake, “How bad do you feel about punkin’ Judy Burk? Bein’ the good cop?”
Shrake said, “Oh . . . you know. She was hanging out with a guy who sells crank to kids. She’s sort of sad on her own, but she knew what he was doing, and she helped him out. Maybe I’ll reincarnate as a termite, but I don’t feel that bad.”
As they rolled through town, Virgil called Gomez, who said, “Honest to God, do you ever call anyone during business hours? You didn’t find another meth mill, did you?”
“No. I just wanted to tell you that D. Wayne Sharf burned that house to the ground,” Virgil said. “You won’t have to come back for any further processing.”
“Great. I assume you grabbed him?”
“No, not exactly,” Virgil said. “But—I know where he’ll be on Saturday.”
“Grab him, then. We’ll come and take him off your hands,” Gomez said.
—
JENKINS AND SHRAKE dropped Virgil at Johnson’s cabin, and went off to their motel, with plans to play golf in the morning, to make up for the evening’s overtime.
Virgil got a good night’s sleep, and the next morning took a call from Dave at the attorney general’s office. “We’ve been conferencing on the Buchanan County matter, and I’m going down to Winona this morning, with my assistant, to talk to Masilla. I’m calling you more as a courtesy than anything—happy to have you, but it’s not required.”
“I’ll hang down here,” Virgil said. “I got enough information from Masilla to go around and knock on some doors. I’ll stay in touch with what I get—you might want to plan to come down here tomorrow or the next day, depending on what breaks.”
“Call me when life gets serious,” the lawyer said, and hung up.
—
VIRGIL ATE BREAKFAST, blocking out his day on a yellow pad. When he was done, he called the attorney back: “I’m going to interview a guy name Russell Ross, who runs a wholesale diesel business, then I’m going to see the guy who runs the school’s motor pool. His name is Dick Brown. If I’m found floating facedown in the river, he’ll be the one to talk to about it.”