Deadline(14)

            “This is going in the paper next week, Jen,” he’d told her. “Everybody’s going down, but when the police arrive, I’ll tell them that you were the person who cracked the case. I’m sure, if you cooperate, they’ll take it easy on you. You might have to do a little jail time, but you ask anybody who’s been to jail, and they’ll tell you—a little is way, way better than a lot. Way better.”

            She’d started crying, and asked for a couple of days to think it over. Conley had just put the paper to bed for that week, and had time, so he’d agreed: “Two days is fine, Jen. Take three, if you need it. But . . . it’s going in the paper one way or another, next week. I’ve already cleared it with Vike.”

            She’d crack, Conley thought. He was coming to the bottom of the hill, by the cattail swamp, just before the last hard climb back up to his trailer, his running shoes flapping on the warm blacktop. A truck came up in front of him, slowing as it went by, and Conley moved over to the shoulder. Wasn’t sure, but it looked like Randy Kerns behind the wheel.

            He turned his head to look back, but the next thing he knew, he was lying in the cattails, the cold water soaking through his shirt and shorts.

            Before he died, which was only a few seconds later, it occurred to him that he wasn’t too surprised. . . .

            Vike was really, really close to the school board.





                     4


            THE ALARM ON Virgil’s cell phone went off at eight o’clock. He rolled out, remade the bed, more or less, got cleaned up, and took a call from Johnson Johnson.

            “You up?” Johnson asked.

            “Yes.”

            “I’m in my truck. I’ll meet you at the Gourd.”

            “Ten minutes,” Virgil said.

            Johnson and his girlfriend lived west of town, in a sprawling ranch-style house with a barn out back, for the horses, which his girlfriend trained and endurance-raced. Johnson’s sawmill was a mile back behind the house, on the other edge of his twelve hundred and eighty acres of hardwood forest.

            Johnson was hunched over a cup of coffee, reading the Wall Street Journal, when Virgil walked into the Golden Gourd. “Don’t know what I’m going to do about insurance,” he said. “Gotta have it—I got six employees, and it’s rough work, but Jesus, it costs an arm and a leg.”

            “You need to work for the government,” Virgil said. “Insurance is free.”

            “Free for you, not for the rest of us,” Johnson said. He put the paper down and waved at a waitress. They got breakfast, argued about insurance, and talked about what they’d be doing that day.

            “We need to find a way to come down from the top,” Virgil said. “There’s gotta be one—there’s probably a whole bunch of ways. If you have to go in on that road, everybody in the valley knows you’re coming.”

            “The south side of the valley is steeper, and not so many houses over there,” Johnson said. “If they’re hiding dogs, they’re probably on the north side.”

            “Ought to look at a plat map, see who owns what,” Virgil said.

            “Do that at the courthouse,” Johnson said.

            “Might be handy to have a rope to come down off that bluff line,” Virgil said.

            “Get that over at Fleet Farm,” Johnson said.

            When they finished eating, Johnson looked at his watch and said, “Ag office oughta be open.”