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.”