Deadline(148)

            “I told somebody that, recently, but she disagreed, and eventually talked me around.”

            “Thanks, old buddy,” Johnson said. He yawned, stretched, and said, “I probably lost five pounds this past couple of weeks, running around with you. Maybe I ought to write a diet book: The Virgil Flowers Weight-Loss Plan. Start by leaving your gun in the truck. . . .”

            Virgil leaned across the table and asked, in a near-whisper, “When you said a posse was coming with us, you meant four couples in four trucks, and one old guy with a missing tooth?”

            “Maybe somebody else will show up,” Johnson said. His eyes slid sideways, and Virgil detected a likely prevarication.

            “You lying motherfucker, Johnson, what have you done?”

            “Not a fuckin’ thing,” he said. “I’m completely innocent.”

            “Your mom told me that you were a difficult baby,” Virgil said. “You haven’t been innocent since you were a half hour old.”

            “Fuck you. And Mom,” Johnson said. “She always liked Mercury better.”

            —

            THE WORD WAS that the dog roundup was scheduled to start at eight o’clock, when bunchers from Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota would open for business at Dillard’s farm, which also held occasional farm equipment auctions. Johnson had learned that to prevent disputes, no dogs would be sold even a minute before nine o’clock, although the dogs would be available for survey before then. Dillard was expecting upwards of three hundred dogs. A few would be sold as hunting dogs, most as lab dogs, and “trash” would be handled by Dillard.

            “That’s what he called them,” Johnson Johnson said. “Trash. Is that anything to call a dog? They’re man’s best friend. And when he said ‘handling them,’ you know what he’s gonna do? He’s gonna shoot them, is what I think.”

            A little after eight, they were in their trucks. Virgil was alone in his, because Johnson wanted to take his own truck in case he had to haul some dogs back, and Virgil, with any luck, would have D. Wayne Sharf handcuffed to the steel ring in the backseat of the 4Runner. The little caravan stretched out over a half-mile, with Virgil in the lead.

            The drive was pleasant enough, rolling along the back highways, none of them straight, listening to country music on satellite radio. They were still in the Driftless Area, with heavily wooded hills overhanging small farms and narrow farm fields that twisted up the hillsides, the small farmhouses neat and usually white, with gardens and fruit trees and older cars parked in side yards.

            They arrived at Dillard’s farm at eight forty-five. There were three larger trucks and a dozen pickups, some with trailers, already parked in a field that stretched along the gravel road, between the road and a dry creek a hundred yards downslope. Except for the barking of several hundred dogs, it might have been the beginning of some low-rent hippie music festival.

            A few pickups and SUVs were parked on the shoulder of the road. Virgil pulled off behind them, and his caravan pulled off with him. He’d already asked them not to get out of their trucks until he’d spotted D. Wayne Sharf, just in case Sharf should recognize any of them. They’d all agreed, with a little bitching from the Bald Old Man with One Tooth, who, Virgil had been told, was looking for a stolen dachshund named Dixie.

            Virgil had asked Johnson, “Is he sure it was stolen? Maybe it was eaten by coyotes.”

            “Coyotes don’t eat dachshunds,” Johnson said. “Dachshunds were bred to go down badger tunnels and drag the badgers out by their ass. A good-sized dachshund could weigh thirty pounds and has jaws like a crocodile. Old Dixie would straight-out fuck up a coyote.”

            “Didn’t know that,” Virgil said.