Deadline(15)

            They left their cars in the street and walked two blocks over to the Buchanan County Soil and Water Conservation District, where they talked to a clerk who pulled out large-scale, high-resolution aerial photos of the land around Orly’s Creek.

            The clerk left them, and they bent over the photos, tracing Orly’s Creek Road up to the spring. The cleft of the valley was clear on the photos: the land up on top was the dark green of heavy forest, cut by the lighter green of the valleys, from which most of the trees had been cleared.

            Virgil tapped County Road NN, which ran west a half-mile north of Orly’s Creek. “If we leave my truck at this bridge”—he looked at the scale—“which is about three-quarters of a mile from 26, we could walk along the edge of this field and into woods, up the hill and down the other side. No houses close by . . . and it looks like there’s a gap in the bluff line . . . here . . . and here.”

            “Still gonna be pretty goddamned steep,” Johnson said.

            “That’s why we take some rope.”

            “We could probably get down, but we won’t be able to get out in a hurry,” Johnson said. “If we have to run for it, we might best go all the way down to the road. Tell you something else—might be tough calling for help. In those deep valleys, the cell phone service is kinda iffy.”

            Virgil said, “We’ll take it slow.” He tapped the map, a line that ran near the top of the valley, just below the bluffs. “See this line? It looks too heavy to be a game trail, and it comes up to this flat patch. It looks like something built is in there.”

            “Kennels?”

            “Looks like something. If we can come over the bluff line . . . here . . . we could move right along the trail, and it’s not more than a couple hundred yards.”

            “Worth a look,” Johnson said.

            —

            VIRGIL GOT THE CLERK to make a Xerox copy of the photo, paid for it, and they continued down the street to the county courthouse, where they looked at plat maps. The man Virgil had talked to the day before, Zorn, owned the land from the road up to his house, and perhaps fifty yards on either side of it, and behind it—not more than two acres or so, a relatively small patch compared to some of the other holdings. The largest plot was at the end of the valley, on the north side. A hundred and twenty acres of woods, and what looked like a small house, showing no mowed fields or outbuildings, under the name of Deland.

            “Don’t know any Delands,” Johnson said. A quick check with the tax records showed a mailing address in the Twin Cities suburb of Eagan.

            “Could be a hunting cabin,” Virgil said. “That kid must have come down from here.” He touched the image of a house on the south side, on twenty acres, showing a large garden to one side, and what appeared to be a small orchard, judging from the way the trees were spaced. The tax records said the bill went to a Julius Ruff. After a last review, he said, “Let’s get some rope and go on out there.”

            —

            THEY BOUGHT a hundred feet of three-quarter-inch nylon rope at Fleet Farm, stopped at Johnson’s cabin on the way north, so they both could change into running shoes, and took Highway 26 past Orly’s Creek Road for half a mile, took a left on NN, and drove to the small bridge where they’d leave the truck. The creek below it was barely damp.

            Virgil had weapons in the back, and after debating with himself about the options, put a “Bureau of Criminal Apprehension” sign on the dashboard, activated the car alarm, and locked everything up.

            He did take his pistol with him, a standard-issue Glock 9mm, and though he didn’t ask, was sure that Johnson had his .45 in his military-style rucksack, along with a couple of cans of Budweiser and a GPS receiver that he’d bought for his boat. Before leaving the ag service, Johnson had found the GPS references for what looked like the easiest breaks in the bluff line above Orly’s Creek valley.