Deadline(17)

            They moved off down the trail, listening and watching. Virgil asked, “What is it with these trees?” He pointed to a young maple that had been girdled with an ax or hatchet, but left standing.

            “They’re killing the tree, but leaving it standing to dry out. Making firewood,” Johnson said. A hundred yards farther on they came to the built spot that Virgil had seen on the photos, and it turned out to be a woodlot, with a few face cords of stacked wood set off to one side.

            “Could be the answer to the trail,” Johnson said. “Somebody’s harvesting firewood. You’d need an ATV to tow it out of here.”

            “But this isn’t the end of it . . .”

            Virgil led the way out of the woodlot. The trail had narrowed to a single-wide track, blocked by a pile of brush—the leftover ends of trees cut up for firewood. An ATV could get around it, but nothing wider. The trail eventually led to three metal sheds of the kind sold at lumberyards. They’d been painted with a green-on-black camouflage pattern, and all had tightly sealed doors, with padlocks. A half-dozen propane cylinders sat on the ground beside one of them.

            “Smell it?” Virgil asked.

            “Yeah.”

            They could smell the acetone.

            “Cooking meth,” Virgil said. “And not long ago.”

            “They could use the same setup to cook syrup, the same setup I have,” Johnson said. “I wonder why that never occurred to me.”

            “Because, despite your many enormous personal flaws, character weaknesses, and innate criminality, you’re too much of a gutless coward to cook meth,” Virgil said.

            “I wondered about that,” Johnson said. “Thanks for the explanation.”

            Virgil tested all the locks and found them solid. He took out his camera, made a few photos, and then saw, farther down the slope, a hump of raw dirt, like the fill from a double-long grave. When Virgil went to look, he found a dump: trashed containers that once contained the raw materials for methamphetamine. He took some more photos, then put the camera away and walked back up the slope to Johnson. “Can you get a GPS reading here?”

            “Maybe,” Johnson said, looking up at the canopy of maple leaves. He had one a minute later, and saved it to the receiver’s memory.

            “Let’s go upslope and see if we can find a way out,” Virgil said.

            “What about the dogs?”

            “This operation is more important than the dogs,” Virgil said. “They could be taking a ton of meth out of here. Johnson: this is sort of a big deal.”

            “I’ll give you that,” Johnson said. “I still want the dogs.”

            “We’ll be back,” Virgil promised. The trail had ended at the shed, and following the points on the GPS, Johnson led them to another of the openings in the bluff line. When they got there, the slope was still too steep, and they moved along to the last one, two hundred yards farther along the valley. This one was steep, but had saplings growing all the way up, and by using the trees to pull themselves along, they managed to climb to the crest.

            Twenty minutes later, they were back at the truck.

            “Now what?” Johnson asked. He cracked his second Bud as they did a U-turn and headed back toward the river.

            “Got to think about that,” Virgil said. “To tell the truth, I don’t entirely trust your trusty sheriff.”

            “You’re more perceptive than you look,” Johnson said. “Not to say that he’s an outright criminal. He may accept a little help now and then.”