Deadline(45)

            A third man volunteered, “Something weird about it, though. You won’t hear nothin’ at all, then you’ll hear a lot of dogs, all of a sudden, but the volume is down low, like they’re a long ways off. Then the volume gets turned up, and that goes on for a while, and then it gets turned down. The barking keeps going, but the volume gets turned down, until you can’t hear them at all. It’s like they’re on an amp.”

            “That is a strange fuckin’ thing,” Eddy said. “I heard that myself. The barking just fades away, like when you’re listening to an AM radio out on the prairie, in your car, and the radio signal starts to fade out.”

            “Huh. Lots of dogs?”

            “Lot of them,” said the man called Dick, who’d told Eddy to shut up. “I wondered what the hell was going on over there.”

            “Anybody know what a beagle sounds like?”

            “They got beagles, I think,” Eddy said. “That’s a sorrowful sound, when an unhappy beagle gets going. Could be bassets, though.”

            “Thanks, guys,” Virgil said. He patted Eddy on the shoulder as he stood up.

            He walked back to Gomez, who said, “You got a very strange job, Virgil.”

            —

            THE AMBULANCE HAD SHOWN UP on the road below them, and the paramedics had carried a stretcher up the hill. They loaded up the man Virgil had hit, and then a van showed up down below and a couple of feds got out and looked up at them.

            “Crime scene,” Gomez said. “The bureaucracy begins.”

            Virgil hung around for a while, as the bureaucracy got going. Gomez asked, “You remember Matt Travers, the regional guy out of Washington?”

            “I met him.”

            “He said to tell you we’ve still got a job, if you want it.”

            “Man, I appreciate it, but I like it here,” Virgil said.

            “You could get a whole fuckin’ state if you came with us. Get some guys working for you . . . It’s kinda fun, if you like that kind of fun.”

            “I’ll think about it . . . but I’m just being polite. You guys are the most interesting feds, no doubt about it, but like I said . . .”

            “You like it here.”

            “Yes, I do.”





                     9


            VIRGIL CAUGHT A RIDE to his truck with one of the DEA agents, and on the way back to Johnson’s cabin, called Frankie and told her about the raid.

            “Goddamnit, I wish I’d been there.”

            “Maybe you ought to be a cop,” Virgil suggested.

            After a moment of silence she said, “Nah. I’d feel too sorry for most of the people I arrested. But I would like to run around screaming and yelling and chasing through the woods.”

            “Well, shoot, we could do that at your place,” Virgil said. “Naked.”

            “Aw, Virgie . . .”

            —

            VIRGIL CALLED JOHNSON: it was well past midnight, but Johnson had called him at three o’clock in the morning about rescuing some dogs. Johnson answered the phone: he didn’t sound sleepy, he sounded interrupted.

            “What?”

            “We cleaned out the meth labs. We need to get the posse together tomorrow. We’re going after the dogs.”