“And you could get your ass killed,” somebody added. “Fuckin’ peckerwoods are all carrying .223s. Pick you off like sittin’ ducks.”
Another big man stood up, and everybody turned to look; his face was red, and it appeared that he’d been weeping. He took off his camo cap and said, “I’m Winfred Butterfield. Winky. They took my two Labs last night. Right out of the kennel. My dogs’re gone, sir. Snatched right out of my yard. Knowed what they was doin’, too—left behind some pork chop bone and a cloth muzzle, used to keep them quiet.”
He told the story, until he got to the part where he “let off some shots in that direction.” He paused and then said, “Maybe I shouldn’t have said that.”
“You hit anyone?” Virgil asked.
“Naw, I wasn’t trying. I mean, I wouldn’t mind shooting that miserable motherfucker, if I had a clear shot, but I was afraid I might hit one of the dogs.”
Somebody said, “You got that right.”
“Okay, just a note here. Let’s decide right now that we’re not going to shoot anybody over a dog,” Virgil said. “Let me handle this the legal way.”
The men all looked around, and then one of the women said, “Kinda afraid we can’t do that, Virgil.” And they all nodded.
“Well, goddamnit, people.”
“This is organized crime, Virgil,” she said. “If we don’t shut these people down, no dog will be safe.”
—
VIRGIL WAS WORRIED. Everyone at the meeting seemed stone-cold sober, and they talked about shooting the dognappers with the cool determination of people who might actually do that, given the chance. They didn’t seem anxious to do it, like a bunch of goofy gun nuts—they sounded more like farmers planning to eliminate a varmint that had been killing their geese.
Virgil asked them about the hillbillies on Orly’s Creek, and a dozen people gave him bits of information—sightings, rumors, incidents—that made him think they were quite possibly right.
One of the men said, “I saw this old gray truck going by Dan Busch’s place, two or three times over a week. Driving slow, looking around . . . Couple days later, Dan’s beagles got ripped off.”
“Four of them,” another man said, who added, “I’m Dan.”
The first man said, “Anyway, a couple weeks later I was driving up 26, and I see this old gray truck coming out of the Orly’s Crick Road. Same truck. Couldn’t prove it, but it was.”
Another man said, “There’s this guy called Roy, I think his last name is Zorn, he lives up there. Tall red-haired guy, skinny, got about nine million freckles on his face. They got his picture in all the animal shelters and humane societies, telling them NOT to give him any dogs or cats, because he was going around, getting them, and then he’d sell them off to animal bunchers.”
Virgil said, “Excuse me? What’s a buncher?”
“That’s guys who collect animals for the laboratories, for experiments. He’d go around and get these free animals, saying he was looking for a pet, and then he’d sell them off to the bunchers,” the big man said. “We know damn well, he’d get kittens that way, too. You know, somebody’d put an ad in the paper, saying, ‘Free Kittens,’ and he’d take as many as they’d give him, sayin’ he needed mousers for his barn. The animal people caught on, and somebody took his picture, and now he can’t go into those places.”
“I’ll go talk to him,” Virgil said. He turned to Butterfield and asked, “Winky—how much did you pay for those Labs?”