Deadline(6)

            “These were top dogs, partially trained. I paid fifteen hundred for one, twelve hundred for the other,” Butterfield said. “But I don’t give a damn about the money—they’re my best friends.”

            “The money makes stealing them a felony,” Virgil said. “It always helps to have a felony backing you up, when you talk to people.”

            “I’ll tell you what,” said one of the women. “Most everybody here has had dogs stolen, which is why they are here. The rest of us are worried. If you took all the dogs stolen, they’d be worth twenty or thirty thousand dollars, easy. Maybe even more.”

            Virgil said he’d look into it: “I’ll be honest with you, this is not what I usually do. In fact, I’ve never done it before. I can see you’re serious folks, so I’ll take it on. No promises. I could get called off . . . but if I do, I’ll be back. You all take care, though. Don’t go out there with guns, I don’t want anybody to get hurt.”

            —

            WHEN THE MEETING broke up, he and Johnson drove over to the law enforcement center, which housed the Buchanan County Sheriff and the Trippton Police Department, which were one and the same, and a few holding cells. In the parking lot Johnson said, “I’ll hang out here. Jeff don’t appreciate my good qualities,” and Virgil went in alone.

            Entry to the sheriff’s office was through a locked black-steel door, with a bulletproof window next to it; there was nobody behind the window, so Virgil rang the bell, and a moment later a deputy stuck his head around the window and said, “Virgil Flowers, as I live and die.”

            “That’s me,” Virgil agreed. The deputy buzzed him in, and Virgil followed him down the hall to the sheriff’s office. The sheriff, Jeff Purdy, was a small, round man who wore fifties-style gray hats, the narrow-brimmed Stetson “Open Road” style; he had his feet up on his desk and was reading a New Yorker magazine. When he heard the footsteps in the hallway, he looked over the magazine and saw Virgil coming.

            “I hope you’re here to fish,” he said.

            “Not exactly, though it’d be nice to get out for a couple hours,” Virgil said. “I just came from a meeting down at Shanker’s. . . .”

            Virgil told him the story, and the sheriff sighed and said, “You’re welcome to it, Virgil. I know those people have a complaint, but what the hell am I supposed to do? We patrol up Orly’s Crick, but we never see a thing.”

            “You know a guy named Roy Zorn?”

            “Yeah, yeah, we’ve been told he cooks some meth up there, but we never caught him at it. Basically, he’s a small-time motorcycle hood, rode with the Seed for a while, over in Green Bay, before he came here. And I know all about that thing he used to do with cats and dogs, him getting banned from the Humane Society. But we got nothing on him. Can’t get anything, either. If I had ten more men . . .”

            “You don’t mind if I take a look?”

            “Go on ahead. Keep me up on what you’re doing,” Purdy said. “If you find something specific, I could spring a couple guys to help out on a short-term basis. Very short-term, like a raid, something like that.”

            “That’s all I wanted,” Virgil said. “There’s a good chance I won’t find a thing, but if I do, I might call for backup.”

            “Deal,” Purdy said.

            The deputy who’d taken Virgil back to the sheriff’s office returned and said, “Sheriff, Sidney Migg’s walking around naked in her backyard, again.”

            The sheriff grunted and boosted himself out of his chair. “I better handle this myself.”