—
Virgil followed Bakker down eight miles of blacktop highway, three miles of blacktop side road, and a half mile down a dead-end gravel road. Jim Button lived in a decrepit clapboard farmhouse that a Midwestern cartoonist might have drawn: it appeared to be taller than it was wide or deep, like an inhabited silo, and it had all gone crooked, as if the two floors had rotated in different directions. Virgil could see eight windows, none of them matching. The last flakes of paint were peeling off the boards, and the front steps had collapsed into the weeds beneath the porch. The only new-looking thing anywhere was a silver propane tank next to a stand-alone machine shed.
A too-heavy blond woman was in the backyard, hanging clothes, and a red-and-black Nazi flag, on a clothesline. She stopped to look at them, and instead of running for the house, she took a cell phone out of her pocket and made a call.
Virgil parked beside Bakker, who had gotten out of his car and was talking into his shoulder microphone. When Virgil came up, he said, “I let the boys in the office know that we got here alive.”
As he said it, a man in a black wifebeater shirt came out a side door, looked them over, called something back inside, and started toward them. Behind him, another man and two women came out of the house and trotted after him to catch up.
Bakker nodded at the leader—a thin, muscular man, with a fuzzy black beard and mustache—who displayed a variety of Nordic symbols tattooed on his arms, but nothing that would have impressed the average NBA player. Bakker said, “How you doin’, Jim? . . . Virgil, this is Jim Button.”
“What’s up, Darren?”
As the others came up, Bakker said Virgil was a BCA agent, and Virgil said, “You heard about those people in town getting shot, right? Apparently with a .223, and we’ve been told that you folks have a bunch of .223s, and a grudge against the town. I’m checking to see if you can tell me where you were on Saturday around four-fifteen, and about the same time the Saturday before that.”
“Wouldn’t you fuckin’ know it?” Jim Button asked the air. “Somebody gets shot, so who’re you gonna blame? The National Socialists.” He turned to his friends. “Can you believe this?”
Both the women who’d come out of the house had dark hair, but only one had swastikas on her earlobes. The other was prettier and had a dime-sized black rose tattooed on one side of her neck. She said, “I can tell you where I was the day before yesterday. I was at work, from three ’til nine, over in Austin. Raleigh dropped me off at three, and then he hung around for a while, bullshitting with my boss.”
“Trying to get a cleaning job over there, after closing,” Raleigh Good said. “You can call up Bob and ask him.”
“So what time did you leave there?” Virgil asked.
“About four.”
“You were bullshitting with the boss for an hour?” Bakker asked. “That’s a lot of bullshit.”
“Wasn’t all bullshit,” Good said. “We were talking about how I wouldn’t be an employee, I’d be my own business, and I’d have to provide my own equipment and supplies; we also talked about what needed to be cleaned every day and what needed it once or twice a week. There was a lot of bullshit, but it wasn’t bullshitting, if you see what I mean.”
“About four o’clock, then.”
“At least. No way to get back to Wheatfield and set up and shoot somebody. And I didn’t have a gun with me—ask Rose.”
“He didn’t have a gun,” Rose said. “They got two of them, and I saw both of them, in the rack, before we left.”
Raleigh said, “See?”
Virgil asked Rose, “Where do you work?”
“Bob’s Spinners and Bells,” she said. “It’s a gym. I’m a spinning instructor.”
Button said, “I was at an assembly plant over in Albert Lea, looking for work.”
“On a Saturday?”
“Weekend work. You can call and ask.”
The clothesline lady said, “They had both cars. Me’n Marie stay home when they’re all gone.”
Virgil asked, “Do you have WiFi out here?”
Good, a short, wide man who seemed to consist mostly of tangled black hair and who undoubtedly had a broken-down Harley somewhere, snorted. “We’re lucky we got runnin’ water out here.”
“You don’t like it, you could always move,” Button snapped.
“We got WiFi at the gym,” Rose said. “Why?”
“Because you’re all talking about reasonable alibis, but I need to check. If you could email the names of people who saw you around those places, who you’d talk to, I’d appreciate it. If everybody backs you up, then we got no problem.”
The five of them eye-checked one another, and then Button said, “Sounds okay. We’d appreciate it if you could skip over the National Socialist stuff when you talk to them. Hard to find jobs, with all the bigots out there.”
Virgil nodded. “I can do that. Though I gotta say, this being Minnesota, you’d have been better off to pick Communism. If you know what I’m saying.”
“Got that, all right,” said the unidentified, clothes-hanging blond woman. “I’m thinking about switching over.”
Bakker gave Virgil a tap in the ribs with an elbow, and said, “Give me a minute, Virgil.” He walked a dozen steps away, and when Virgil came over, he whispered, “If you look behind the machine shed, you’ll see the back end of a black Chevy Camaro. Woody Garrett drives a black Camaro.”
Virgil nodded, and said, “You want me to lead or you?”
“You got a gun on you?”
“As a matter fact, I do, at my back,” Virgil said. “You know, heavily armed Nazis.”
“Right. I don’t think these guys are dangerous, but Garrett could be a problem.”
* * *
—
They walked back to the group, and Virgil said, “Could you ask Woody to come out here?”
Button did an astonishingly bad imitation of a confused man. “Woody who?” He scratched his head and looked at the others. Rose rolled her eyes.
“Woody Garrett, who drives that black Camaro parked over there behind the machine shed,” Virgil said, nodding toward the shed.
The group all turned to look, and Rose said, “Oh, that Woody Garrett. Jim thought you meant some other Woody.”
Virgil was getting the impression that the group lacked cohesiveness. “Could you ask him to come out?”
“What’d he do?” the clothes hanger asked.
“Beat the heck out of his wife and daughter,” Bakker said. “Busted the daughter up real bad, using a two-by-two the size of a baseball bat. Broke her pelvis.”
“What! He beat up Anna? She’s nine years old!” Rose turned to Button. “You said he had an argument with Sandy and needed a place to sleep for a couple of days.”
Button said, “Well . . . he did. He didn’t mention the beating-up part.”
“You dumbass,” Rose said. To Virgil: “He was sleeping in the back bedroom, first floor, when you showed up. He was drunk last night, so I believe he’s still asleep.”
“Are we invited in?” Bakker asked.
“No,” said Button.
“Harboring a fugitive from the law is a felony,” Virgil said.
“Like I said, you’re welcome to come in,” Button said. “Don’t go shooting the place up.”
“Yeah, we don’t need any home improvements,” Rose said.
* * *
—
The entire group moved to the house, but Button, Good, Rose, and the others waited in the kitchen, after pointing Virgil and Bakker to a door at the back of the house. Rose whispered, “The lock’s broken.”
Virgil tiptoed across a worn carpet, with Bakker a couple of feet behind, and tried the doorknob. It creaked, and Virgil gave it a fast twist and pushed the door open. The room contained an empty, two-tier bunk bed, a dresser supported on one side by a two-by-four that was replacing a broken leg, and an open window whose curtain was blowing gently into the room.
“He’s run off,” Bakker said, and he turned to sprint to the front door. As he took his first step, Virgil hooked his arm, put a finger to his own lips, and pointed beneath the lower bunk. Bakker stooped and looked under the bed; he could see two jean-clad knees.