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out.”
    â€œOf course I came, you damn fool. One of my people’s dead,” Pye snapped, as he walked up. His face appeared to be permanently red and frustrated. “When the hell are you gonna get this nut? It’s been two weeks and we’ve seen nothing.”
    Barlow said, “We’re focused on it, and this new bomb tells us a lot. We now believe we’re dealing with a man from here in the Butternut Falls area. We’re coordinating with the Kandiyohi sheriff’s department and the state Bureau of Criminal Investigation.”
    â€œApprehension,” Virgil said.
    â€œSounds like more bullshit to me,” Pye interrupted. “Is this the trailer? Holy crap, it looks like the Nazis bombed it.” He said gnatzees. “Where’s the hospital here? Is this boy Sullivan still there? Has Mrs. Kingsley got here yet? I hear she got hung up in Detroit, plane was delayed or she got bumped or some crap like that. I’m talking to the CEO of Delta, he’s seeing what he can do, but it don’t seem like much.”
    Barlow and Ahlquist took turns answering questions, and introduced LeCourt and Virgil. As they were doing that, Virgil noticed that the tall woman was taking notes, in what looked like shorthand; O’Hara was watching her with one eye closed, like a housewife in a butcher shop, inspecting a suspect pork chop. Pye looked at Virgil’s shirt and asked, “What the hell’s these Freelance Whales?”
    Ahlquist jumped in: “It’s a band. Virgil rushed up here on his day off, didn’t have time to change.”
    Pye turned back to Barlow and LeCourt, and the sheriff caught Virgil’s eye and tipped his head toward the trucks. They started drifting that way, until Pye said, “Whoa, whoa, where’re you going? We’ve got some planning to do.”
    â€œWe’re going to go investigate,” Virgil said. “If I need to talk to you, I’ll let you know.”
    â€œHey: this is my goddamn building going up here, and my people got hurt and killed,” Pye said. “I want to know what the crap is going on here, and you’re gonna tell me or I’ll call somebody up and tell them I need a new investigator.”
    Virgil nodded, slipped his ID case out from his pocket, took out a business card, and scrawled Davenport’s office number on it. “This is my boss. Call him up and tell him you need a new investigator.”
    â€œThat don’t worry you, huh?” Pye cocked an eye at him.
    â€œNot much,” Virgil said. “Davenport will either tell you to kiss his ass, or, if you’re important enough, he’ll pass you on to the governor, who’ll tell you to kiss his ass. So either way, somebody’ll tell you to kiss his ass, and I’ll keep investigating.”
    Pye frowned. “Huh. Your goldanged governor’s got almost as much money as I do, and it’s older.” He scratched his head, then asked, “How long will it take you to catch this nut?”
    He and Virgil were now almost toe to toe, and the woman was still taking notes, writing at such a pace that it had to be verbatim.
    Virgil looked at his watch, scratched his cheek, then said, “I can’t see it going much more than a week.”
    Pye nodded. “All right. You get me this guy in a week, and I will kiss your ass.” To the woman, he said, “You got that? One week and I kiss his ass.”
    â€œI got it,” she said. Her eyes flicked to Virgil: “Good luck, Mr. Flowers. I’ll prepare an appropriate ceremony.”
    Virgil thought, Hmm. But then, his sheriff had been in Hollywood for a while.
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    AHLQUIST AND VIRGIL WENT on to their trucks, and Virgil followed the sheriff out of the parking lot. Virgil had worked with Ahlquist a couple of times, to their mutual satisfaction. A former highway patrolman turned to politics, Ahlquist probably knew half the people in the county