They engaged in more pointless speculation all the way to the Iowa line; and Skinner filled in some of his own background. His mother, he said, was a pleasant, intellectual woman who communed with the earth and Buddha, and sometimes went on earth- or Buddha-related trips, and other times on mind-expanding trips, depending on what was coming in from Colorado. “She’s a positive enough person, but ambition to my mom is like kryptonite to Superman,” Skinner said. “She wantsnothing to do with it. With the money from the trust fund Grandpa set up for her, it’s not a problem. We’re not rich, but we’re not poor, either.”
He was not curious about the identity of his father. Virgil suggested the red hair might be a tip-off, but Skinner said his mother was tall, red-haired, and freckled, so appearance wouldn’t help.
—
In Armstrong, Skinner pointed out the high school. “I played a basketball game there in junior high. I can’t remember why.”
A pickup truck with a camper back and a dusty black Mustang pulled into the parking lot ahead of them, moved to one side, and parked. Bell Wood got out of the Mustang, hitched up his pants, and looked around, and, a second later, a woman got out of the other side. Another man got out of the pickup, wearing overalls, a plaid shirt, and a ball cap. Skinner muttered, “Cops.”
“Yeah, what’d you expect?”
“Cops. They look like cops. They dress like farmers and they still look like cops. The stink hangs on them. Even the chick,” Skinner said.
“Careful with that ‘chick.’ She’s probably armed.”
“See, the thing you don’t know is, lots of women cops want you to think of them as chicks,” Skinner said “Because the alternative is, they’re like Nazi prison guards, all waxy-faced and carrying billy clubs. You gotta think about their self-image, not some kind of artificial construct in your own head. And they think they’re ‘chicks.’”
Virgil couldn’t think of an immediate rebuttal—“artificial construct”?—and let it go.
—
Bell Wood was a big, square man with a brush mustache and gold-rimmed glasses that made him look a little like Teddy Roosevelt, which he knew. He was a major in the Iowa National Guard and had done a tour in Iraq. His subordinates, relishing the double entendre, called him Major Wood behind his back and occasionally to his face.
The woman with him was slender and square-chinned, had pale brown hair and amber eyes—possibly the best-looking woman in Iowa and all adjacent states. The man who’d driven the pickup truck was narrow-faced, with shoulder-length brown hair and a three-day beard; he would have looked at home on a bench in a bus station. Skinner was right: despite the surface patina of a farmer, he was giving off a distinct law enforcement vibe.
Skinner, in the meantime, had introduced himself to the woman, whom he then introduced to Virgil as Katie Easton. Virgil shook her hand, and he shook hands with the bus bench guy, Joe Rivers, and Wood asked Skinner, “You’re the kid who found the trailer?”
“Yeah. It’s a couple of miles back north.”
Virgil pulled an aerial view up on his iPad, and they gathered around the hood of his Tahoe and looked at it. “Can’t see the trailer,” Wood said.
“Can’t see it from off the property, either,” Skinner said. “It’s right... here.” He put his index finger on the center of the farmstead’s woodlot.
“All right. Well, we’ve got a warrant on the basis of the video Virgil sent me, so we can go in. We’ll move as soon as this Larry Van Den Berg shows up with his truck. If he doesn’t show, we’ll goin at noon, or thereabouts.” Wood said. “You guys better hang back. We’ll wave you in.”
“If you run into trouble?”
“Then we’ll wave you in faster,” Wood said.
—
Virgil and Skinner waited while Wood, Easton, and Rivers armored up. They didn’t look at Easton, because she was so pretty that they didn’t want to be seen staring. When the Iowans were ready to go, Wood handed Virgil a police handset, and said, “You know how these work. Turn up the volume and leave it on your passenger seat.”
Virgil took the radio, and, two seconds later, his cell phone beeped: Jenkins.
“Van Den Berg showed up, ran inside his house, came back out two minutes later, jumped in his truck, and he’s headed your way. In a hurry.”
“Excellent. Stay way back, don’t let him spot you,” Virgil advised.
“You mean, like experienced cops?”
“Exactly. You’ve got a half hour ride.”
—
Virgil relayed the word to Wood, who said, “Then we gotta go. I want to cruise the place. I’ll get off at a crossroad as far down as I can get and still see the truck coming in. And I want to take Mr. Skinner with me while we make the pass at the house. I’ll drop him off before we go in, and you can pick him up while we wait.”
Virgil nodded. “I’ll follow from way back. There’s not much time...”
