“By that time, they’ll have gotten a dose of Dr. Jenkins’s female cure and they won’t care.”
“Yeah, they’ll probably have gotten a dose of something,” Virgil said.
“Hey! Is that kind? You gotta try harder to be kind, man. We’re all trapped on this earth together.”
—
Holland came in, and asked, “What are we doing?”
“You’re delivering the envelope and a game-trail camera in my Tahoe, wearing my cowboy hat so they think it’s me.” The camera was sitting on the table, and Virgil turned it toward him. “The camera’s got an infrared flash and a five-second delay. You’ll get flashed a few times when you plant it, but, since it’s IR, you won’t see it. You need to set it up about fifteen feet from where you put the envelope. You don’t want it facing anything that might move. You don’t want any swaying tree branches, or anything. Point it at the bridge, if you can. You’re gonna have to be fast so they don’t get suspicious.”
“I can handle that,” Holland said. “While you were gone, I drove over the bridge. I can put it down in some weeds; it’ll point right back to where he’ll be coming down the bank.”
“Hope you didn’t spook anybody,” Jenkins said.
“I borrowed my girlfriend’s car. She dropped it out back. Nobody saw me.”
Virgil said, “Good. I’ll have the camera all set, all you have to do is turn it on and make sure there’s no grass or weeds in front of the lens. When it senses movement, it’ll start flashing, and it’llkeep going until the movement stops. The flashes are five seconds apart.”
“Cool,” Holland said. “Where will you guys be?”
“We’ll take Jenkins’s car, head north to I-90, make sure nobody is following us. Then we’ll cut south, around the west side of the East Chain, to a farmhouse—it’s only about a half mile from the bridge, and we can walk through the farmer’s fields all the way up to 18. If we do it right, we’ll only be a couple of hundred feet from the bridge. From there, we ought to be able to ease down real close.”
“Does the farmer know you’re coming?”
“Not yet... just in case he might want to chat about it. We’ll tell him when we get there.”
“I have only one objection,” Jenkins said.
Virgil: “Yeah?”
“The bow hunter tried to kill you last night. What if he set this up? What if he’s going to try again? What if it’s an ambush?”
“That hadn’t occurred to me,” Virgil said. He gave it a moment’s thought, then said, “That’s unlikely. First of all, Wardell said the caller was a woman. That’d mean there’d be two people involved in the murders, and I don’t see that. This is a loner. Another thing: he would have had to think this up and deliver the letter to Wardell a couple of hours after we chased him all over the neighborhood.”
“I’m with Virgil,” Holland said. “I’m not worried about an ambush. I’m more worried about falling in that fuckin’ creek.”
“When you get killed, don’t come complaining to me,” Jenkins said.
Virgil checked the time. “We got a couple of hours. I didn’t have a chance to eat, and I... Man, those potpies.”
“Why don’t we all run over to Fairmont and get something decent?” Holland said.
“Good. I made it down there in, like, eighteen minutes last night,” Virgil said. “We’ll take my truck, use the lights and siren, see if we can beat the time.”
—
They spent ten minutes with Shrake at the hospital, ate, and made it back to Skinner & Holland, where Virgil parked the Tahoe out front. Sundown was about 8:40, and it was fully dark by 9:15. Virgil had worn his pale straw cowboy hat getting out of the truck, and Holland would wear it going back out.
As soon as it was dark enough, Virgil and Jenkins snuck out the back and down to Jenkins’s rented Toyota and left for the East Chain. Virgil called Zimmer, who said his patrol cars were all set. “We hid them. Nobody’s going to see them unless they go looking off-road.”
“We’ll call your nine-one-one line if we need help,” Virgil told him.
—
The farm they’d targeted was owned by Don and Donna White. Zimmer knew them—not well, but well enough that they would recognize his voice. He would call them a few minutes before Virgil and Jenkins arrived at their farm to avoid scaring them and to vouch for the state cops. When they pulled into the farmyard, the Whites were waiting at the side door.
“The sheriff told us not to turn on the porch light,” Don White said. “I got some stuff to show you.”
