Frankie had referred to the flashlight as “thermonuclear.” Virgil had been given it by a DEA agent and was fairly sure that it could be seen on the moon. The man coming toward them was in themiddle of the highway, and when he was thirty feet away, Virgil hit him in the face with the light, and Jenkins yelled, “Stop! Stop there!”
The man—Virgil recognized him as Jim Button—screeched to a stop, looked wildly around, as if for a place to run, dropped the brown manila envelope full of magazine pages cut to dollar-bill size, and said, “Ah, shit. There’s no money, is there?”
“How you doin’, Jim?” Virgil asked. And, “My friend here has a twelve-gauge pointed at you. It’d cut a hole the size of a softball in your chest... if you have a gun or knife, or whatever.”
“I don’t,” Button said. “Goddamnit.”
“So who’s the shooter?” Virgil asked.
Button stared at him for a few seconds, then said, “Well, it’s gotta be Barry Osborne.”
Jenkins asked, “Who is this guy?”
“One of the Nazis,” Virgil said. To Button: “Barry Osborne, is what you’ve got? That’s all? That’s it? I hate to tell you this, pal, but we’ve already eliminated him as a suspect.”
“Well, that’s dumb,” Button said.
Virgil said to Jenkins, “Get your Glock out and point it at his head. I’m gonna cuff him.”
Button said, “Aw, we gotta do that?”
“Yeah, we do, Jim. You tried to defraud the state government out of ten thousand dollars.”
Button refused to say where he would have been picked up, but Virgil suspected it would be the same place he was dropped off. He called Holland, who’d pulled off the highway a couple of miles away, and he came back to pick them up.
They retrieved the camera, though they didn’t need thepictures anymore. Virgil got Button’s phone out of his jacket pocket, and they drove back to the Whites’ farmyard, Jenkins and Button in the backseat. Button’s hands were cuffed, and one ankle was locked to the steel ring in the floor of the Tahoe.
Fifteen minutes after they got to the Whites’ place, Button’s phone rang, and Virgil answered it.
“You got it?” Male voice.
Virgil whispered, “Got the envelope. But I’m in this field, I’m lost... Get me where you left me. Maybe ten minutes...”
“You okay?”
More whispering. “Yeah, but I can’t talk. I think there might be some cops up on 18.”
“I’m coming...”
Virgil hung up. “He’s coming.”
—
They brought in a sheriff’s car, hidden on a side road, and when Raleigh Good rolled past the Whites’ house and down the highway in Woody Garrett’s black Camaro, the cop pulled out across the highway and turned on his flashers. Virgil pulled out in the Tahoe, behind the camera, and turned on his own flashers. Good pulled the Camaro over, and when Virgil walked up and shouted, “Get out of the car!” Good got out, and asked, “What are you guys doing here?”
“Collecting you, and Jim,” Virgil said. “Jim’s already in my truck.”
“Was that you on the phone?”
“Yes, it was.”
“That goddamn Button. I will never, ever...”
Jenkins patted him down. “Get in the truck,” Virgil said.
—
They headed back to Wheatfield, trailed by Jenkins and the sheriff’s patrol car. Holland, looking over the seat back, asked Button, “What the hell were you thinking? Or did you think at all?”
