“Two each, and two for me,” Olaf said. “A shame about the stable. That was a beauty.”
Sam wanted to eat, Frankie wanted to sit down, and both of them wanted Virgil to check on the whereabouts of the horses. Virgil and Olaf went back outside and walked over to the firemen, who said they were about done. “Don’t think it’ll reignite, there’s not much left to burn,” one told him.
Looking out across the still-standing turnouts that the day before had been attached to the back of the stable, and well out into the green grass of the big pasture, Virgil could see the horses lookingback at him. What he could do about them, he didn’t know; they seemed best left where they were, until they could get a veterinarian to the farm.
He and Olaf went back inside. Sam was eating cereal, Frankie perched on a kitchen chair, talking with him.
“Tell me about the gasoline again,” he said.
And when they had, he had no doubt that the fire had been deliberately set. The Nilssons had not seen anybody on the road. After another cookie, Olaf Nilsson said he needed a nap, and the couple left.
Virgil went back outside, Honus tracking behind him, where the firemen were finishing their work. He saw no sign of a gas can in the smoldering wreckage, or any kind of bottle or other vessel that might have held gasoline, so the arsonist had taken it away. All he could smell was wet burnt wood, wet burnt hay, and the stink of burned corrugated steel from the roof, now collapsed in the middle of the cinders.
He walked around the mess for a bit, looked across a field where an arsonist might have come in. There was no track that he could see.
He called Lucas, who was still soundly asleep. Lucas came up and without preamble asked, “Who’s dead?”
“Nobody, thank God. I’m down in Mankato. Somebody tried to burn us out last night. Burned my stable to the ground…”
“Oh, Jesus! Is everybody okay?”
Virgil said, “Frankie and Sam got second-degree burns getting the horses out, but they’re okay. I can see the horses in the pasture and they look all right, but I haven’t been able to get a close look yet. The twins are fine. Honus is fine. Both Sam and Frankie smelled gasoline in the barn, and we’ve never had gas in there.”
“So it’s arson.”
“Yes.”
“You got insurance?” Lucas asked.
“Not for arson.”
“Ah, shit. This is Doris Grandfelt,” Lucas said.
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Virgil said. “There are a couple of other possibilities.”
“No. It’s Grandfelt. I can feel it in my bones,” Lucas said. “Somebody wants you off the case. Call Duncan, tell him you’re gone until Tuesday. I’ll be back and we’ll kick some serious ass. Until then, take care of your people.”
“I called because I was thinking you might want to take care of your own.”
“Ah…yeah. You’re right, though I don’t expect they’d try to burn both of us,” Lucas said. “That’d be too obvious. Probably hoping your stable would look like an accident.”
“It’s a fucking disaster, is what it is,” Virgil said.
“Virgil, I’m sorry.”
“So am I,” Virgil said. “And I’m gonna hang somebody for it.”
—
Virgil called Duncan,who was horrified: “Take all the time you need. We need to get an arson guy down there…”
“Nah. There’s nothing left to investigate,” Virgil said.
The veterinarian made an emergency visit before her office hours, and Virgil, Frankie, Sam, and the vet chased down the horses, which was harder than it looked in cowboy movies. Virgil wanted Frankie and Sam to stay inside, but they told him to stuff it, and both agreed that they didn’t hurt much with the application of a topical painkiller and a couple of pills.
The horses were okay, though their manes and tails were curled with heat, and they were still spooked. The vet recommended that they be put in separate pastures in case they had invisible burns that made them cranky. “You really don’t need to have a horse fight at this point,” she said.
The vet left and as Virgil was watching her truck turn into the road, he took a call from Dahlia Blair. “We’re trying to look up the marriage date, you know, Carlson and Fisk, but there’s some kind of computer hang-up. We won’t be able to get it until Monday.”
