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months. Beltrami’s a Holiday Inn compared to Nygard’s dungeon. They got programs, counseling. Get a dentist to check out your teeth. Could turn your life around.”

Then Gator grabbed Terry’s arm and shoved him toward the floor. Terry panicked at the touch, the downward movement. “Please…”

“Pick up your shit,” Gator said, not hiding the disgust at this kid’s callowness. “Go on.”

Terry scrambled on the floor, grabbing at items. His hand hovered near the pipe. Gator’s mashed the heel of his work boot down, crushing it. “How much money you got?” he asked.

Terry stood up and held out the crumpled bills. Four singles, some change. Gator palmed his wallet, selected a twenty, and handed it to Terry.

“What’s this?”

“Gas money. Get some McDonald’s. A malt.”

“Ah, thanks,” Terry mumbled, staring at the bill.

Gator took Terry by the arm and walked him to the swaybacked porch. “One last thing.”

“Sure, anything,” Terry said, antsy, seeing his car just thirty feet away.

“Say, ‘Who was that masked man,’” Gator said,

“What?” Terry’s voice cracked wide open with fear, sensing some freaky trick coming just as he was about to get free.

“C’mon. It’s just words. Say it.”

Terry swallowed, took a breath, and said, apprehensively, “Who was that masked man.”

Gator smiled. “Good. Now get the fuck out of here.” He shoved him hard and sent him sprawling off the porch into the snow. “Run, you little shit. Run for your life,” he taunted as he put the light on him.

Terry scuttled on all fours, gamboling through the snow. Got to his feet, surged for the car, hurled open the door, and jumped behind the wheel.

Gator watched the kid fishtail the Nova, hell-bent with a twenty in his hot hand, heading for the nearest dealer who’d sell him a chunk of ice. But probably not in Glacier County. The kid would get high and embellish the story. Tell ’em to keep clear of those spooky woods where nobody lived but crazy cousin-killer Gator Bodine. And the wolves.

And that’s just how Gator wanted it.

He went back in the house, shone the light at the cook ingredients strewn on the floor. Leave it. Give Keith the names. Plan it so they’re sitting in his office, talking, when Broker goes down.

That’d work.

Chapter Thirty-eight

Griffin studied the squat gray building just fifty yards away, checked the road, then, seeing no headlights, left cover and jogged leisurely toward the shop. He had no preconceived plan; it all depended on what he found. Freeform. The thing would dictate its own course.

He went right to the front door, twisted the knob, and went in; knelt, unlaced his boots, stepped out of them, and did a fast walk-through in his socks. The square cement-block building was divided roughly into three rooms. In front, the office took up a partitioned corner and contained a desk and shelves with this open alcove at one end with a bunk and an exposed toilet.

The office door opened into a machine shop area with a steel lathe, milling machine, metal saw, grinders, and a drill press.

The second room was the garage. A disassembled rust orange tractor was raised up on blocks and bottle jacks. A tall tool caddy on casters was positioned next to the tractor; lots of drawers, with a workbench on top. Looking around, he saw a wire-feed Mig welder, welding tanks, an air compressor, and a big Onan diesel generator. Gaskets hung on the wall next to a Halon fire extinguisher. Lots of wood blocks, a few jack stands. What you’d expect to find in a mechanic’s shop.

Griffin briefly inspected the partitioned storeroom between the garage and the paint room. It contained a paint gun, two protective suits with breather masks connected to filter packs, and buckets of paint. Last, he walked through the paint room. The walls and floor and ceiling were rainbow-mottled with spray from the paint gun, as was the sink and a long worktable with a wide elaborate fume hood that he assumed led up to the blower exhaust fan on the roof.

He walked up to a small color snapshot taped over the workbench: palm trees, a sand beach, sea blue water, and surf that looked like ocean. He shrugged and walked back through the shop into the office, taking his time now. He noticed two things. There was a pile of rags under the desk and two bowls; one with a residue of milk, the other with cat chow.

And on the desk, a blue-green pamphlet caught his eye, lying on top of a pile of tractor magazines. Tropics View under a red logo. He opened it and thumbed through. It was a brochure for a puddle-jumper airline that catered to Belize, on the east coast of Mexico.

He put down the brochure. Nothing in the shop struck him out of the ordinary; the paint room could be dual use. Okay. Teedo said that he’d seen Gator moving boxes and drums with his Bobcat, to the barn.

Griffin put his boots back on and walked to the barn.

The hayloft was vacant, so Griffin went to the lower level and pulled open the tall, stout sliding doors. The basement floor was walled in two broad stalls; the one on the right was obviously used as a parking garage for Gator’s truck and was empty except for a battery charger and plastic gallons of wiper fluid and antifreeze.

The other stall looked more promising. He searched inside the door jam, found an electrical box, and flipped the switch. A chain of four overhead bulbs came on, illuminating a long interior space. A working tractor with a snow bucket and the Bobcat were parked alongside a huge white oblong tank on wheels. “Anhydrous” printed in blue on the side. Stacks of yellow bags; rock salt. A bank of chest-high feed bins made of heavy three-quarter-inch ply lined the entire length of the partition to the right.

The long basement abutted cattle pens and a lean-to that was open to the fenced pasture. He saw half a dozen heavy green plastic fifty-five-gallon drums arranged in the corner of one of the pens. Inspecting the drums, he found them empty and clean-smelling, like they’d been scrubbed with disinfectant.

Griffin was running out of places for Gator to hide things. Briefly he considered digging through the tangled tractor graveyard in back of the shop. Then his eyes settled on the row of plywood bins. He walked over and lifted one of the lids. Immediately he stepped back, making a face at the stench. It was heaped with blackened smutty feed corn, garnished with a jumbo decomposing rat sprawled next to green poison pellets. He went down the line, opening the lids. Five in all; another corn, a barley, two oats, all of them years gone to mildew and rot. A remnant of the hobby farm that had been here.

Griffin thought about it.

The rest of the place was so shipshape. Why would he have these bins full of rotten feed? Decided to give the bins a closer look. He rapped his knuckle on the side panel; a solid thump. Moved his hand down a foot. This time when he struck the wood with his fist, he got a hollow-sounding bounce.

Well, well.

After fiddling with the plywood, he determined that the bins had been constructed with lift-out front panels; the wood screws that appeared to pin them in place had been trimmed back, didn’t go through. Cosmetic.

Grunting with the effort, he forced the tightly fit panel up and revealed a compartment beneath the false feed tray. It contained a tall cardboard box. He removed the box, opened the flaps. Three round-bottomed glass flasks and a long twin-tubed glass apparatus were carefully packed in wadded newspaper. Tubing, stoppers, and clamps were tucked in crevices between the flasks.

Gator’s little home chemistry set. Okay.

Griffin stood up and looked down the row of bins. He didn’t have time to open all five bins. After carefully repacking the box, he put it back in the compartment and forced the panel in place. Then he went to the last bin and swiftly wedged open the front panel. This compartment contained a stash of over-the-counter chemicals, just like he’d read about in his Internet search. Stacked gallon cans of camping fuel, toluene, and paint thinner. A tightly