'We'll sweep through there…'
An intermittent drizzle had begun, coming with the occasional ragged black cloud, going with brighter gray ones. They all stood hunched in it, watching the work.
There were four cop cars on the road outside the fence, a couple more trucks down the driveway, and three civilian cars, as well as Virgil's truck and the crime-scene van parked in front of the house. Mapes and Huntington were directing the excavation, and half the truck was now clear, sitting in the bottom of the widening hole. One of the civilians was a Bobcat operator from Grand Rapids, and he was carefully digging down the sides of the vehicle, while deputies with shovels did the close work.
Full circus mode, Virgil thought.
PHILLIPS, THE COUNTY ATTORNEY, wearing a yellow rain jacket, climbed out of the hole, scraped mud off the bottom of his shoes on the lawn, and brushed off his hands and came over and said, 'Goddamnedest thing. The woman's in the backseat, the guy's across the front. It looks to me like he shot them in the head. The skulls are right there, faceup, grinning out at you…' He shivered and said, 'I won't be trying to sleep tonight. Or maybe the rest of the month.'
'How did this happen?' Sanders asked. 'Why didn't anybody know?'
'A lot of people did know. They knew it before it happened-knew that Hector and Maria were going to run off,' Virgil said. 'And then they were gone… and they'd gone to Arizona. Everybody knew that. Slibe apparently didn't make any secret of it. Now that I think about the way it worked, he must've started a few rumors himself. About the letter from Maria, and all that. People knew she'd written back… because Slibe told people.'
'Her family… her parents?'
'Don't know,' Virgil said. 'I'll ask Wendy when I have a chance.'
THE SHERIFF WATCHED the excavation, then sidled over and asked quietly, 'How in the hell did you figure this out?'
Virgil said, 'People kept talking in the background, about Hector Avila and Maria, and I never concentrated on the Hector part. But when we were searching the Deuce's loft, I found some pictures of Slibe and Maria when they were young. They were blond. And Wendy is flat, pure blond: she's so white she's transparent. I got down to the hospital, and the Deuce was propped up on these white sheets, and he was so dark… and it all tripped off. Hector Avila, a Latino name. An affair; a dark kid; a father who seemed willing to frame his own son. It occurred to me, the Deuce wasn't his son…
'I thought about that, and then I thought about the fact that we can't find Windrow's car. Not even with a LoJack on it. Maybe somebody found and disconnected the LoJack, but there was another explanation. You said it yourself-that it must be in a lake somewhere. Or something. Like, buried.'
'And you thought about those goldarned Bobcats…'
Virgil nodded. 'And that Slibe started a big garden the day his wife disappeared forever.'
THEY WERE TALKING when Virgil saw Slibe's truck coming, burning up the road, and he said, 'Oh, shit. Slibe.'
The cops turned and looked, and a couple of them ran for their cars. Slibe's truck slowed, stopped, and Virgil could see a figure in the driver's seat, taking them all in-taking in the hole in the garden. The truck started to back up, to turn around, and a cop yelled, 'He's running,' but then it straightened again, came on, accelerating, moving too fast to make a good turn at the driveway, took out the mailbox and then came on, straight at the deputies in the drive, who scattered, the truck accelerating, throwing wet gravel, coming straight at Virgil and Sanders and Phillips.
Virgil yelled, 'Get out of the way,' and Phillips ran for the garden hole and Virgil and Sanders ran for the concrete steps, got on the steps as the truck brushed by, Slibe's face framed in the side window of the truck, and then he was past them, continuing past the house and the crime-scene van, past the kennel. The truck crashed through a board fence and into the back pasture.
Wendy'd heard the commotion and came to the door, and saw the truck disappear. The cops were pulling vests from their cars, and Sanders was pointing the deputies after the truck, and Virgil asked Wendy, 'What's back there?'
'Nothing. He can't get out of the pasture… There's a shortcut down to Hourglass Lake. A trail…'
'There's a boat?'
'No, there's a place you can fish, but it's not our property. There's swamp on both sides of it, there's a creek that goes in there… I don't know. He can't swim that good, so… There's a cabin that way.' She pointed. 'Left when you get to the lake. If he got to that road I guess he could get out. It'd be a long walk.'
Phillips had heard the last part of it, and he said, 'It's wet country back there. I don't see where he's going. There's hardly any way out.'
Cop cars were going in on Slibe's trail, and Sanders hurried up: 'I called for the state patrol chopper. It's gonna be a while.' A cop car headed out of the driveway, and he added, 'I got guys going over to Hourglass; they can seal off the landing, and the roads.'
Virgil said, 'Why didn't he run? He seemed to know what he was doing.'
Berni, who'd come up behind Wendy, said, 'We'd go swimming down on Hourglass sometimes. Slibe's got an old plastic toolbox, you know, like a truck toolbox, hidden back in the woods. It's got fire-starter and a minnie net and some fishing poles.'
'But how's he…' Sanders began.
Berni said, 'It's big enough for a gun. I never thought of it when you were here looking for the gun, but it's big enough for one, easy.'
VIRGIL TO SANDERS: 'Get your guys. If he's out there with a.223 with a scope, they gotta back off. Those vests won't work. Gonna get some guys shot up if they push him.'
Sanders was already jogging toward his car.
'You know what we need?' Berni asked.
Virgil: 'What?'
'We need the Deuce to track him down.'
THE COPS WERE ALL gunning up, and Wendy asked, 'They'll kill him, won't they?' and Virgil thought that was probably the case, but didn't say so.
'Where's the lake?' he asked. 'Exactly?'
Wendy pointed to a low spot in the skyline. 'Right down there. But it's more than half a mile.'
Virgil said, 'I gotta go out,' and, 'I'll try not to hurt him, if I see him.'
He went to his truck and got his vest and his shotgun, slapped the Velcro tabs in place, walked over to Sanders, who was directing traffic. 'I'm going up on that high spot.' He pointed to a place thirty degrees to the right of the tree line dip that marked the lake.
'You think that shotgun's gonna work? I can get you an AR-15 if you'd rather,' Sanders offered.
'I'm okay-but tell your guys where I'm at. I don't want to get shot up by a friendly.'
'Take a radio.' He yelled at one of the cops: 'Bill-give me your radio.'
VIRGIL TOOK THE HANDSET, hung it on his belt, climbed into the truck and followed the rest of the crowd through the broken fence, and bounced over the pasture. At the far end of the field, he could see where Slibe's truck had crashed through another fence, this one barbed wire, and had gone into the trees. The cop cars were stopped short of that, and most of the cops were standing behind their cars, while two more did an end run to the left, into the woods.
Virgil didn't like it: there'd be some dead people for sure, if they pushed Slibe. He drove as far as he could, but well to the right of the others, got out of the truck and on the radio.
'Your people are crashing into the woods. If he decides to fight, he'll kill some of them,' Virgil said. 'They gotta let him move before they do. They gotta calm down, or he's going to hunker down somewhere and ambush them.'
'Gotcha. I think they've got a good idea where he went, they're just keeping him moving.'
'They're moving too fast, way too fast,' Virgil said. 'If he's got that rifle-'
'Gotcha.'
VIRGIL THOUGHT,Dumbass.
The sheriff hadn't struck him as a dumbass, but the chase was hot and he was caught up in it. Cops watch movies like everybody else, and sometimes, it gets them killed.
