“The sign is old,” I said, spelling it out. “If it happened recently, why didn’t they put up a bright new yellow sign that would catch people’s attention? You can see empty bottles and condoms and so on here—local people are using the land. If it’s dangerous, doesn’t the county have some duty to warn them?”

“I’m warning you,” Gisborne growled. “Locals are smart enough to stay off the site.”

“So it’s those dreaded outside agitators who’ve been littering the silo.” I nodded as if he’d made an important point. “It was good of you to drive all the way out here to alert me to the radiation.”

“I was already out here,” the sheriff said. “When the call came in from Sea-2-Sea, I said I’d take it myself because I was sure it’d be you, sticking your nose in other people’s business. And don’t give me crap about air force bases belonging to you.”

It would have been juvenile to whine that as a taxpayer it was hard to pay for things I never got to see or touch, like drones and warheads and so on.

“You were at the murder scene?” Baggetto asked Gisborne.

“Yep. We’re not as well supported as city forces, maybe. We don’t get to put sixteen bullets in a suspect, then take a hike, the way they can where this lady comes from, but we do slowly figure out how to walk and chew gum at the same time.”

The sheriff was trying to goad me, but Baggetto’s knowing the geography out here was what really had my attention. He was in the army, he lived a hundred miles away, but he knew about McKinnon’s murder and knew where her farm was relative to the silo.

“Did you?” the sheriff said.

“Did I what?” I’d missed his question.

“Go into the barn when you were out here yesterday.”

I shook my head, my stomach clenching: What had I missed? Emerald Ferring’s body?

“Someone was keeping a car in there. McKinnon had an old pickup and an older Subaru. Subaru’s there, but the pickup’s gone. My techs say the tire tracks indicate a Prius. What do you know about that, Warshawski?”

“Prius is a hybrid, right? That’s pretty much all I know about them, but a good mechanic could tell you how they work.” I kept forgetting I wasn’t going to bait the sheriff.

He jammed his hands in the pockets of his football jacket: he wasn’t going to slug me, at least not with Baggetto watching, but the impulse was strong. “You know anyone who drives one?”

“I don’t think so.” I knew August Veriden owned a Prius, but I didn’t actually know him, and I couldn’t think of anyone in my own circle who did.