“She broke it! Of course she broke it,” Van Den Berg screeched. “What the fuck?”

“He broke it,” Fischer muttered, “so he could beat me up.”

Virgil squatted to take a close look at her. Now her other eye was closed and going purple, and her lip was twice as large as it had been the last time he’d seen her.

Virgil stood up, and Van Den Berg barked, “Get the cuffs on her. I’m charging her with breaking and entering and . . . stealing stuff.”

Virgil said, quietly, “I think what we have here is a standard he said, she said domestic. Without outside witnesses, I can’t arrest her for breaking and entering.”

“Bullshit,” Van Den Berg said, pointing a finger at her. “She . . .”

“Larry, let me tell you something,” Virgil said. “There’s no way I’m going to arrest her. If you want to file charges, go down to the sheriff’s office and do it. And she can go down and file assault charges against you. And since you weigh, what, two hundred pounds, and she weights a hundred and twenty, guess what’s going to happen? They’re gonna yank your assault bail, and you’ll be sitting in jail until your trial. Then I’ll call Bell Wood and tell him that you committed a crime up here, and they’ll be waiting for you to get out of jail so they can hook you up in Iowa, and you’ll be sitting down there without bail . . . What’s it gonna be?”

Van Den Berg gave it ten seconds, then said, “Get her the fuck out of here.”

Virgil stepped close to him, six inches away, and grabbed Van Den Berg’s throat while pinning his hip with his own, and Van Den Berg’s right arm with his left, and squeezed the man’s throat until his eyes bulged out, and Virgil said, in a near whisper, “If you ever, ever touch her again, I’ll arrest you for assault, and you will resist. Then I’ll beat the hell out of you, and I’ll charge you with resisting arrest with violence and attacking an officer of the law, and you will go to Stillwater prison. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Van Den Berg made a gurgling sound that might have meant “Yes,” and Virgil released him, brushed off the front of Van Den Berg’s shirt—hard—and said, “I’m extremely pissed off. Don’t give me a reason to beat the shit out of you now because I don’t know if I could stop.”

Van Den Berg held his throat with one hand and backed away, and Virgil reached down to take Fischer’s hand and helped her to her feet. “Get your stuff. We need to get you to a doctor.”