“We can do that,” Zimmer said, after Virgil gave him the details. “Sounds like those Nazis.”

“That’s the general impression,” Virgil said. “I thought about driving out there, but they’d just deny it. Grabbing them and squeezing them, is the thing to do.”

When he was off the phone with Zimmer, he called Frankie and told her he was heading north. “I’ll see you there,” she said.

When he got home, she met him at the back door, and said, “I put all your stuff in your big duffel: your camo, the trail game camera, the thermonuclear flashlight, and those Nikes you were supposed to throw away. Plus, I added your mosquito nets. The mosquitoes were thick at the farm last night, and you’re gonna need them.”

“Great. This’ll be a quick trip.”

She grabbed the front of his shirt. “Not so fast, buster. It’s been a while, and my stomach has finally settled down.”

“I don’t have time. We’ve got three dead . . . Okay, maybe I’ve got a little time, but no more than fifteen minutes. Okay, no more than half an hour. Forty minutes at the outside . . . There are people depending on me . . .”

“Yes. I’m one of them.”

21

Virgil used his flashers going back to Wheatfield, not that there was much traffic, but he could run at ninety miles an hour without worrying about a sheriff’s speed trap. Running that fast, he arrived back in Wheatfield almost exactly three hours after he left. Jenkins was waiting at Skinner & Holland, and said, “You look a little haggard.”

“Anybody would be haggard, working this fuckin’ disaster. Are we wasting our time?”

“I suspect we are, but we don’t have a choice,” Jenkins said. “If it turned out these idiots actually know something, and we didn’t follow up, there’d be hell to pay. Besides, I already learned something very worthwhile.”

“About the killings?”

“No, about clothing. I bought some black jeans and a long-sleeved black polo shirt. Black really is slimming. I give off this terrific artist vibe. When I get back to the Cities, I’m gonna head go over the Art Institute. Horny art women are stacked up like cordwood over there.”

“What happens when they find out the truth, that you’re nothing but a sexual predator?” Virgil asked.

“By that time, they’ll have gotten a dose of Dr. Jenkins’s female cure and they won’t care.”

“Yeah, they’ll probably have gotten a dose of something,” Virgil said.

“Hey! Is that kind? You gotta try harder to be kind, man. We’re all trapped on this earth together.”

—

Holland came in, and asked, “What are we doing?”