“So the place goes down, and Barry winds up getting stuck with a piece of the original investment,” Virgil said. “His mother was their backstop. He’d keep paying interest on the loan, and when she finally died, he’d come into a bundle, and Apel would get the principal back.”

Jenkins asked Zimmer, “You think it’s enough for a warrant? You know the judges around here.”

“I got a guy I can talk to,” Zimmer said. “What do you want to do?”

“First we hit that Quonset hut,” Virgil said, “see if there’s any sign that somebody’s been shooting through the vent. There’s a big padlock on the door, so Apel couldn’t hardly say somebody else got in there. Then, if there’s anything, we go to the house and hope to hell he hasn’t ditched the rifle. And we check to see if there’s arrows matching the ones that hit me and Shrake.”

“Goddamnit, I think we’re rolling,” Holland said. “Though, I gotta tell you, if you’d said Davy Apel last week, I would have said you were full of it.”

“That’s not good,” Jenkins said. He added, “I’d be happier if you’d said he’s a psychotic asshole you hadn’t thought of.”

“Money does weird things to people,” Zimmer said. He looked at his watch. “You all go get some of those potpies. I’ll make a call, get the warrant over here. Probably take an hour, if old Hartley’s out on the golf course, which he probably is.”

Holland said to Virgil and Jenkins, “Hartley’s the judge.”

“Been a bad spring for golf,” Jenkins said. “The greens are always wet; you see the balls throwing off that spray, so you can’t judge how hard to hit a putt. And then there are footprint indentations around the cup . . .”

Virgil jumped in before it became a conversation. “Let’s get the judge going. Let’s get the potpies going.” And to Jenkins: “Fuck golf anyway. Stupid goddamn game, chasing a ball around a perfectly good cow pasture.”

“I’ve lost all respect for you,” Jenkins said.

“Can we get the warrant without all these histrionics?” Holland asked. Everybody looked at him, and he said, “I know, it’s a big word, I apologize, but I couldn’t think of anything else on the spur of the moment. So, we should stop dicking around and get the warrant. Okay?”

“There you go,” Jenkins said.

—

Hartley, indeed, was on the golf course. The deputy drove up and down twelve fairways before he found the judge’s foursome, and Hartley was so pissed off, Zimmer said, that he almost refused to consider the warrant. Reminded about the killings—and the voters—he reconsidered.

“We’re good to go,” Zimmer said. “Lucy’s got a bolt cutter in her car, but don’t we need a ladder?”