Fischer said, “It’s a bad habit. I’ll break it.”

—

Virgil called the sheriff’s office to get a deputy to stand by while he was busting Van Den Berg. Zimmer told him that because of the shootings, he’d kept at least two deputies in the immediate area and he could have one at Skinner & Holland in a few minutes. Virgil reheated what was left of the chicken potpie while he waited for the deputy, and told Skinner, Holland, and Fischer that he was struggling with the problem of why nobody had heard the supersonic crack of the rifle bullet and the apparently nonrelated question of the timing of the shootings.

“There’s something important going on there,” Virgil told the other three. “I can’t figure out what it is.”

They hadn’t figured it out when the deputy arrived, a woman named Lucy Banning. She pushed through the curtain, saw Fischer, did a double take, and said, “Oh my God, Janet, it’s you? Did Larry do that?”

Fischer started to cry. “Yeah.”

The deputy looked at Virgil. “I’ll take the complaint.”

—

She did that, and when Fischer finished a short statement, with Banning taking notes, Banning tipped her head toward the door, and said to Virgil, “Let’s go get him.”

Outside, she said, “I want to do this. I’d appreciate backup, but I want to haul his ass in myself.”

“You know him?”

“We all went to high school together,” Banning said. “I could never figure out what Janet saw in him. He was a jerk then, he’s a jerk now.”

“But he’s not the dumbest guy in the world . . . at least, that’s what Janet thinks,” Virgil said.

“Oh, he’s not dumb. Did real good in math and accounting. I mean, I’ll tell you, Larry had a rough time growing up. Everybody knows it. It’s his folks who made him a jerk, but a jerk is still a jerk wherever it came from. And you don’t go around beating up your fiancée.”

“Ex-fiancée,” Virgil said.

“I hope. I’ve seen a lot of them go back.”

—

Nothing in Wheatfield was very far from anything else. Virgil followed Banning over to Van Den Berg’s house. Van Den Berg was in his side yard when they pulled up, washing his tractor unit. When he saw them coming, he said, “What do you want, Lucy?”

“Janet Fischer said you beat her up last night. That right?”

“We had a fight, but she was into it, too.”

“Not what she says,” Banning said. “Doesn’t look like she messed you up much.”

“Look. Let me talk to her, we’ll straighten it out,” Van Den Berg said.