Lionel abandoned the two-lane highway and hummed along narrow, lumpen back roads. The roads got sketchier and the forest deeper and darker by the second. Soon, there were few roads and fewer houses. We hooked right at a billboard that used to say something before its paint peeled and locals shot the letters off. This neighborhood embodied a theme I thought of as Libertarian Hell. Decrepit trailers flew American flags in overgrown yards. One enterprising resident had mounted the skulls of animals on a tree in a vaguely occult pattern. I kept an eye out for a Pentecostal church with an inverted crucifix.

“Satanic panic.” Lionel nodded sagely.

“It completely missed this street,” I said.

“Satanic panic. That’s all I’m gonna say.”

“That’s all you’re going to say?” Bellow said.

“Yep.”

“Really? Are you sure?”

Lionel drove past a trailer boasting a partly charred Dixie banner stretched across the frame. He cleared his throat.

“Well, there may be more.”

Bellow pressed his forehead against the window.

“Hey, what about that shutdown?” I said. “Did it affect Bureau affairs?”

Earlier that year, disagreements between Congress and the president led to a month-long freeze of federal budgets. This had included wages and discretionary funds for FBI operations. Snitches and undercover cops relied on government cash to play make-believe high rollers, drug dealers, and the like. Bellow said it had been hellish. He told a brief anecdote about an asset a colleague in the DEA deployed to infiltrate a high-value narcotics ring. Names changed to protect the guilty, of course.

The asset, “Tito Boniface,” called up his handler and related a tale of woe. As the government shutdown went on, the DEA said everybody on the ground was shit out of luck and basically ghosted its operatives. No moola for coke deals, no moola for lavish druggy lifestyles of the rich and infamous. Over cards with the other hard cases, somebody asked Tito why he’d reneged on a promise to acquire a hefty payload of primo dope. And why was Tito so cheap lately with paying for a few rounds? How come they hadn’t seen him at the clubs? It ain’t the shutdown, is it? one chortled. Tito ran a finger under his collar, Rodney Dangerfield style, and laughed it off. But he was sweating bullets.

“That’s the inside baseball John Q. Public never sees,” Lionel said.

“Pull a thread and the whole hair suit unravels.”

“Dude must’ve been relieved when the freeze ended.”

“They fished Tito out of the Potomac forty-eight hours after that conversation,” Bellow said. “Evidently, his poker buddies weren’t joking.”

We parked near a culvert and walked in along a muddy track. Whatever direction I turned, trees and more trees. Pine and hemlock blocked out the hazy sky. Something I’d learned in the Northeast: Five steps into the pines and you’re on the dark side of the moon.

Ted’s file on Lenny Herzog was thin—lifelong resident, attended trade school. Employed in numerous custodial and handyman roles, including a hitch with the Jeffers Project. The latter-day Herzogs were descended from a moonshining dynasty and, once upon a time, owned a chunk of the ridge. Lenny Herzog attended Valley High with that generation of Redlicks. I surmised that Gerald R threw him a bone when it came time to recruit allies for the supercollider construction. Another variation on the odd couple phenomenon that wasn’t as weird as it seemed. Scheming rich dudes can always find use for a blue-collar man with underworld connections.