At the house, the first thing he noticed was that the firefighters weren't fighting the fire. No point. The rain meant that the fire wasn't going anywhere, and when Little Curly called it a tornado, he hadn't been joking. Throwing a few tons of foam on the burning house would have been a waste of good foam.
The cop cars were parked behind the fire trucks, and Virgil moved into last place. He unbelted, knelt on the seat, and dug his rain suit out of the gear bag in the back. The suit had been made for October muskie fishing and New England sailing; not much got through it. He pulled it on, climbed out of the truck.
The sheriff's name was Jimmy Stryker, whom Virgil had more or less known since Stryker had pitched for the Bluestem Whippets in high school; but everybody on the hill was an anonymous clump of waterproofed nylon, and Virgil had to ask three times before he found him.
"THAT YOU, JIMMY?"
Stryker turned. He was a tall man, square-chinned, with pale hair and hard jade-green eyes. Like most prairie males, he was weather-burnt and wore cowboy boots. "That you, Virgil?"
"Yeah. What happened?"
Stryker turned back to the fire. "Don't know. I was down in my house, and one minute I looked out the window and didn't see anything, and the next minute, I heard the siren going, looked out the window, and there it was. We got a guy who was driving through town, saw it happen: he said it just exploded."
"What about Judd?"
Stryker nodded at the house. "I could be wrong, but I do believe he's in there."
Up closer to the fire, a man in a trench coat, carrying an umbrella, was standing with three firemen, waving his free hand at the fire, and at the trucks, jabbing a finger. In the light of the flames, Virgil could see his mouth working, but couldn't hear what he was saying.
Strkyer said, "That's Bill Judd Jr. He's pissed because they're not putting out the fire."
"The New York City Fire Department couldn't put that out," Virgil said. The heat came through the rain, hot as a hair dryer, even at fifty yards. "That thing is burning a hole in the storm."
"Tell that to Junior."
The fire stank: of burning fabrics and old wood and insulation and water and linoleum and oil and everything else that gets stuck in a house, and maybe a little flesh. They watched for another moment, feeling the heat on the fire side, the cool rain spattering off the hoods on their rain suits, down their backs and necks. Virgil asked, "Think he was smoking in bed?"
Stryker's features were harsh in the firelight, and the corners of his mouth turned down at Virgil's question. "Bill Parker, he's a guy lives up in Lismore, was coming into town on Highway Eight. He saw the fire, mmm, must've been a few minutes after it started. He was driving toward it when a truck went by, moving fast. He figures it was going eighty, ninety miles an hour. And it was raining to beat the band. It took the turn on Highway Three, headed down to Ninety."
"He see what kind of truck?"
"Nope. Not even sure it was a pickup. Might've been an SUV," Stryker said. "All he could see was, the lights was set up high."
They looked at the fire some more and then Virgil said, "Lot of people hated him."
"Yup." A few locals sidled past, grinning, hiding beer cans, having snuck past the cops below. Small town, you took care of yourself: Stryker told them, "You folks stay back out of the way."
They watched for another minute, then Virgil yawned. "Well, good luck to you, Jimmy. I'm heading down to the Holiday Inn."
"Why'd you come up?"
"Just rubbernecking," Virgil said. "Saw the fire when I was coming down Ninety. Knew what it must be."
"Goddamnedest thing," Stryker said, peering into the flames. "I hope that old sonofabitch was dead before the fire got to him. Nobody needs to be burned to death."
"If he did."
"If he did." Stryker frowned suddenly, again turned his green eyes to Virgil. "You don't think he might've faked it? Skipped out to wherever he put that money?"
"I think the money might be a legend, is what I think," Virgil said. He slapped Stryker on the shoulder. "You take it easy, Jimmy. I'll see you tomorrow."
"Not too early. I'll be out here awhile." As Virgil walked away, Stryker called, "That money wasn't no legend, Virgil. He's burnin' because of that money."
Behind him, up closer to the fire, Bill Judd Jr. was still screaming at the firemen, looking like he was one step from a heart attack.
THE HOLIDAY INN was smoke free, and Strictly No Pets, but Virgil's room smelled of smoke and pets anyway-snuck cigarettes and cats in the night-as well as whatever kind of chemical they sprayed in the air to kill the smell of smoke and cat pee. You got two beds whether you wanted them or not. Virgil tossed his bag on one of them, pulled off the rain suit, and hung it over the showerhead to drip-dry.
He was a medium-tall man with blond hair and gray eyes, a half inch over six feet, lean, broad shouldered, long armed with big hands; his hair was way too long for a cop's, but fell short of his shoulders. He'd played the big-three sports in high school, had lettered in all of them, a wide receiver in football, a guard in basketball, a third baseman in baseball. He wasn't big enough or fast enough for college football, he was too short for basketball, and had the arm for college baseball, but couldn't hit the pitching.
He drifted through a degree in ecological science, with a minor in creative writing, because it was easy and interesting and he liked the outdoors, the botany, and the girls in the writing classes. He joined the Army after graduation, got semicoerced into the military police, saw some trouble, but never fired his weapon in anger.
He came back home, found that there was no huge demand for bachelor-degree ecologists, and went off to the Police Academy. Got married, got divorced, got married, got divorced, got married, got divorced, and at the end of a five-year round of silliness, decided he didn't want to be a four-time loser, so he stopped getting married.
He was working for the City of St. Paul as an investigator-eight years on the force, getting bored-when he was borrowed by a Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) unit looking into a home-invasion ring. One thing led to another, and he moved to the BCA. There, he fell into the orbit of a political appointee named Lucas Davenport who made him an offer he couldn't refuse: "We'll only give you the hard stuff."
HE'D BEEN DOING the hard stuff for three years, with a personal side-venture as an outdoor writer. He had credits at most of the magazines that still took freelance stuff, but he wasn't going to make a living at it; not unless he got a staff job, and magazines weren't looking real healthy.
Didn't know if he wanted to, anyway.
Davenport had told him that smart crooks were the most interesting game, and Virgil sometimes agreed.
VIRGIL WORE native dress out on the prairie: faded jeans and scuffed cowboy boots and musical T-shirts, and because he was a cop, a sport coat. In the sun, in the summer, he wore a straw hat and sunglasses. He usually didn't wear a gun, unless he was in St. Paul, where Davenport might see him. The law required him to go armed, but in Virgil's opinion, handguns were just too goddamned heavy and uncomfortable, so he kept his under the seat of the car, or in his briefcase.
After hanging his rain suit in the shower, he got a laptop out of his briefcase, went online. In his personal e-mail, he found the note from Black Horizon, a Canadian outdoor magazine, that he'd been expecting for a couple of days. They were working late in Thunder Bay: "Virg, I had to take a couple graphs out of the section on the portage-nothing I could do about it, it's all about the space. I tried not to hack it up too bad. Anyway, it works for us if it works for you. Get back to us, and I'll stick a check in the mail."