Dark of the Moon

back.
    “I knew you’d say that. I talked to Davenport, and he says he wants to see your happy face on all channels, thanking the governor for this opportunity to take crime fighting into the sticks.”
    “Fuck Davenport,” Virgil said.
    “Get your ass down here. I’m too tired to fool around.” Gomez walked away, stopped to talk to Stryker. Virgil stood up, dusted off the seat of his pants, picked up a half-drunk bottle of Pepsi, and stepped toward the ladder.
    One of the agents, the Latino-looking New Yorker who’d given Virgil a hard time about his T-shirt, said, “Virgil. We owe you. Puttin’ those guys in the truck and taking them out of the yard. We pay. You ever need help on anything… you call us. No bullshit.”
    The other agent nodded, said through a mouthful of Wonder Bread and bologna, “Anything.”
     
    G OMEZ AND S TRYKER rode to Bluestem with Virgil, in the shot-up Ford, trailed by two more agents in one of the north-crew trucks. They’d both been back and forth since the killing of Feur. The two badly wounded DEA agents were still alive. One would probably make it, the other probably not; two more, whom Virgil didn’t know, were less seriously wounded, and almost everybody was scratched and pitted by rocks, dust, and pieces of metal.
    Pirelli was screwed up, but not terminally. A slug had busted up his shoulder joint, and putting that back together would be tough. His broken arm was another problem, and would take a while to heal.
     
    “A ND J UDD, ” Stryker said. “Where is that asshole?”
    A DEA arrest team had gone after Judd as the raid on the farm was taking place, but hadn’t been able to find him. His car was at his office, the door was unlocked, but there was no sign of Judd.
    “This bothers me,” Virgil said. “Why would he be gone?”
    “Tipped?” Gomez asked.
    “By who? One of your guys? When Pirelli called me, Jim and I were together, and we were together every inch of the way. Neither one of us called anyone.”
    Stryker nodded; Gomez said, “Maybe…I don’t know.”
     
    G OMEZ ASKED, “You got a better shirt than that?”
    “And another jacket,” Virgil said. “We can stop at the motel.”
    “Keep the jacket; I don’t want you guys washed up,” Gomez said. “I want you looking messed up, but the T-shirt is too much. Looks crazy, given all the dead people.”
    “I got a black AC/DC shirt that should be perfect,” Virgil said.
    “Virgil.”
    “I take care of myself,” Virgil said. “Stop worrying about it.”
    They stopped for two minutes at the hotel, Virgil pulled on a plain olive-drab T-shirt that gave him a vaguely military look, and Gomez said, “Not bad.”
    Stryker said, “Hell of a day.” He had three little pockmarks on his left cheek, showing blood. He wasn’t cleaning that up, either.
     
    A DEA INFORMATION specialist had flown in from the Twin Cities and set up the press conference at the courthouse, the same room where Virgil and Stryker had been after the killing of the Schmidts.
    More media this time: a half-dozen trucks, including freelance network feeds going up from satellite trucks parked in the courthouse yard. Too late for the evening news, but the late news would get it, the cable channels, and the morning network shows.
    Gomez led the way: gave a terse, five-minute briefing, using the satellite photo of the farm, an outline of the fight, starting with the attack of the dogs—compressed the time a bit between the first shots at the dogs, and the fire from the house—and ending with the shootings of Feur and the man they still called John. He showed off a gas can full of glass tubes of methamphetamine, and allowed the best-looking media lady to handle one of them, holding it up to the lights for the cameras.
    While she was doing it, Virgil noticed Joan and Jesse at the back of the room, looking at him and Stryker with deep skepticism. They were standing next to Williamson, who turned repeatedly to Jesse, talking at her, teeth showing.
    At the very end, Gomez pulled Virgil and Stryker in front of the cameras and said, “We’d particularly like to thank Sheriff James Stryker, who as you can see was mildly wounded while suppressing the fire from the farmhouse, and Virgil Flowers, of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, who risked his own life to save the lives of two of our wounded men. Damnedest thing I ever saw, when Virgil backed that truck out of the yard. These are two good guys.”
    Virgil was genuinely