Dark of the Moon

were halfway up the street before Stryker turned on his headlights and asked, “You bring a rain suit?”
    “Yup. You awake?”
    “I’m fine.” He flicked a finger at the lightning to the west. “Probably won’t need the water bottles.”
    “Looked pretty interesting on the radar,” Virgil said. “You know where we’re going?”
    “Right down to the foot. We’ll be walking in from three-quarters of a mile out. Gonna be darker’n a bitch, but we’ll be mostly on the road.”
    “Lightning will help,” Virgil said.
    “As long as we’re not hit.” They were clearing the town, the last few lights fading behind them as they took the road north toward the Stryker farm, then turned west toward Feur’s. Coming in from the back.
     
    G OOD THING ABOUT rolling out in the night, Virgil thought with a tight smile, was that he could put some talk and time between the afternoon at the dell, and the next time he had to look Stryker in the eyes, in daylight. If he’d had to do that, first thing, Stryker would have known that something had happened, he’d have seen it in Virgil’s eyes. He was a good enough cop that he might have figured it out…
    Stryker said, “After we split up this afternoon, I walked over to the ag extension service to look at their photo set for the county. The photography was six years old, but Feur hasn’t built anything new out there. There’s the house, where you’ve been, there’s a big garage and shop in the side yard, that would have been on your left as you drove in.”
    “I saw that Quonset hut. It was in pretty good shape.”
    “Yes. Then there’s the barn out back, that was remodeled into a meeting room, and people who’ve been inside say it’s pretty open. They have meetings on Wednesday and Saturday nights and Sunday mornings, fifty, sixty people, come from a hundred miles around. The sheds next to the barn don’t look like much. They must be eighty years old.”
    “So the places to look are the Quonset hut, the barn, and the house. I’ve been in the house, one room, anyway, didn’t look like much.”
    “I’ve been in that. There’s a basement…haven’t seen it. The shed is what I’d like to get a peek at. If they’re moving drugs through, in bulk, that’s dangerous stuff. They might want to keep it outside the house.”
    “Are you thinking about going in?” Virgil asked.
    “I’m more thinking about watching for a few hours. See if anything isn’t right. Look for dogs. See if there’s any security stuff. See if we can smell anything. Look for any precursors.”
    “Didn’t see any dogs when I was out there,” Virgil said.
    “That’s good; that’s the best thing. Most people don’t know it, but dogs can see almost as well at night as they can in daylight. Burglar alarm won’t hunt you down, like a dog will.”
     
    T HE DARKNESS DEEPENED as they got away from the lights of town, and as the clouds spread overhead; then they crossed the top of a low hill and Stryker slowed and killed the lights. They were on gravel, creeping along, the lightning nearly overhead, with Stryker staring at a GPS screen. Then he said, quietly, “We’re there.”
    “Can’t see a damn thing,” Virgil said.
    “I left a rock out here,” Stryker said. He’d put a couple of strips of black gaffer tape over the interior and door lights, and he said, “Be right back.” He shifted into Park, climbed out of the truck, and using a penlight, walked down the road. He was back in fifteen seconds, climbed back in the truck. “We’re right there…”
    He shifted into Drive, rolled forward thirty feet, then hooked through the ditch and powered blindly up a low rise, and then down the other side. He stopped once, got out, walked, flicked the light a couple more times, then pulled ahead and again turned blindly to the left, drove another thirty feet. In the illumination of a lightning stroke, Virgil saw that they were about to plow a stand of sumac. “This is it.”
    “What is it?”
    “Used to be a farmhouse. The Miller place. Abandoned and dangerous. The fire department came out a couple of years ago and burned it down for training, filled in the hole where the root cellar was. But there’re still the windbreak trees that used to be around the house. We’re back in what used to be the side yard, so there won’t be any reflections off the car, if somebody comes down the road.”
     
    V IRGIL GOT HIS SHOTGUN, and Stryker popped the back hatch of the truck and took