Rough Country

DEPUTIES SAT on the scene, waiting for the BCA crime-scene people to show up. Mapes had had more business in Grand Rapids in a week than he’d had in the rest of his career, Virgil thought.
    He moved around, talking to the deputies: two of them had fired their weapons. The first deputy had fired into the brush ahead of the Deuce to slow him down, to push him away from the trees. The second deputy thought the Deuce had opened fire, and fired at him, and as the Deuce had moved behind a tree from his point of view, then the first deputy fired again, confused about where the second burst had come from.
    Virgil talked to a couple more deputies, then had Earl run him back to the boat ramp.
    On the way, Earl said, “Don’t think they shoulda shot that boy.”
    “If he’d gotten back in the trees with a rifle, could have got some people killed, digging him out,” Virgil said, without much conviction.
    Earl spit over the side. “He had plenty of chances to shoot somebody if he wanted to. Never untied that rifle.”
    “Not everything is simple to figure out,” Virgil said. “Not everything is easy.”
    “That’s the goldurned truth,” Earl said. They were cutting through the channel with the early morning light coming on, throwing pale shadows on the water off the walls of wild rice, and Earl said, “God’s country.”
    Virgil thought about Johnson Johnson saying the same thing, on Vermilion, and said, “Yes it is.”
     
     
     
    SANDERS WAS ALREADY AT THE HOSPITAL when Virgil arrived. He saw Virgil coming and walked toward him and asked, “Were you there?”
    “Yeah, but I was the last boat in. I didn’t see what happened. How’s he doing?”
    “He’s hurt bad, they’ve got him in surgery, they’re trying to control the bleeding. They’re putting blood in him. I talked to one of the technicians, he’s type O. You know, just remembering . . .”
    “Yeah. That’s gonna be important,” Virgil said.
    “I couldn’t tell whether there was an exchange of gunfire down there.”
    Sanders used the exchange of gunfire cliché in a hopeful way, but Virgil was shaking his head. “He had a .22. It was still tied into the canoe when he was hit.”
    “Damnit. He didn’t have a handgun or anything?”
    “There was some confusion at the scene, but it was all complicated,” Virgil said. “If he’d gotten back into the trees, with a gun, it would have been hell getting him out of there. Don’t know what to tell you, Bob—but this might’ve been for the best. Nobody else got hurt.”
    “Tell that to Channel Three,” Sanders said.
    “They up here?”
    “They called. I don’t know if they’re coming or not,” he said. “How about your pal from the Star Tribune ?”
    “I don’t know where he is; he’s not exactly a pal—”
    “Bullshit,” Sanders said, showing a thin grin. “You must not have seen this morning’s paper.”
    “Aw . . .”
    “Smiling face right out there, on the front page,” Sanders said. “Cracked the case.”
    “Aw, man.”
     
     
     
    SANDERS SAID THEY WOULDN’T know anything for certain until the surgeons came out to talk, and he thought that would be a while; an hour or two. “They gotta do a lot of work,” he said.
    He was going to wait. Virgil walked down to the front entrance and found a copy of the Star Tribune , paid for it, and looked at himself, standing, arms crossed, talking to Slibe. Not a bad shot; and he’d never seen Ignace shoot it, didn’t even know that he carried a camera.
    He looked pretty good, he thought. He was still thinking that when his cell phone rang. He pulled it out: Davenport.
    “Yeah.”
    “You see the Star Tribune this morning?” Davenport asked.
    “I’m looking at it right now. Let me tell you a few things; we had some trouble this morning. . . .”
    When he finished, there was a moment of silence, and Davenport asked, “How strong’s the case?”
    “We’re doing DNA on the blood on the sleeve, and we can get DNA on Windrow from his house . . . get the Iowa guys to do it. If we get a match, and with the credit card, we’ll put him away.”
    “So, we’re happy, right?”
    “Not happy. The kid could have done it, but I went out there looking at his old man. His old man feels right for it, but I don’t know about the kid. The kid doesn’t seem like a planner, to tell you the truth. I don’t know . . .”
    “So you won’t be back tonight.”
    “No. And probably not tomorrow night. Goddamnit, Lucas, this has got a