Rough Country

you at this point.”
    Wendy asked, “What?”
    Virgil sighed and stepped up on the top step and put his arm around her shoulder and squeezed her tight. “Ah, God I hate this.”
    “What?”
    “Wendy . . . I believe your mom is down there, under the garden.”
     
     
     
    SHE FROZE, as if all the muscles in her body contracted at once. Then she pushed him off, and Berni, agape, stepped away and said, “You’re crazy.”
    Wendy, horrified, looking from the garden to Virgil, repeated it: “You’re crazy.”
    Virgil said, “These guys are using a top-end metal detector. They say there’s a big buried metal mass out there, under the garden.
    “You told me that when your mother left, she left her car here, and took off with her boyfriend, Hector Avila. I had a BCA researcher look up Avila’s car, which was a 1990 S10 Blazer. It was never rereg istered anywhere in the United States. There was no sign of it in Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, California, Nevada, Colorado . . . no place in the Southwest.
    “You told me that when you came back from school, that your father told you that your mother had gone away, and that day he started a garden. . . .”
    She shook her head. “No . . . no, no, no, not right. Mom’s out in Arizona.”
    “Can’t find her,” Virgil said. Can’t find a Hector Avila, either. Can’t find a Maria Ashbach getting a divorce anywhere in Minnesota or Arizona or anywhere else.”
    “Dad told me when they got divorced . . .”
    “And he told you that he got a letter that said your mom didn’t want to see you anymore. Did that sound like your mom?”
    She looked at the garden, a sense of dry-lipped desperation about her. “But that . . . but that . . .”
    “Your brother. I took his picture and showed it to Jan Washington, in the hospital in Duluth. She thought it was a picture of Avila. The Deuce is Avila’s son, and your father knows it. That’s why he’s framing him.”
    “It can’t . . .”
    “There’s only one way to find out,” Virgil said. “We know we’ve got a big metal mass down there. We know your father had excavation equipment that he could have used to bury it. You’re out here at the end of the road, with nobody going by. He could have pulled it off. We gotta look.”

    WENDY STARTED TO CRY, and Berni wrapped her up and led her back into the trailer, Berni looking at Virgil with fear on her face, and Virgil said, quietly to the deputies, “Hang around, keep an eye on them.”
    He called Sanders: “You better get out here.”
    Mapes showed him the space in the garden where they were getting the best responses. “You can’t tell exactly how big it is, but it’s probably car-length, and probably car-wide, and not too deep.”
     
     
     
    WENDY CAME OUT of the house, tears streaming down her face: “How’re you going to dig it up?”
    “Get some guys out here.”
    “I can run the Bobcat better than anyone in the county.”
    “Wendy, that’s a really bad idea.”
    She shrieked at him: “I can’t stand this. I can’t stand it. I can’t wait. You understand that? Mom’s in Arizona. Mom’s in Arizona, and she might come back. She can’t be in the garden. . . .”
    Virgil said to Berni, “You better take her—”
    Wendy pushed Berni away. “Bullshit. I’m going for the Bobcat.” She stalked away, and one of the deputies moved to cut her off, but Virgil gave him a shake of the head, and the deputy stepped back. Virgil followed her, and Berni followed Virgil, and the deputy came after them, leaving the second deputy, Mapes, and Huntington standing in the garden.

    THERE WERE TWO BOBCATS in the machine shed, one with a front-end loader, the other with a shovel. The larger Caterpillar shovel was gone. Wendy climbed into the Bobcat with the shovel and fired it up. She said to Virgil, “Out of the way.”
    “Not a good idea, Wendy,” Virgil said.
    “I don’t care. . . .” She idled the machine for a moment, said, “When Mom left, something must have busted in his brain. He told me once that he’d taken her into town, and they bought gravesites together. I mean, they were thirty.”
    “I think that’s why he was holding you so close,” Virgil said.
    She ran the power up a bit and said, “Out of the way.”
     
     
     
    VIRGIL FOLLOWED THE BOBCAT across the yard, and Mapes came up and said, “You think this is a good idea?”
    Virgil said, “We’re going with the flow. Give her an outline to work with.”
     
     
     
    MAPES MARKED OUT a