Rough Country

I’ve heard, he’s virtually a part of the band. And I’ve got this thing going in my head: maybe somebody didn’t want McDill to mess with the band. Maybe somebody saw her as a threat, who’d either take you away from them, or maybe force some people out of the band. . . . I understand from some people that your father has been pretty central to your career.”
    “Well, he’s . . . I don’t know what he is. He’s not an official member or anything,” Wendy said. “He’s the one guy I know who has my best interests at heart, and I don’t have to worry about that. I don’t have to worry that he’s up to something.”
    “He’s got your back,” Virgil said.
    “That’s it: that’s what he does.”
    “Still need to talk to him,” Virgil said. “I’m told he’s sort of a backwoods guy. A good shot.”
    She didn’t react to the “good shot.” She said, “Well, go on out—he’s around.”

9
    BEFORE GOING TO TALK to Slibe Ashbach, Virgil called Zoe again, and she was still at her house. He got directions and went over, and looked at the locks.
    “The locks are fine,” he said, when he’d looked.
    She lived in a modest bungalow, two bedrooms, and one of the bedrooms had an antique folk-art crucifix over the bed, and he wondered about it but didn’t ask.
    “The doors, on the other hand, are crap,” he said. “A child could kick out those bottom panels, and the windowpanes are too big. Somebody with a gun could stick the gun barrel through the glass, knock it out, and unlatch the door. When you get the money, buy new doors.”
    She was anxious about it, but also an accountant: “There’s usually no problem . . .”
    “This is the twenty-first century, the problem’s always out there,” he said. He put his fists on his hips: “Now, why’d they break in? Why?”
    “I still can’t figure it out. I keep thinking about it—I can’t get away from it,” she said. “But I know one thing. I’ve lived here for thirty years with no problems, and then I hang out with a cop on a murder case for one day, and somebody tries to get in. . . . That doesn’t feel like a coincidence.”
    “No, it doesn’t. So think about it,” Virgil said. “All the time. Work something out. Call me.”
     
     
     
    THE ASHBACH PLACE was an early twentieth-century farmhouse eight miles out of town, down a country road that pushed past a couple of lake turnoffs, dropped from blacktop road to gravel, and finally ended at Ashbach’s. It could be a hard place to get to in the winter, Virgil thought as he drove in; a place where you’d need snowmobiles.
    The two-story farmhouse looked like something from Grant Wood: white, with a picket fence around a neat patch of green lawn, clumps of zinnias and marigolds along the fence, fifty yards off the road. Closer to the road, a brown double-wide trailer sat on concrete blocks that had all been neatly painted gray. Farther back, at the end of the drive, was a newer metal barn, and off to the right of the barn, an open shed, covering two Bobcats—a backhoe and a front-end loader—and a larger Caterpillar shovel. A lowboy was parked beside the shed. Across the drive from the farmhouse, an open half-shed was two-thirds full of split firewood.
    The house sat on what Virgil thought was probably twenty acres, with a pine plantation at the far end, and a half-dozen apple trees clustered in a back pasture. At the driveway entrance, a home-painted sign said ASHBACH KENNELS. Under that, an older sign said SLIBE ASHBACH SEPTIC & GRADING. And under that, a newer metal sign said NO TRESPASSING.
    As he turned in the drive, Virgil noticed that the metal barn had a series of chain-link enclosures protruding from the sides, each with a half-grown yellow dog inside. A neat and expansive vegetable garden ran parallel to the driveway, filled with corn, beans, cabbage, some used-up rows that probably had been greens and radishes, earlier in the year; and a plot of dark green potato plants, enough to feed a family for a long northern winter. The back side of the garden was bordered by a raspberry patch.
    A nice place, Virgil thought, if a little low, dark, and isolated.
    A man was working next to the firewood shed.
     
     
     
    SLIBE ASHBACH WAS FIFTY or fifty-five, weathered, stocky, with a sandy three-day beard and dishwater blond hair worn long from a balding head. He was dressed in a T-shirt, jeans, and muddy camo boots, working over a hydraulic log-splitter, splitting and piling