Rough Country

firewood, which he stacked in the shed.
    Virgil got out of his truck and walked over. Slibe didn’t stop working for a minute, finished off three logs, threw them on the stack of split oak, then cut the motor and looked at Virgil and asked, “You see that no trespassing sign?”
    “Yeah, but I ignored it,” Virgil said. “I’m with the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, looking into the murder of Erica McDill.”
    Slibe picked up his chain saw, popped the oil cap, paused, and asked, “What’s that got to do with me?”
    Virgil said, “I’m talking to everybody associated with Wendy’s band. Your daughter had a sexual . . . interlude . . . with McDill the night before she was murdered. It turns out that McDill was involving herself in the affairs of the band. Some people don’t like that, so it seems that we should check on the band.”
    He was blabbing on, he realized, and cut it off, and asked, “Where were you when McDill was killed?”
    Slibe said, “Well, from what Wendy told me, I guess I was feedin’ the dogs, or trainin’ them. Or in the house, or somewhere. I was around.”
    “Anybody else around?” Virgil asked.
    “Berni was over in the trailer for a time. . . . The Deuce was around somewhere, probably out in the woods. And somebody might have drove by, but I didn’t notice. You could check back down the road. See if anybody saw me.”
    “Who’s the Deuce?”
    “Slibe Junior. He’s called the Deuce.”
    At that moment a dark figure, in a long-sleeve blue shirt and jeans and a yellow ball cap, slid from behind the double-wide, looked at them for a moment, then slid back behind it. Big guy.
    “Your son wear a yellow hat?” Virgil asked.
    Slibe turned and looked at the double-wide, and said, “Yeah. Big kid? He ghosts around here like a . . . ghost. Spooks me, sometimes. Don’t have much to say for himself.”
    “Huh. Well . . . you got a rifle?”
    Now Slibe showed an improbably white smile—false teeth, Virgil thought—though it was as thin and nasty as a sickle blade. He asked, “You think you could find anybody around here who doesn’t? Doesn’t have about six?”
    “How about a .223?”
    “Yes, I do. Hasn’t been shot for a while,” Slibe said.
    “I’d like to take it with me, if I could—I’d give you a receipt for it,” Virgil said.
    “Get a warrant,” Slibe said.
    “Well, I’ll do that,” Virgil said. “But things could get pretty inconvenient for you, to do it that way. But if that’s the way you want to go, it’s up to you.”
    Slibe asked, “What’s that supposed to mean?”
    Virgil shrugged. “If we get a warrant for weapons . . . they’ll take all of them. No skin off our ass. Wind up sending in a crime-scene crew, search everything out here.”
    “Aw, fuck. The goddamn government.” Slibe screwed the oil cap back on the chain saw and said, “All right. In the house.”
    “Let me get my notebook,” Virgil said. “I’ll write you out a receipt.”
    He walked over to the truck, got a notebook, dug his pistol out from under the seat, and clipped it under his jeans in the small of his back. Turning out of the truck, he saw the Deuce slide back behind the double-wide.
    He followed Slibe to the house; up close, it looked as neat as it did from the road. The kitchen was like Signy’s, small, with a two-chair table, with a dog-fancier newspaper folded on the table. Slibe went to a kitchen drawer, pulled it open, rattled some forks around, came up with a small key, walked down a hall to a closet, and opened it, to reveal a steel gun safe.
    He popped the safe, which had at least four rifles and two shot-guns, and, on the top shelf, showed the stock of a large-frame handgun. He pulled out a rifle and handed it to Virgil—a military-look semiautomatic Colt AR-15 Sporter II with open sights. More than enough to take out McDill. He hadn’t heard back from Mapes on the extraction marks, but Mapes had thought they were probably from a bolt action, not from a semiauto.
    Virgil said, “Thank you,” pulled the bolt, sniffed, and smelled the distinctive cut of gun solvent. “I’ll get it back to you as soon as I can.” He poked back into the safe. “These all Thirties?”
    “Except for the .22,” Slibe said. “A .308, .30-06, and the .22.”
    Virgil pulled out the pump .22, checked it, put it back. A long-rifle slug would have killed McDill if it had hit her right, but wouldn’t have done the damage.
    “I thought she was shot in a swamp,”