Rough Country

would, but it’s nine hours, and I don’t want to drive nine hours, and nine hours back. Can I rent a plane? It’s maybe a grand.”
    “Is it absolutely necessary?”
    “It’s pretty necessary,” Virgil said.
    “Tell you what—drive down here, bag out in a motel, and I’ll get Doug Wayne to fly you down first thing tomorrow. Tell me a time.”
    Wayne was a highway patrolman who’d flown Virgil on other trips. Virgil glanced at his watch, did some arithmetic, and said, “Seven o’clock tomorrow morning at St. Paul.”
    “I’ll call somebody right now. You’re still in Grand Rapids?” Davenport asked.
    “Yeah.”
    “Okay, uh, you’ll be here by two. Five hours of sleep. That good enough?”
    “That’s fine,” Virgil said. “Listen, call the patrol and tell them I’m coming down I-35 with lights. If they’ll let me roll, I can get an extra half-hour.”
    “Plan on it. But I’ll call you.”
     
     
     
    ZOE SAID VIRGIL could drop the boat in her driveway, and when that was done, he headed back to the motel, told the clerk to hold his room, got his bag, and took off. Davenport called as he was pulling out of the parking lot, said, “You’re clear all the way down, but don’t hit any deer or you’ll be all over the place. You’re not pulling a boat, are you?”
    “No, I’m not pulling a boat,” Virgil said. “Why’re you always so suspicious?”
    “ ’ Cause I got you working for me, for one thing,” Davenport said. “I talked to Doug; he’ll be ready to fly at seven o’clock.”
    Then he was driving fast through the starry night, past the hamlets and small towns and widespots, Blackberry, Warba, Swan River, Wawina, Floodwood, Gowan to the Highway 33 cutoff, south to I-35, then hammering down I-35, into Minneapolis by one o’clock. He crashed at the Radisson University, with a wake-up call for six-thirty.
    Thought little about God that night; but, still, some.
     
     
     
    WAYNE WAS IN HIS FLIGHT SUIT , reading a Walter Mosley paperback and eating a peanut butter cookie. Virgil came in, five minutes late, and Wayne said, “We’re rolling.”
    They were in the air in ten minutes, heading for an airport south of Cedar Rapids. Hertz had promised to have a Chevy Impala waiting for him.
    “So tell me about what happened after I dropped you off last time,” Wayne said.
    Virgil told him about the shoot-out in International Falls, about who did what, and how they set up the ambush, and about the Vietnamese team coming in, about the firefight at dawn.
    “Man, people were so proud of you guys,” Wayne said. “Nobody was talking about anything else. Fucking North Vietnamese commandos, man, and you guys took them down.”
    “Didn’t feel proud at the time,” Virgil said. “Still don’t. And we missed their main operator.”
    “That chick. Yeah. But man, that was something. . . .”
     
     
     
    ON THE WAY DOWN, passing from cell tower to cell tower, Virgil talked to the chief deputy for Johnson County, whose name was Will Sedlacek, and who said the sheriff was fishing in Minnesota. “If you tell me he’s in Grand Rapids, I’ll kill myself,” Virgil said.
    “I don’t know where Grand Rapids is—I thought it was in Michigan, to tell you the truth—but he’s on Lake of the Woods.”
    “That’s quite a way from Grand Rapids,” Virgil said. “Look, I’ll be down there at eleven, and I need to talk to somebody about the murder of Constance Lifry and this country-western bar you got down there—”
    “The Spodee-Odee,” the deputy said. “Tell you what: call me when you get here, I’ll take you over and talk to Jud.”
    “Deal,” Virgil said.
    Two hours to Cedar Rapids, clear skies all the way. Wayne said he’d catch a movie up in Cedar Rapids. He’d brought a bag, and was prepared to stay overnight, if Virgil had to.
    “I don’t think we’ll have to,” Virgil said. “I mostly need to look at the case file and talk to a few people, and we’re all set up on that.”
     
     
     
    SEDLACEK WAS A BURLY, dark-haired man who pointed Virgil at a visitor’s chair and asked, “Have any trouble finding us?” and half listened to Virgil’s reply as he poked a number into his office phone and said, “He’s here,” and hung up.
    “Yeah, I got tangled up by the river and went the wrong way around the university . . . nothing to speak of,” Virgil said.
    Another deputy stepped into the office, carrying a paper file, and Virgil stood up to shake hands with Larry