Rough Country

“How far is it?”
    “Nine hours by car, probably. You can fly in, commercial, but there aren’t many flights. Bar is called the Wild Goose.”
    “I fly a little Cessna. Love to do it, don’t do it enough,” Windrow said. “If the weather’s good, I’ll head up there in the morning, maybe.”
     
     
     
    OUT IN THE PARKING LOT , Sedlacek and Virgil shook hands, and Sedlacek said, “Prudence is okay. A little dry, but she’s smart, like her sister.”
    “Seems okay,” Virgil said.
    “I was worried that she might seem a little crazy, going on about the Lord this and the Lord that, that he wouldn’t allow Constance to be murdered at random.”
    “Who can tell about that,” Virgil said, looking over at the woman as she got into a Ford Taurus. “She might even be right.”

11
    JANELLE WASHINGTON WENT TO WORK in a candy store to pick up extra cash when her husband, a greenskeeper, hopped down off a tractor and tore his ACL. He was out of work for weeks, and they were living on worker’s comp payments, and something had to be done.
    The candy store barely paid minimum wage, but that was fine. The work wasn’t onerous, and they were only bridging the gap between worker’s comp and what they needed, so they didn’t need a lot. Then, after he got back on the tractor, she decided she liked the contact with other people during the day, and she stayed on with the candy store.
    There was a problem, though. Janelle couldn’t stay out of the chocolate. She’d always prided herself on her figure, which wasn’t perfect, but her husband, James, seemed to like it a lot, and when she gained two pounds in the first week, and another in the second week, then two more . . . something had to be done.
    First, she resolved to eat only two pieces of fudge a day: five hundred calories. Then, during the summer, at least, she’d ride her bike from her house, out in the countryside, all the way into town, eight miles each way, which took her about forty-five minutes each way, and burned, according to an Internet calculator, about five hundred calories. Also, she learned, she’d be building muscles, and more muscles also meant more calories burned.
    Now the question was, should she use the extra calories for another piece of fudge? Or really turn herself into a raging piece of super-fit muscle? Staying at two pieces a day was hard, with the owner in the back cooking up all that chocolate. . . .
    On this day, she’d finished up, cleaning off the counters, had said good-bye to Dan, the owner, and took off. The first few blocks were stop-and-go, getting out of town, watching the traffic; but once she was on the other side of the river, the traffic disappeared and she started to pump; started to sweat.
    She’d never been an athlete, but the bicycle had turned something on, and she was getting addicted to the flow of the thing. . . .
     
     
     
    McDILL’S KILLER SAT in a copse of trees that grew on a natural mound at the intersection of the county road and a trail that led back to a canoe-landing on the Mississippi. From a nest at the top of the mound, both the landing and the road were visible. No canoeists had come along in an hour, and none were visible in a half-mile stretch of the river above the landing.
    Washington should be coming around the corner at any minute. Shooting her would do two good things. First, it’d confuse the issue. The killer would carefully leave behind a shell, so they’d know that McDill’s killer also shot Washington. But since Washington had no connection to lesbians or Wendy’s band or the Eagle Nest, maybe they’d go for the idea that the killings were random. Maybe; but if not, it’d at least be confusing.
    The other thing the killing would do is get rid of Washington. Nobody would remember it after she was dead, the killer thought, but Washington knew a little too much about Slibe Ashbach Jr. and his father. . . .
     
     
     
    WASHINGTON CAME AROUND the corner a mile away, not pedaling hard, but moving right along. The road was smooth blacktop, and she was clear and steady in the four-power scope. She was wearing a scarf, as a babushka, to keep her hair neat. Her face was clear in the glass . . . four hundred yards, three-fifty, three hundred, and closing . . .
    A truck came around the corner behind her. Not moving fast, sort of idling along, and the killer took the gun down, forehead beaded with sweat, breathing hard from a sudden shot of adrenaline. Not good. Not