Rough Country

most famous cop in Minnesota.
    Which worried him a little.
    He’d always been the genial observer—that was most of his method—and having other people looking at him, questioning him, watching his moves, was unnerving.
    He’d mentioned it to Davenport, and Davenport’s wife had said, “Well, somebody’s got to be the tall poppy.”
    He hadn’t known exactly what she’d been talking about until he looked it up on Wikipedia.
    Then he worried more . . . and now fellow cops were sucking up to him, which made it worse.
    He’d have to fuck something up, he thought, to get back to normal. Shouldn’t be a problem.
     
     
     
    SLIBE WASN’T HOME when Virgil got there.
    The pickup was gone, and when he knocked on the door, he got a hollow echo, the kind you get when a house is empty. Virgil had the rifle case in one hand and stepped back from the door and turned toward his truck and saw Slibe II standing in the doorway of the kennel, with a half-bag of Purina dog chow in his hand. The sun was illuminating him, a Caravaggesque saint set against the black velvet surround of the barn’s interior.
    Virgil went that way, called out, “How ya doing?”
    The Deuce didn’t say anything; stood in his camo coveralls, one hand in a pocket, and watched Virgil get closer. Virgil thought about the pistol under the front seat of the truck, but kept walking anyway, smiling, called, “Your dad around?”
    The Deuce said, “No trespassin’.”
    “Bringing your dad’s rifle back to him,” Virgil said.
    The Deuce was an inch taller than Virgil, with melancholy, deep-set dark eyes under overgrown eyebrows and shaggy dark hair that looked as though it had been cut with a knife. He was slender, underfed, with hard, weathered hands and a short beard. He wore a Filson canvas billed hat the precise color of a pile of dog shit somebody had shoveled out of the kennels. He considered Virgil’s comment for a moment, then grunted, “You can leave it.”
    “Can’t. Need to get your dad to sign a receipt,” Virgil said. He turned casually toward the kennels and asked, “How many dogs you got here?”
    “Some,” the Deuce said. He smiled, said, “Get ’em going at it, we’ll have some more.”
    “The kind of business you want,” Virgil agreed.
    “Them bitches want it all the time, when the heat’s on them,” the Deuce said. He spat in the yard, but in a conversational way, not as an insult.
    “You know when your dad’s coming back?” Virgil asked.
    “Nope.”
    “I’m a cop, I’m looking into that shooting up at Stone Lake.”
    “Wendy . . .” The Deuce lost his thought for a moment, as though his mind were wandering through corridors labeled “Wendy,” then found it again. “. . . told me.”
    “Yeah? You know that country? Up around Stone Lake?”
    “The Deuce knows all the country around here.” He dropped the bag of dog food by a foot, stepped out into the driveway, turned slowly around, as though sniffing the air, looked north, then northeast, then pointed with his chin and said, “Off that way. About, maybe . . . I could walk there after breakfast, get back here for lunch, if I hurried.”
    “You ever do that?”
    “Oh, I went by there a few times, but it’s not a good spot,” the Deuce said, turning his dark gaze back on Virgil. “The trails don’t lead in there.”
    “The trails?”
    “Indian trails. I follow the Indian trails. But the lake is there, cuts the trails off. . . .” He looked north again, then gestured. “See, the trails go this way, and that way, but they don’t go straight, because the lake cuts them off, so they bend.”
    “But if I needed somebody to take me in there, you could do it,” Virgil said.
    “Could. Probably wouldn’t,” the Deuce said.
    “Yeah? You don’t like cops?”
    “Not much,” he said.
     
     
     
    TALKING TO HIM, Virgil understood what people had meant when they described Slibe II as not quite right. He thought too long about his words, though the words, when they arrived, were appropriate enough; it was the measure of his sentences that was wrong. And he had an odd sideways gaze, not shy, but shielded, as though he were trying to conceal an unhealthy curiosity, or passion, or fear.
    Virgil had met people like him a few times, and he knew for sure that if he accused Slibe II of stealing a ham sandwich, a good prosecutor could get him sent to prison for life.
    The Deuce oozed guilt.
     
     
     
    VIRGIL WAS ABOUT to go on with the questions about