Rough Country

family’s always been a little off center. You know their mom was a lesbian? You know, became one?”
    “Yeah? So what?” But he didn’t say it. He stood up, slapped the door, and said, “You guys take it easy. Find that damn Windrow. Man, I’m gonna be pissed if he’s off at one of these resorts. . . .”
    “And that could be—there’s only about a million of them,” Dan said. “But we called in when we got out of there. No sign of him yet.”
    “The thing that messes me up is that we can’t find the car,” Virgil said. “I can’t figure out why we can’t find the car. I mean, even if they snatched him, we ought to be able to find that.”
    “Out in the bush somewhere,” Ben offered.
    “Find him,” Virgil said, and he headed back to his car.
     
     
     
    AND THE THOUGHT:
    If somebody were going to snatch Windrow, with his car, and kill him and take the car out in the brush and ditch it . . . how would the killer get back to his car? It was possible that the killer was willing to walk eight or ten miles in the dark, and had left the car in an all-night parking lot somewhere. Or maybe had ditched it only a couple of miles out, so the walk back would be a half-hour or so. But how would he know that in advance? He had to know where Windrow would be eating, for one thing.
    Unless there were two of them.
    Like Slibe & Son.
    And the Iowa cops thought the killer was male. . . .
     
     
     
    THE WASHINGTONS LIVED FIVE or six miles out of town, on another country road, but not nearly as isolated as the Ashbach place. There were lights all along the way, and Virgil got glimpses of houses and sheds and cars and mailboxes on posts.
    He drove past the Washington place and had to double back, shining his flashlight on the rural mailboxes, before he found it. They lived in a plain white one-floor ranch-style house with a two-car garage and white vinyl siding, with a shed around the back and a flower garden along the driveway. The only light looked like it might be a night-light, but the automatic yard light came on when Virgil drove down the driveway.
    The front porch was a simple concrete slab. Virgil rang the doorbell, and a moment later he heard footfalls, and then the porch light flicked on. Washington looked out through the picture window, and came over and unlocked the door and said, “Jan? Is Jan okay . . . ?”
    Virgil held up his hands and said, “I’m sorry to scare you, this isn’t about Jan. I’m sure she’s fine. But we’ve got a serious problem, and I wanted to ask you a couple of questions.”
    Washington, in blue pajamas, said, “Sure—c’mon in. What’s going on?”
    “We’re looking for a guy . . .” Virgil said, and he quickly explained about Windrow. “I got a couple of questions. Have you or your wife had anything to do with Slibe Ashbach, or his son?”
    “No. Can’t say that we have. He’s got that septic service, right? Our septic was done by El Anderson.”
    “Do you know them? Slibe and his son?”
    “Slibe . . . the older one . . . I was on a tax adjustment board a couple of years ago, and he came in to ask for an adjustment, I believe. I can’t remember what happened, but it wasn’t a big deal. It seems like we might have referred it to the assessor for a reassessment. . . . I’d probably know him to see him. Maybe.”
    Then: “Okay . . . do you do your own taxes?”
    “What?” Washington sat back.
    “Do you do your own taxes? Or do you have somebody do them for you?”
    “We have them done by a girl in town,” Washington said.
    Virgil’s heart sank. “And that would be . . . ?”
    “Mabel Knox is her name.”
    “Mabel Knox?” A reprieve.
    “Yeah, she works for Zoe Tull,” Washington said. “Zoe’s got a big tax business downtown.”
     
     
     
    THE WASHINGTONS KNEW ZOE; and Zoe knew the Washingtons.
    Probably meaningless, Virgil thought. But still, the only connection he’d found.
    And he should have found it earlier; she should have mentioned it earlier.
    Would have, if he hadn’t known in his heart that Zoe was innocent. . . .

19
    SLIBE ASHBACH SLIPPED OUT the back door of his house, stood in the dark, and listened. If you listened hard enough at night, you could hear a background crackling, as if the leaves of the trees were talking to each other, or the bugs were foot-racing through the long grass. . . .
    He heard that, but didn’t hear anything human. There was still light from Wendy’s trailer; the light, Slibe knew, that pulled in