Shock Wave

reports of Pelex theft in the last couple of years. So, the bomber’s probably local.”
    “Okay,” Virgil said. “What’s the other thing?”
    “Butternut is having a civil war over the PyeMart. People are saying the mayor and city council were bought, and the Department of Natural Resources is being sued by a trout-fishing group that says some trout stream is going to be hurt by the runoff. Lot of angry stuff going on. Over-the-top stuff. Threats.”
    “There’s runoff going into the Butternut? Man, that’s not just a crime, that’s a mortal sin,” Virgil said.
    “Whatever,” Davenport said. “In any case, the DNR okayed their environmental impact statement. I guess they’re already building the store.”
    “What else?”
    “That’s all I got,” Davenport said. “Interesting case, though. I didn’t want to take you away from your sheriff. . . .”
    “Ah, she’s out in LA, being a consultant,” Virgil said. “Having dinner with producers. Guys with suits like yours.”
    “Sounds like the bloom has gone off the rose,” Davenport said.
    “Maybe,” Virgil conceded.
    “I can hear your heart breaking from here,” Davenport said. “Have a good time in Butternut.”
     
     
    VIRGIL LIVED IN A SMALL white house in Mankato, two bedrooms, one and a half baths, not far from the state university. He traveled a lot, and so was almost always ready to go. He told the old lady who lived next door that he’d be leaving again, asked her to keep an eye on the place, and gave her a six-pack of Leinie’s for her trouble. He packed a week’s clothes into his travel bag, mostly T-shirts and jeans, put a cased shotgun on the floor of his 4Runner, along with a couple boxes of 00 shells, and stuck his pistol in a custom gun safe under the passenger seat, along with two spare magazines and a box of 9-millimeter.
    A quick Google check said that Butternut Falls would be two hours away. He printed out a map of the town, and while it was printing, turned the air-conditioning off, checked the doors to make sure they were locked, and turned on the alarm system. On the way out, he thought, with his last look, that the house looked lonely; too quiet, with dust motes floating in the sunlight over the kitchen sink. Nothing to disturb them. He needed . . . what? A wife? Kids? More insurance policies? Maybe a dog?
    When the truck was loaded and the house secure, Virgil pulled out of the driveway into the street, reversed, and backed up in front of his boat, which had been parked on the other side of the driveway. His fishing gear was already aboard. But then, it was always aboard. After a quick look at the tires, he hitched up the trailer, folded up the trailer jack, and took off.
    He got fifty feet, pulled over, jogged back to the garage, opened a locker, took out a pile of fly-fishing gear, including a vest, chest waders, rod case, and tackle box, and carried them back to the truck.
    Better to have a fly rod and not need it, than to need a fly rod and not have it. He climbed back in the truck and took off again.
     
     
    PACKING UP AND GETTING OUT of town took an hour, just as he had told Davenport it would. The sun was still high in the sky, and he’d be in Butternut well before sundown, he thought. The longest day of the year was just around the corner, and those days, in Minnesota, were long.
    And he thought a little about the sheriff out in LA, Lee Coakley. She was still warm enough on the telephone, but she’d been infected by show business. She’d gone out as a consultant on a made-for-TV movie, based on one of her cases, and had been asked to consult on another. And then another. Women cops were hot in the movies and on TV, and there was work to be had. Her kids liked it out there, the whole surfer thing. Just yesterday, she’d had lunch in Malibu . . .
    Once you’d seen Malibu, would you come back to Minnesota? To the Butternut Falls of the world? To Butternut cops?
    “Ah, poop,” Virgil said out loud, his heart cracked, if not yet broken.
     
     
    VIRGIL TOOK U.S. 14 out of town, back through North Mankato and past the 5B, resisting the temptation to stop and see if Johnson Johnson was still alive. He went through the town of New Ulm, which once was—and maybe still was—the most ethnically homogeneous town in the nation, being 99 percent German; then took State 15 north to U.S. 212, and 212 west past Buffalo Lake, Hector, Bird Island, and Olivia, then U.S. 71 north into Butternut Falls.
    Butternut