He was about to start back when a thought occurred to him. He'd just rewired the lights on his trailer connection, and if this Dodge was anything like his truck…

He groped around for a minute, then risked a quick flash with his light, well under the truck bed. Spotted the wires, got a grip on them, and hung on them, all of his weight, yanking until something came free. He risked another flash-hell, the first one had worked-and saw raw copper on two wires.

That should do it, he thought.

Then the dog barked. Once.

A FUCKIN' DOG› in the truck. And not a small one.

He said aloud, "I'm coming," and he scuttled back across the face of the building into the dark beside Stryker, and the dog barked again, several times.

"What the hell was that all about?" Stryker whispered, as they duckwalked away. The dog started barking again, but the sound was muffled by the truck cab, and nobody came out of the house. Fifty yards out, they were on their feet, hunched over, and then a hundred yards out, they were upright and moving away. They found their nest, and settled into it.

"Wires," Virgil said. "Whenever we find out who this guy is…why, I'm afraid he'll have a moving violation. If we need it."

"A moving violation?" Stryker asked.

"I yanked the wires on a taillight," Virgil said.

"That'll go on his permanent record," Stryker said.

"Yes, it will."

"When that dog…You owe me money for a laundry bill."

NOTHING MORE HAPPENED at the house for half an hour, when the door opened, and three men, one of them Feur, came out, looked around, and then crossed the yard to the machine shed. They were inside for ten minutes, then came out carrying four five-gallon metal gas cans. They loaded them carefully in the truck's camper, moved some things around in the interior of the camper, went back inside the shed, got four more cans. They closed the doors on the camper, talked for a few minutes, and then the driver got back in the truck, waved, and pulled out. The left rear taillight was out.

"Let's go," Stryker said.

They eased away in the dark, and two hundred yards out, tried to cross to the road. Stryker got tangled in the fence and ripped his coat, said, "Damnit, I just bought it this spring," and then they were on the road, jogging. The moon, on its way down, broke through the ragged clouds on the back edge of the squall line, and helped them along.

"We're there," Stryker said, his face a pale oval in the light from his GPS. They cut across the ditch back into the dark, risked a couple of flashes, got the truck, pulled around in a circle, and bumped back onto the road.

"Let's go talk to the computer," he said. "See where this guy is coming from."

"Two possibilities," Virgil said. "The gas cans have something in them besides gas. Maybe, in addition to gas. Get some plastic chemistry flasks, slip them down in there, fill it the rest of the way with gasoline."

"The other possibility…" Stryker reached overhead and started pulling gaffer tapes off the internal lights.

"The other possibility is that there really is gas in the cans, but our guy couldn't stop because he couldn't risk being seen. A guy on the run, or being really careful."

"Careful about what?"

"Say he's the shooter," Virgil said. "Coming in from someplace else-Kansas City, most likely, with the Missouri plates. You could get a pretty damn good shooter in Kansas City. So he fills it up just before he leaves town, drives up here, does the job, picks up an extra twenty gallons, and that'll get him all the way back. Never stops at a gas station, nobody ever sees him. He's not on any security tapes…How far could you go with a full tank and forty gallons?"

They both thought awhile, and then Stryker said, "At least to Kansas City."

"But then," Virgil asked, "why didn't they just put it in the tank here? Fifteen gallons, anyway."

Stryker said, "There's something else in the cans, Virgil."

"That would be my thought," Virgil said.

Another two miles: "Unless he's just picking up some lawn mower gas," Stryker said.

THERE WAS LIGHT in the east when they pulled into the courthouse. Stryker led the way into the office, where a dispatcher lifted a hand inside his Plexiglas cage and Stryker got on a computer and ran the Missouri plates. They had a return in ten seconds: Dale Donald Evans of Birmingham, Missouri. Birmingham was just outside Kansas City. With his name and birth date, they ran Evans through the NCIC, and came up with six hits.

"Burglary, burglary, burglary, assault, theft, assault. Done two, three, five years, total, all in Missouri," Stryker said.

"Thought they gave you the first three burglaries for free," Virgil said.

"Not in Missouri, apparently. Or maybe he stole something big."

"Or from somebody big." Virgil tapped the screen. "You know what he is? He's a trusted small-timer. Did his time, kept his mouth shut. So now, he's a driver. Run up to Minnesota, pick up a load, a few beat-up cans of gas mixed up with some firewood and a chain saw and maybe a generator and some tools…nobody gives him a second look."

Stryker leaned back in his chair: "I could use some recommendations, about what to do about all of this."

"We need to take a meeting," Virgil said.

DAVENPORT GROANED into the phone: "Virgil, goddamnit…"

"Get your big white ass out of bed and call the DEA," Virgil said. "I need to talk to one of their serious guys, like right now."

"You got something?"

"Biggest meth lab in the history of big meth labs," Virgil said. "Maybe."

He could hear Davenport yawning. "Okay. I can call a guy. But is there some reason that you're calling me at five-thirty in the morning?"

"Yeah. About forty gallons of meth is driving down to Kansas City. We need to get somebody on it, and we figure the feds are as good as anyone."

A DEA AGENT called back twenty minutes later. With Stryker sitting across from him, Virgil gave the agent a precis of the investigation, the killings, the ethanol plant, and what they thought. The DEA man, whose name was Ronald Pirelli, and who said that he was in Chicago, said, "Sit there, at that telephone."

Ten minutes later another DEA man called and said, "Can you brief a team in Mankato in four hours?"

"We could do that," Virgil said. "Why Mankato?"

"Because it's almost halfway between here and there. Ten o'clock at the Days Inn."

"We could be there in two hours," Virgil said.

"Got the big guy flying in from Chicago," the DEA man said. "He can't make it before ten."

VIRGIL HUNG UP and said to Stryker, "We started a prairie fire, boy. You're gonna be a hero."

"Either that, or I'll be a farmer again," Stryker said. But he looked happy enough. "Rather leave that to Joanie, tell you the truth."

Virgil retrieved his car from Stryker's house, drove back to the Holiday Inn, tried to catch an hour's sleep, and failed. Instead, he got caught in a recursive semiwaking dream involving dogs and running in the rain. At seven-thirty, he got up, found a good, clean, conservative Modest Mouse T-shirt, took a shower, and went and got Stryker.

Stryker was wearing a necktie. He looked at Virgil's shirt and said, "That's nothing but cold, deliberate insolence."

On their way to Mankato, the accountant called on Virgil's cell phone: "When can we get together?"

"We've been called to a meeting up in Mankato; we'll be back this afternoon. You got something?"

"A headache and a big bill. And, I have to say, our friend is in worse shape than we thought. I can't prove it, because it doesn't have anything to do with numbers, but he has extra money coming in. Quite a bit of it. I'm going to bed. Call me when you get back."

"Be careful. Keep your mouth shut," Virgil told her.

THE GUY from Chicago was Ronald Pirelli, who'd called that morning. He was a short, dark man wearing a black linen jacket, black slacks, a French-blue shirt, and six-hundred-dollar sunglasses. He had three other agents with him, all casually dressed, and all with the wary look of the DEA.