FBI agents, Virgil thought, usually looked sleek. DEA guys usually looked like they'd just driven a Jeep back from Nogales, with the windows down.

Pirelli had arrived a couple of minutes before Virgil and Stryker. They followed him down to the room rented by another of the agents, and they all introduced themselves and Pirelli asked Virgil, "What's with the T-shirt?"

Virgil said, "I thought my Sheryl Crow shirt might piss you off."

"Hey…"

Pirelli was affable, the other agents skeptical, watching Stryker carefully, and Virgil even more carefully: One of them said, "You've got kind of a weird reputation, dude. Everybody in Minneapolis calls you 'that fuckin' Flowers.'"

Stryker laughed and said, "You wanna know something? He's been seeing my sister, and just the other night, honest to God-she's a farmer; she's got no contact with Minneapolis-I asked her what she was doing, and she said, 'Goin' out with that fuckin' Flowers.'"

The agents all laughed, and the skepticism receded a little, and Pirelli said, "Give us what you've got."

WHAT THEY HAD was mostly conjecture, with a few names and background. They sketched in the story of the Jerusalem artichoke scam, and the general belief that Bill Judd Sr. had a hidden account somewhere. That Judd Jr. was in desperate financial straits, and the death of his father would make them worse, not better. That Junior might be embezzling from the hidden fund.

"Why didn't he just keep that money, instead of doing this ethanol thing?" Pirelli asked.

"Maybe a couple of reasons," Virgil said. "First, there might not have been enough money left in the account-not enough to take care of all his debts and provide him with some security. He's getting to be an older guy. Second, it's coming out of a bank account, somewhere. There'll be a paper trail. It's not that easy to do things in cash anymore…people want checks and wire transfers and financial controls. The way they did it, it looks like old man Judd put up some starter cash for an ethanol plant. They actually make some ethanol, and sell it, probably, but we think they're also running this little chemical factory on the side."

"I wouldn't be surprised if they own some land around the plant, to grow corn for processing," Stryker said. "Then they'd be on the up-and-up ordering all the chemicals they'd need. The smell of the meth processing could be passed off as just another stink from the ethanol plant."

"But basically, there's no indication whatsoever that this ethanol plant has anything to do with meth," one of the agents said.

"I suppose that depends on how imaginative you are," Virgil said. "We've got a bunch of dead people. We've got a nutcase preacher who's tied to the Corps. We've got a guy desperate for cash. We've got them buying anhydrous ammonia by the tanker truck, and they're making alcohol by the tanker truck, and we've got hard guys coming and going in the night, with five-gallon cans of gas. These are the same guys who could act as a collecting system for the hard-to-get chemicals. You get one dumb-ass driving around a metro area buying a package of diet pills at every possible store, and you can get pounds of the stuff every day. You get ten dumb-asses driving around doing it, in ten different metro areas, and you can get a ton of it in a week. We know that they're connected into a distribution system, through the Corps. That could also be a collection system for the other stuff they need. I mean, maybe they're selling the ethanol as moonshine at five dollars a quart; but I doubt it."

"So if these are small-town guys, how does he afford an ethanol plant?" another agent asked.

"You ever seen one?" Stryker asked. "Ethanol plant?"

The DEA guy shook his head. "Not that I know of."

"There are some ethanol plants that look like grain elevators. In fact, most of them do. And the newest ones look like little refineries. But some of the older ones, going three-four-five years back, look like a big garage. Basically, an ethanol plant is a still. What they're making is moonshine; that's all it is."

Pirelli said, "For the past two years, there's been an ocean of crank flooding the area between the Mississippi River and the Rockies. Most of it's going down to Dallas-Fort Worth, San Antonio, Houston. Heavy stuff, pure white, not that brown stuff you see out of coffeepots. We've been going crazy trying to find the source. One possibility we have is that it has something to do with the Corps. The guys who are dealing more than a few ounces are all tied in."

"What about Dale Donald Evans?" Stryker asked. "He ought to be home by now."

Pirelli's eyebrows went up. He took a cell phone from his pocket, scrolled, and punched. A minute later he asked, "Get him?" He listened, and then said, "Stay just like that. He didn't take the gas cans out of the truck?" He listened some more and then said, "Call me."

To Stryker: "He got home forty-five minutes ago. Doesn't have a garage. Parked the truck."

"He's got a bad taillight," Virgil said. "You could stop him on a violation, have the cop check the gas cans…It's a little thin, but it'd hold."

"Lucky thing about the taillight," one of the agents said.

WHEN THEY WERE DONE with the briefing, Pirelli said, "Okay. What we'd really like is, for you two to take the day off. Enjoy your Saturday afternoon, enjoy your Sunday. I'll call you Monday. Or Tuesday."

"Monday," Virgil said.

"Or Tuesday. There's this Sioux Indian guy about to drift into Madison, South Dakota, where his car is gonna break down. He'll be there for a while, watching that plant, talking with the locals. In the meantime, we're gonna be on Dale Donald Evans like yellow on a Chinaman. If this turns out to be what you think it is, we'll give you a call. We appreciate the help of local authorities, and when we take down the Reverend Feur, you'll be right there with us."

Stryker slapped his thighs, and said, "Sounds like a deal." To Virgil, "Sound like a deal to you?"

Virgil said, "Okay with me, if it's okay with everybody."

One of the agents said to Virgil, "You know, Modest Mouse music is really sorta gay."

15

ON THE WAY back to Bluestem, Virgil said to Stryker, "I don't want to bring you down, but I don't think Feur killed Schmidt or the Gleasons. Might have killed Judd, using the Gleasons as cover."

"That brings me down," Stryker said.

"Thing is, the Gleasons and the Schmidts…that has the smell of craziness about it."

Stryker: "Let me share something with you, Virgil: George Feur is pure, one hundred percent, grade-A high-test bat shit."

"In the wrong way," Virgil said. "If we're right about him, if they've been pumping meth out of that ethanol plant, then you've got a guy who believes in organization and networks and conspiracies. He sets up cover companies. He raises start-up funding. The guy who killed the Gleasons, and the Schmidts…this guy believes in chaos and oblivion. He believes he's the only real soul in an ocean of puppets."

"Ah, fuck." Stryker peered out his side window, watching the summer go by. "Ah, fuck me."

"Speaking of fuckin' you, how are things on the Jesse front?"

"Shut up."

THEY WENT STRAIGHT to the house of Chris Olafson, the accountant. Stryker banged on the door off and on for three or four minutes, before she finally came to the door in a dressing robe. "Come in. I'd just finally gotten to sleep."

"We haven't been to sleep yet," Stryker said. "What'd you find?"

She shook her head: "Junior's goose is cooked."

"How cooked?"

"Very cooked."

Junior had gotten all the tax-free gifts he was entitled to, some two million dollars. That meant the total estate was taxable. But the total estate was less than anyone had expected, at a little more than six million, and that included "assets" of two million in loans to Junior.