"Well, he's… I don't know what he is. He's not an official member or anything," Wendy said. "He's the one guy I know who has my best interests at heart, and I don't have to worry about that. I don't have to worry that he's up to something."

"He's got your back," Virgil said.

"That's it: that's what he does."

"Still need to talk to him," Virgil said. "I'm told he's sort of a backwoods guy. A good shot."

She didn't react to the "good shot." She said, "Well, go on out-he's around."

9

BEFORE GOING TO TALK to Slibe Ashbach, Virgil called Zoe again, and she was still at her house. He got directions and went over, and looked at the locks.

"The locks are fine," he said, when he'd looked.

She lived in a modest bungalow, two bedrooms, and one of the bedrooms had an antique folk-art crucifix over the bed, and he wondered about it but didn't ask.

"The doors, on the other hand, are crap," he said. "A child could kick out those bottom panels, and the windowpanes are too big. Somebody with a gun could stick the gun barrel through the glass, knock it out, and unlatch the door. When you get the money, buy new doors."

She was anxious about it, but also an accountant: "There's usually no problem…"

"This is the twenty-first century, the problem's always out there," he said. He put his fists on his hips: "Now, why'd they break in? Why?"

"I still can't figure it out. I keep thinking about it-I can't get away from it," she said. "But I know one thing. I've lived here for thirty years with no problems, and then I hang out with a cop on a murder case for one day, and somebody tries to get in… That doesn't feel like a coincidence."

"No, it doesn't. So think about it," Virgil said. "All the time. Work something out. Call me."

THE ASHBACH PLACE was an early twentieth-century farmhouse eight miles out of town, down a country road that pushed past a couple of lake turnoffs, dropped from blacktop road to gravel, and finally ended at Ashbach's. It could be a hard place to get to in the winter, Virgil thought as he drove in; a place where you'd need snowmobiles.

The two-story farmhouse looked like something from Grant Wood: white, with a picket fence around a neat patch of green lawn, clumps of zinnias and marigolds along the fence, fifty yards off the road. Closer to the road, a brown double-wide trailer sat on concrete blocks that had all been neatly painted gray. Farther back, at the end of the drive, was a newer metal barn, and off to the right of the barn, an open shed, covering two Bobcats-a backhoe and a front-end loader-and a larger Caterpillar shovel. A lowboy was parked beside the shed. Across the drive from the farmhouse, an open half-shed was two-thirds full of split firewood.

The house sat on what Virgil thought was probably twenty acres, with a pine plantation at the far end, and a half-dozen apple trees clustered in a back pasture. At the driveway entrance, a home-painted sign said ASHBACH KENNELS. Under that, an older sign said SLIBE ASHBACH SEPTIC amp; GRADING. And under that, a newer metal sign said NO TRESPASSING.

As he turned in the drive, Virgil noticed that the metal barn had a series of chain-link enclosures protruding from the sides, each with a half-grown yellow dog inside. A neat and expansive vegetable garden ran parallel to the driveway, filled with corn, beans, cabbage, some used-up rows that probably had been greens and radishes, earlier in the year; and a plot of dark green potato plants, enough to feed a family for a long northern winter. The back side of the garden was bordered by a raspberry patch.

A nice place, Virgil thought, if a little low, dark, and isolated.

A man was working next to the firewood shed.

SLIBE ASHBACH WAS FIFTY or fifty-five, weathered, stocky, with a sandy three-day beard and dishwater blond hair worn long from a balding head. He was dressed in a T-shirt, jeans, and muddy camo boots, working over a hydraulic log-splitter, splitting and piling firewood, which he stacked in the shed.

Virgil got out of his truck and walked over. Slibe didn't stop working for a minute, finished off three logs, threw them on the stack of split oak, then cut the motor and looked at Virgil and asked, "You see that no trespassing sign?"

"Yeah, but I ignored it," Virgil said. "I'm with the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, looking into the murder of Erica McDill."

Slibe picked up his chain saw, popped the oil cap, paused, and asked, "What's that got to do with me?"

Virgil said, "I'm talking to everybody associated with Wendy's band. Your daughter had a sexual… interlude… with McDill the night before she was murdered. It turns out that McDill was involving herself in the affairs of the band. Some people don't like that, so it seems that we should check on the band."

He was blabbing on, he realized, and cut it off, and asked, "Where were you when McDill was killed?"

Slibe said, "Well, from what Wendy told me, I guess I was feedin' the dogs, or trainin' them. Or in the house, or somewhere. I was around."

"Anybody else around?" Virgil asked.

"Berni was over in the trailer for a time… The Deuce was around somewhere, probably out in the woods. And somebody might have drove by, but I didn't notice. You could check back down the road. See if anybody saw me."

"Who's the Deuce?"

"Slibe Junior. He's called the Deuce."

At that moment a dark figure, in a long-sleeve blue shirt and jeans and a yellow ball cap, slid from behind the double-wide, looked at them for a moment, then slid back behind it. Big guy.

"Your son wear a yellow hat?" Virgil asked.

Slibe turned and looked at the double-wide, and said, "Yeah. Big kid? He ghosts around here like a… ghost. Spooks me, sometimes. Don't have much to say for himself."

"Huh. Well… you got a rifle?"

Now Slibe showed an improbably white smile-false teeth, Virgil thought-though it was as thin and nasty as a sickle blade. He asked, "You think you could find anybody around here who doesn't? Doesn't have about six?"

"How about a.223?"

"Yes, I do. Hasn't been shot for a while," Slibe said.

"I'd like to take it with me, if I could-I'd give you a receipt for it," Virgil said.

"Get a warrant," Slibe said.

"Well, I'll do that," Virgil said. "But things could get pretty inconvenient for you, to do it that way. But if that's the way you want to go, it's up to you."

Slibe asked, "What's that supposed to mean?"

Virgil shrugged. "If we get a warrant for weapons… they'll take all of them. No skin off our ass. Wind up sending in a crime-scene crew, search everything out here."

"Aw, fuck. The goddamn government." Slibe screwed the oil cap back on the chain saw and said, "All right. In the house."

"Let me get my notebook," Virgil said. "I'll write you out a receipt."

He walked over to the truck, got a notebook, dug his pistol out from under the seat, and clipped it under his jeans in the small of his back. Turning out of the truck, he saw the Deuce slide back behind the double-wide.

He followed Slibe to the house; up close, it looked as neat as it did from the road. The kitchen was like Signy's, small, with a two-chair table, with a dog-fancier newspaper folded on the table. Slibe went to a kitchen drawer, pulled it open, rattled some forks around, came up with a small key, walked down a hall to a closet, and opened it, to reveal a steel gun safe.

He popped the safe, which had at least four rifles and two shot-guns, and, on the top shelf, showed the stock of a large-frame handgun. He pulled out a rifle and handed it to Virgil-a military-look semiautomatic Colt AR-15 Sporter II with open sights. More than enough to take out McDill. He hadn't heard back from Mapes on the extraction marks, but Mapes had thought they were probably from a bolt action, not from a semiauto.