They went, Virgil following Coakley’s taillights through the winter night’s gloom. The temperatures were in the teens, not too bad, but there was no traffic at all. They rolled along, alone, for nine minutes. Schickel called to confirm that the Platts and the Floods had gone to the Steinfelds’ farm.
They dropped Virgil’s truck on a narrow loop road away from the major routes into the Steinfelds’, and Virgil loaded his gear into Coakley’s truck. In another two minutes, they were down another small lane across a half-mile-wide cornfield, looking south, at the back of the Steinfelds’ barn, barely visible through a heavy woodlot.
They unloaded without speaking, got into the winter gear, picked up the sleeping bags and a pack with the binoculars, flashlights, and granola bars. Coakley was breathing hard, excited; Virgil said, quietly—the night was so silent he could hear his heart beating—“The one thing that could go really big wrong is if somebody’s sitting in that woodlot with a starlight scope. If we should take some fire, stay on the ground and scream for Schickel to start calling them. Don’t try to run unless we’re still way out.”
She stopped her preparation for a moment and asked, “What are the chances of that?”
“Small, and very small, but not zero. But I doubt they’d actually shoot somebody down without knowing who they are.”
THEY CROSSED a ditch and then a fence, crunching though the snow; hardly any wind, but deep, deep darkness, broken only by the lights around the farmstead. Schickel said that there were at least thirty cars around the barnyard and driveway.
Crossing the field took almost fifteen minutes. They were walking with the furrows, rather than across them, which made life easier, but not easy. At the edge of the woodlot, they paused to listen and heard, very faintly, somebody singing.
Coakley whispered, “It’s like a choir song.”
“‘ Lift High the Cross,’” Virgil whispered back. “Let’s get in the woods.”
The woodlot was a tangled mess, and after pushing twenty or thirty feet in, they gave up and sat down.
Watched the barn, heard more hymns. Watched the barn. Heard somebody speaking, but couldn’t make out the words. The rhythm of the speech, though, sounded like that of a sermon. They sat for half an hour, and then Virgil put his face close to Coakley’s and said, “It’s a bust. Let’s go.”
“What?”
“We’re not going to see anything—I’m feeling sort of dumb. Let’s go.”
“Just like that?”
“Lee, we’re not getting anywhere. Come on.”
She didn’t argue. They couldn’t see anything, couldn’t hear specific words, couldn’t get closer. They walked back out of the woodlot, running into stumps and downed limbs, then trudged back across the field, following their incoming tracks as best they could. They hadn’t even had a chance to eat a granola bar, or use the binoculars, Virgil thought. At Coakley’s truck, they pulled off the heavy gear and climbed inside, and Coakley fired it up and they headed back to Virgil’s truck.
“What a waste. Got the airplane and everything.” She got on the radio and told Schickel that they could head back to Blue Earth. He said okay, and she clicked off and grumbled, “I oughta dock my own pay.”
“Wasn’t your idea,” Virgil said.
“Ah, well.”
Virgil asked, “When you were a cop, were you pretty law-abiding?”
She thought about that for a full fifteen seconds, then said, “As much as possible.” Then, “What do you have in mind?”
“Karl Rouse is an amateur photographer. A guy in town told me he used to buy a ton of Polaroid film, and as soon as digital came in, he began buying a lot of digital paper. In other words, he wanted to make photos that nobody else would see. He has a young daughter, probably a year younger than Kelly Baker. They may have been friends.”
“And . . .”
“If you were to drop me off at their place, I’d make sure they aren’t home, and then take an unofficial look around.”
“You mean . . . inside the house?” she asked.
“If I can get in,” Virgil said.
“Oh, jeez, Virgil, I don’t know. What if they come back . . . what if they have a dog?”
“I don’t think they have a kennel, and if you were down the road with a radio, I could get out,” he said.
“But people lock their doors now,” Coakley said. “They don’t leave them open.”
“If they’ve got good locks, I couldn’t get in,” Virgil said. “I don’t know how to pick locks or anything. I’d just have to