“Yeah, what’d you expect?”

“Cops. They look like cops. They dress like farmers and they still look like cops. The stink hangs on them. Even the chick,” Skinner said.

“Careful with that ‘chick.’ She’s probably armed.”

“See, the thing you don’t know is, lots of women cops want you to think of them as chicks,” Skinner said “Because the alternative is, they’re like Nazi prison guards, all waxy-faced and carrying billy clubs. You gotta think about their self-image, not some kind of artificial construct in your own head. And they think they’re ‘chicks.’”

Virgil couldn’t think of an immediate rebuttal—“artificial construct”?—and let it go.

* * *

—

   Bell Wood was a big, square man with a brush mustache and gold-rimmed glasses that made him look a little like Teddy Roosevelt, which he knew. He was a major in the Iowa National Guard and had done a tour in Iraq. His subordinates, relishing the double entendre, called him Major Wood behind his back and occasionally to his face.

The woman with him was slender and square-chinned, had pale brown hair and amber eyes—possibly the best-looking woman in Iowa and all adjacent states. The man who’d driven the pickup truck was narrow-faced, with shoulder-length brown hair and a three-day beard; he would have looked at home on a bench in a bus station. Skinner was right: despite the surface patina of a farmer, he was giving off a distinct law enforcement vibe.

Skinner, in the meantime, had introduced himself to the woman, whom he then introduced to Virgil as Katie Easton. Virgil shook her hand, and he shook hands with the bus bench guy, Joe Rivers, and Wood asked Skinner, “You’re the kid who found the trailer?”

“Yeah. It’s a couple of miles back north.”

Virgil pulled an aerial view up on his iPad, and they gathered around the hood of his Tahoe and looked at it. “Can’t see the trailer,” Wood said.

“Can’t see it from off the property, either,” Skinner said. “It’s right . . . here.” He put his index finger on the center of the farmstead’s woodlot.

“All right. Well, we’ve got a warrant on the basis of the video Virgil sent me, so we can go in. We’ll move as soon as this Larry Van Den Berg shows up with his truck. If he doesn’t show, we’ll go in at noon, or thereabouts.” Wood said. “You guys better hang back. We’ll wave you in.”

“If you run into trouble?”

“Then we’ll wave you in faster,” Wood said.

* * *

—

Virgil and Skinner waited while Wood, Easton, and Rivers armored up. They didn’t look at Easton, because she was so pretty that they didn’t want to be seen staring. When the Iowans were ready to go, Wood handed Virgil a police handset, and said, “You know how these work. Turn up the volume and leave it on your passenger seat.”

Virgil took the radio, and, two seconds later, his cell phone beeped: Jenkins.

“Van Den Berg showed up, ran inside his house, came back out two minutes later, jumped in his truck, and he’s headed your way. In a hurry.”

“Excellent. Stay way back, don’t let him spot you,” Virgil advised.

“You mean, like experienced cops?”

“Exactly. You’ve got a half hour ride.”

* * *

—

Virgil relayed the word to Wood, who said, “Then we gotta go. I want to cruise the place. I’ll get off at a crossroad as far down as I can get and still see the truck coming in. And I want to take Mr. Skinner with me while we make the pass at the house. I’ll drop him off before we go in, and you can pick him up while we wait.”

Virgil nodded. “I’ll follow from way back. There’s not much time . . .”

* * *

—

   Wood’s Mustang, with Easton and Skinner riding along, was a black dot on the horizon when Virgil saw it take the left turn past Ralph Van Den Berg’s place. Rivers, in the pickup, continued on the highway past Van Den Berg’s and, before Virgil got to the turn, pulled into a field access track and parked, so conspicuous in the pickup that he was inconspicuous.

Virgil took the left past Van Den Berg’s, following Wood. The house was a blue-painted rambler with faded white shutters, and sat a bit lower than the road, with a detached garage to one side and a red metal barn in back. A sprawling woodlot sat west of the house along a fence line. Virgil saw no hint of a trailer. Janet Fischer had referred to the place as “an acreage,” and Virgil estimated there were six, surrounded by bean fields that didn’t seem attached to Van Den Berg’s place.

Access to the house was by a wide driveway across a culvert; the ditch along the front was four feet deep and steep-walled. There were four cars; and three men and a woman were standing in the driveway, talking, an air of tension or contention about them. They were dressed for work—canvas jackets, long-sleeved shirts, jeans, and boots. All four cars were pulling trailers.

The people in the yard looked toward Virgil as he went past. But dusty Tahoes were as common as pickups, and Virgil accelerated away and, a mile farther down the road, found Wood parked around a turn on a side road. Wood, Easton, and Skinner got out of the Mustang and walked back to Virgil as he pulled in behind them. Virgil got out, and Wood said, “More of a crowd than I expected.”

“We should get my guys to fall in behind Joe and arrive all at once,” Virgil said. “You guys can lead, but if there’s trouble, we’ll have six cops right on top of them. I’ll come in last and put the Tahoe across the driveway—they won’t make it across the front ditch pulling trailers if somebody decides to run for it.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Wood said. “Talk to your guys. They must be, what, ten minutes out?”

“Something like that,” Virgil said.

He got on his phone to Jenkins and asked where he was. “Got a ways to go yet. Shrake’s iPad says we’re still ten miles north of the Iowa line. We’re staying way back.”

Virgil told them to look for Joe Rivers and follow him in. “There are a bunch of people there, at least four, and maybe more that I didn’t see. We’re all going in at once.”

* * *

—

They waited. It was a clear, cool, damp day in northern Iowa, ankle-high beans and corn as far as they could see. Blue metal silos were sticking up here and there, marking farmsteads. A cock pheasant sprinted across the road a hundred yards down. Easton leaned her well-toned butt against the Mustang and thumb-typed on her cell phone while Skinner ambled back and forth between the vehicles, hands in his pockets, occasionally glancing at Easton. Waiting.