As Yeager drove back to town, Broker worked at shoring up his compartments. He lit another of Nina’s cigarettes. He tore open the pack and counted; nine remaining.
He stared straight ahead, fixed on the dead-straight two-lane narrowing down to a vanishing point. He avoided the image that waited one mental partition away-of Nina lying dead in a North Dakota ditch.
He refocused on the present. At least he had blundered into a good fit with these guys. Especially Holly, who had migrated past tough, scary, and super-elite, achieving now the cool intensity of a ghost. He was utterly without affect, like he was already spending his weekends on the other side.
Yeager was smart enough to know he was running with the big time. But he was proud and grounded and suspicious enough not to take it all too seriously until he had proof.
And they had none of the macho posturing that afflicted some cops, feds, and soldiers. Usually the ones with the peacock-strut were the guys who’d only shot their weapons at stationery targets under the watchful eyes of a range officer.
As the grain elevators and water towers of Langdon came into sight, Yeager finally reached his wife.
“Pam, find me a phone number on Irv Fuller in the Cities. Somebody’s gotta be in touch with him. And it’s urgent.” He ended the call, put down the phone, and turned to Broker in the passenger seat.
“Irv Fuller’s dad had a construction business in town. Irv’s dad and Ace’s dad always got in these pissing contests back and forth over equipment. But the thing that got me thinking is-Irv and Dale were in the same class in school. Along with Ginny Weller and Gordy Riker. And those three really stuck it to Dale senior year.
“Then Irv and Ginny got married when Irv took over his dad’s business. Ginny wanted to leave town, Irv wanted to stay. Ginny left him and took up with an attorney in Grand Forks.
“After Ginny left him, Irv migrated to the Cities about seven years ago and remarried a gal whose dad had a construction outfit. Irv’s dad and father-in-law threw in together and word is, now he’s got this big operation.”
Yeager turned to Holly, “Except Ginny went missing and Dale Shuster blacked out her eyes in his yearbook.”
“That yearbook. Somebody should take a look at Fuller’s picture,” Broker said.
“You got it,” Yeager said. “And I want to go back to the shed and look at that loader. It’s the same model as the one Dale sold to Irv. Maybe we look at it we can get more of a picture on those channels.” Then he picked up his mike and called dispatch. “Anyone get a line on Gordy Riker?”
“Nobody seen him since yesterday morning. He bought some doughnuts at Linder’s bakery.”
Yeager looked at Broker. “You ain’t missing after just twenty-four hours. He could be down at Devil’s Lake fishing.”
“Still,” Broker said.
“Yeah,” Yeager said. He keyed the mike again. “Kruse, you monitor?”
“I’m here, Jimmy.”
“Could you check that yearbook they found. Look for Irv Fuller in the senior pictures. Tell me if there’s anything weird about the picture.”
“Ten-four.”
Three minutes later they were pulling in at Shuster’s shed when Kruse called back: “No Fuller. In fact no names starting with F.”
“Burned?” Broker asked.
“Missing. Just ragged paper curled against the binding. Page has been ripped out.”
“Thanks,” Yeager said and hung up the mike. Broker, Yeager, and Holly exchanged apprehensive looks and got out of the car. Across the highway Lyle waved. Yeager called to him. “Where’s the crime lab?”
“On the way. Probably another half-hour.”
While the two cops traded information, Broker felt the first delayed panic attack flap through his chest. He looked up into the blazing sun, shivered, lit another of Nina’s cigarettes.
Eight.
They tried the front office door, found it locked and walked around back. The rear entrance was a tall, wooden, barn-type sliding door. Only rusty wheels on a rail resisted them. They pushed the door open and went inside.
The John Deere 644C front-loader sat in veils of heat and shadow like a giant yellow steel-and-rubber Sphinx. It stood ten feet tall to the roof of the cab and weighed fifteen tons. The bucket rested on the ground at the end of the lowered hydraulic boom and cylinder. Motionless, it mocked them like a deceptive, sleeping beast of burden with long yellow steel muscles and fat, four-foot-high Michelin tires.
A spray of white dots speckled the cab, the motor assembly, the huge wheels, and the bucket. Pinpoints coming in through birdshot punctures in the tin roof.
Broker imagined Ace or even Dale: country kids with their dad’s shotgun, knocking down pigeons.
The left rear counterweight was missing from the chassis.
Holly leaned forward and rested his right palm against the hot metal where the missing weight should be. He closed his eyes-Spock in a Vulcan mind-meld. Abruptly he turned, walked from the pole barn, and went around to the right, into the weeds, generally in the direction of the buried counterweight.
Broker and Yeager walked around the machine, trying to puzzle out Dale Shuster’s strange millwork. Then they wandered up toward the office area, which had been stripped clean. No phone. No computer. Just the chair, a desk, and the small refrigerator, unplugged, empty, with the door open. Yeager’s eyes traveled around the empty structure, then his cell rang. He answered. It was his wife. He hunched the phone to the crook of his neck, took a notepad and a pen from his chest pocket, and jotted something down. Thanked her and hung up.
“We got Irv Fuller. He lives in Lake Elmo, Minnesota,” Yeager said. “Just a sec, I gotta take a leak.” He went into the bathroom as Holly came back in the shed. Yeager flushed the toilet. Came out. He called to Holly. “We got a location on Irv Fuller.”
Holly nodded, walked faster.
But something had Broker thinking. “I only met Dale once,” he said. “Yesterday morning. With Kit.”
“Yeah,” Yeager said, momentarily distracted, yawning in the heat.
“Kit said he was weird. She used the bathroom and she said it was creepy because when she went in there she found blue poop in the toilet…”
“What?” Holly came alert, pale eyes zeroing in as he moved closer. “She said what?”
“Something about blue poop. I thought she meant that some toilet-bowl cleaner-”
“No.” Holly bit off the syllable. “I spent five days with Kit.” He waved his hands for quiet as he came closer, then he jabbed his finger. “She never made anything up. She was not suggestible at all. Not easily influenced. She was always very precise. If she said blue poop, she saw blue poop.”
“Holly, man; slow down,” Broker said.
“Slow down, my ass. Blue poop does not normally occur in nature. Blue poop is one of the side effects of ingesting ferric hexacyanoferrate II, a mineral compound commonly known as the paint pigment Prussian blue. It was invented in Berlin around 1704.” He took a step forward and tapped Broker on the chest. “Guys. Prussian blue has other uses. It’s an antidote to radiation poisoning. It absorbs thallium and cesium 137 in the intestines. Then the radioactive isotopes are excreted.”
Broker and Yeager stared at him.
Holly went on, “Blue shit in Dale Shuster’s toilet means he could have been working around something radioactive and taking precautions.”
“Jesus. And he’s drilling big hidey holes in construction machinery,” Broker said.
“I think we gotta locate that machine fast,” Holly said.
Yeager referred to his notepad and punched numbers in his cell. They huddled around him. His lips jerked in a disappointed expression. “Got an answering machine.”
“Wait. Don’t leave a message. End the call. If Dale’s got Nina…” Broker said. “What if he’s in contact with Dale? It would telegraph we’re onto him.” He asked Yeager, “Would people in town call Irv about the shooting and Dale disappearing?”
Yeager shrugged. “Possibly, but he’s been gone quite a while.”
“Broker’s right,” Holly said. “We want to talk to Fuller face-to-face. So where is he?”
“Lake Elmo, Minnesota.” They looked at Broker.
“Little town east of the Twin Cities, just south of where I was working last week,” Broker said. “I could call the county sheriff’s department, they could track down Fuller.”
Holly shook his head. “Same problem, might signal we’re coming. We have to hit him cold. Just us.” Holly was moving toward the door, reaching for his cell phone. “C’mon, Yeager, we need a ride to the PAR radar site.”
They piled into the cruiser and Yeager wheeled onto the highway. Holly started talking fast into his cell. “Screw what they say. Northern Route is active again. So get the bird ready, file a flight plan to Lake Elmo, Minnesota…Okay, it’s a direct order, I take full responsibility. Just get the bird ready. Lay on some ground transportation, location to come.” Holly ended the call and smiled, back in the game.
“You borrowing another helicopter?” Broker asked.
“Step on it. We gotta get in the air before the pilots start having qualms,” Holly said, leaned over the seat. “And, Yeager, you have to come with us.”
Yeager’s eyes went wide. “Where? To Minnesota? In a stolen Army helicopter. You’re shitting me.”
“He’s right,” Broker said. “You know Fuller. We don’t.”
Yeager reached for his radio handset. Holly leaned over the seat and stayed Yeager’s hand. “Don’t call. Just go. Trust me.”
“Jesus,” Yeager said. “Gotta tell ’em something.” He called dispatch. “Karen, this is Jimmy. Ah, I’m going to be outta the car for a few hours. Personal time.”
Broker said, “The sheriff said he had enough bodies to handle the scene here. He told you to keep an eye on us, right?”
“If it’s nothing, you’ll be back in a couple of hours,” Holly said.
Shaking his head, sweating profusely, Yeager drove the speed limit through town. He cast a pained expression at the county office building. “Norm ain’t gonna like this.”
“C’mon, punch it,” Holly said.
Fifteen minutes later they hurried through the security checkpoint at the radar base and drove to the helipad. Following Holly’s instructions, Yeager parked his cruiser in a hangar out of sight. Without consulting with anyone, they jogged across the strip and got in the waiting Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk.