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second woman, he called Mickey Berenson, who was sleeping when he called. He explained the situation, and said, “. . . so we’re trying to get in touch with her.”
    “Oh, jeez, I haven’t seen her in a long time. You know, she was hanging out with Jimmy Sharp. He’s from Shinder, too, he was two grades ahead of us. I think they were getting serious.”
    She didn’t have Sharp’s number, either, but said Sharp’s father lived in Shinder, and might know where his son was, and maybe Becky, too. Virgil thanked her, and went on to Caroline O’Meara’s house, and found her loading sacks of used clothing into the bed of a Toyota Tacoma. She and her mother, O’Meara said, were on their way to a flea market, and were already running late. “I talked to Becky, mmm, last fall, I think, about Halloween. She was back with Jimmy Sharp, they were cruising around town in Jimmy’s dorkmobile.”
    “And that would be . . .”
    “A black Pontiac Firebird, about a hundred years old. Like he was king shit, or something. My boyfriend said he’d be lucky to get it back to the Cities before the tranny fell on the ground.”
    “You sound like you don’t care for him,” Virgil suggested.
    “Well, he’s an asshole. Ask anyone. He was the biggest bully the whole time I was in school,” she said.
    “You know where he works?”
    “No. I doubt that he works. Might sell a little pot or something. He had a job down at the Surprise for a while.”
    “I was just there.”
    “Yeah,” she said. “You come to Shinder, you wind up at the Surprise. If you live here, you wind up working there, sooner or later. Jimmy got fired after he got in a fight with Larry Panero. Larry wouldn’t hurt a fly, but Jimmy got on him and never quit.”
    “Huh. Where could I find Jimmy’s father?”
    •   •   •
    SHARP’S FATHER LIVED in an old wind-burned farmhouse at the far northwest corner of town. O’Meara had told him to look for the only red-painted place at the end of January Street, with a dirt track leading up to the side of the house: “Mean old redneck, is what he is.” A broken-down garage sat at the end of the track.
    Virgil pulled into the dooryard and got out. There’d been a little breeze, early, but that had gone, and the place was dead silent—so silent that he paused, just to listen, and heard nothing at all. The nearest neighboring house was probably two hundred yards away, with an old car parked in front of it, but there was no movement there, either.
    Virgil paid attention to the general vibe, then stepped back to the car, climbed inside, got his gun, and slipped it into his back waistband, under his jacket. Bad feeling. He went to the back stoop, knocked, got no response, knocked louder. Still no response. He backed off and looked toward the garage, with its antique side-folding doors. The doors were partly open, and after another look around, he went that way.
    The car inside the garage was a newer Dodge Charger, with current Missouri plates. There was nobody around the garage, and he turned to walk away when he noticed the bumper stickers. One side featured an oval Thizz Hands sticker, and the other a sticker that said, “Free Li’l Boosie.” Li’l Boosie, Virgil believed, was currently spending his days in the Louisiana State Pen for issues involving guns and drugs; and, judging from the house, he thought it exceedingly unlikely that Old Man Sharp—he didn’t know the old man’s first name—was a big gangsta rap fan.
    Which made the car, in the eyes of a perceptive law enforcement official, something of an anomaly. Virgil noted the car’s tag number, went back to his truck, called the number into the BCA duty officer, and told him to run it.
    After a moment, the duty officer asked, “Uh, where are you, Virgil?”
    “In Shinder. Minnesota. Out west,” Virgil said.
    “Where’s this car?”
    “Sitting in a garage out here,” Virgil said. “I’m looking at it.”
    “You got your gun with