SIX

It was easy to justify my behavior to myself. I was getting the Iron Range Bandits off the street—no thefts, no guns, no danger to themselves or their potential victims. I would go through the motions of organizing a stickup until everyone was comfortable, I would convince Roy to lead me to his friendly neighborhood gunrunner, and then I would turn the lot of them over to the ATF, FBI, BCA, Silver Bay PD, county sheriff, and whoever else wanted a piece. In the meantime, I wouldn’t be compelled to participate in any criminal activities myself, which would please Bobby Dunston no end. The more I thought about it, the more clever I felt. Not to mention quick-witted, resourceful, and ingenious. I went to bed thinking I was smarter than Ernest Hamwi, the man who first thought to serve ice cream in rolled-up waffles. When I woke the next morning, I was just as impressed with myself.

This is good, my inner voice told me. You’re doing God’s work.

“You da man,” I said aloud as I did a little dance.

I thought I was alone in the cabin. Josie poked her head around the doorway that led to the bathroom and looked at me.

“Did you say something?” she asked.

“Hmm? Me? No.”

“Thought I heard something.”

She stepped into the living room. Gone were the boots, baggy coveralls, sweatshirt, and ball cap that she used to disguise herself the previous day. They were replaced by flip-flops; khaki shorts that revealed long, slender legs; and a light, pink sweater that Josie had buttoned from her waist to just below her chin. She had allowed her auburn hair to cascade around her shoulders.

“Dyson, what are we going to do first?” she asked.

“Get some breakfast,” I said.

Josie had grilled chicken on the deck the evening before, and I hadn’t eaten anything since, although I had consumed plenty of cheap beer. Afterward, everyone except Skarda and myself departed to their separate homes, taking their thin stacks of currency with them. Jill didn’t get a share, and I had asked Josie about that.

“It’s the way Roy wants it,” she told me. I took that to mean Roy was desperate to keep Jill under his thumb. Give her money and she might use it to leave him.

Only Skarda and I had remained overnight. When he wasn’t looking, I took the grocery bags filled with checks and receipts and stashed them beneath the cabin.

Early in the morning, we went fishing, using the late owner’s boat and equipment; he had a nice Shakespeare rod and reel outfit and an impressive tackle box. Yet despite Skarda’s promise of fish, we were both skunked. While we were on the lake, I unceremoniously dropped the Glock overboard, making sure Skarda saw me do it. When he asked why, I told him there was an unsubstantiated rumor that it had been employed in the commission of a felony and I didn’t want the authorities to get the wrong idea should they find it on me. “Never keep the gun, Dave. Never.” He nodded his head in agreement as if my advice had come straight from the mount. ’Course, I didn’t mention that I dumped the Glock to make sure nobody discovered it had been loaded with blanks. (You had to give Bullert credit; he didn’t leave much to chance.)

By the time we got off the lake, the Iron Range Bandits were already gathering on the deck. I went inside and changed clothes. I didn’t have much to choose from, just the stuff we had tossed into the nylon bag in the back of the Explorer before staging the escape. I thought I was the only one in the cabin until Josie appeared.

“What are we going to do after breakfast?” she asked.

“It’s like I told Jimmy last night. We need to find an armored truck and follow it around for a few days. Armored trucks generally have a tightly choreographed routine of stops and starts—supermarkets, bank branches, department stores, casinos, anyplace with an ATM. What we’re looking for is a weakness, something we can exploit. I remember there were these two armored car guards working outside San Francisco a couple years ago. Turned out they always stopped at the same coffeehouse. They’d stop there at different times of the day, but it was always the same coffeehouse. One afternoon a crew met them at the front door with guns, took their keys, forced them back into the truck, drove to a prearranged location, looted the truck, and left them tied up in the back. Feds said the crew got away with the proverbial undisclosed amount of cash. I’m here to tell you that it was nearly eight hundred thousand dollars.”

“How do you know?”

“How do I know what?”

“How do you know…” Josie was watching my eyes. They told her to stop asking questions, so she did.

I’m getting good at this, I thought.

“Where do we start?” Josie asked.

“I’m not familiar with the area, so I’m going to need someone to drive.” I pointed at her.

“Me?” she said.

“Can’t use Dave. He and I are still wanted, and while it’s unlikely that anyone will recognize me, Dave is known up here. All things considered, I think it’s best that Roy and I keep our distance as much as possible. The old man—with due respect, he’s too old for what I have in mind, and Jimmy, he’s a little too enthusiastic. That leaves you.”

“Jillian…”

“I want her kept out of this. She should never have been involved in the first place.”

“You seem to have taken quite a fancy to her.”

“She’s the little sister I never had.”

“Is that it? She’s quite beautiful, you know.”

“I make it a point not to lust after any woman who hasn’t voted in at least three presidential elections.”

“I don’t think Jill’s voted in any yet. Besides, she’s married.”

“There’s that, too.”

“If you need a woman…”

“Excuse me?”

“I’m just saying…”

“Josie, are you offering yourself to me?”

She blushed, actually blushed—you don’t often see that in a grown woman. Her eyes grew wide, her freckles sparkled, her mouth opened, and she took a step backward.

“No,” she said. “I should say not. I mean—I meant a married woman, Jill is a married woman, and Roy—Roy has a temper and, and there are others who would be willing, that you can, but not—dammit.”

She spun on her heel and quickly walked out of the cabin, letting the door slam behind her.

“Oh, well,” I said.

*   *   *

I joined her on the deck a few moments later. The Bandits watched me expectantly. I didn’t want them to think too much, so I told them what I had in mind.

“Josie will be my driver,” I said. “Jimmy, you’re the tech guy.” Jimmy grinned widely and jumped up from the picnic table as if he had been chosen first in a game of dodge ball. “I want you go to your computer and locate all of the cash-intensive businesses you can. I don’t mean in a ten-mile radius, either. I mean throughout the Iron Range. Compile a list. Afterward, I want you to mark their locations on a map of the area. A big map.”

“I’m on it,” he said.

“Roy, you’re my procurement officer. We’re going to need vehicles, coveralls, gloves, masks, nylon restraints like the kind cops use, weapons, of course—I’m not sure exactly what we’ll need, but I need you to think about where we’re going to get this stuff, anyway.”

“Are we going to buy or steal?” he asked.

“We’ll steal the cars.” Roy’s pupils grew larger. “Don’t worry, I’ll show you how.”

“You should have seen how he stole the Jeep Cherokee,” Skarda said. “It was beautiful.”

“Dave,” I said. “You talk way too much.”

“Sorry.”

“Try to work on that.”

“I will.”

“Which reminds me—I don’t need to tell you all to keep quiet about this, do I? You’re conspiring to commit a major felony. You can be arrested just for that alone. Please, please don’t tell your friends. Don’t tell your relatives. Don’t get drunk and brag about it in a bar. If you want to stay out of prison, this is a secret you take to your graves.”

“Hear, hear,” said the old man. He seemed to have recovered nicely from the Silver Bay raid. He was wearing a tie-dyed T-shirt and sitting in his frayed lawn chair at the head of the picnic table. An unlit joint hung from his lips. The look in his eye suggested it wasn’t his first of the day. I asked the obvious question.

“Are you smoking dope?”

“It’s medicinal marijuana,” he said.

Does he have cancer? my inner voice asked. I glanced at Josie for confirmation. She was rolling her eyes. I guess not.

“It’s important that we keep a clear head,” I said.

“You got a job for me?” the old man asked.

“Not today.”

He spread his arms wide. “Still say you look like a narc.”

“Keep it to yourself.”

“What do you want me to do?” Skarda asked.

I gestured at the old man again. “Take your father fishing. And keep out of sight. You’re hot, remember?”

“So are you.”

“No one will recognize me. You, on the other hand, are known hither and yon. Don’t worry about it, Dave. You’ll have plenty to do when the time comes.”

“Should I be doing anything?” Jill asked. Her voice was so soft I barely heard it. I found her eyes. They betrayed her apprehension.

“No,” I said. “I won’t ask you to do anything on this job. You’ll be left completely out of it. All I want you to do is go home and pretend that you’re not surrounded by a bunch of lowlife maniac thieves, okay?”

She didn’t quite smile, but her face seemed to brighten a bit just the same. “Thank you,” she said.

Roy glanced from Jill to me to her and back to me again. “What do you mean, she’s out of it?” he asked.

I ignored the question, although I knew it would come up again, and soon.

“One more thing, people,” I said. “I’m not a big believer in this honor among thieves BS. Everything you heard about being a stand-up guy and not snitching, not informing—forget that. It’s okay to look out for yourself. I highly recommend it. All I ask is that you give everyone the same courtesy that the CIA asks of its operatives—a twenty-four-hour head start. If you’re arrested, don’t even give out your name, rank, or serial number. Keep absolutely quiet for twenty-four hours; give the rest of us a chance to run and hide. After that, I advise you to do whatever you need to to protect yourself, and good luck to you.”

“Hear that, Roy?” Skarda asked.

“What’s that suppose to mean?” Roy said.

“Your gun dealers—you’ve been keeping their names a secret so that you have something to trade to the cops if you get arrested, make a deal to help yourself while the rest of us go to prison. Well, now you’ve got our blessing.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Dave,” I said. He looked at me, and I ran my thumb and index finger across my lips like I was closing a zipper.

“I was just saying,” he said.

“Okay.” I clapped my hands together and rubbed them back and forth. “Let’s get to work.”

Josie and I left the deck and circled the cabin to where Josie’s Taurus was parked. We were going to take her car because my Jeep Cherokee, after all, was stolen. Roy followed us. I kind of figured he would.

“Wait a minute, Dyson,” he called.

“What do you need?” I asked.

His fingers curled into fists as he approached, and his eyes darted from my hands to my chin, nose, eyes, throat, groin, and knees—they were target glances, something I was taught to look for when I was at the police academy. The sonuvabitch is going to throw a punch, my inner voice warned. I waited.

“What is this bullshit?” he asked.

“Could you be more specific?”

His fists tightened and his teeth clenched. “I saw the look you gave my wife.”

“What look?”

He stopped with his left foot forward and his right foot back, a pugilistic stance. He cocked his right arm. I hit him hard in the jaw with a left jab, but he took it like a bitch-slap from an old man with arthritis. I hit him again with my right, this time putting all of my weight into it. He fell backward, bounced against the cabin wall, and slid slowly to a sitting position. For a moment he looked like a pile of laundry before being tossed into the washer.

“Dyson,” Josie shouted.

“What? I’m supposed to wait until he hit me?” I moved close to Roy and leaned in. “You were going to hit me, weren’t you, Roy?”

He nodded even as he brought a hand up to cradle his jaw.

“I guess you’re upset that I cut Jill out of the crew, am I right?” He nodded again. “Maybe you think I have the hots for her.” His eyes locked on mine. “Not true. It really isn’t. She’s out because she doesn’t have the stomach for any of this; she doesn’t have the heart for it. Jill’s gone along with you so far because you made her. Every step of the way, though, she’s been thinking she should run—you can see it in her eyes, in her demeanor. Your slapping her around isn’t helping any, either. All it does is make her want to run that much more. Where do you think she’s going to run to, Roy, if you keep punching her out? She’s going to run to the cops, and then we’re all screwed.”

“She won’t go to the police.”

“What’s stopping her, Roy? Her undying devotion to you? I have no doubt that Jill loved you once, but I think you’ve pretty much beaten it out of her. I understand that times are tough; I understand that they’re tougher on some than on others. Beating on the one person who has vowed to stick with you for better or for worse, tell me how that helps? Look, your personal life is your business. If you don’t love your wife, that’s fine with me—”

“I love my wife.”

“I hadn’t noticed, but that’s not my concern. My concern is staying out of prison, so Jill is out of it. It wouldn’t kill you to be nice to her until the job is over, either. You might try to remember why you married her in the first place—I bet you had some pretty good reasons.”

I stepped back and offered Roy my hand. He took it, and I helped hoist him off the ground.

“No hard feelings, okay?” I said. “I need you, Roy. These kids, they don’t know which end is up. If we’re going to pull this off, it’ll be you and me doing the heavy lifting. I know I’ve been giving you a hard time since I arrived. That was just to establish hierarchy for the kids. You’re army; you understand what I’m talking about.”

He nodded, and I patted his arm.

“Good man,” I said. I started walking toward Josie’s car. Roy called to me.

“Dyson. When this is over, I’m going to kick the shit out of you.”

“Roy, Roy, Roy,” I said. “When this is over, you’re going to be too busy counting your money to even think about that.”

A few moments later, Josie and I were in her car and heading toward the county road. She had an amused expression on her face. I knew she wanted me to ask her about it, so I did.

“You handled that really well,” she said. “You not only got Jill out of the robbery, you got Roy to agree with you. He doesn’t even seem all that angry that you punched him. How did you do that?”

“I read a business book once, The One Minute Manager. It taught me everything I know about running a crew.”

“Did it teach you how to be a criminal?”

“No, that I learned reading Donald Trump’s autobiography.”

*   *   *

Krueger was a “city” in name only. The entire community could have fit easily inside Target Field with room left over for an executive golf course. There was very little of it that I could not see from the road: an orange-brick schoolhouse next to an overgrown football field and an outdoor hockey rink, the boards still up even though the ice had been gone for months now; a gas station/minimart at the crossroads; a bar, restaurant, hardware store, bait and tackle shop; a building that looked like a barn with KRUEGER VOLUNTEER FIRE DEPT. painted above the door. A half-dozen businesses made up Krueger’s downtown, with an abundance of empty parking spaces in front of them. Houses packed close together, some new, most old, surrounded the downtown. They thinned out as we drove; there were longer and longer stretches between neighbors until there were no neighbors at all. Yet I could see plenty of people living their lives—a mother with a stroller, young kids running through sprinklers, older kids playing baseball; a young man working a barbecue grill while his buddies watched, plates in hand; an elderly couple walking down the road, their arms linked.

“A great place to live, I just wouldn’t want to visit here.”

I was speaking to myself. Josie heard me, though, and added, “Until the jobs went away.”

“Not much worth stealing.”

“No, not much. Do we have time enough for me to make a quick stop at my office?”

“Sure.”

Josie’s office was also her home, located on the intersection of paved and gravel county roads. It was small and square and built to resemble a log cabin. A sign clearly visible from both roads read LAKE DREAMS REALTY—SERVING ELY-KRUEGER-BABBITT. She stopped for mail and then went through the front door. I followed. The office was all blond wood, including the large desk that sat at an angle in the corner. Next to the desk was a rack filled with brochures, most citing tourist attractions, area businesses, and financing options. One noted that “Ely ranks 12th on the Field & Stream Magazine 2008 list of Best Fishing Towns in America.” Another stated that “Real Estate is an important element of any long-term investment plan.” Across from the desk four chairs surrounded a round table. A PC was in the center of the table; its screen saver read “Browse our listings of affordable lake homes.”

Beyond the office the house was set up like an efficiency apartment. A doorway behind the desk led to a kitchenette and tiny living room; a staircase in the living room allowed access to a second-floor bathroom and a large bedroom.

While Josie went to her phone and checked her voice mail, I clicked the mouse and skimmed the real estate listings. There were three pages of them. All of the listings had gorgeous photographs and enticing copy; a third were highlighted with the words “Recently Reduced Price” written in red. Josie hung up her phone and cursed loudly. I turned away from the PC to look at her.

“Client just backed out of a sale,” she said. “A hundred and eighty-five thousand dollars.”

“Sorry.”

“I needed that eleven-thousand-dollar commission.”

Josie sat behind her desk and sorted through the stack of mail. “Bill, bill, bill, flyer, request for money, request for money, bill, flyer, and one, two, three preapproved credit card applications. What am I going to do, Dyson?”

“I think you’ve already made that decision.”

“Am I a bad person?”

“Most bad people don’t ask that question. We are not prone to introspection.”

“We?”

Stay in character, stay in character, my inner voice chanted.

“I have no pretensions about what I am,” I said aloud.

“What are you?”

“A thief.”

“I googled the Iron Range Bandits last night. They’re blaming the Silver Bay robbery on us.”

“Lucky you.”

“They don’t seem to have any suspects, though. I mean, nothing to connect us to the robbery.”

“Sweetie, if they did, they wouldn’t tell the newspapers.”

“They mentioned you, though, and don’t call me sweetie.”

“Me?”

“You’re the unidentified suspect that caused a traffic accident that allowed us to escape.”

“It’s like I once told you, I’m a helluva guy. Did I tell you that? I’m sure I did.”

“Where are you from, Dyson? I mean, where is home?”

“I don’t remember.”

Dammit, did you say that out loud? my inner voice asked. Truth was, I couldn’t remember where Dyson was from. You should have done a better job studying his profile.

“I don’t have a home, Josie,” I said aloud. “I had to give that up.”

She studied me from across her desk for what seemed like a long time. “Will I have to give up my home?” she asked.

It was a good question. My deal with Harry and Bullert was for information identifying the gunrunners. I made no promises concerning the Iron Range Bandits, and like Bullert said, I was under no legal obligation to report their crimes. It was possible I could do what I came there to do and leave them out of it.

But they’re thieves, my inner voice reminded me. How many jobs have they pulled?

That’s not my problem, I told myself.

Whose problem is it?

“I don’t know, Josie,” I said aloud. “We’ll see.”

*   *   *

A few minutes later, we were back on the road. We drove northwest until we reached Ely. Compared to Krueger, Ely was a teeming metropolis with thirty-eight resorts, twenty-seven outfitters, six bait shops, thirteen restaurants, twelve bars, nine motels, and two B&Bs, plus art galleries, museums, gift shops, golf courses, parks, and the International Wolf Center. Nearly all of its businesses catered to tourists lured to the area by the fabled Boundary Waters Canoe Area. It had a listed population of 3,700 people, although that number more than doubled during the summer months when people from the Cities opened their lake homes. Which wasn’t to suggest that it was all sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows. Many of the joys of Ely ended fourteen miles east in the charred remains of the Pagami Creek Forest Fire.

A lightning strike caused the biggest fire in state history, burning over a hundred thousand acres of jack pine, black spruce, white cedar, balsam fir, birch, aspen, ash, and maple trees in the BWCA and even threatened the tiny town of Isabella. Plumes of ash actually settled on the roof of Miller Park in Milwaukee over four hundred miles away. Despite that, the U.S. Forest Service—which allowed the blaze to burn unchecked for over three weeks before stepping in—was pretty much nonchalant about the situation, suggesting that a fire every now and again was necessary to clean up the forest. Josie, for one, was skeptical.

“Tell that to the people who rely on the tourist dollars that the BWCA brings to the area, the resorts and outfitters and whatnot,” she said. “As if the Range didn’t have enough problems.”

Josie wasn’t a particularly good driver. She tended to behave as if there were no other traffic on the road. Still, I had her drive back and forth and around Ely for nearly an hour. She became quite nervous when I had her motor past the county sheriff’s department substation on East Chapman and Second Avenue East—twice. Eventually I found just what I was looking for.

“Hey, a Dairy Queen,” I said.

I made her stop, and we both ordered Blizzards; she had Cappuccino Heath Bar, I had M&M’s. We ate them while sitting in the car in the parking lot. While we ate, a county sheriff’s department patrol car parked two spaces down from us. Josie flinched and gave me a panicked look. I rested a hand on her thigh. Her skin was soft and warm beneath my fingers. I left them there while we watched the two deputies enter the DQ. One was short and thin with sandy, receding hair. The other was tall with a beer belly that rolled over his belt buckle and hung there as if it were looking for a place to sit. We could see them ordering through the store’s large windows.

I did not move my hand, so Josie did it for me, taking my fingers and setting them on my own thigh. “Look,” she said. “They’re paying for their treats with the free coupons they’re supposed to dole out to the kids that they see wearing bicycle helmets.”

McKenzie would have been outraged by the sight; Dyson, not so much.

“Scandalous,” I said. Josie gave me a look that suggested she was disappointed in me. “We’re not exactly Ken and Barbie ourselves,” I reminded her.

“These two—James and Williams—they stopped my father a few months ago. My old man, everyone up here knows he does grass. It’s not a secret. So they stop him for no particular reason and search his car.”

“Is this before or after your cousin decided to go into the drug business?”

“Before, and Jimmy—Jimmy was never in the drug business. We put a stop—do you know he had pictures on his cell phone? He went around showing people photos of his plants and fertilizer and equipment.”

“Gotta like a man who takes pride in his work.”

“But that was—ridiculous.”

“Go on with your story.”

“My dad, they stopped my dad. He wasn’t carrying, okay; didn’t have anything on him. That didn’t faze James and Williams. They supplied a baggie of grass for him, pretended they found it in his trunk and told him—they were laughing when they told him, the old man said—that it felt like it weighed more than two ounces. In Minnesota if you’re caught carrying less than one and a half ounces of grass it’s a three-hundred-dollar fine. More than that, it’s a felony starting at five years in prison and a ten-thousand-dollar fine. As a favor, though, as a favor to my father, they said they’d call it one and a half ounces and he could pay them the fine, pay them the three hundred dollars. This wasn’t a bribe, oh no—Dad said they were very clear about that. They claimed the law was being upheld and my father was being punished for his crime—which he didn’t commit. The difference was they didn’t have to do paperwork, didn’t have to bother the overworked court system, and the old man wouldn’t be going to prison, thus sparing the state the expense of another mouth to feed.”

“I bet your old man paid,” I said.

“Of course he paid. He was so frightened—going to prison. The odd thing is that Dad smokes a lot more grass, drinks a lot more beer, now than he ever did before it happened. Look, Dyson, it’s not just him. Everyone pays. Don’t tell me the county sheriff doesn’t know about it, either. All the other county deputies, they ride one to a car. James and Williams, they ride together—they’re always together. Makes it easier for them to intimidate people.”

“James and Williams, is that their first names or last?” I asked.

“Last. I think their first names are Eugene and Allen. Bullies with a badge.”

“Well, we all have to make a living,” I said—or rather Dyson said. McKenzie had been a cop for eleven and a half years. He wanted to beat the hell out of the two sonuvabitches and then make sure they never carried a badge again.

We remained in the car eating ice cream. At least I ate ice cream; Josie seemed to have lost her taste for it. James and Williams finished theirs before we finished ours and drove off down Sheridan Street, the name the locals gave to Minnesota Highway 1 as it passed through Ely. It was the main drag. Hell, it was the only drag.

“This isn’t going to work,” I said. “Everything is on the same damn road, all the major businesses. If we stop and start along with the armored truck, I don’t care how many car lengths we stay behind, how many times we pass it and then wait down the road for it to pass us, we’re bound to be spotted. Especially if we’re going to repeat it over a three-, four-day period while looking for the best place to hit ’em. We could run a three-car rotation in Ely, a city like Ely, only what about the long stretch of single-lane highway between Ely and Tower or Virginia? It would look like a frickin’ parade.”

Josie stared at me. I wasn’t sure she knew what I was talking about.

“Okay,” I said. “We’ll go to Plan B.”

“There’s a Plan B?” she asked.

“There’s always a Plan B. I just don’t know what it is yet. Call your cousin. Let me talk to him.”

A moment later, Jimmy was on Josie’s cell phone.

“Jimmy,” I said. “I want you to look up the address for Mesabi Security.”

He did. “Their main office is in Duluth, plus they have a terminal in Krueger,” he said.

“A terminal?”

“That’s what it says on its Web site.”

“Hang on.” I lowered the cell and looked at Josie. “Does Mesabi Security have an office in Krueger?”

“Not an office. Just a parking lot.”

“Parking lot?”

“They keep some of their trucks there.”

I stared at her for at least a half-dozen beats, marveling that this woman had made a considered decision to engage in a life of crime. She ate a spoonful of her melting ice cream to be doing something instead of staring back.

“You didn’t think that might be pertinent information, JoEllen?” I asked.

She twirled a lock of auburn hair around her finger and dragged it across her mouth. “Please, mister. Don’t scold me. I’m just a little girl from the Iron Range.”

“Sure you are.”

*   *   *

I studied the Mesabi Security Company’s truck terminal from the parking lot of a roadhouse located on the other side of a county road about three miles east of Krueger. There wasn’t much to it—a small shack and parking lot about the size of a gas station that had been carved out of the forest and surrounded by a high chain-link fence with razor wire strung along the top. There were eight vehicles—three cars, three SUVs, and two pickup trucks—parked inside the enclosure. A short driveway led from the county blacktop to the gate. The gate was open. A large padlock was attached to a thick chain hanging on the fence post. The padlock was open. There was no one in the yard. If there was someone in the office—and I assumed there was—I couldn’t see him.

Josie kept twisting in her seat to look at the entrance to the roadhouse. It was called Buckman’s, and it looked like it had been there since the last time the University of Minnesota went to the Rose Bowl—1962.

“Should we go inside?” she asked.

“Why? Are you thirsty?”

“Won’t people be suspicious if we just sit here?”

“A man and a woman spending time together in a car outside of a bar—no one’s ever seen that before.”

“They know me here.” That caught my attention. “They’ll think I’m spending time with you.”

“Perish the thought.”

“You know what I mean.”

I gestured casually at the shack across the county blacktop. “Do you know who works here?”

“No. Why would I?”

“It’s a small town.”

“Not that small.”

“Sweetie, my high school graduating class was bigger than this.”

“That doesn’t mean we know everybody, and don’t call me sweetie. Besides, the man who works there, he might not even be from Krueger. People don’t necessarily live near their work up here. Distance doesn’t mean the same to us that it does to people in the Cities.”

“Distance, though, that’s why this place exists. I’m guessing Mesabi Security has a lot of clients up here. Instead of commuting all the way from Duluth, especially when the weather’s iffy, they roll some of their armored trucks out of this terminal. Judging by the number of cars in the lot, I’m guessing three.”

“Is that a good thing?”

“Time will tell. Do you have a map?”

“Glove compartment.”

I opened it, found a three-year-old Explore Minnesota Official State Highway Map, and handed it to Josie.

“Tell me your cell phone has a camera.”

She did. I asked her to show me how it worked. Afterward I told her to drive the car to the shack, get out, and ask the attendant for directions.

“Directions where?”

“Josie, I don’t care. I just want you to distract him for a few minutes.”

“Why?”

“So I won’t be seen while I take photos of the padlock.”

“Why do you want to do that?”

“God, you’re worse than your brother.”

“What a terrible thing to say.”

“Do me a favor. Before you walk into the shack, undo a couple of buttons on your sweater.”

“I most certainly will not.”

“Just a thought.”

I slipped out of the Taurus and walked casually down the county road. Josie drove her car out of the roadhouse parking lot to the nearest intersection, flipped a U-turn, and came back, pulling up in front of the shack. As soon as she disappeared inside, I jogged across the blacktop and followed the short driveway to the gate. The padlock was made by Abus, a company I had never heard of. I took photos of each side, plus the top and the bottom. Less than a minute later, I was back on the blacktop and walking away from the terminal. Six minutes after that, the Taurus pulled up, and I jumped into the passenger seat.

“What took you so long?” I asked.

“The attendant wanted to chitchat.”

I glanced at Josie’s chest. She had undone the top three buttons of her sweater.

“I don’t blame him,” I said.

Josie knew exactly what I was talking about. She tried to rebutton her sweater with one hand while driving with the other. The car swerved over the centerline.

“Want me to do that?” I asked.

“I hate you, Dyson. Honest to God I do.”