“Sorry, fellas, but duty calls. Talk to you again soon,” Clyde said, and hung up the phone.
Everyone in the snack bar was staring at him interestedly. As soon as he turned around, twenty sets of dentures bit into as many ninety-nine-cent breakfast specials, and conversation resumed. Clyde walked slowly out to his unit and sat there behind the wheel for ten minutes or so, staring off across the cornfields, covered with frozen stubble.
There were so many strange things about this conversation, he hardly knew where to begin.
They were trying to send him a message. They couldn’t just come out and say it, for some reason, and so they were saying it in other ways.
He had expected that either they would believe him, in which case reinforcements would arrive shortly, or else they’d think he was full of shit, in which case they would ignore him. But instead the message seemed to be, We believe you and you’re on your own.
And there was another thing, too. Something about the way their minds operated.
“Those guys aren’t cops,” he said to no one in particular.
Out on the highway someone stretched a yellow light into red. Clyde pulled out of the Hy-Vee, chased them down, and wrote them a ticket. Which is what real cops did.
What we’ve got on them is that they stink to high heaven.
What was that supposed to mean? You couldn’t get a warrant with some vague nonsense like that. Any evidence they were getting from their phone tap was useless in court. A complete waste of time.
Except that they didn’t seem to care about what would or wouldn’t stand up in court. These guys acted as if the judicial system didn’t exist.
They acted as if they’d never stepped into a courtroom their whole lives. By cop standards they were clowns. Amateurs who never could have graduated from the Iowa Law Enforcement Academy, who would have been drummed out of even Sheriff Mullowney’s department.
So who the hell were they, and what were they doing pretending to be FBI agents?
Chapter Fourty-Six
_ I’m writing this about six hours into our luxury charter flight to the Gulf. They picked us up in a big, nice new 747. Strange to see all these folks in Army green, piling their duffel bags on the edge of the runway and climbing up onto this nice plane. We have stewardesses and everything. For once everyone sat up straight and paid attention when they showed how to use the oxygen masks. We’ve also got our gas masks in the overhead luggage bins in case a Scud hits the airport in Dhahran._
_They served us a meal—not too bad, but nothing like the hot dishes you are probably getting from the Dhonts. Doused the lights a few minutes ago and I tried to sleep but can’t. Walked back to the rest room and looked at the faces of all the people in their green camo (Army doesn’t have enough desert camo to go around yet!). All these regular-looking folks just listening to their Walkmans, or leaning back trying to sleep, or sitting in pools of light like I am right now writing to loved ones. Not a single G.I. Joe among them. Just plain old people like you see on the street, except we all wear the same clothes and call ourselves soldiers. I hope when the time comes we will be._
Clyde read the letter several times over as he sat there in the station wagon in the parking lot of Wapsipinicon Senior High School. Directly in front of him was the breezeway where, long ago, he had watched Desiree handle that Nishnabotna boy and decided that he had to marry her.
Maggie woke up and needed to be changed and fed, which occupied body and mind for a few minutes; a good thing, since the sight of the breezeway had led his thoughts down a sentimental and dangerous path.
Another letter was resting on the front seat of the Murder Car. This one had been postmarked in Washington, D.C., and bore no return address. It was addressed to Clyde in care of the Forks County Sheriff’s Department. It contained a single sheet of paper that had come out of a laser printer or something. It said:
_The man with the cauliflower ears murdered my brother. Regardless of what the Bureau does or doesn’t do, you must stop him._
You must not rely on the United States government to do anything worth doing. You must get it through your head that you are totally on your own.
_Believe me, it’s better that way._
Clyde heard a rapping on the window and wiped fog away with one hand to reveal the face of Jonathan Town, steaming like a locomotive as he breathed into his clenched fists. Clyde beckoned him in. Town pulled at a door handle and was startled to find that it was locked. Clyde was a little bit startled himself and reached across the car with one arm to unlock the door while holding Maggie’s bottle steady with the other. He snatched up the mystery letter from D.C. and stuffed it into his coat pocket as Town climbed into the car.
“Sorry,” he said as Town came in from the wind.