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.
Easton asked nobody in particular, “Anybody take the train from Paris to London?”
“I haven’t, but my old man has,” Virgil said. “Goes through the Chunnel. I think he said it took two hours, or something.”
“So you could make the round-trip in a day?”
“My dad did,” Virgil said. “Took an early train, spent the whole day in London, rode back that night. Never had to change hotels.”
“Cool,” she said without looking up, still thumb-typing. “I’m going in June.”
“Where in the fuck are they?” Wood asked.
“Been six minutes since you last asked,” Skinner said.
“Shut up, punk,” Wood said.
“Fuckin’ cops,” Skinner said.
Nerves.
* * *
—
Virgil’s phone beeped. Shrake said, “We crossed the line ten seconds ago. We’re three minutes out.”
“Saddle up,” Virgil said to the others. “Three minutes.”
Wood called Rivers as he and Easton walked up to the corner, where they could look down the road toward Van Den Berg’s acreage. Virgil pointed Skinner to the passenger seat of the Tahoe and then he got in himself and started the engine. Skinner said, “I can’t believe Katie could stand there and text when we’re going on a raid. I don’t even know why they’d allow a woman to go on a raid.”
“So here’s something you don’t know, Skinner,” Virgil said. “You never say that about a woman cop. Never. Not unless you’re ready to run for it, ’cause they will flat kick your ass.”
Skinner considered, then said, “You’re right. I was being stupid.”
He really was smarter than he looked, Virgil thought. As he thought that, Wood and Easton turned and jogged back to the Mustang, and Easton called, “He’s here,” and, a moment later, they were all rolling.
* * *
—
Rivers’s pickup turned the corner as Wood’s Mustang approached Van Den Berg’s driveway, and the pickup was right on Wood’s tail as they pulled into the yard. Shrake and Jenkins were fifty feet behind the pickup and went down the driveway, and Virgil pulled into the entrance of the driveway and then turned so the Tahoe blocked it. He said to Skinner, “You sit tight.”
Skinner said, “Bullshit, I want to see this,” and he was out and walking to the middle of the yard, where Larry Van Den Berg’s truck was pooping out diesel smoke, and the cops had surrounded Van Den Berg and the three men in work clothes. Virgil saw the woman running toward the woodlot, with Easton and Shrake close behind, and Virgil could hear Easton’s soprano voice as she shouted, “Down on the ground. On the ground . . .”
Larry Van Den Berg saw Virgil and pointed his finger, and said, “You motherfucker. You motherfucker,” and one of the other men asked, “For Christ’s sakes, what the hell is going on? Why are the cops here?”
Shrake and Easton caught up with the woman, put her on the ground, cuffed her, Easton patting her down, and they brought her back. Shrake said, “Skinner nailed it. There’s a trailer back there.”
Rivers had cuffed Larry Van Den Berg, and Wood asked the woman, “Are you Jill Van Den Berg?”
“Who wants to know?”
“Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation,” he said. “Where’s Ralph?”
She said, “In the house.” And, “This isn’t fair.”
“Does he have a gun in there?” Shrake asked.
“Yes, but he’d never shoot anyone,” Jill Van Den Berg said. She said her daughter, Billie, was in the house with her father.
Wood made Larry Van Den Berg and Jill Van Den Berg sit on a trailer, told Rivers and Jenkins to keep an eye on them, told the other three men to sit, uncuffed, on another trailer, “Until we have a chance to talk.” Then he, Easton, Virgil, and Shrake walked to the house, with Skinner trailing despite Virgil telling him repeatedly not to.
The screen door was closed but the inner door was open, and Wood pulled the screen open and shouted, “Ralph! Ralph, come on out here.” A man’s voice answered. “Don’t scare my little girl.”
“You’re fine, Ralph. We’ll give her to her mom.”
Ralph Van Den Berg, a thin man with a scruffy dishwater-blond beard and shoulder-length hair, poked his head around a corner, and said, “We’re coming. Don’t do nothing.”
He was leading a little girl by the hand. When they were outside, Easton told him to face the house while she cuffed him and patted him down. Wood took the little girl’s hand, and said, “C’mon, Billie, we’ll go see your mom.”
The girl started to cry, but Wood had Rivers uncuff Jill Van Den Berg, and told her, “Why don’t you take Billie back in the house. Don’t do anything weird. We’ll be in to talk to you in a while . . .”
The semitrailer was still stacked with Legos. The three men who’d been in the yard, with their trailers, told Wood that they’d been hired by Ralph Van Den Berg to unload the semi and haul the Legos to a self-storage unit in Emmetsburg. They said Van Den Berg told them the big trailer had to be returned to its owner. The Iowa cops got their names and addresses and, after recording their individual statements, sent them on their way.
A couple of sheriff’s cars showed up and hauled away the male Van Den Bergs. Jill Van Den Berg was told that she might be charged in connection with the theft but, for the time being, would be left with her daughter.
By 4 o’clock, it was all done, and Wood said to Virgil, “I owe you one.”
“At least one,” Virgil said.
“No goddamn excitement at all,” Jenkins said. “I expected more.”
“This is Iowa,” Shrake said. “Your expectations were grossly misplaced.”
“We got a big meth bust coming in a day or two,” Easton said. “The cookers have lots of guns, from what we hear.”
Jenkins regarded her for a moment, then said, “Now you’re teasing me.”
She said, “I don’t tease, pal. I deliver.”
That killed conversation for a few seconds, then Jenkins asked, “You ever think of moving to the Cities and the big time?”
That made her laugh.
* * *
—
As the Minnesota cops and Skinner were packing up, Virgil quietly asked Wood, “So what exactly is your relationship with cupcakes?”
“Shhhh . . . Don’t even ask that question, and for God’s sakes don’t use words like ‘cupcakes.’ Or ‘peaches.’ Or any small, round objects at all,” Wood muttered.
Virgil said, “Or any members of the melon family?”
“Oh, Jesus, no,” Wood said, glancing sideways at Easton, who was thirty feet away, talking with Skinner. “Tell you the truth, I’m almost afraid to work with her. She’s an excellent cop, but she’s too good-looking, and that ain’t good, if you know what I mean. I don’t joke with her. I don’t walk too close. I won’t even buy her a cup of fuckin’ coffee. Or even non–fuckin’ coffee.”