HE'D BEEN DOING the hard stuff for three years, with a personal side-venture as an outdoor writer. He had credits at most of the magazines that still took freelance stuff, but he wasn't going to make a living at it; not unless he got a staff job, and magazines weren't looking real healthy.

Didn't know if he wanted to, anyway.

Davenport had told him that smart crooks were the most interesting game, and Virgil sometimes agreed.

VIRGIL WORE native dress out on the prairie: faded jeans and scuffed cowboy boots and musical T-shirts, and because he was a cop, a sport coat. In the sun, in the summer, he wore a straw hat and sunglasses. He usually didn't wear a gun, unless he was in St. Paul, where Davenport might see him. The law required him to go armed, but in Virgil's opinion, handguns were just too goddamned heavy and uncomfortable, so he kept his under the seat of the car, or in his briefcase.

After hanging his rain suit in the shower, he got a laptop out of his briefcase, went online. In his personal e-mail, he found the note from Black Horizon, a Canadian outdoor magazine, that he'd been expecting for a couple of days. They were working late in Thunder Bay: "Virg, I had to take a couple graphs out of the section on the portage-nothing I could do about it, it's all about the space. I tried not to hack it up too bad. Anyway, it works for us if it works for you. Get back to us, and I'll stick a check in the mail."

He was pleased. This was his third piece in BH. He was becoming a regular. He opened the attached Word document, looked through the edited section.

Good enough. He closed the document and sent a note to the editor: "Thanks, Henry. It's fine. I'll look for the check. Virgil."

Whistling now, he went to the National Weather Service, typed in the zip code for Bluestem, got the week's forecast: thunderstorms tonight-no shit-with fair skies and warm weather the next three or four days, thunderstorms possible in the afternoons. He checked Google News to make sure London hadn't been nuked since he left Mankato; it hadn't.