VIRGIL PARKED in the courthouse lot, walked past the war memorial-thirteen Stark County boys lost in World Wars I and II, Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq-and inside, down the long hall to the sheriff's office.

Stryker's secretary was a heavyset fiftyish woman with an elaborate pearly-blond hairdo, accented and bias-cut with a couple of tentative spikes sticking out the back like porcupine quills. She squinted at Virgil, took in the sunglasses and the Sheryl Crow T-shirt with the carp on the front, and asked, abruptly, "Who're you?"

"Virgil Flowers. BCA."

She looked him over again: "Really?"

"Yup."

"Sheriff said for you to go on back." She half turned and gestured toward the back wall, which had a frosted-glass window set in a door that said SHERIFF JAMES J. STRYKER. Virgil nodded, and started past, and she asked, "How many times did you shoot at that man in Fairmont?"

Virgil paused. "Fourteen," he said.

She looked pleased: "That's what I heard. You never hit him?"

"Wasn't particularly trying to," Virgil said, though he'd just about given up on this argument.

"They say he was shooting at you," she said.

"Ah, he didn't want to hurt me," Virgil said. "He was letting off some hot air, because he was pissed about being caught. Wasn't really a bad guy, except for the fact that he held up gas stations. Had eight kids and a wife to feed."

"Sort of his job, huh?"

"That was about it," Virgil said. "Now he's gonna be making snowplow blades for six years."

"Huh," she said. "Well, I think most of the boys around here would have shot him."

"Must be pretty goddamn hard-hearted boys," Virgil said, not liking her; and he went on back to Stryker's office.

STRYKER WAS on the phone. Virgil knocked and Stryker called, "Come in," and he waved Virgil to a chair and said into the phone, "I gotta go, but the first minute you find a toenail, I want to hear about it." He rang off and shook his head and said, "Can't find him. Judd."