Virgil had been to the park a dozen times, and knew his way in, threading past a line of cars and trucks pulled to the edge of County Road 8. A sheriff's squad car blocked the park road up the hill, and a crowd of gawkers stood just below it. Even from a half mile away, the fire looked enormous. He eased the truck past the rubberneckers and up to the squad. A cop in a slicker walked up and Virgil rolled down the window and said, "Virgil Flowers, BCA. Is Stryker up there?"

"Hey, heard you were coming," the cop said. "I'm Little Curly. Yeah, he's up there. Let me get my car out of the way."

"What about Judd?"

Little Curly shook his head: "From what I hear, they can't find him. His housekeeper says he was up there this afternoon. He's senile and don't drive himself anymore…so he might still be in there."

"Burning pretty good," Virgil observed.

"It's a fuckin' tornado," Little Curly said. He walked back to his car, climbed into the driver's seat, and pulled it through the fence. A woman with a beer can in her hand flipped back her rain-suit hood and peered through the driver's-side window at Virgil. She was dark-haired, dark-eyed, and good-looking, and she grinned at him and twiddled the fingers on her beer-free hand. Virgil grinned back, gave her a thumbs-up, and went on by Little Curly's car and followed the blacktop up the hill.

At the house, the first thing he noticed was that the firefighters weren't fighting the fire. No point. The rain meant that the fire wasn't going anywhere, and when Little Curly called it a tornado, he hadn't been joking. Throwing a few tons of foam on the burning house would have been a waste of good foam.

The cop cars were parked behind the fire trucks, and Virgil moved into last place. He unbelted, knelt on the seat, and dug his rain suit out of the gear bag in the back. The suit had been made for October muskie fishing and New England sailing; not much got through it. He pulled it on, climbed out of the truck.