“We’re checking,” Jackson said. He too had infant skin, though that was unremarkable, considering he was half the sheriff’s age.

“‘This,’” Dahl mused. “You hear from the lab?”

“Oh, ’bout that Wilkins thing?” Jackson picked at his stiff collar. “Wasn’t meth. Wasn’t nothing.”

Even here, in Kennesha, a county with the sparse population of 34,021, meth was a terrible scourge. The users, tweakers, were ruthless, crazed and absolutely desperate to get the product; cookers felt exactly the same about the huge profits they made. More murders were attributed to meth than coke, heroin, pot and alcohol combined. And there were as many accidental deaths by scalding, burning and overdoses as murders related to the drug. A family of four had just died when their trailer burned down after the mother passed out while cooking a batch in her kitchen. She’d overdosed, Dahl speculated, after sampling some product fresh off the stovetop.

The sheriff’s jaw tightened. “Well, damn. Just goddamn. He’s cooking it. We all know he’s cooking. He’s playing with us is what he’s doing. And I’d like to arrest him just for that. Well, where did it come from, that nine-one-one call? Landline?”

“No, somebody’s cell. That’s what’s taking some time.”

The E911 system, which Kennesha County had had for years, gave the dispatcher the location of the caller in an emergency. The E was for “enhanced,” not “emergency.” It worked with cell calls too, though tracing them was a little more complicated and in the hilly country around this portion of Wisconsin sometimes didn’t work at all.

This…

A woman’s voice called across the cluttered space, “Todd, Com Center for you.”

The deputy headed to his cubicle. Dahl turned back to the wad of arrest reports he was correcting for English as much as for criminal procedure.