It was ten in the morning before Vince made it back up to the house. He was hungry as a bear, but the smell of ham and eggs cooking in the skillet made his stomach turn. He ended up tossing the food off the back porch for the stray dog who came around.

Eight or nine o’clock in Phoenix. He could never keep it straight. Was it Mountain or Pacific in Arizona this time of year?

Either way, Reet hadn’t called. Probably out walking with her mom. He took a chance, got her voice mail, and left a message. Hey babe. Everything’s fine. Probably be out on the plow all day.

He brewed enough coffee to fill a gallon thermos jug, got on the tractor, and opened the driveway down to the road. For the next two hours, Vince sat in the heated cab and pushed snow into piles, thinking things through.

The impact crusher had reduced what was left of the girl-beater to a pound or two of fine calcium sand. Later—tonight after dark—he’d drive it away on the snowmobile and sprinkle it in the woods somewhere.

As soon as the temperature broke above freezing, he’d hose out the crusher, grind a few hundred pounds of limestone, and use it for concrete in spring.

He’d dumped the clodded mass of greasy ash from the incinerator’s waste bin into the load scheduled for the county landfill. Before he hosed out the crusher, he’d scrub the bin, the interior of the furnace, and the stack pipe with acid solution. Then he’d burn a whole shitload of stuff on top of that.

He’d stop watching those forensics shows on the Discovery Channel. Starting now, that shit was information he didn’t need.

Which left only the car.

Vince made it into the shop by one o’clock and cracked open a new bottle of Beam. No need for a hangover in the middle of the day.

It was almost a relief to get started. Fenders and chrome, seats and doors. A steering wheel. An engine block. Vince knew how to handle these things.

He’d sandblast the exterior to bare metal and spark up the cutting torch. With no need to be careful, and no interruptions, he guessed he’d be able to chop the car to its axles in ten or twelve hours.

It took him nearly thirty minutes to figure out what the hell was wrong with the trunk.

By midafternoon, everything worth cutting into firewood or kindling had been cut, hauled around back, and stacked against the east side of the garage. It would need to cure for a year, maybe two, but it was good solid maple and would burn warm and slow. They tossed the remaining brush into a single pile in the corner of the yard. Worth could take it away later in the truck.

He had a sheet of plywood in the garage and a spare bundle of fiberglass insulation in the attic. They nailed the plywood over the exterior of the broken window and laid a few panels of insulation against the inside.

He also had some leftover window film in the basement. The three of them managed to tape a clingy, ungainly sheet of it over the interior window frame. That had been Ricky’s idea. Worth had his doubts that it would do much good, but he shrank the film tight with the hair dryer, sandwiching the insulation in between. By the time he finished, the living room already felt ten degrees warmer than it had before.

The plows had been by twice while they worked. While the Modells cleaned up at the house, Worth ran out to pick up a couple pizzas and a twelve-pack of Budweiser from the HyVee on Center Street.

It felt good to go somewhere besides the SaveMore for a change.

He was on his way back home with supper for himself and the guys when his cell phone buzzed. Worth took a look at the ID screen and answered the call.

“Got a problem here,” his brother said.

15

The county road up into the bluffs was passable, thanks to the thick barrier of oaks and elms along either side. Worth only had to stop twice: once to dig through a drift, once to wait for a small herd of whitetail deer.

At 5:15 in the afternoon, he rolled up the long driveway to Junk Monkey Scrap and Salvage for the second time in two days.

Vince met him at the side door of the machine shed holding a pistol-grip shotgun alongside his leg.

“Jesus,” Worth said. “You expecting somebody else?”

“Hell if I know,” Vince said. His eyes were glassy, but not incoherent. Even in the cold, his breath reeked of booze.

“What’s going on?”

Vince turned without speaking and went into the shop.

Worth followed him to where the GTO sat, uncovered, lift chains attached. The trunk lid was open. A section of carpet liner sat on the concrete, off to the side of the car.

Inside the trunk, Worth saw a smaller lid in the bottom. Also open.

“Trigger button under the dashboard,” Vince said. “Electric locks, hidden hinges. Took me half an hour to find it.”

The space beneath the false panel ran the width of the trunk, about six inches deep. Worth stood there a minute, just looking.

He’d seen plenty of false compartments in plenty of vehicles, but this one appeared to be a good cut above standard construction. His thoughts began to race, going nowhere.

“Said you figured he was into something.” Vince produced a flask and unscrewed the cap. “Guess you pegged that one, huh?”

Worth reached into the trunk. He picked up a rectangular brick wrapped in black plastic, secured with packaging tape.

He tore one end of the plastic away, revealing a bundle of wrinkled bills in mixed denominations: hundreds, fifties, twenties, tens. The entire trunk bottom was lined with bundles just like it.

“Trick or treat,” Vince said, pouring the last of the flask into a hole in his beard.

“So he’s a fuckup,” Tony Briggs said. “This we know.”

“This we hear,” said Ray.

“Dude’s rolling nights at a grocery store.” Tony looked at his partner. “A goddamn SaveMore, man.”

Ray chuckled.

“Store isn’t even in his precinct. You know?”

“Point taken.”

“Ex is banging another cop. Homicide, yet.”

“At least he popped the guy one.”

“And gets busted to fitness eval for it?” Tony shook his head. “Forget it. Dude’s own commander thinks he’s ten ninety-six. Besides that, guy at Central I talked to said Vargas handed his ass to him.”

“So life sucks.”

“Sucks hard. But then our boy gets it on with the checkout girl.”

“Whose boyfriend works for your uncle.”

“And knocks her around,” Tony said. “No secret, everybody knows.”

“So it goes how?”

“Say she knows boyfriend’s business. He’s stupid and tells her, or she’s smart and figures it out. Either way. She knows his runs.”

“And when he’s rolling heavy.”

“So she lays it out, gets our boy Worth on board. He sees his shot, right? Why not? Life sucks hard. At least this way he’s getting laid.” The more they talked it out, the more Tony liked it. “They plan the night. Girl knows all boyfriend’s buttons. She’d have to, right? But now she wants to push ’em. So she gets him going. Takes the beating like a super trooper.”

Ray went along. “So there’s an alibi. By the time Worth files the report, she’s in the hospital. Boyfriend’s gone.”

“And the lovebirds are up the quarter mil boyfriend was supposed to deliver to Chicago,” Tony said. “Meanwhile, Uncle Eddie’s giving away chain saws, wondering where the hell his money went.”

Ray sat with it awhile. Tony propped a leg up on Matthew Worth’s kitchen table and drank a beer from the crisper drawer of Matthew Worth’s fridge. The ski mask was making his head itch, so he took it off. He kept his gloves on.