“Let’s go down there,” I said confidently—or at least with a voice that sounded confident. Man, I was starting to behave like the Woody Allen of private investigators, much too paranoid for this line of work.

I stood and stretched. My thought was to work our way back to the 4X4 and drive to the cabin. But Loushine was already moving down the hill. The show-off. I followed, moving gingerly, picking up the pace when Loushine did. In my haste, I tripped over a root and fell headlong into a blueberry bush. I looked up. Loushine hadn’t even slowed. He was waiting for me on the gravel road at the base of the steep hill when I broke through the last wall of brush. He shook his head at me like he pitied me.

“Poor little lamb lost in the woods,” he muttered.

Yeah? I’d like to see how he’d manage the Phillips neighborhood in Minneapolis on a Saturday night!

We went to the cabin and climbed the redwood steps leading to the deck. I peered through the windows while Loushine leaned against the railing. The cabin appeared empty.

“See anything?” he asked sarcastically.

I knocked on the door; its lock and frame were cheaply made and flimsy. I doubted they could withstand a strong wind.

“I told you, no one is home,” Loushine added.

“Shhhh!” I hushed him. “Do you hear that?”

“What?”

“It sounds like a call for help.”

“Excuse me?”

BAM!

I kicked the door in.

“Jesus Christ, Taylor!” Loushine protested. “We don’t have a warrant.”

“Oops.”

“This is breaking and entering.”

“Oh, well,” I said. “Since the door is already open …”

“This is a felony!” Loushine insisted.

The cabin consisted of three rooms, including the bathroom. The first room, a combination kitchen/dining room/living room was papered from floor to ceiling with pages that had been carefully cut from Penthouse and Playboy magazines and Victoria’s Secret catalogs (personally I preferred the lingerie models over the nudes, but that’s just me). The room also contained several bookcases filled with paperbacks with titles like Country Club Wife, Fraternity Initiation, The Girl Next Door, The Naughty Lady, and Curious Cathy. Another bookcase next to the TV and VCR contained adult videos with similar titles. I recognized one: Debbie Does Dallas, an oldie but a goodie. Nowhere did I see a publication dealing with the environment.

“Wow!” Loushine said from where he stood just inside the doorway.

“Man doesn’t get out much, does he?” I said.

“Guess not.”

“Take this room,” I told him.

“And do what?”

“Look.”

“For what?”

“Incriminating evidence.”

“What exactly does incriminating evidence look like?”

“It’s like pornography,” I told him. “You’ll know it when you see it.”

“Yeah, but even if we find some, then what? Without a warrant, a judge would never allow us to admit it into evidence.”

“Trust me,” I told him.

“Trust him,” he muttered. “Big-city homicide cop.”

“Amateur,” I muttered back.

I went into the bathroom. It was small, dirty, and stank of mildew. Thilgen had taped several suggestive photos—they were suggestive in the way a slap in the face was suggestive—to the dirty mirror fronting the medicine cabinet. I opened the cabinet. Thilgen’s toothbrush, toothpaste, electric shaver, and hairbrush were all accounted for.

“If Thilgen is running, he didn’t plan to,” I called out.

“Huh?” Loushine grunted.

I moved to Chip Thilgen’s bedroom and immediately regretted it. The small room reeked of sweat and semen, and the sordid odor made me gag. The unmade bed was soiled; its sheets looked as if they hadn’t been changed in months. More pornography hung from the walls, and several life-sized posters were stapled to the ceiling above the bed.

“You’re one strange biscuit,” I told the absent Thilgen as I went through his bureau drawers. They were filled with clothes and assorted sex aids—manual and electric. Two small suitcases, both empty, were hidden under his bed, and the tiny closest was filled with shirts, pants, and jackets. In the pocket of the jacket hung from a hook on the back side of the door I found his checkbook. Again I concluded that if Thilgen was on the run, it wasn’t something he had planned. At the bottom of the closet I discovered a cardboard box filled with his financial records: old tax returns, receipts, bank envelopes stuffed with canceled checks, and several check registers. I set the checkbook on top and carried the box back into the kitchen with me.

“Whaddaya got there?” Loushine asked, rushing to my side— anything to quit searching through Thilgen’s unsavory life. He watched over my shoulder as I examined the contents of the box, paying particular attention to the checks written most recently.

“This is interesting,” I said at last.

“What?”

“Nearly every check Thilgen wrote paid for monthly bills or purchases—groceries, gasoline, utilities, that sort of thing—except for these six that were made out to James Johannson.”

“Jimmy Johannson is an asshole,” Loushine told me. “An asshole with a record.”

“Yes, I know,” I recalled. “We met.” I studied the check amounts. “Five checks were written for five hundred dollars each over the past nine months except for this last one.” I gave Loushine a look at the carbon in the checkbook register. It was for twenty-five hundred, and it was made out the day the Buick was stolen from the Wascott fire chief.

“The day before Michael was shot,” Loushine noted.

“Uh-huh.”

“Let’s go,” the deputy said excitedly.

“Go where?” I asked.

“Go and brace Johannson, whaddaya think? Bring him in for questioning.”

“On what grounds?” I asked.

“On what—?”

“What probable cause are you going to give the judge when he asks?”

Loushine gave it two beats then began to curse bitterly.

“Dammit, Taylor. You’ve compromised the investigation.”

“Would I do a thing like that?”

“We can’t use any of this shit now,” Loushine told me as I returned the check registers to the box.

“Unlawful entry … proceeds of an illegal search … fruits of the poisonous tree …” Loushine went on like that while I took the box back to Thilgen’s bedroom. He was just finishing up when I returned.

“Is this how you do things in St. Paul?” he asked.

“Of course not,” I told him. “It’s illegal.” I smiled—and inwardly shuddered—at the thought of what Anne Scalasi would do to me if I attempted the same nonsense in her town.

“So now what do we do?” Loushine asked.

“So now I go talk with James Johannson. Alone.”

Deputy Loushine cursed some more.

twenty-one

Deputy Loushine’s directions—or my misunderstanding of them—got me all turned around. I ended up at a service station off the county road, absolutely lost. The kid manning the pumps regarded me suspiciously, and when I asked him for directions to Johnny Johannson’s place, he asked, “Why do you want to know?”

“So I can talk to the man. Is that a problem?”

“Let’s just say it’s a small county, and it’s getting smaller all the time, and I have to live in it, and I don’t want to do anything that will make living in it harder than it already is.”

“I just want to talk.”

“There’s a phone inside.”

“Swell.”

And people say I’m cynical.

A phone book was attached to the telephone stand with a chain in case someone wanted to steal it. It listed John Johannson’s address as 315 Fire Road 21. Next to the unmanned cash register was a rack filled with maps going for a buck-fifty each. I stole one labeled Kreel County and took it back to my car.

No fewer than five wrecks littered Johnny Johannson’s yard, the hood of each car opened to the elements. Most of the cars were rusted through, dead but unburied. I parked in the driveway next to them, thinking that my ’91 Dodge Colt fit right in.