We were all surprised when we pulled into the parking lot. It was filled with deputies donning Kevlar vests and checking weapons.

Ingrid and Lonnie were curious but not enough to ask questions. They drove off, leaving me standing next to my car. I was curious and not shy about it.

“What’s going on?” I asked no one in particular. Gary Loushine heard me and answered as Sheriff Bobby Orman stood behind him and listened to every word.

“We searched Chip Thilgen’s house,” the deputy told me. “We found financial records that indicate that Thilgen wrote five checks to James Johannson for five hundred dollars each and a sixth for twenty-five hundred. Each of the five-hundred-dollar checks were written the same day as a reported farm break-in or animal liberation that Thilgen had been accused of but not charged with. The sixth check—the twenty-five-hundred-dollar check—was written the day before Michael Bettich was shot.”

I nodded, pretending I didn’t already know this.

“Jimmy Johannson is well known to us,” Loushine added. “He has a significant record. So we checked his fingerprints against a set of latents we lifted off the Buick, including an index finger we found on one of the shell casings. We examined them on the optical comparator. There’s no mistake.”

“The perpetrator is James Johannson,” Sheriff Orman announced, reminding me of Jack Lord in Hawaii Five-O.

“James Johannson,” Loushine agreed.

They were both smiling.

“So what do you expect from me?” I asked. “Applause?”

twenty-seven

Sheriff Drman was acting like Joe Professional now—perhaps he thought he had something to prove.

“We have an hour of daylight left,” he estimated, glancing at his watch.

“Yes, sir,” said Loushine.

“I want everybody here. Now.”

“They’re here,” Loushine said.

Sheriff Orman nodded.

“This is going to get ugly,” I muttered to myself.

I was impressed by how grim and unsure the deputies appeared as they awaited their instructions—so unlike my former colleagues in the St. Paul Homicide Unit. This was not something they wanted to do, and not wanting to do it put them at risk. Loushine moved among them, grinning, even cracking a joke or two. He managed to illicit a few chuckles, a few smiles that faded fast. But the overall mood didn’t change, and I could see that he was as concerned as I was.

I didn’t know any of these men, these strangers. I didn’t know if they were properly trained for this kind of action. I didn’t know how they would react. I knew only that they were scared. And that was reason enough for me to adjourn to the beer joint down the street. Besides, it wasn’t my job. I was a civilian. I shouldn’t have even been invited to the party. But then the sheriff asked, “You coming, Taylor?” in a voice loud enough to be heard by all of his deputies.

The men stopped checking their weapons, stopped donning their body armor, and waited for my reply. And suddenly I felt responsible for them, for all of them, as if my refusal to join the posse would make them more afraid than they were, and that extra load of fear would be too much for them to carry.

Loushine whispered something to the sheriff, and Orman replied, “No, it’ll be all right.”

“You’re the boss,” Loushine said and joined the others who waited for my answer.

“Wouldn’t miss it,” I said, smiling just as big and brightly as I could.

And we tell our children not to succumb to peer pressure.

Thirty minutes later I sat on the hood of the sheriff’s cruiser about a mile from the Johannson homestead while he deployed his men. I could hear the low rumble of his voice but not what he was saying. By my estimate, we had thirty minutes of daylight left.

“I’ll tell you what we used to do,” I announced. “When we could, we would take our suspects at dawn. Hit ’em hard and fast when they were still too groggy from sleep to put up a fight. It was standard procedure.”

No one was listening.

“I was out there yesterday,” I recalled. “Johannson’s father and his young nephew were in the house. Have you considered them?”

No one was listening.

“Hey, I know! We have the barn. We have the costumes. Let’s put on a show.”

“Quiet down, Taylor,” Loushine warned.

“Deputy, this is small-town amateur night,” I countered.

He looked at me like he knew I was right but said nothing. A moment later, the sheriff joined us. His deputies had scattered, some in cars, to encircle the house down the road. He looked at his watch. “The teams will be in position in ten minutes. Then we move.”

“Move? What do you mean, move?” I knew what he meant, I just wanted to hear him say it.

“We’re going to knock on the front door.”

“Sheriff, the man has an UZI semiautomatic carbine. He can fire twenty-five rounds before you can say, ‘Bless me father for I have sinned.’”

“You’re not frightened, are you, Taylor?” Loushine interrupted.

I studied him for a moment. He was busy checking the load in his service revolver. It wasn’t necessary. I had seen him check it twice before. But it gave his hands something to do, and it was an excuse not to look me in the eye.

“I’ll be standing right behind you, Deputy,” I told him.

Sheriff Orman slapped a gun into my hand. A Smith & Wesson .38 Police Special, Model No. 64: three-inch barrel, thirty and a half ounces fully loaded, serrated-ramp front sight, square-notch rear sight, square butt, satin finish, six shots—as efficient a close-encounter killing machine as you’ll ever find and a stunning improvement over the Walther PPK in my pocket. Yet I looked at it like I had never seen one before in my life.

The minutes dragged on, giving me plenty of time to think, plenty of time to contemplate what I was expected to do with the .38. I was expected to point it at a man and squeeze the trigger. Simple, right? Yeah, sure. That’s why I have nightmares, because it’s so simple.

It is not as easy to kill a man as TV and the movies would suggest. Living with it later is even harder. You don’t brush it off and go out for Chinese like the actors in the cop shows: “Hi, honey, I killed a couple of guys today; what’s for supper?” I know. I’ve killed men. Four of them. I’ve replayed my encounters with them a hundred times in my head, carefully editing each tape until any alternative action was clearly impossible. I memorized their rap sheets until I convinced myself that their deaths were an almost preordained consequence of their lives and my involvement a kind of destiny. Yeah, I know it’s self-deluding bullshit. But a man has to sleep.

Now I was being encouraged to kill again.

And I was willing.

I stuck the .38 in the waistband of my jeans and pretended it wasn’t there, concentrating hard on the advice George Meade had given me my first day on the job: “Don’t think too far ahead.”

When his deputies were in position, Orman cautioned them over the radio to play it safe and ordered them not to shoot unless Jimmy Johannson tried to break through.

“If there’s any shooting to do, I’ll tell you,” he said. “Remember, surprise is what we want. If we do this quick and clean, we won’t have anything to regret tomorrow.”

“Please, God,” Loushine prayed.

I wished I had said that. I believe in God as much as anyone who doesn’t make a living out of it, which is to say I believe in Him more at some times than others. It’s true we haven’t exactly been on speaking terms since my wife and daughter were killed. Still, one would hope He wouldn’t hold that against a guy. I found myself searching the quickly darkening sky for a sign that He approved of tonight’s activities. There was none. Just as well. A divine revelation right then would have been particularly disconcerting.