"This was a pipeline?" Heinrich asked.

"Nope, just a tap so they could fill their own bottles. They weren't using enough gas to justify the cost of a pipeline."

Heinrich flipped his notebook closed. "Thank you for your time, Herr Acton. If you think of anything. "

"Call the police. Sure." Marcus shook hands with both officers and watched them walk off. That hadn't been so bad, and it seemed he'd covered his tracks well. A glance at his watch had him hurrying back to work. The client expected his bio-gas reticulation system to be ready for him by tomorrow, and there was still a lot of work to be done.

Dina walked into the police department and straight up to the reception desk and asked if she could see her uncle.

"Sergeant Frost is very busy," Eva Bernhardt said. "And shouldn't you be in school?"

Dina sighed. Adults had one track minds. "It's lunch break.Can you tell Uncle Estes that I need to speak to him, please? It's important."

Eva looked askance at Dina, but she did pick up the internal phone and called her uncle. "Sergeant Frost, your niece is at the desk and would like to talk to you. She says it's important." She nodded absently as she listened. "Yes, of course." She put down the phone. "Do you know where Sergeant Frost's desk is?" Dina nodded. "Very well, he's expecting you."

"Thank you," Dina said before hurrying off. She made her way to the office her Uncle Estes shared with several other officers. He was sitting down, papers spread all over his desk.

"I know you well enough to know you'd only ask to see me about something important, so take a seat and tell me."

Dina climbed onto the hard wooden chair and sat looking at her uncle. "Bruno recognized two of the men."

"Dina, I know you think a lot of Bruno, but you were both too far away from the car to see their faces."

"Bruno didn't have to see their faces close up to recognize them, Uncle Estes. He says they are his brothers," she said as if that explained everything.

Her uncle's eyes widened, and he reached for a clean sheet of paper and a pen. Do you have their names?"

"Wilhelm and Hermann." She shrugged. She knew that wasn't what her uncle really wanted, but it had been difficult enough getting that much out of Bruno.

"And their surname? Come on, surely if they are brothers, they should have the same name as Bruno."

"Bruno doesn't have a surname, Uncle Estes. At least not one he knows. He's only ever answered to Bruno."

Estes sighed. "What does he know about them? Are they older or younger than him?"

"They're older. They were really horrible to him when he was growing up. That's why seeing them scared him so much."

"How much older?"

"Bruno thinks they were about ten years older. They were always bigger than him when he was growing up." Dina really hadn't liked what she'd heard about Bruno's brothers. They sounded like a pair of real bullies. She'd never be that mean to her little brother.

"And how old is Bruno?"

Dina had to shrug again. "We don't know. Mom's best guess, based on the work history she's been able to back-track, is that he's about twenty-five."

"So we're looking for two men in their early- to mid-thirties."

"And fairly new to Grantville, because me and Bruno were out that way last year, and there was no shed in that spot."

"You were heading for that site?"

"They built their shed right on top of a really good patch of milkweed me and Bruno were going to harvest."

Suddenly the office went quiet. Dina looked around at the blank faces staring at her. "The latex you get from the milkweed is worth over a hundred dollars a gallon," she explained. "Of course you have to collect a lot of milkweed to get that much latex."

"Of course you do," Estes muttered as he got to his feet. "Well, there's not a lot we can do about your information unless you can give us a name. So for now, we'd better see about getting you back to school before you're missed. Come on, I'll give you a lift."

Dina followed her uncle, who was joined by Sergeant Fleischer. She was doing up her seatbelt when Erika Fleisher looked over her seat. "Dina, we appreciate your coming in to tell us what you've learned."

"But it's not much good because Bruno doesn't remember his family's name," Dina muttered.

"I'm afraid not," Erika agreed.

Dina stared blankly at the road ahead. There was one way to identify Bruno's brothers, and that was having him see them again. She started plotting how she could arrange that.

April 1636

Marcus cut the engine just as the boat started to ground. He hurried forward, grabbed the anchor, and jumped for shore. He grounded the anchor and then pulled the boat up onto the shore until it was firmly beached. It was the first time he'd returned to his old moonshine camp since the beginning of March when he'd killed two people. He removed his rifle from its scabbard, loaded five rounds into a magazine and clicked it into place before slinging it over his shoulder. It was time to explore.

The old cabin where Herman and Wilhelm had lived was a burned-out ruin. He nodded in satisfaction at the sight before moving on to the shed where they'd had their still. The fire he'd set there had left even less behind than the cabin fire. No doubt the gas had had something to do with that.

The still and all the gear they'd been forced to leave behind in the mad dash to evacuate the site were all gone, but he'd expected that. If nothing else, the police would have removed the still just to stop other people getting it.

He gave the site one final walk-around before returning to the shore. He traded his rifle for his fishing rod and found a spot on the shore where he could cast without catching his line in the trees. The wounded cop was improving, but from what he'd heard on the grapevine, was unable to give a description of Marcus or the Kindorf brothers. The most the cops had learned from Officer Heilmann was that they were looking for three people. Good luck to them with that bit of information. The cops seemed to have hit a dead end, meaning he was home free, so he might as well see if he could catch lunch.

The events of the previous month had resulted in Dina's activities being severely curtailed. She was behind in her latex collection, so today she and Bruno were carrying over fifty pounds of plant matter between them as they emerged from the woods around Deborah. She was hungry, and no doubt so was Bruno. Dina checked her purse, and taking full account of the money she should earn from the milkweed they carried, decided to divert past the bakery. They emerged with a sticky bun each.

They found somewhere to sit. Dina dug a couple of bottles of water out of her rucksack and passed Bruno one before drinking from hers. It was a warm April afternoon, so she leaned back on a tree trunk and watched the world go by while she ate her bun.

"Wilhelm!"

Bruno's horrified whimper jerked Dina back to the present. She checked Bruno. He was pale, almost white, and he was staring at a man sitting at an outdoor table.

Dina studied the man. He looked vaguely similar to one of the men she'd seen looking at the police cruiser, but then, so had a lot of men she'd seen since then. However, this was the first one Bruno had reacted to. She pulled out the camera her Aunt Lettie had lent her. She was looking at him through the viewfinder when he looked up and stared straight at her.