Chapter One:

Mike watched through his office window as the big, black car drove up to their tiny municipal building. The two men inside could've been here for the Records Office, or even for the Fire Station, since this was a combined-use building, but Mike had a pretty good idea the two good-looking guys in their almost-expensive suits were going to come in the entrance to the Police Station.

He wasn't wrong, so he put a quarter in his fishing jar as a reward.

Maggie was out front, and Mike could hear her gravelly voice interrogating them. Maggie had been a deputy here for as long as Mike could remember. Never wanted to be Sheriff though—didn't like the politics. She also didn't like bullshitters, and Mike could tell from her tone she'd placed those two guys in that category.

Mike started his countdown: 5—4—3—2—

"Sheriff!"

He got up, put another quarter in his fishing jar, and went to the front desk.

"These guys say they're from the FBI," Maggie announced with obvious disbelief. "Here to look into the string of strange deaths we've been having." She turned to the strangers. "Whaddya say your names were again?"

"Agents Scott and McTiernan," said the shorter of the two, indicating himself as McTiernan and his partner as Scott.

Mike wasn't a small guy. He was nearly six feet and still carried the muscle he'd put on as an offensive linebacker in college, but as he reached over to shake the strangers' hands, he felt smaller than normal. McTiernan wasn't so bad, but Scott… Scott was easily a head taller than Mike and just as wide.

"I'm Mike," he said. "Mike Hardy." He waited until Scott mumbled out something that could've been a first name before turning to the shorter one.

"Dean," the agent said without prodding. His eyes didn't flicker, his color didn't change. Mike would be willing to bet the guy's first name truly was Dean. He wouldn't be putting any money down on the last name being real, though.

"Come into my office and we'll talk." He lifted the counter and swung open the gate, ignoring Maggie's skeptical look. "Did you boys need any coffee?"

Scott shook his head, but Dean said yes. He said no to cream and sugar when he heard they had a Tassimo, meaning the coffee would be fresh. Once he heard that, Agent Scott asked for a cup as well. With a lifted eyebrow, Mike asked Maggie to bring them. With a silent snort and an eye-roll, she left the room.

"So," he drawled as he let them settle into the uncomfortable wooden chairs in front of his desk. "You want to know about Wilby, Brogan, and Connolly."

"Connolly?" Dean asked with a small frown.

"Beth Connolly, age 16," Mike explained. "She died of syphilis three nights ago."

"Syphilis!" Agent Scott said in surprise. "That's completely treatable."

Beside Scott, Dean swallowed down a smile and muttered, "You'd know."

Scott gave his partner a malevolent look, and Mike figured there was a story there. But Mike wasn't interested in their story: he wanted these killings solved and resolved—so he ignored it. He said, "It is treatable, and she would've had it treated, if Doc Cole had found any sign of the disease during her last exam. Which was less than a month ago."

"A month," Dean repeated. "People don't die of syphilis in a month."

"These days, people don't die of syphilis period," Mike pointed out. "However, that's the cause our ME put down in her report."

Scott shifted in his seat. "So we've got Jim Brogan—a known alcoholic who died of sudden acute cirrhosis; Torson Wilby—a builder, being sued for negligence and endangerment, who died of carbon monoxide poisoning in one of his own buildings; and now Beth Connolly—who died of syphilis." Scott stopped and frowned.

He tried again. "Contracting syphilis…" Again, he stalled out. He looked at Mike, cheeks pink with embarrassment.

Mike was amused that an FBI agent—real or not—would have so much trouble discussing the details of a case. He could've waited for "Agent" Scott to ask the question, draw out the man's embarrassment; but again, it came back to the fact that he didn't care who was investigating as long as someone was.

He opened his mouth to answer Scott's unspoken question but Dean was already talking. "It's always assumed that if someone catches an STD then they've been sleeping around. Would that be the case here?"

"You're asking, was she a whore?" Mike kept his voice carefully neutral.

Dean grunted and shook his head. "Let's call it 'sexually active' and leave it." There was no judgment in the man's tone and Mike relaxed. Unlike some in the community, like the Mayor's wife, Mike didn't feel these deaths were about the victims' so-called sins.

"Because you're not one to be throwing labels like that around," Scott muttered.

"And neither are you, Sam. Not anymore." The glare Dean shot his partner—Sam—was another sign of a long and complex history between the two.

Mike interrupted. "Beth Connolly was sexually active, and had been for some years."

"But you said she was sixteen," Sam protested.

"Sixteen going on sixty," Mike replied. He was pretty sure Beth's grandfather had sexually abused her. As Mike suspected, he'd done to her mother before her. He'd never been able to get either of them to admit it, and without someone to lay charges, Old Man Connolly had been untouchable, until an anonymous tip caused an IRS audit and he was charged with tax evasion and fraud. Officially, Mike had no idea who'd tipped them off. Unofficially, Mike suspected Maggie.

"The thing is," Mike went on, "she could've contracted syphilis since her last doctor's appointment; it's not impossible."

"It certainly shouldn't've killed her," Sam argued. "Not in a month."

"Was it one of those superbug versions?" Dean suggested. He leaned forward. "Like the alkie guy–"

"Brogan," his partner corrected.

"Yeah, him. He had cirrhosis, and it would've killed him in a decade, maybe less. But he doesn't get a decade. Instead, all of a sudden–" Dean formed his hands into an expanding starburst and made an explosive sound. His partner frowned at him in disapproval, but Mike was glad to see the "agent" had picked up on the salient facts.

"And Wilby'd been short-cutting on his materials for years," Mike said. "Reports from his last locations say he built over badly drained swamps, old landfills—anywhere land was cheap. Here, he bought up the old air strip."

"He faked the results of the environmental analysis, right?" Sam asked, looking through his notebook.

"He cleaned it up enough for it to not stink anymore," Mike confirmed. "But the dirt and water was laced with airplane fuel and chemicals. Anybody who lived there long enough would be affected by it, especially if they planted a garden."

Sam nodded. "The vegetables would be tainted as well."

"I knew vegetables could be bad for you," Dean muttered.

Sam rolled his eyes and continued. "But they'd be more likely to develop cancer twenty or thirty years from now, rather than drop dead from carbon monoxide poisoning."

"Middle of the day, during an open house," Mike commented. "People going in and out, so the door was opening and air circulating. Yeah, carbon monoxide poisoning does seem a little unlikely. However," he added, "that is what the autopsy showed."

"Wilby was showing the house that day?" Dean asked, frowning. Mike nodded. "You wouldn't happen to have contact information for those people?"

Mike opened the folder on his desk. He pulled out a handwritten list inside. "It's a list of names and phone numbers and emails of all the people who entered a drawing for a new Flamemaster double-tank barbecue," he said.

Agent Scott's eyes lit up. "Can we get a copy?"

"Sure," Mike said easily. "Won't be needing it though. I'm coming with you."

Before he let the two fake agents loose in his town, he needed to know if they were what he thought they were. He needed to know if he could trust them to kill only what needed to be killed and not anybody or anything else.

He needed to know if he could trust them to do the job right.

.o0o.

Mike drove out to the first couple's house in Lavenda. The two almost certainly fake agents followed in their classic car.

It was a black monster of a car, intimidating and attention-grabbing, and completely unlike just about every official vehicle or rental Mike had ever seen used by government agents in his twenty-odd years of service. He was pretty sure those two boys thought their high-quality badges and their decent-quality suits were sufficient cover, and Mike could admit they were good—as were the "yessirs" and "nosirs" they used exactly like people used to obeying orders—but the car gave it away. That car was personal.

He should probably write down the license plate number and run it.

He should… but he wasn't going to.

Three bodies. Three autopsies. Mike wasn't going to be checking up on Sam "Scott" and Dean "McTiernan".

He pulled over to the curb, carefully noting the time in his logbook before climbing out of his vehicle. He waited on the sidewalk for Sam and Dean to reach him.

"Don and Leslie Hunt," he said. "They were with Wilby when he collapsed."

"They were checked?" Sam asked. His partner was looking at the house, looking at the yard, looking for anything out of place.

Mike wondered what Dean was looking for even as he answered Sam. "Thoroughly. Not a hint of anything in their lungs. They remained fully conscious and self-aware, phoning 911 and giving clear, concise descriptions to the operator."

"Which they shouldn't have been able to do if the house was filled with carbon monoxide." Sam nodded understanding.

Mike decided Dean liked stating the obvious. Maybe it helped to embed the information in his mind. Mike liked to write things out for the same reason. Everybody had their way of working, he guessed.

Mike pushed the doorbell, and they waited on the step for the door to open. It didn't take long. "Hello, Leslie," Mike said with a light smile.

"Sheriff Hardy," she responded, opening the door wider. "Don's not here. He's out at his parents' farm."

"That's all right. We can talk to you just as easily."

Leslie's welcoming smile slipped. "It's about Wilby again, isn't it?" It wasn't a question.

"I'm afraid so," Mike confirmed. He swept off his hat. "Can we come in?"

Leslie stepped aside and waved them all in. Mike made sure to pause and wipe his shoes on the coarse mat at the entrance and was pleased when both Dean and Sam did the same.

"I don't know what else I can tell you, Sheriff," she said as she closed the door. She ushered them into the front room.

"Why were you buying a house from someone who was being sued for fraudulent building practices?" Dean asked bluntly.

Mike saw his partner frown at him, but Leslie merely sighed. She sat on the arm of the couch, not intimidated by having the three of them standing over her. Mike had discovered that nothing much intimidated Leslie Hunt.

"We weren't," she answered. "We were trying to gather evidence for a friend. My husband and I posed as home-buyers and Mr. Wilby gave us the 5-cent tour. We took pictures on our cell phones, just like any serious house-shoppers would."

Sam leaned forward. "Do you still have those photos?"

"Oh, yes, of course," Leslie said. "But I already gave a copy of them to the Sheriff. On a flash drive."

"I'll make you a copy," Mike offered.

"So you were investigating," Dean said, bringing the conversation back on topic. "Did you see anything or hear anything that raised your alarms?"

Leslie nodded. "Walls didn't line up; corners weren't 90-degrees," she said. "I mean, houses shift over time, but these were new. And the ground outside had sunken over the pipes, and I thought it seemed too narrow for sewage outflow."

"How about smells?" Dean asked. "Did you smell anything weird?"

Leslie shrugged. "He had a bread-maker going. To make it seem more home-like?" she added when the two "agents" looked confused. "It's a standard show home trick."

Mike had already asked Leslie all his questions, so he kept the bulk of his attention on the two agents.

The big one wrote copious notes, looking at Leslie with tired, earnest eyes. Dean's voice was a vaguely accusatory growl, but Mike figured his voice always sounded that way. The man sounded like he smoked three packs a day, but there was no tobacco smell hanging around him. Maybe he'd inhaled a hell of a lot of smoke in a fire or some such. Mike didn't plan on asking about it, but he filed it away with the knowledge of the large-caliber handguns Dean and Sam both carried at their backs.

He stood patiently as Leslie Hunt repeated everything she'd told him—how Wilby had given them a spiel about bringing his development company up here because of his poor, sick dad (imaginary), and the company's inspection record in his home state (good, but half the inspector's office was up on bribery charges), and how nothing was more important to him than the safety and happiness of the families who bought from him. All typical salesman stuff, Mike had concluded.

Then Wilby had taken the Hunts to the back deck to view the yard. He'd suddenly become confused and incoherent, talking about evil spirits and demons. Then he'd vomited on their feet, collapsed, convulsed, and died almost before either of the Hunts could pull out their cell phones to call for help. All within sight of two other couples who were also viewing the show home.

Mike wasn't hopeful that the two "agents" would learn anything new.

Sure enough, as they walked down the Hunt's path to the vehicles, Dean slapped his notebook against his open hand.

"Nothing!"

"Nothing obvious, at least," Sam temporized.

"He talked of evil spirits," Mike threw out to see how the agents reacted.

Dean shook his head. Sam frowned. "Delusions and hallucinations are a common side effect of carbon monoxide poisoning," he said. "I don't think we should read anything into that."

Mike hadn't put much stock into it either, so he just shrugged.

"Agent" Scott was looking at the list. "Next up is… Tony and Velma Wazcheweski?

Mike took a look at the ancient Chevy, and bet the pair would like any idea that cut down on gas consumption. "We'll stop by the show home first," he said. "It's on the way."

Dean nodded. "Sounds good."

Mike climbed into his SUV, settling his heavy belt comfortably with the ease of long practice. He made a quick report to Maggie, letting her know where he was going and who he was with. She must've had someone at the desk because she didn't give him much of a hard time. He'd take it, and enjoy the ride. Which he did. Aside from the weird deaths, it was the perfect morning to drive around the county. The trees in the windbreaks were starting to put out their autumn colors, but everything was still mostly green.

He checked his rear view, making sure he hadn't lost Dean—nearly impossible on these roads, but still. They were there, following a safe two-car-lengths behind.

In keeping with the general air of caution, Mike signaled his turn a good distance from the crossroad. Wilby had torn down most of the old trees to make access easier, so nothing hid the new buildings and the turn-off was obvious. Plus the "Open House" signs and flags still fluttered along the side of the road, even though the subdivision was shut down while county and state investigators went through the place with backhoes and crowbars.

To Mike, the development was like a jagged scar against the low, rolling fields: ugly and out of place. The box houses were nearly identical to each other and packed tight, as if huddling together against an unknown threat.

Although that one might be accurate, Mike considered.

When he'd been out here originally, turf had been laid in front. It was gone; carefully hauled away for testing. Sunken patches in the dirt revealed where inspectors had dug up pipelines. Dried mud coated the driveway and police tape crisscrossed the property. It merely highlighted the large "CONDEMNED" sticker on the front door.

Dean and Sam were standing on the pavement when Mike got out. Dean scanned the surroundings while Sam sniffed the air like a dog.

"Pretty rank, huh," Mike commented. Sam nodded. Mike continued, "Wilby claimed it was from the unfinished septic system, but he also paid off the inspector, who's now a former inspector."

Mike opened the door to the empty house. All the display furnishing had been returned, so there was nothing but blank walls and carpet, and even that was patchy as the inspectors had taken samples to test.

"What's going to happen to the houses?" Sam asked. "Will they be torn down?"

"That'll depend on who buys the property and what they want to do with it." Mike shrugged. "We got patrols out here, keeping kids and looky-loos away until the health and safety inspections are all done."

Dean tipped his head slightly. Sam shook his. Dean's eyebrows went up. Sam's came down. Dean sighed, resigned. They both nodded, and Mike was sure they'd both be careful if they broke into the house later.

Sam pulled out his notebook and consulted his notes, while Dean opened cupboards and examined walls. "Leslie Hunt said they toured the whole house, right?"

"That's right," Mike answered as Sam said, "Yeah."

"Mind if I take a look around, Sheriff?" Dean asked.

Mike waved him off. He turned to "Agent" Scott. "Anything in particular you'd like to see?"

Sam cleared his throat. "How 'bout the deck? Where he died."

The deck was big, with room for a full set of furniture and a huge barbeque. There'd been a massive one—the Flamemaster Wilby was using as a lure. Mike had eyed it guiltily even knowing he should've been concentrating on the dead body. Now the deck was barren—no furniture, no barbeque. Nothing to hide the fact it had been badly made.

"So they stepped out here, and…?" Sam had his notebook out, too.

"Went over to the railing so Wilby could point out the view."

Sam looked out over the backyard, seeing the same thing Mike had seen: a whole lotta flat land and a few grain silos. And a rusty metal Quonset hut that had been the hangar and flight center.

"If you squint, you can see mountains," Mike added.

Sure enough, Sam squinted. "Yeah, right."

He walked to the railing. "Kind of a long landing strip, isn't it?"

"There was a USAF training center here during the war. Shut down after Korea." Mike replied. "They pulled up the concrete in the seventies—grass is easier to maintain. After that, there were only private planes and the occasional charter. Fishermen coming in for vacations, that kind of thing." Mike paused. "I don't think anybody thought much of the occasional fuel spill. After all, they were all small planes; how much damage could they do?"

"A lot, judging from all the brown patches over there," Sam said with a nod to area near the hangar.

"Over seventy years it adds up," Mike agreed. "Groundwater's no good. Top two feet of soil needs to be hauled away. More, where they had the fuel stored."

Sam looked down at the ground closer to the house. "It's even bad way out here."

Mike glanced down. The dark-green broadleaf ground cover he'd noticed on his last trip out here was now grey-brown and withered. "Huh."

"What?" Dean asked as he came out onto the deck.

"Nothing," Mike replied. He hoped it was nothing.

Sam opened his mouth to pursue it, but Mike's cell phone rang out with the theme from Cops indicating an official call. He looked up at the probably-fake agents, and tried not to feel embarrassed. "My deputy programmed it," he explained like he always did.

Everyone in town knew Toby had found and downloaded the Sheriff's ringtone, and they gave the young deputy no end of hassle over it. They gave Mike even more because he hadn't yet figured out how to reprogram his own damn phone.

"Maggie, what's up?"

"Donny out at the roadhouse just called." Maggie sounded tentative, which was unlike her. "Some tourist just keeled over."

"Keeled over?" he questioned.

"'Got sick, passed out, and died,' is what I was told," Maggie answered. "But Donny sounded shaken, and nothing disturbs that boy."

Mike sighed and rubbed his forehead. "So it fits the pattern?"

"Dunno, Sheriff," Maggie said. "I've sent for Doc Cole. She'll meet you at the roadhouse."

"Okay," Mike said, bowing to the inevitable. "We'll be there in ten."

"We?" his deputy asked pointedly.

"Special Agents McTiernan and Scott will be accompanying me to the latest crime scene, yes," he responded flatly. On the other end of the line, Maggie snorted, but she recognized his tone well enough not to question him further. He liked working with Maggie. She was a good second-in-command.

"There's been another one?" Sam asked while Mike put the phone back on his belt.

"Maybe, maybe not," he answered. "Won't know for sure until we investigate." He gave the two men in their mostly-cheap suits a small smile. "The scene's on the way back to town. You can follow me."

.o0o.

The Ramblin' Man roadhouse had started life as a double-wide trailer planted ten feet outside municipal lines when the town had voted to go dry back in the sixties. The ban had been lifted after fifteen years, but aside from paint and new chairs, the roadhouse hadn't changed much until six years ago. That was when Donny took over the business and added another trailer decked out as a kitchen. Then he hired his buddy, who used to cook for the officer's mess in Germany, and the Ramblin' Man had become the place to go to have a seriously good steak. It was why the dead fisherman and his buddies had stopped there.

"–and it was a really good steak," said Vern, a mid-level bureaucrat with a fly-covered fishing hat and a growing paunch. "Everything Bob said it was."

"Bob" was Robert Wezsnovski and Vern's boss back in St. Louis. He'd loaned them the cabin on the lake for the weekend. Mike had had to get them to spell the last name four times.

"Of course, Bill kept saying it wasn't as good a steak as this one he'd eaten in Tokyo." Bill was the dead guy. "Bill always had something better someplace else."

Mike looked at the speaker, George Alvarado. Slim, predatory, in command—there was something in his tone.

Beside him, Sam shifted. "He did, did he?" he prompted, and Mike figured the man had heard the same thing he had.

"If you went deer hunting in Minnesota," George said with snort, "then he'd hunted bear. In Alaska."

"Or lions in Africa," Vern corroborated. "And if you talked about a canoe trip on a lake, then Bill had to tell you about his white-water rafting trip down the Salmon River in Idaho–"

"It has Class IV rapids, don't you know!" they all chorused.

"Bit of a braggart," Mike summarized. Again, they all nodded. Mike downgraded their status from 'friends' to 'companions.'

"We didn't want to invite him," Vern said. "But he just doesn't hear 'no'. I mean, he didn't—he didn't hear the word 'no'—not ever," Vern said, blinking rapidly. It was the first sign that any of them were upset that Bill had died, rather than upset that the manner was weird or that he'd died in front of them.

"He always invited himself along," George added, waving his hand in a circle. "Anything we were doing, he had to come, too."

"It was okay at first," Vern continued. "Ten years ago, when we first started working together, he seemed like a decent guy."

"Then Vern got promoted, and Yi married a beauty queen," George said pointing his finger at their silent third companion, Yi Chou.

"Miss Alabama, 1998," Yi said with a goofy smile.

"And Bill got really competitive," George finished. "Biggest house, fastest car."

"Best… y'know… sex," Vern added. They all nodded. "Lots about his sex life."

"Then this trip. He didn't catch anything. I mean, neither did Vern–"

Vern shook his head.

"But Vern didn't pout about it." George's voice was filled with disgust, and Mike figured that, even if he'd lived, Bill wouldn't have been going on any more fishing trips with George.

Vern took up the narrative. "What made it bad was how he went on and on about taking lessons from some fly fishing champion up in Canada."

"Not on his salary, he didn't," Yi said. They were the first words he'd spoken outside of his mild brag about his wife and his contact information.

Mike turned to look at him, and raised his pencil expectantly.

"Bill was an ass," Yi said baldly. "And a liar, and a thief. The cops back home have probably seized all his documents and assets—I know they were going to."

George and Vern turned to stare at their friend who shrugged. "It's why I agreed to let him come along."

"You sneaky son-of-a-bitch," George said. It was hard to tell if he was accusing Mr. Chou, or congratulating him on being sneaky. Either way, it soon became apparent to Mike that he wasn't going to get anything more out of the trio until they'd had a chance to speculate on events back home.

With a small nod, Sam indicated that he'd stick around to ask the trio more questions. Mike left "Agent" Scott behind, and wandered over to where "Agent" McTiernan was staring down at Lizzie Cole as she examined the body.

There was something more than clinical in Dean's expression when he looked at the doctor, but that was hardly surprising in a hetero male: even in her ugly blue coveralls and the little paper hat, Doc Cole was a fine-looking woman. Mike had noticed it right off, and in the eight years since she'd moved here, he hadn't once regretted letting her know he'd noticed.

She was looking a little rougher than normal right now. Some kind of stomach bug was making the rounds of the acreages, and Lizzie had been pulling double-shifts at the hospital as well as being called out to all these freaky deaths. As a former trauma surgeon in Chicago, she'd been the obvious choice to be ME, and the extra income was always nice, but looking at the deepening lines beside her eyes and mouth, Mike couldn't help but resent the toll it was taking on her.

If it had only been the flu thing, Mike wouldn't've worried. Lizzie would fight to save everyone she could, and she'd be frustrated and hurt when she couldn't, but she'd come out the other side the same as she'd gone in. But this other thing—the thing making stomachs explode, and asphyxiating people in backyards.That was something that could change Lizzie, and he wouldn't be able to do anything to save her. He'd moved here to be safe and now he wasn't, and she wasn't, and he hated it!

He'd always hated it.

He lifted his belt, feeling the weight of the gun and ammo, the big flashlight and the handcuffs—the realities of this life. It grounded him in the now, as it always did. It let him back away from panic and fear, and remember that here—in this place—he was in control.

Professional. Clinical. Unafraid.

"Doc," he said formally because they were both on the job here.

"Hey, Sheriff," she said in vague acknowledgement. She was staring down at the dead Mr. Bill as if he had personally offended her.

"Well?" he asked, prodding her out of her reverie.

Lizzie waved at the brown and red stains coating the victim's pants. "Aside from the obvious, there are no external symptoms of anything I can see," she answered. "There are no signs of stroke or heart attack, which I'd expected, but there's also no signs of poison or toxins." She huffed out a breath as she stood, putting offended hands on her offended hips. "Not that I know of any that would cause…this."

"Gall stones maybe?" Mike quipped, to be a Bruce Willis-tough-guy. Behind him, Dean snorted in amusement, so he guessed it worked.

"Gallstones don't explode out your ass." Lizzie glared at him. "Plus, if this man had gallstones big enough to cause this amount of damage to his rectum, then there's no way he would've been sitting at the table all happy and hungry."

"Actually," Sam said as he walked over. "All three say Bill started showing signs of discomfort very soon after they sat down. They took it for indigestion, but didn't care enough to ask."

"Nice," Dean said. He lifted his brows in a silent question for his partner, and received a small headshake in reply. Dean grimaced. "I'm gonna take a look around. Maybe we missed something."

Mike looked around the open plainness that was the Ramblin' Man's décor, but said nothing. "When you taking him?" he asked Lizzie instead.

Lizzie stared down at the body. She was frowning and unhappy, and Mike repressed his urge to soothe her with a vapid promise that they'd figure it out. He wanted to, but knew the doc would punch him if he tried.

"Maybe it's time we called the CDC," she said softly.

"Agent" Scott perked up. "Center for Disease Control? But none of the causes are similar."

"Except for their extreme weirdness," Lizzie replied.

"Look," Sam said sympathetically. "I understand your desire to know what's going on; I just don't think the CDC will be able to help you."

"How're you going to explain it to them for one thing," Mike added. Sam nodded with a rueful smile. "Let's give Sam and Dean a chance before we escalate this."

Lizzie looked up at him, eyebrow raised.

It was a question, because Mike never hesitated to ask for help when there were lives at stake. Mike gave her a small nod in return. If the two men were what he thought they were, then they were probably the town's best hope.

She quirked an eyebrow back at him, and Mike knew he'd have some "'splainin' to dooo" when they were at home. But he also knew Lizzie trusted him enough to hear his explanation.

A nasal voice broke their conversation. "Hey, Sheriff Mike? Can I go now?"

Mike turned to face the speaker. It was Joesy Miller, one of the roadhouse's regulars.

"Have I talked to you yet, Joesy?" Mike asked back.

"No, sir. That you haven't."

"Then I guess you can't go, yet."

"Aw, c'mon, man!" Joesy slapped his hand down on the table. "It's not like I saw anything, or like I was doing anything."

Lizzie rolled her eyes in commiseration before she turned back to Bill's body. It freed Mike to head over to Joesy's table.

Joesy Miller was Caucasian, with the looks that ran in his mother's family, the body that came from his father's, and a shit work ethic that didn't come from either of them. He looked like the poster boy for good-old American farm boys, but Mike knew Joesy fleeced the tourists at pool, and the locals at darts, and sold drugs when he thought he could get away with it. He worked as little as possible, but whined about "wetbacks" taking all the good jobs. He also stole candy bars from the gas station out of habit and lied as easy as breathing.

He'd often been found in the company of one Jim Brogan, which made him even more unattractive in Mike's eyes.

Mike paused, half-way to sitting, as Joesy coughed, a wheezing hack that was going around the county. Mike inched his butt a little farther to the side. Last thing he needed was to get sick now.

"You know, Joesy, I'm finding you all over my investigations," Mike said. "You were the last person to see Brogan, one of the last to see Beth Connolly."

"I didn't sleep with Beth, Sheriff," Joesy protested. "She was just a kid. I don't do jailbait."

Debatable, Mike thought, but ultimately unprovable.

"And you worked with Wilby," he continued.

"I just dropped off building supplies," Joesy protested. "Didn't stick around. Just, in-out, like ducks mating, right?"

By this time, "Agent" Scott had joined them. "You were here when they arrived?" he asked.

"Yeah," Joesy nodded. "Just grabbing a quick lunch before heading out. Got things to do, man."

Mike snorted. "Carl fired you again, Joesy. You got nothing more important to do than this."

"Did you notice anything unusual about the group?" Sam said, indicating the businessmen who were still huddled in the corner, waiting for the body of their companion to be taken away.

"I hardly noticed them," Joesy said, shaking his head. He coughed, and Mike thought it sounded a little guilty.

"You didn't notice their three-hundred-dollar shoes and five-hundred-dollar watches?" Mike asked in disbelief. "You didn't wonder how you could sucker them into a game of pool or poker?"

Joesy shook his head. "I told you: I had things to do—legitimate things. I hardly noticed them." Joesy's voice thinned out, and he gave another rough cough to clear his throat. Then he coughed again, for longer.

"Are you okay?" Mike asked.

Joesy stopped coughing, but his next breath sounded like it was being dragged through a clogged drain. His lips turned blue as Mike watched. "Lizzie!" he called, sliding out from behind the table.

He and Sam pulled Joesy out of the booth and laid him out on the floor. It helped a little, but not enough. They loosened his collar, checked his throat for blockages. Mike even heard Sam whispering a prayer over Joesy, but he knew it was hopeless even before Lizzie rushed over.

"We can throw him in the back of the creeper," Mike suggested anyway. "Faster than waiting for the ambulance.

Joesy's breath rattled and stilled. Mike watched Lizzie do compressions, heard her curse. Watery blood gushed from Joesy's mouth with every push.

Sam looked at him. Shook his head.

Mike nodded. He put his hand on Lizzie's shoulder. "He's gone."

"No!" She leaned down to give mouth-to-mouth.

Mike's breath hitched and his adrenaline spiked.

Quickly, Sam bent and stopped her. "There's no point."

Mike let out a shaky breath. His stomach uncoiled more slowly.

"This makes no sense!" Lizzie looked down at Joesy, looked over at the tourist, looked up at them. "There's no reason for any of this—no cause!"

"That we know of," Sam corrected.

She turned to glare at the agent. "I may not be a big city doctor now, but I interned in Chicago. I have seen a lot of death, and even the weirdest ones made sense."

Mike decided it was time to intervene. He put his hand under her arm and lifted her up. "We'll figure it out, Lizzie, but I don't know if it'll ever make sense."

He could feel their eyes on him: Lizzie's and the fake agent's. He didn't look at Sam. Mike knew he'd only look surprised. Lizzie, however… Lizzie's look demanded answers. Answers he tried with his eyes to promise to give. He must've done okay, because Lizzie nodded.

"Okay. Okay. You figure it out," she said. "You figure it out, and I'll make sense of it."

Again, Mike lost his breath. She'd cover for them.

Lizzie, his straight-arrow better-half, had just promised to cover the truth with a more palatable official story.

He wanted to kiss her.

He contented himself with his own heartfelt nod and a smile. "I'll take you up on that."

.o0o.

Lizzie shooed them out of the Roadhouse. She'd shoo-ed everybody non-medical out and shut the doors on their heels.

Mike and Sam moved out to where Dean stood staring at the fields. Dean didn't look like he was assessing a threat, or even thinking about the case. He just looked lost. When Mike realized it, he abruptly cut to the right. He would make his report to Maggie from a few steps away—it was all the privacy he could give the two "agents". Mike lifted his radio and tried not to listen in on their conversation.

"What?" Sam asked.

"Maggie. We need a second ambulance out here."

"It occurred to me that I've been travelling the Midwest for thirty years, through farm after farm, and I have no idea what that plant is."

Dean's voice was matter-of-fact. Sam's return comment sounded pole-axed.

"You're… thinking about plants?"

Mike nearly missed Maggie's response. Not a problem—he'd had a lot of years with the deputy.

"No. I'm not telling you what happened over an open radio," he said. Maggie sniffed unhappily.

"You don't know what it is either do you," Dean said.

"Ummm. Looks like… barley?"

Mike looked at the plant in question. It covered barely a quarter of the field beyond the parking lot. It was kind of familiar, but certainly not barley—more like potatoes.

" You have no more idea than I do."

Except that was Nick Patteson's field, and Nick wouldn't plant potatoes this late in the year.

He finally caught the gist of what his deputy was saying.

"For god's sake, Maggie," Mike said firmly into the radio. "Neither McTiernan nor Scott pulled their guns on anyone."

"It's kind of stupid, isn't it? We saved all this, and we don't even know what it is," Dean said sadly.

"Just send the damn ambulance," Mike ordered before clicking off. He didn't want to know, Mike told himself. He didn't.

"Isn't it enough that it exists, at all?"

Mike gave his sore head a rub, pulled his hat back on straight, and marched over to the two men. He didn't want to hear whatever Dean might say in response to his partner's comment. He was not into noble self-sacrifice for the greater good. He was a small-town sheriff, for Christ's sake. He'd been one for a lot of years, and he wasn't going to pine for a life he'd left behind in his teens.

"Sheriff," Dean acknowledged.

"Find anything?"

"Just this." Dean jerked his head in a 'follow-me' gesture, and headed up the highway. Mike followed, giving Toby a wave to let the deputy know he was leaving the scene.

Dean didn't go far before left the road, heading out into the overgrown verge. Mike could only be thankful there was no drainage ditch at this point—he was getting a little too old to be hopping over smelly, stagnant water. A few steps on, Dean stopped. He pointed at the body of a dead hare.

"Tell me if this is normal," Dean said.

Pale brown fur stood out easily against the deep-green ground cover. Mike tried to look at the body the way Dean had looked at it—what had he seen that made it out of place? It had been dead at least a couple days, but scavengers hadn't touched it.

"Rabbits get hit by cars all the time," Mike ventured, but the hare's body was pristine.

"And drag themselves ten yards from the road to die?" Dean scoffed.

Flies were buzzing around it, but none were landing.

"The plant's growing over it," Sam said. "So it has to have been here a while."

"No decomposition," Dean argued.

Mike looked closer. Dean was right. He looked at the area around the rabbit's body. The broad-leafed plant looked both familiar and unfamiliar. Then he realized it was the same plant which covered up a quarter of Nick Patteson's field, the one he'd thought looked like potatoes.

"Huh," he grunted.

"What?" Both agents looked at him.

He shook his head a little. "Nothing. Only, I'm gonna have to tell Nick Patteson that he's got an aggressive, invasive plant species attacking his south-forty."

Both agents looked confused.

Mike nodded at the plant. "That's not potato or barley."

"So what is it, then?" Sam asked.

"An aggressive, invasive plant species that's taking over his south forty." He kept his voice flat and dry, but Dean got it anyway. The fake agent smirked at his partner.

"I think it's the same plant I saw at Wilby's development," Mike continued. "In which case, we've got a bigger problem than Nick Patteson's lost crop."

Dean shifted his weight. "Forget the plant," he said impatiently. "What about the rabbit?"

Mike took off his hat and scratched his head. "Well, could be the plant is poisonous. Rabbit ate some and died."

"Hah!" Dean snorted. "More proof that vegetables are deadly." Sam gave his partner a sad headshake.

Mike ignored them. "I'll have to get somebody out to test it before we burn it."

"Wait," Sam said. "If it's poisonous, and it was all over Wilby's property…" he trailed off.

"Then maybe it's the reason Wilby died so weird?" Dean finished.

Mike frowned at them. "Wilby wasn't hopping around in the stuff. Unless you think there's something else going on."

Dean and Sam shifted and stole glances at the other. Small tells, but Mike prepared himself for the lie.

Finally, Dean caved. "Toxic fumes?" he suggested.

Mike gave that suggestion the derisive snort it deserved, and tried a different tack.

"What made you notice the rabbit?" Mike asked.

"What do you mean?"

"I wouldn't've thought twice about seeing a dead rabbit," Mike explained. "But you did."

"I don't know." Dean shifted like a little boy being lectured by his father. "Maybe it's because I'm a city boy." He smiled charmingly. "Not used to dead animals."

Mike snorted again: thirty years travelling the Midwest did not a city boy make.

However, since he'd already chosen to bury his head about what the two men weren't, it was too late to nit-pick about this.

Mike started back towards the pavement. The two "agents" followed. Like ducklings.

He even helped steady Dean when he stumbled to prove there were no hard feelings.

By the time they got back to the roadhouse, the second ambulance. They had arrived at the roadhouse. Mike could hear Lizzie ordering young Toby and the paramedics around. He could also hear the fishermen complaining about having to stick around, and Donny's staff pelting everyone with questions about whether they'd be going back to work. Mike sighed. He was the County Sheriff, elected three times over, and yet some days his job still came down to crowd control.

He turned to his companions. "I'm going to be stuck here for a while," Mike said. "You two might as well go see the other sites before it gets dark." A part of him wanted to go with them He stamped on it ruthlessly—they'd have to follow something close to procedures if he went.

"It's unlikely we'll find anything," Sam pointed out.

Mike gave a little shrug. "New eyes. Fresh perspective. Don't see how it's gonna hurt the nothing we've got so far."

Dean's mouth went up on one side, while Sam merely looked sheepish. "Good point," he said.

"Tomorrow morning, though," Mike went on. "Back at the station. Bright and early."

Sam nodded, "We'll be there."

Mike watched them get into their classic, gas-guzzler. He listened as old heavy metal music blared from the speakers. He lifted his arms to protect his face when the spinning tires spat rocks and dirt at him.

'Federal agents' his rear end.