Mad River

by John Sandford

  “Yeah.”

  Nina looked at her dead husband and began to shake with fear and regret and said, “Please don’t,” but Jimmy shot her in the head and she fell beside her husband and, like him, curled herself into a snail shape.

  • • •

  JIMMY, BECKY, and Tom spent the rest of the day eating, watching television, and ransacking the house. They got two hundred dollars in cash, which Jimmy added to the stash. Becky said, “Tell me how much we’ve got.” Jimmy smiled, uncurled the sheath of bills, licked a finger, and counted it out: a little over twelve hundred dollars.

  Tom said, “Holy shit. You must’ve took a thousand dollars off that girl.”

  “Not exactly,” Jimmy said, but he wouldn’t say anything more, even after Becky started picking at him. Finally, she asked, “Did you get that money for killing her?”

  Jimmy said, “Shut up.”

  Tom thought, Jeez. He did. He got the money for killing her.

  • • •

  THEY WATCHED TELEVISION, but it was all cable stuff, and they didn’t know that they were being hunted until late in the afternoon, a “Five dead in Minnesota” news flash.

  The next thing they knew, they were looking at photos of themselves; and the sheriff—Duke, they all knew who he was—said that they were looking for a silver Chevy truck, and he said the numbers on the plate.

  Tom rocked back and said, “We’re cooked, goddamnit, I knew it, we’re cooked.”

  Jimmy asked, “How could they know all that? How could they know it?”

  Tom said, “Fingerprints. Witnesses. Somebody saw us, that’s how. Everybody in town knew us.”

  “Gotta think, gotta think,” Jimmy said.

  “You don’t gotta think at this very minute. What you gotta do is get that truck out of the driveway,” Tom said.

  • • •

  THEY DIDN’T KNOW IT, because they weren’t smart enough, but they were cruising purely on luck when Jimmy and Tom took the truck out of town, sticking to back streets, out into the countryside, with Becky driving the Boxes’ Tahoe behind them.

  Jimmy had figured out that as long as the cops were looking for the silver truck, they wouldn’t be looking for anything else. He didn’t know the land west of Marshall very well, but he knew what he was looking for, and he found it eight or ten miles out of town, a long snaky creek with a low bank. He drove the truck off the road and across the corner of a cornfield, then into the trees next to the creek, running over saplings and small stuff until he was stopped by a fallen log.

  By that time, he was far enough back that the truck couldn’t be seen from the road. The farmer would find it when he started plowing, but that’d be a while yet.

  When they were all back in the Tahoe, Jimmy said, “Let’s get back to the house. Sit and figure out what to do. We got to get out of here. Maybe . . . Florida. Or Alaska. We need a map.”

  At the Boxes’, they ate Cheetos and watched more television, switching around local channels, and Becky found herself to be a star. The TV people had gotten her yearbook photo, which looked pretty damn good, she thought.

  “You’re famous now,” Jimmy said.

  At the end of the broadcast, the news channel put up two telephone numbers, one for the sheriff’s office and one for the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, “Ask for Agent Virgil Flowers,” and Jimmy laughed at Flowers’s name and said, “If I was going to give myself up, it’d be to somebody named Flowers. I sure as shit wouldn’t give up to that fuckin’ Duke. He’s crazier than we are.”

  • • •

  THE PHONE NUMBERS got Tom thinking. When the other two were in the kitchen, he went through Rick Box’s pockets and, sure enough, found a cell phone. Later, when he had a chance, he went through Nina Box’s purse and found another one. He made sure they were turned off, and put them in his inside jacket pocket.

  The next time Flowers’s number came up, he wrote it in the palm of his hand. He went in the kitchen a minute later, wrote the number on a piece of notepaper, and put it in his back pocket, and scrubbed off his hand.

  He was still in the kitchen, drinking a Pepsi, when Jimmy wandered in, looked at him. He said, “I think we got something. Got an idea.”

  Late that night, they went on a scouting trip to a town called Oxford, fifteen miles out of Marshall. They took both of the Boxes’ vehicles, and left the Lexus at the Walmart Supercenter on Highway 59, before they left town. If they needed to switch vehicles, it’d be there, Jimmy said.

  So they scouted Oxford, but there wasn’t much to see. When they came back, they couldn’t get through to the house. There were cops all over the streets—they were clustering around the Boxes’ place. Becky was driving, and took a left as soon as she saw them.

  “Goddamn, that was close,” Jimmy said, looking back. “Somebody must’ve seen that truck this morning.”

  “Now what?” Becky asked.

  9

  VIRGIL WORKED INTO THE NIGHT: called the crime-scene crew out of Bigham, where they’d checked into a local motel for the night. Virgil listened while the Lyon County sheriff and a social worker talked to the two kids, and then got Duke out of bed and told him about it.

  “You think they’re gone from my county?”

  “I don’t know where they are, Lewis. They might be running for the West Coast. But they might be coming back to you, since that’s the country they know best. I just got no idea.”

  They learned that the Boxes had two cars, and that both were missing. Whether one might be in a shop somewhere, they didn’t know, but the killers now had access to either two or three vehicles, and they put out stop orders on all three.

  • • •

  A BIT BEFORE three o’clock in the morning, Virgil got back to the motel, beat, and had just taken his boots off when he took a call from the BCA duty officer in St. Paul, who said, “We’ve got an incoming call from somebody who says it’s an emergency, about those guys you’re chasing. He wants your number.”

  “Did he say where he’s calling from?”

  “He said he’s traveling, but he needs to call you right quick, or he’s got to turn his phone off.”

  “Is there an ID on the phone?”

  “Yeah, it’s a guy calling, but it’s a woman’s phone. A Nina Box.”

  “Give him my number,” Virgil said. “Jesus, give him my number. Then see if you can track the call, get all over the call . . . that’s one of the guys we’re chasing.”

  The duty officer went away, and fifteen seconds later Virgil’s phone rang. He said, “Yeah. Virgil Flowers.”

  “This is Tom McCall.”

  “How do I know that?” Virgil asked. He needed to keep McCall talking.

  “Jimmy shot the Boxes. He shot Mr. Box in the heart with one gun and then shot Mrs. Box in the head with another gun that he got out of the Boxes’ gun safe in the bedroom. That good enough?”

  “Tom, you’ve got to come see me,” Virgil said. “You are in deep, big trouble, but if you’re calling, I can probably help you out.”

  “Listen, I got nothing to do with this,” McCall said. “I was hanging with Becky and Jimmy in Bigham—we are friends, I admit that, or anyway, we were friends. Jimmy and Becky said they were going over to a guy’s house in Bigham because the guy owed Jimmy some money for dope, and they’d come back and pick me up. When they came back, they were driving this other car, and, man, I didn’t know what they done until the next day when Jimmy shot his old man.”

  “It’s all Jimmy?”

  “It’s all Jimmy . . . but Becky is his girlfriend, and they’re gonna kill me. I can’t get away from them. I know they’re gonna kill me. I got the Box kids down the basement, I think they’re all right, Jimmy wanted to kill them, too.”

  The Box kids remembered Becky pushing them down the sta
irs, so McCall was probably lying about that.

  “Where are you?” Virgil asked.

  “I don’t know. Becky was driving when we left the Boxes’, and they made me sit in the backseat. Becky’s in a Shell station, we’re getting gas and groceries. I’m sitting low in the seat, but Jimmy’s out walking around, smoking. . . . They think I’m sleeping, but they don’t know I got this phone. I’m scared to run. You gotta get me out, man. They’re both crazier than bug shit. You gotta get me out.”

  “You’re in a Shell station. Are they gonna hold it up?”

  “No, no. I don’t think so. We’re in some town, but not Marshall. I don’t know my way around so good. . . . But listen, I’m innocent. I didn’t do any of this shit. I can tell you something that nobody knows. When we were in Bigham, we had NO money. NO money. So Jimmy went over to this girl’s house in Bigham, and when he came back, he had a thousand dollars in cold cash. He didn’t say so exactly, and I’m afraid to ask, but I think he was paid to kill her. He and Becky talk— I think Jimmy’s coming back. Get me out, man, get me out.”

  Virgil shouted, “Call me back.”

  Maybe too late: McCall was gone.

  • • •

  VIRGIL PUNCHED UP the number of the BCA duty officer and at the same time brought up his computer; the duty officer said, “Sorry, Virgil, he was on AT&T and I still don’t have anybody who can help me out. I got the phone number and your number and maybe we’ll get something out of that.”

  Virgil told him to call anytime he had anything of substance, and then did a search for Shell stations in Minnesota. There was one at Springfield, probably fifty or sixty miles away, but there was no way that one would be open at four o’clock in the morning; the other one was at Luverne, just off I-90. That one was a possibility.

  Another minute of digging on the ’net got him a phone number, and he called it, but there was no answer. Luverne didn’t have a police department, but was covered by the Rock County sheriff. Virgil had that number in his database, called it. The duty officer said, “Tell you what—they aren’t open. If he told you he was calling from the Shell station in Luverne, he was pulling your weenie.”

  “Could you send a car by?”

  “I’ll have one there in two minutes.”

  “If you see them, don’t try to go one-on-one—for one thing, there are three of them, and they are killers. Get everybody you can find to help out.”

  Then Virgil sat on his bed and stared at his telephone. Ten minutes later, Rock County called back and the duty officer said, “Virgil, there’s nobody there. The station’s closed. There’s nothing moving downtown, nothing at all. If they were here, they’re gone—but I got people looking anyway.”

  Virgil thanked him and hung up. He called the duty officer at the BCA and told him to get set on Nina Box’s cell phone. “If he calls again, I want to know where he is, and I want to know right now. I want them all over that phone. If they want a warrant, get one. Call when you find out, and call me whatever time it is.”

  Then he called Springfield, wound up tracking down a police sergeant, who confirmed that the Shell station was closed and had been for hours. He told the cop why he was calling, and the cop said they’d keep their eyes open, “but they weren’t buying any groceries here.”

  Virgil thought about that for a while, and wondered why McCall had specified a Shell station. Was it possible that he’d been at a Shell station earlier? If they were going to Los Angeles, they wouldn’t be going out I-90. On the other hand, I-90 did go west, and everybody said Jimmy Sharp was a little dumb.

  • • •

  HE DIDN’T THINK he would sleep, but there wasn’t much of an alternative—nothing to do but think—so he finished undressing, lay down, and opened his eyes at seven-thirty with a good solid four hours of sleep behind him; and felt not bad. He rolled out of bed and called Duke, and told him what had happened.

  “Ah, jeez, you didn’t have any way to run him down? You had nothin’?”

  “I had nothin’,” Virgil said. “I was pulling my hair out, trying to think of something. One thing for sure, we got the right people. And we got the highway patrol and every sheriff’s deputy in four states looking for the pickup and the Boxes’ cars . . . but what else is there?”

  When Virgil got done with Duke, he called the BCA and found out that while Nina Box had an AT&T phone, the call had come in on a non-AT&T tower, through some kind of roaming arrangement, and they were still trying to sort out the wheres and whens.

  “Let me know,” he said.

  • • •

  VIRGIL NEEDED TO SCRATCH out some kind of plan, and he’d always found a good place to do that was a restaurant booth. He went over to a Perkins diner and got a booth and ordered the barn-buster breakfast, two eggs, hash browns, three buttermilk pancakes, with whole wheat toast, and lots of butter and syrup. He got his iPad and a stylus out and began doodling.

  McCall had said that Jimmy Sharp had come back from the O’Leary house with a thousand dollars; that he’d been paid to kill Agatha. The O’Learys had said that if Ag died before the divorce, her husband would get three-quarters of a million dollars, or more. Virgil had known people to kill for three-quarters of a hundred dollars, so it wasn’t hard to believe that somebody would kill for three-quarters of a million.

  He’d have to talk to Duke about that, and then make another pass at the O’Learys. He liked seeing his folks, but maybe, he thought, he should find a motel over in Bigham.

  • • •

  “WELL, VIRGIL FLOWERS, as I live and breathe,” a voice said, and he turned in the booth.

  In his own defense, Virgil thought later, her breasts were right there, in a form-fitting sweater, practically in his ear. He did not goggle at them, but even if he had, it would hardly have been insulting, given their quality, and perhaps he did delay a microsecond before lifting his eyes to hers and saying, “Sally! Hey, jeez, I heard you moved to Omaha.”

  Sally Long. She was short and dark-complected, with black eyes and black hair, fifty percent Sioux, she’d told him, both of her grandfathers being full-bloods. She had been a high school junior when Virgil, a senior, had taken her to the junior prom. He’d spent the rest of the following summer plotting to get into her shorts, but never had. She said, “I did. With my husband. He’s still there. With his second wife.”

  Virgil said, “Uh-oh.” He pointed her to the seat on the other side, and she slid into it and smiled. She’d always been a happy sort.

  She said, “Yeah,” and shrugged, and said, “We had a few good years.” There was a beat, and then she said, “Okay, a few good weeks. He was a fuckin’ goat-roper right from the start.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “No, you’re not,” she said. “I heard you’re an important cop, and you’ve been in shoot-outs with spies, and that you’ve been married four times and divorced all four.”

  Virgil: “That’s a lie. It’s three.”

  They both laughed, and the food arrived, and she ordered a much smaller breakfast, but when it came, she used just as much syrup. The thing was, Virgil was really pleased to see her; happy right to the bottom of his toes. She seemed happy enough to see him, too.

  “Your old man still got that tire place on 59?” he asked, as he worked through the pancakes.

  “Yep. I’m the manager, now,” she said. “You need your tire changed?”

  Virgil’s mind went blank for a moment, then he said, “Maybe,” and the idea of a motel in Bigham slipped away.

  • • •

  THE NEXT TIME Virgil looked at his cell phone, he realized that they’d been talking for more than an hour. He’d told her about chasing the three killers, and the possibility that they were headed west. Now, he said, “Ah, man, I’ve got to go. I’m staying at the Ramada. There’s a good chance I’ll be back tonight, unless we ru
n these kids down. You wanna go out for a salad and a beer?”

  She would. He got her phone number and took off.

  He tried to plan—he really did need one—but his mind kept skipping back to memories of Sally and that summer before he went to college. He’d been juggling three simultaneous romances, which was not easy to do in a small town; impossible, actually—he’d been caught out by all three of the women. Or girls. Or whatever they are when they’re still in high school.

  Crazy days. First time he’d ever smoked dope; remembered sitting up behind the Olson brothers’ barn, by the old abandoned cattle pen, smoking ditch weed and fooling around with Carol Altenbrunner . . .

  • • •

  THE CRIME-SCENE CREW had shifted to the Box house in Marshall, working with the Marshall cops. Virgil stopped there first, wending through a line of TV trucks to get there. All the major Twin Cities stations were there, and local stations from all over western Minnesota and eastern South Dakota. A Twin Cities newspaper reporter named Ruffe Ignace saw him go through the line and put a hand to his cheek in a “call me” sign. Virgil nodded, held up a finger, meaning “It’ll be a while,” and went on through.

  At the Box house, he learned from the crime-scene crew that the couple had been killed with two different guns, one an old-fashioned .38 revolver that shot one-hundred percent solid lead bullets, the other a 9mm shooting modern copper-jacketed hollow-points. They’d picked up the 9mm shell and could see a partial print on it, but hadn’t determined who the print belonged to.

  “Right now, I’m ninety-nine percent that the .38 was the same one used to kill the first several victims,” said Sawyer, the crew leader. “I’m just eyeballing it, but it’s the same kind of mungy old lead. I suspect he changed to the nine-millimeter because he’d run out of bullets for the .38. It’s a six-shooter.”

  “I’ll tell you what, Bea, you’re right. We got it from another source,” Virgil said, and he told her about talking with McCall.

  Duke had come over to Marshall from Bigham, and Virgil took him aside and said, “What do you know about the Murphys there in Bigham? Ag O’Leary’s husband—or Ag Murphy’s?”