Mad River

by John Sandford

  “Everybody is talking about the fight last night. Then a guy told me that Dick Murphy is getting out of town after the funeral. That he’s going to Vegas.” She looked at her watch. “The funeral’s going on right now.”

  “Goddamnit,” Virgil said. “Well: thanks for telling me. I’ll head over to the church.”

  “You got a few minutes—it just started,” she said. She got up to leave and said again, “I’m so sorry.”

  • • •

  ALL SAINTS was a yellow brick church built at the edge of the hill overlooking the river, bigger than most small-town Catholic churches, probably because the town was half-Irish, and had been for a hundred years. Virgil was of the opinion that Catholic services were weird, but never told anybody that. He limped into the back of the church at twenty minutes to two; the place was jammed, which was fine with him, as it allowed him to stand inconspicuously in the back.

  The interior was elaborately decorated in gold and yellow paint; it was built in the traditional cruciform style, and Ag O’Leary’s coffin was sitting at the far side of the crossing, covered with a white-and-gold cloth. The O’Learys were all in the front row of pews on the right side of the church; there was a youngish man in the first seat of the first pew on the left side, in a dark suit, and Virgil suspected that he was Dick Murphy.

  Virgil was standing between a thin, earnest-looking woman in a black coat that smelled of mothballs, her hair covered with a black hanky; and an older bald man in a green wool coat, with the reddened face of a longtime drinker and the white hair and eyebrows of Santa Claus. They’d been standing, watching for a couple of minutes when the old man leaned toward him and asked, with beer-scented breath, “You’re the state agent, right?”

  Virgil nodded. “Yup.”

  “Heard you got kicked pretty bad last night.”

  Virgil: “Yeah.”

  The old man went back to watching the service, then Virgil leaned toward him and asked, “That guy in the front pew, on the left, in the suit . . . Is that Dick Murphy?”

  “Yup.” Then, after a few seconds, “The little prick.”

  Virgil watched for a few more minutes, then retreated to the front steps and called Davenport. “The word is, Dick Murphy is leaving town after the funeral. It occurred to me that we might have enough to bust him as a material witness. Then again, maybe not.”

  Davenport thought it over for a few seconds, then said, “Be better if you could tell him what you’re thinking: that you might need to talk to him. Tell him you want him to stay in town. If he can’t do that, you want to know where he’s going. And if you call him back, and he doesn’t come, then you’ll bust him. Tell him if he’s busted, it might take a while to get him back here, and in the meantime, he could spend quite a bit of time in some unpleasant lockups.”

  Virgil said, “Good. I could have figured that out myself, if I weren’t so fucked up.”

  “You still hurt?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You okay?” Davenport asked.

  “Yeah. I just hurt.”

  “Getting old, man,” Davenport said.

  “But, fortunately, not as old as you,” Virgil said.

  • • •

  VIRGIL WAITED OUTSIDE THE CHURCH, sitting in his truck, and when the funeral Mass ended, he climbed out and walked across the street. The ushers brought the O’Learys and Murphy out first. There was an older man with Murphy, probably fifty or so, and they looked enough alike that Virgil thought he must be Dick Murphy’s father. Whoever he was, he left quickly, leaving Murphy on one side of the church steps, and the O’Learys on the other side, where they shook hands with people leaving the Mass.

  Murphy looked like an athlete prematurely going to seed—still in his early twenties, good-looking with dark hair and broad shoulders, he was already showing a bit of a gut. He was a little wider than Virgil, but a little shorter. He wore a black suit that was too sharp for a Midwestern small town, like perhaps he got it at the young man’s shop at the Las Vegas Barneys.

  When the stream of funeral-goers had slowed to a trickle, Murphy stepped toward John O’Leary and said something, and O’Leary snapped something back. Virgil could see his teeth, and one of the O’Leary boys stepped in front of his father, as if to protect him. Murphy may have thought the O’Leary kid was about to attack him, because he shoved the kid’s fist—was it Frank? Virgil wasn’t sure—and the kid threw a punch. Not a bad one, either, Virgil thought, as he started running.

  But the fight exploded across the church steps, three or four of the O’Leary boys going after Murphy as John and Mary O’Leary, along with the priest, tried to pull them off. Virgil got there perhaps ten seconds after the fight had begun, and began pushing people apart, roughing them, yelling, “Enough, enough . . .” James O’Leary had gotten ahold of Murphy’s left hand and was trying to wrench off a thick gold wedding band, and was screaming, “Give me that fuckin’ ring, you sonofabitch,” and Murphy tried to wrench his hand away but James hung on, and got flung down the steps for his trouble, and then Virgil wrapped up Murphy and hustled him backward away from the O’Leary crowd.

  James was hurt, a sprained wrist, and torn pants, and Murphy was bleeding from his lower lip and a mouse was swelling up on his cheekbone.

  When they were thoroughly separated, the priest standing between Murphy and the O’Learys with his hands stretched out to them, like Moses parting the Red Sea, Virgil let go of Murphy and said, “Easy, now.”

  Murphy yelled past him, “The whole fuckin’ bunch of you can bite me.”

  Jack O’Leary started across the steps, but John O’Leary and the priest grabbed him, and he subsided. The fight was done.

  Virgil said to Murphy, “I’m Virgil Flowers, an agent with the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.”

  “I know who you are,” Murphy said. He spat a little blood off to one side and rubbed his lip. “You’re the guy going around telling people I had something to do with Ag’s murder.”

  “I’m going around asking people about your relationship with Ag,” Virgil said, “because we have one witness who says he thinks you paid Jimmy Sharp to kill her.”

  Murphy reddened and poked a finger at Virgil’s chest: “I swear to God, you tell people that, and I will sue you. I’ll sue you right down to your shorts, and when they take your badge away from you, I’ll come kick your ass.”

  “Last night wasn’t good enough?” Virgil asked.

  Murphy’s eyes ticked away from Virgil’s, like a second hand going to the next hash mark, and then came back, and he said, “I don’t know anything about that. I heard about it, but it has nothing to do with me. It probably has to do with you going into a bar and asking questions. Especially that bar. They don’t like people like you, going around smearing their friends for no good reason.”

  “I hear you’re going to Las Vegas,” Virgil said.

  Murphy turned sullen. “No law against it. And I gotta get out of town, get away from these fuckin’ holier-than-thou O’Learys, treating me like dog shit.”

  Virgil said, “I’ll tell you something, Dick. I’ve got almost enough to arrest you. And I’ll have enough, when I nail down a couple more things. I’ve been talking to my boss about whether to arrest you as a material witness, or let you go on to Las Vegas. We decided to let you go, but if I call you back here, you best get on the first plane back. Because if you don’t, we’ll issue a warrant for you. If that happens, you could spend three weeks or a month in various goddamned unpleasant lockups before you make it back here, where you can talk to a lawyer.”

  “I did not have anything to do with Ag’s murder,” Murphy said. “That’s all I’ve got to say to you. I can prove where I was when she was killed, and it wasn’t anywhere around there. So get off my fuckin’ back.”

  Virgil said, “Good luck in Vegas, Dick. And you come back when I call
or you’ll regret it.”

  • • •

  VIRGIL TURNED AWAY and walked across the steps to the O’Learys, who were talking with the priest. He hadn’t met Marsha O’Leary, and when John O’Leary introduced them, she said, “Killing Jimmy Sharp and Becky Welsh won’t bring Ag back, Mr. Flowers. Despite what my children might have told you.”

  Virgil nodded, but didn’t have a reply, other than, “I feel really bad for you. This is a dreadful thing.” He’d said the same thing at twenty other funerals over the years, and always felt a bit hypocritical saying it.

  “On the other hand, if Dick had anything to do with it, I’d be very pleased to see him spend the rest of his life in prison,” she said.

  “Me, too,” Virgil said.

  “Are you coming to the cemetery?” John O’Leary asked.

  “I wasn’t planning to. I will if you think I might be needed to . . . keep order.”

  “Murphy’s not coming out there,” Jack O’Leary said. “At heart, he’s a chickenshit.”

  Marsha O’Leary said, “That’s not the kind of talk I’d expect from a doctor.”

  John O’Leary clapped his son on the shoulder and said, “You gave him a pretty good shot.”

  “Not good enough,” Jack said. “He’s still walking.”

  John said to Virgil, “We’ve got to go. We’ve got to swing by the emergency room and see if the dummy here broke his wrist.” He had James by the arm and roughed his hair and said, “Basically, as a surgeon, you don’t want to break your suturing arm.”

  Then they went off, the whole bunch, to the hospital, and then the cemetery.

  The priest said to Virgil, “That Murphy can take a shot. When Frank hit him, I thought he’d go down.” After a fifteen-second analysis of the pugilism, he said, “Say, you’re not related to Reverend Flowers over in Marshall?”

  Virgil said, “Yeah, I’m his kid.”

  “Really? He’s quite the golfer. He was up here in Bigham with Paul Berry. You know Paul? The priest at Saint Mary’s?—so we were down at the club here, and your old man is on the wrong side of the dogleg-right number two, and he takes out his four rescue club . . .”

  And so on.

  • • •

  VIRGIL GOT BACK to the truck and called Jenkins, who said, “I was just about to call you. We’re heading back to the Burger King for a snack. You want to keep looking at those farmhouses?”

  “Yeah. You still got Boykin with you?”

  “He’s out running a roadblock, but he’s available. You want me to call him?”

  “I can’t think of anything else to do right now,” Virgil said. “Let’s get back at it. I’ll meet you at the Burger King.”

  At the Burger King, Shrake and Jenkins told Virgil that they thought they knew who beat him up: two guys named Royce Atkins and Duane McGuire. “We got a tip through one of Davenport’s spies,” Jenkins said. “We found Atkins, but we’re not going anywhere with him. He’s a mean sonofabitch, just the kind of guy you’d go looking for, to do this. We’ve got him nervous, but he won’t talk unless we get something to squeeze him with.”

  “What’s he do?”

  “He’s a roofer, out of work for now. He says when spring gets going, he’ll get his crew back together. Right now, he sits on his ass.”

  “What about McGuire?” Virgil asked.

  “McGuire might talk, but he took off before we got there,” Shrake said. “We talked to his girlfriend. She said he was going on a road trip. We asked her if he helped beat you up, and she didn’t say no. She said, ‘I wouldn’t know anything about that.’ Which means yes.”

  “But you don’t know where he went?”

  “Not yet. But not far. His girlfriend knows where he is, but she’s not scared enough to tell us yet. She will be, though. When we get him, we’ll whip the dilemma on their young asses. One of them’ll crack.”

  The “prisoner’s dilemma” came out of game theory, but cops only used part of it. When they had two or more suspects, they’d make a simultaneous offer to all of them: talk first and you get a reduced charge on a plea bargain. Hold out, and you carry the full load. With your ex-buddy testifying against you, you could kiss your ass good-bye.

  “I need them to do that—I need one of them, or both of them, to testify that Dick Murphy paid them,” Virgil said. “If we can keep Jimmy or Becky alive, it won’t be so critical.”

  “We better plan on it being critical,” Shrake said.

  • • •

  THEY DROVE THROUGH Arcadia on the way south; Boykin said that the search was being run out of the filling station there. He’d be parked across the street.

  When Virgil, Shrake, and Jenkins arrived, they found what amounted to a media village—three news helicopters sitting in a hay field just north of town, at least a dozen satellite trucks lining the main street, along with a dozen cop cars from various jurisdictions, and a half dozen Humvees. The Guard had set up a bunch of big olive-drab field tents, which smelled like telephone poles, and one of them was working as a cafeteria, passing out ham and egg-salad sandwiches, and bottles of water. They parked behind Boykin’s patrol car and got out.

  Boykin came over, carrying an egg-salad sandwich, and said, “The Ferris wheel ain’t here yet,” and Jenkins shook his head: “Dumb shits probably got lost somewhere.”

  Shrake: “That egg salad was made for the invasion of Iraq. I hope you got a case of toilet paper in the car.”

  “It’s actually quite tasty,” Boykin said. “I talked to the young woman who made it, who is also quite tasty.” He added, “You’re just in time. Duke is going to make a statement. He is in a bad mood, and when he makes a statement to the TV people, in a bad mood, like he was with that concentration camp thing, it is usually something to see. He does put on a show.”

  “Ah, man,” Virgil said, and, “Excuse me for a minute.” He walked across the street and got a Diet Coke at the gas station, and then with the other three, walked down to a Guard tent that was being lit up by the TV cameramen. He saw Duke a couple of tents down, and went that way.

  “Sorry I couldn’t wait for you to wake up this morning,” Duke said, as Virgil came up. “But I heard it wasn’t that bad. Though, I see you’re limping.”

  “Got my ass kicked, is what happened,” Virgil said. He said, “Lewis, we’ve got to talk. It’s not going to help you to go out there and throw a fit.”

  “I know what I’m doing,” Duke said. “I learned my lesson. I’m going up there, and I’m going to be polite, and tell them what’s going on, and that we’re following all the rules and regulations.”

  “They might start ragging on you.”

  “I’ve had that done before,” Duke said.

  “Just don’t shoot anybody,” Virgil said.

  For the first time since Virgil met him in Shinder, to look at the Welshes’ bodies, Duke cracked what might have been a smile; but not a pleasant one. He seemed to be fantasizing about the possibility of blowing up the media. “I can’t make no rash promises,” he said.

  “Ah, man,” Virgil said.

  • • •

  ONE OF THE GUARD people had created a large dry-erase schematic map of southwest Minnesota, and she put it up on the stage, with a red dry-erase pen. Duke climbed on the stage a moment later, along with a National Guard lieutenant colonel whom Virgil didn’t know. With the media people pressing into the tent, Duke introduced the colonel, who pissed everybody off by citing his authority going back to Abraham, by giving the Guard credit for providing vehicles, sandwiches, and water, and by concluding with a confession that nobody had seen anything.

  Duke then described the ongoing search of local farmhouses, using the red pen and the map to locate the tightening search—information that everybody already had.

  A reporter called, “Bottom line—you h
aven’t found anything, and as far as you know, they could be in Quartzsite, Arizona.”

  “Not at all,” Duke said. “We’ve got very good reason to believe that they’re contained.”

  “Then how come the state agents are looking for them way down south of here? Who’s stupid?”

  “Nobody’s stupid. The state officers are working with a different set of parameters.”

  “How many more will die before they’re caught? I’m not asking for an exact number, but how about an estimate?”

  Shrake turned to Virgil and said, “Uh-oh.”

  The question was followed by laughter, which irritated Duke more than the question had, and he said, “I’m glad somebody can laugh at this tragedy. I assume you’ll be showing that on your news shows tonight.”

  Somebody said, “Fuck you,” just loud enough to be heard, but not loud enough for anybody to identify the source; Virgil thought it might be one of the cameramen. Duke said, “What was that?” and a senior reporter for one of the more dignified news channels said, “That was disgraceful,” and there was a muffled “Suck-up,” followed by more laughter, and then a man whom Virgil recognized as the second-string anchor for Channel Three stood and raised a hand, and Duke poked a finger at him.

  “Sheriff Duke, everybody here has heard rumors that James Sharp and Becky Welsh won’t be given a chance to surrender—that you’ve put out a shoot-to-kill order on them, a shoot-on-sight. Is that correct? Are you going to kill them? Or are you going to give them a chance to give themselves up?”

  “I’ll take them any way I can get them,” Duke said. “If they turn themselves in, they’ll be protected.”

  “I was told by a very reliable source in your department that one of your men would have shot Tom McCall except for the intervention of a state agent.”

  “I know that’s a lie because my people don’t talk out of school,” Duke said.

  Virgil put his hands over his ears as the anchor said, “You’re calling me a liar? Wait a minute—did you just call me a liar?”

  “I’m saying that none of my men—”