John Sandford - Mad River

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.

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 stairs, 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.”