John Sandford - Mad River

The network was paying dividends, but Davenport kept the whole thing close to his chest. “If you got some highway patrolman calling you up every ten minutes, trying to solve the local speeding crisis, it won’t work,” he said. “You only call on the heavy stuff.”

Getting Davenport involved gave Virgil even more time to think about Sally, and as he turned the crest of a hill and dropped down the valley that led into Bigham and to the Minnesota River, he decided that he really had to put Sally aside.

A romance, hasty or otherwise, would divert his attention from the investigation, and Sharp, Welsh, and McCall had to be stopped; and Murphy, if he was involved, had to be tagged.

As he came up to the first stoplight in town, he took out the cell phone again and punched in Nina Box’s number. As it had earlier in the day, it switched immediately to a recorded answering message. McCall had turned the phone off, but when he turned it on, the first thing he’d see would be five calls from Virgil.

He’d planned to go to the O’Learys’ place and have a long talk with them about Dick Murphy. Instead, he went to the Pumpkin Cafe, got a BLT and fries, and a Diet Coke, and read the local newspaper, and waited.

He was on his third Diet Coke when Davenport called back. “I’ve got two names and phone numbers for you. You’ll have to meet them somewhere private, because they don’t want to be seen with you.”

“Not a problem. Are they on their phones right now?”

“They are. Waiting for you to call,” Davenport said. “Don’t give them too much shit, and call me and tell me where you’re gonna meet, in case something goes wrong.”

“Are they gonna be a problem?”

“Shouldn’t be. But. . I don’t know some of them as well as I should.”

“Can they keep their mouths shut?” Virgil asked.

“If you use the right threats.”

The first guy was named Honor Roberts, and he said he’d meet Virgil at the Parker Bird Sanctuary where Bare County Road 6 crossed the Minnesota River. “There’s a chain across the entrance, but if you look close you’ll see that the lock is broke. You can lift it right off and come in. Be sure you put it back up when you come through.”

The second source was a woman named Roseanne Bush, who’d meet him in the town’s only tattoo parlor, which was called The Bush.

“We gonna be okay there?” Virgil asked.

“Yeah, we’re not open till six. You can park in the back of the Goodwill store and walk down the alley. The door’ll be unlocked, just come on through.”

The bird sanctuary was ten miles northwest of town, a piece of damp land with a lot of bare-branched cottonwoods in the loop of an oxbow of the Minnesota River. There was nobody else on the road when Virgil lifted the chain off the steel post, went through, and replaced the chain. A gravel road wandered back into the woods, and Virgil, though an outdoorsman, had to wonder what kind of birds were being preserved. Crows? Blackbirds? Starlings? He didn’t know of any rare species going through there. Sandhill cranes, maybe? But didn’t they usually hang out in cornfields?

Roberts was sitting on the tailgate of a Chevy pickup truck, smoking a brown cigarillo down to the end. He was a tall, thin man, with ragged hair and bright blue eyes, dressed quite a bit like Virgil, in jeans and barn coat. He was wearing brown cowboy boots, and stood with the boots crossed at the ankle. He said, “Well, you look like Flowers, from what Davenport told me.”

“I am,” Virgil said. “We wouldn’t have called you up if it weren’t pretty important.”

“If it’s about these people going around shooting everybody, I don’t know much. I know Jimmy Sharp, but I never met either of the other two, far’s I know.”

“I’m not so concerned about Jimmy, unless you know where he is,” Virgil said.

“If I knew that, I’d call somebody up. That boy is nuts,” Roberts said.

“Okay. What I’m looking for is somebody you’d hire to do a killing for you. Who’d do it for money.”

Roberts said, “Huh.”

Virgil added: “Not a complete dumbass, who’d get caught and roll over on you.”

Roberts uncrossed his boots and snapped the cigarillo butt down the road. “That’s a tough one. Who do you think did the hiring?”

Virgil said, “What do you do for a living?”

“I buy and sell,” Roberts said.

“A fence?”

“That’d be a goddamn uncharitable way to look at it,” Roberts said.

“Okay, well, this is the way it is,” Virgil said. “I’ll tell you who I’m looking at, but if the word gets around town, and it goes back to you, I’ll bust you, and I’ll fix it so Davenport can’t save your ass.”

Roberts tipped his head and said, “I can keep quiet.”

Virgil: “I’ve been told that Jimmy Sharp was hired to kill Ag O’Leary Murphy by Dick Murphy. Murphy stands to inherit three-quarters of a million.”

Roberts whistled and said, distractedly, “No wonder.”

“No wonder what?”

“I saw Dick shooting nine-ball down to Roseanne’s Billiards last night, and he seemed pretty goddamned cheerful for somebody whose old lady just got killed.”

“That right?”

“Pretty goddamned cheerful,” Roberts said.

“This is not owned by Roseanne Bush, is it?” Virgil asked.

“Yeah, she owns pretty much every low-life place in town,” Roberts said. “You know her?”

“No, but I heard about her. That a lot of bad people hook up around her.”

“She might find a killer for you,” Roberts said. His eyes narrowed in thought, and he asked, “If you think Dick hired Jimmy Sharp. . why are you looking for another killer?”

“Because Sharp’s kind of a dumbass, I’m told, and I’m not sure he’d be the first person you’d go to, if you were looking for somebody to do a good job on it.”

Roberts said, “Huh. You’re smarter than you look.”

“Thanks.”

“You know, if Dick was gonna sneak up on somebody and ask that question, ‘Would you do a killing for me?’ I bet the first person he’d ask would be Randy White. They played football together, and they hang out some. Randy was a linebacker and a mean little jerk. He’d try to hurt people. Everybody knew it, but the coach is just as mean as he was. A fuckin’ rattlesnake. There was rumors he’d slip Randy ten bucks for every starter he’d take out of a game. I’m not sure I’d believe that-it’s just too goddamned wrong.”

“And White is still around town?”

“Oh, yeah. He works for the county road department,” Roberts said. “Digging holes, filling them in. Runs a snowplow in the winter. He runs with a crowd that’s too fast for him. Out to the Indian casinos and such. Needs money all the time.”

“You ever done any business with him?”

Roberts showed a thin smile. “Maybe. County’s always got some surplus equipment floating around.”

White was the only name that Roberts really had. “I keep thinking of all your qualifications,” he said. “There are two or three people around town who might kill for money, but every one of them’s a bigger fool than Jimmy. I can’t see Dick Murphy talking to them about it.”

“What are the chances that Dick Murphy would do it himself?” Virgil asked

Roberts laughed, almost a bark, sharply cut off. “Zero,” he said. “Dick’s one of those smarmy little assholes who goes greasing around town, spreading trouble. If you want somebody to goad a couple drunks into fighting each other, Dick’s your boy. He’s a real friendly sort, when you first meet him, but the longer you know him, the less you like him. Just like his old man.”

“Maybe I oughta be looking at his old man.”

Roberts shook his head: “Naw. His old man wouldn’t give five seconds to Jimmy Sharp. Or to Ag O’Leary’s money, either. He doesn’t need her money, and he sure as hell is too smart to try to kill her for it. Nope. It’s Dicky you want.”