John Sandford: Mad River

They agreed that while Ray Wylie Hubbard was a leading candidate, there was no question that it was not Ray Wylie but, in fact, Waylon Jennings, who wrote and sang the best song ever written, which was “Good Hearted Woman.” How could you be the best country singer if you weren’t responsible for the best country song?

Waylon was at a disadvantage, though, being dead.

And then there was always Willie, who was the best country singer in a lot of years when Waylon wasn’t, but at that very moment?

Ray Wylie had been around a long time, too, long enough to write the National Anthem-known to downtown cowboys as “Up Against the Wall, Redneck Mother.” That was good, but not nearly enough to make him the best country singer, but he’d followed that up, many years later, with stuff like “Wanna Rock and Roll,” and “The Messenger,” and “Resurrection,” and “Snake Farm,” some genuine poetry, with a taste of blues and the salt of humor.

“But in fact, it is not Ray Wylie who sings ‘Wanna Rock and Roll’ the best,” Cooper said, “but Cross Canadian Ragweed.”

“That’s true,” Virgil said. “But what song, right at this moment , is as good as ‘Resurrection’?”

“But he didn’t write ‘Resurrection.’”

Virgil said, “No, but he sings it, and he did write. .” He broke out in a gravelly baritone imitation of Ray Wylie’s “The Mission.”

Cooper said, “Jesus Christ, keep it down. People will think you’re drunk. And what about Guy Clark?”

Guy Clark. What could you say about “Rita Ballou” or “Homegrown Tomatoes” or “Texas 1947” or “Cold Dog Soup” or “L.A. Freeway”?

But then, what about “Sunday Morning Coming Down”? And if “Sunday Morning” was that good, right up there at the top, and the same guy wrote “Me and Bobby McGee,” which actually was pretty good, despite being some sort of hippie shit, shouldn’t Kris Kristofferson be considered? They thought about that a minute, then simultaneously said, “No,” because, when everything was said and done, Kristofferson just wasn’t country enough, down in his heart.

Billy Joe Shaver? Good, very good. There was a lot to be said for “Georgia on a Fast Train” and even, they agreed, “Wacko from Waco,” which testified to a certain genuineness of the lifestyle. Then there was “Old Five and Dimers Like Me,” covered by the likes of Bob Dylan, backed by Eric Clapton. What about that? What could you say about the second-best country song ever?

They were still working through it, each with a Leinenkugel longneck in his right hand, and Cooper crowned with a black hundred-beaver cowboy hat from Santa Fe, New Mexico, when along came a Mankato cop named Bob Roberts, who everybody called Bob-Bob, and who said, “Hey there, Virg.”

Virgil asked, “Is Ray Wylie the best living country singer?”

Bob-Bob hitched up his duty belt and said, “Well, hell. Let me think. How about. . Emmylou Harris? Or maybe Linda Ronstadt?”

There was a moment of silence, then Virgil said to Cooper, “You miserable sexist piece of shit. You never even considered a woman.”

“I’m sorry,” Cooper said. “I apologize to all women. For everything.”

“I don’t think that’s good enough,” Bob-Bob said. “You’ll have to come down to the station for an application of pussywhip.”

Virgil, trying to smooth over the awkwardness, said, “I think we can all agree that the Texas guys write very smooth stuff.”

“In other words, not tin-eared Nashville whining violin Martha White Grand Ole Opry banjo bullshit,” Cooper said.

“And at this very moment, I say Ray Wylie leads the pack-nothing against the women,” Virgil said. He held out his bottle, and Cooper hesitated only for a moment, then clinked his bottle against it, and they both said, “Ray Wylie.” Cooper tipped his bottle up, finishing the last of the brew, and then looked down the alley and said, “See that net?”

They couldn’t, because there was no net. What there was, was a hoop, with a sixty-watt bulb flickering just beyond it, where the kitchen staff shot baskets on slow nights.

“Sort of,” Virgil said.

“One shot each, for five dollars.”

“You got it,” Virgil said.

Cornelius carefully gauged the distance-just about a free throw-then arced the bottle toward the hoop. The bottle clanged off the rim, ricocheted down the alley, and shattered on a cobblestone. “Shit,” he said.

Virgil finished his beer, and Bob-Bob said, “I got two dollars says you don’t even hit the rim.”

Virgil said, “You got that, too,” and lofted the bottle down the alley; it dropped gracefully through the hoop, the neck just ticking the steel as it went down, and then shattered on another cobblestone. “That’s what you get when you go head-to-head with a natural athlete, you ignorant small-town hicks,” Virgil said. “Pay me.”

“I been set up,” Bob-Bob said, as he dug two dollars out of his pocket. “By the way, Virgie, this BCA guy, Davenport, is trying to find you. He said you don’t answer your phone, but he knows you’re around here. He called at the station house and Georgina said she’d seen you down here. She sent me down to tell you to call in.”

“I told you, you shouldn’t have been hittin’ on her,” Cooper said.

“I was just being social,” Virgil said. To Bob-Bob: “Did Davenport say what he wanted me for?”

“Not to me,” Bob-Bob said. “But calling at this time of night. .”

They all reflexively looked up toward the moon: it was after midnight. A call after midnight meant there’d probably been a murder somewhere. Virgil fished the cell phone out of his pocket, turned it on, found three messages from Davenport.

“Goddamnit. I got home from vacation at six o’clock, and he’s already on my ass.”

“You look like you’re tanned,” Bob-Bob said, squinting in the bad light. “You didn’t get that here. Where you been?”

“Bahamas,” Virgil said. “Bone fishing.”

“Bahamas,” Bob-Bob said with amazement, as though Virgil had said Shangri-la.

Virgil pushed the button to call Davenport, who picked up on the first ring.

“We got a bad one in Shinder,” Lucas Davenport said. He sounded sleepy, and maybe bored. “You better get over there.”

“I’d blow about a ten-point-three right now,” Virgil said. “Can it wait until morning?”

“They’re holding everything for you,” Davenport said. “Get some coffee, and when you’re down to a seven, take off. I’ll find out where the highway patrol is, and you can dodge them. I’m putting Crime Scene on the road, soon as I can.”

“Still probably three hours before I can get there,” Virgil said.

“Three hours is better than anybody else we got,” Davenport said. “And you know that country.”

“How many dead?”

“Two. Man and a wife, named, uh, let me look. . uh, Welsh. Shot in their kitchen, probably last night or early this morning. The locals got nothing, except maybe their dicks in their hands.”

“I’ll go,” Virgil said. “But I’ll be a little slow.”

“You know about what happened Friday night?”

“Friday night I was on Grand Bahama,” Virgil said, “fishing all day, and at night, playing beach volleyball with women wearing bikini bottoms.”

There was a moment of silence, then Davenport said, “I might have to kill you. It was snowing up here.”

“Yeah, well, what happened Friday?”

“There was a double murder over in Bigham. I don’t know if these two are connected, but they’re over in the same corner of the state. Haven’t been four murders, that close, in that corner, in a hundred years.”

“Who caught that?”