John Sandford - Mad River

They did that.

When Virgil woke in the morning, Davenport was sitting next to the bed, tapping on an iPad, looking grim. Virgil cleared his throat, and Davenport looked up and said, “Well, you’re still alive.”

“That’s the good part,” Virgil said. “But I need a drink, and I’ve got to pee.”

“I can get you some water, but you’ll have to pee on your own,” Davenport said. “I’ll call the nurse.”

With the nurse helping, Virgil got out of bed and walked to the bathroom, hurting every step of the way, peed-happy to see no blood-and when he came back out, Davenport handed him a glass of water and Virgil said to the nurse, “I’m okay. I’ll use the chair.”

He sat down-and it hurt to sit down-and Davenport said, “Tell me.”

Virgil told him, and Davenport said, “We’ll talk to this Marjorie, but five’ll get you ten that whoever called Richards saw her talking to you, and used that to pull you back to the bar.” Richards was the BCA duty officer who’d called Virgil the night before.

“That sounds right,” Virgil said. “I really had my head up my ass: I bit on it like a hungry trout.”

“Gotta rework your metaphors,” Davenport said. And, “Duke was here. He said he’d see you this afternoon, but they’re out running the search again.”

“Wrong spot, I think,” Virgil said.

Davenport continued, “Jenkins and Shrake are out tearing up the countryside, looking for the two guys who jumped you. Those frat boys showed up at the right time, but they didn’t get a license plate, and we can’t find anybody at the bar who knows who they are. But we’ll find them.”

“Couple of assholes, not important,” Virgil said. “They weren’t very good at it, either. Probably friends of Dick Murphy. Maybe even Dick Murphy, for all I know. But: I think I worried Murphy enough for him to do this. That’s the only reason I can think of that somebody’d jump me. If I could find those guys. . maybe they’d talk.”

“What do you have on Murphy?”

Virgil laid it out, and when he was finished, Davenport said, “I agree with you that he probably paid Sharp. We need Sharp to say so. Or Welsh to say that Sharp told her that.”

“So we need to keep at least one of them alive,” Virgil said.

Davenport stood up and said, “You take it easy. I think they’re going to let you out this afternoon, but I already told the doc that if he thinks you ought to stay, that they ought to make you stay. Not to take any bullshit from you.”

“All right. But I really do need to get out of here. This whole thing is probably going to end today.”

“Can’t go much longer,” Davenport agreed. He stepped toward the door, then said, “You notice I didn’t say a single fuckin’ thing about you going up to that bar without a gun.”

“I appreciate that,” Virgil said.

“But if you had a gun with you, like you should have, as soon as you were hit, you could have rolled and come up with the weapon and just squeezed off a couple of rounds. . even if you didn’t hit anything, that would have ended it. They’d have run, and you wouldn’t be in here. And if you’d hit one of them, we could talk to the guy about Murphy.”

“No. That’s what would have happened if you had a gun,” Virgil said. “You can do that, because that’s the way you think. If I’d had a gun, and even remembered it, I probably would have dropped it trying to get it out. Then I’d have really been up shit creek, with a gun floating around. I’m just no damn good with pistols, Lucas.”

Davenport looked at him for a moment, then shook his head and said, “Take it easy, man. We’ll find these guys. And I wouldn’t be surprised if they resist arrest.”

Virgil said, “Take care,” and Davenport was gone.

He still had a residual headache, but he’d had worse; and he’d hurt worse, like the time he got thrown off an ex-rodeo horse and pulled a groin muscle. He remembered the wrangler looking down at him and saying, “You take good dirt.”

Maybe he did, he thought as he hobbled around the hospital room, because even though he hurt all over, he would have given a hundred American dollars to get five minutes alone with either of the guys who’d jumped him. “But not both at the same time,” he said aloud, grinning at himself in the bathroom mirror. He had a bad scrape on the left side of his forehead, on his left cheek, and below that, on the left side of his jaw. He had a bruise the size of a Kennedy half-dollar on the right side of his forehead, and he could feel dried blood in his hair, right at the crown of his head.

He was wearing a hospital gown. He pulled the bathroom door closed, peeled off the gown, and took a look at himself. He had a half dozen big boot-shaped bruises on each arm, more on his butt and thighs, and one on his shin. He was scraped mostly on his forearms and hands, where skin had been exposed to gravel, and on his knees.

He put the gown back on, went out and checked his clothes. The jeans were ripped at the knees, and would have to be tossed, and his jacket was a wreck. He thought about getting dressed, but instead, turned around, got on the bed, and went back to sleep.

The nurse woke him at ten o’clock, said that Dr. Rogers was about to look at him. Rogers, who was not the same doc he’d talked to the night before, took a long look at him and said, “All right. I’ll give you a couple things that’ll make you feel better. . or hurt less. . but I want you to stay away from aspirin and alcohol.”

After telling Virgil what he could and couldn’t do, he said that another doc, named Wu, would be in to see him in a few minutes, and if Wu signed off, he could leave: “But take it easy for a few days.”

The next doc to show up wasn’t Wu, but John O’Leary, who was wearing a short white staff doctor’s coat. “I just heard what happened. Does this have something to do with Dick Murphy?”

“Maybe,” Virgil said. “Maybe. Probably. I can’t think of anyone else who’d want to put me in the hospital for a while.”

“I don’t get that,” O’Leary said. “I’d think the last thing he’d want to do is get your dander up.”

“I’ve been thinking about it,” Virgil said. “The people around here, they’ve had a lot of people killed by Sharp and Welsh. Your daughter and Emmett Williams here in Bigham, three people in Shinder, two in Marshall, two more out in the country, and a cop. . that we know of.”

“You think there are more?”

“We’ll find out when we locate them,” Virgil said. “Anyway, the feeling here is that the local folks are going to kill them when they find them. It’s absolutely turned into a duck hunt. But, when I got the chance to take in McCall, I got him to Marshall alive. I don’t think Murphy would want me to get Jim or Becky to jail alive. Jimmy could turn on them.”

“And you need their testimony.”

“That’s about it. . Uh, I thought you’d be at the funeral.”

“I will be, but I have patients,” O’Leary said. “Anyway, good luck with getting Sharp and Welsh. Truth is, I believe you’re right about what’s going to happen. I haven’t talked to a single person here who thinks they’ll be taken alive. Their best chance would be to drive down to Iowa and turn themselves in to the Des Moines cops. Some big-city police station, someplace far away from here.”

“They’re not smart enough,” Virgil said. “Anyway, as soon as this Wu gets here, I’m gone.”

An Asian man stuck his head around the corner of the open door. “Wu you looking for?”

Wu turned out to have a good sense of humor and strong hands, and he only hurt Virgil a little. An hour later, Virgil was back on the street, still feeling creaky. He called what he suspected was the town’s only cab, was told that in fact there were two, and rode back to the motel. Moving around helped; either that, or it was the pills that Rogers had prescribed, of which he had taken three.