John Sandford - Mad River

Shrake and Jenkins were walking out as Virgil walked in, and Shrake said, “We’ve got a few names. We’re going to go talk to them now. You think you scuffed them up at all?”

“Only their legs,” Virgil said. “I was on the ground with the first punch, and after that, I was just trying to stay alive. I kicked one guy in the shins a few times, but that’s about it. He’ll have some bruises.”

“One of those frat boys, a big guy, said he caught one of the guys a pretty good lick in an eye, and the side of a nose. Says the guy’ll have a shiner.”

“These names. . are they tied to Murphy?” Virgil asked.

“A couple of them,” Jenkins said. “The rest are from Davenport’s network-local guys who might do something like this.”

“Well, take it easy,” Virgil said. “I need these guys scared and willing to talk to me. I don’t need them all beat up and pissed off.”

Jenkins patted him on the shoulder. “You’re a fuckin’ saint, Virgil,” he said. “But I gotta tell you-I can’t guarantee these guys’ll be in pristine condition. I can guarantee that they’ll be scared.”

Virgil had a cheeseburger and fries with catsup in the lodge’s restaurant, feeling a little guilty about it-shouldn’t you eat something healthy after checking out of a hospital? Lettuce, or something? He chewed carefully, because his jaw hurt, and then, though his headache had eased, he decided to go take a nap: he was still feeling a little shaky. Just a couple of hours, he thought, which would have him back on his feet by early afternoon. If Shrake and Jenkins were back by then, they could resume the search south of Arcadia.

He was sound asleep when his subconscious gave him a prod, and he opened his eyes. What? Somebody at the door. Just feet? Then, tentatively, a knock. He had the “Do Not Disturb” sign hung on the doorknob, so it wasn’t the motel staff.

He rolled out of bed, jolted by a half dozen minor lightning bolts of pain in his arms, ribs, butt, and legs, called, “Just a minute,” reached into his duffel and pulled out his 9-millimeter, and eased up to the peephole.

From a foot back, and a bit off to the side, he could see nobody; he put his eye to the peephole and then jerked back, and thought about what he hadn’t seen. He hadn’t seen anybody.

He called, “Who is it?”

A woman’s voice, deliberately quiet: “Me. Roseanne.”

A woman had called the duty officer the night before, to pull him up to the bar. . but then, this did sound like Roseanne Bush. He said, “Stand back from the door. So I can see you.”

She said, “Okay.”

He risked another quick peep, thinking about the possibility of a whole bunch of slugs ripping through the door, and saw Bush backed against the far wall. He undid the chain, turned the knob, and pointed the gun at the space where somebody might come through. Nobody came through. He opened the door, and found Bush standing by herself in the hallway.

She said, “Don’t shoot me.”

Virgil said, “Come on in,” and when she was inside, relocked and chained the door, and put the pistol away.

“God, I’m freaked out about last night,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”

“Not your fault. I was talking to people about Dick Murphy. I’m thinking the word got back to him.” Virgil eased back on the bed, and Roseanne sat in the corner chair.

“Lucas called me last night, and gave me a hard time about who it might have been,” Roseanne said. “I’ll tell you what: you would not want to go up against him, on some dark night. Lucas, I mean.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” Virgil agreed. They sat for a minute in silence, then Virgil asked, “So what’s up?”

“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.