John Sandford - Mad River

When the stream of funeral-goers had slowed to a trickle, Murphy stepped toward John O’Leary and said something, and O’Leary snapped something back. Virgil could see his teeth, and one of the O’Leary boys stepped in front of his father, as if to protect him. Murphy may have thought the O’Leary kid was about to attack him, because he shoved the kid’s fist-was it Frank? Virgil wasn’t sure-and the kid threw a punch. Not a bad one, either, Virgil thought, as he started running.

But the fight exploded across the church steps, three or four of the O’Leary boys going after Murphy as John and Mary O’Leary, along with the priest, tried to pull them off. Virgil got there perhaps ten seconds after the fight had begun, and began pushing people apart, roughing them, yelling, “Enough, enough. .” James O’Leary had gotten ahold of Murphy’s left hand and was trying to wrench off a thick gold wedding band, and was screaming, “Give me that fuckin’ ring, you sonofabitch,” and Murphy tried to wrench his hand away but James hung on, and got flung down the steps for his trouble, and then Virgil wrapped up Murphy and hustled him backward away from the O’Leary crowd.

James was hurt, a sprained wrist, and torn pants, and Murphy was bleeding from his lower lip and a mouse was swelling up on his cheekbone.

When they were thoroughly separated, the priest standing between Murphy and the O’Learys with his hands stretched out to them, like Moses parting the Red Sea, Virgil let go of Murphy and said, “Easy, now.”

Murphy yelled past him, “The whole fuckin’ bunch of you can bite me.”

Jack O’Leary started across the steps, but John O’Leary and the priest grabbed him, and he subsided. The fight was done.

Virgil said to Murphy, “I’m Virgil Flowers, an agent with the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.”

“I know who you are,” Murphy said. He spat a little blood off to one side and rubbed his lip. “You’re the guy going around telling people I had something to do with Ag’s murder.”

“I’m going around asking people about your relationship with Ag,” Virgil said, “because we have one witness who says he thinks you paid Jimmy Sharp to kill her.”

Murphy reddened and poked a finger at Virgil’s chest: “I swear to God, you tell people that, and I will sue you. I’ll sue you right down to your shorts, and when they take your badge away from you, I’ll come kick your ass.”

“Last night wasn’t good enough?” Virgil asked.

Murphy’s eyes ticked away from Virgil’s, like a second hand going to the next hash mark, and then came back, and he said, “I don’t know anything about that. I heard about it, but it has nothing to do with me. It probably has to do with you going into a bar and asking questions. Especially that bar. They don’t like people like you, going around smearing their friends for no good reason.”

“I hear you’re going to Las Vegas,” Virgil said.

Murphy turned sullen. “No law against it. And I gotta get out of town, get away from these fuckin’ holier-than-thou O’Learys, treating me like dog shit.”

Virgil said, “I’ll tell you something, Dick. I’ve got almost enough to arrest you. And I’ll have enough, when I nail down a couple more things. I’ve been talking to my boss about whether to arrest you as a material witness, or let you go on to Las Vegas. We decided to let you go, but if I call you back here, you best get on the first plane back. Because if you don’t, we’ll issue a warrant for you. If that happens, you could spend three weeks or a month in various goddamned unpleasant lockups before you make it back here, where you can talk to a lawyer.”

“I did not have anything to do with Ag’s murder,” Murphy said. “That’s all I’ve got to say to you. I can prove where I was when she was killed, and it wasn’t anywhere around there. So get off my fuckin’ back.”

Virgil said, “Good luck in Vegas, Dick. And you come back when I call or you’ll regret it.”

Virgil turned away and walked across the steps to the O’Learys, who were talking with the priest. He hadn’t met Marsha O’Leary, and when John O’Leary introduced them, she said, “Killing Jimmy Sharp and Becky Welsh won’t bring Ag back, Mr. Flowers. Despite what my children might have told you.”

Virgil nodded, but didn’t have a reply, other than, “I feel really bad for you. This is a dreadful thing.” He’d said the same thing at twenty other funerals over the years, and always felt a bit hypocritical saying it.

“On the other hand, if Dick had anything to do with it, I’d be very pleased to see him spend the rest of his life in prison,” she said.

“Me, too,” Virgil said.

“Are you coming to the cemetery?” John O’Leary asked.

“I wasn’t planning to. I will if you think I might be needed to. . keep order.”

“Murphy’s not coming out there,” Jack O’Leary said. “At heart, he’s a chickenshit.”

Marsha O’Leary said, “That’s not the kind of talk I’d expect from a doctor.”

John O’Leary clapped his son on the shoulder and said, “You gave him a pretty good shot.”

“Not good enough,” Jack said. “He’s still walking.”

John said to Virgil, “We’ve got to go. We’ve got to swing by the emergency room and see if the dummy here broke his wrist.” He had James by the arm and roughed his hair and said, “Basically, as a surgeon, you don’t want to break your suturing arm.”

Then they went off, the whole bunch, to the hospital, and then the cemetery.

The priest said to Virgil, “That Murphy can take a shot. When Frank hit him, I thought he’d go down.” After a fifteen-second analysis of the pugilism, he said, “Say, you’re not related to Reverend Flowers over in Marshall?”

Virgil said, “Yeah, I’m his kid.”

“Really? He’s quite the golfer. He was up here in Bigham with Paul Berry. You know Paul? The priest at Saint Mary’s? — so we were down at the club here, and your old man is on the wrong side of the dogleg-right number two, and he takes out his four rescue club. .”

And so on.

Virgil got back to the truck and called Jenkins, who said, “I was just about to call you. We’re heading back to the Burger King for a snack. You want to keep looking at those farmhouses?”

“Yeah. You still got Boykin with you?”

“He’s out running a roadblock, but he’s available. You want me to call him?”

“I can’t think of anything else to do right now,” Virgil said. “Let’s get back at it. I’ll meet you at the Burger King.”

At the Burger King, Shrake and Jenkins told Virgil that they thought they knew who beat him up: two guys named Royce Atkins and Duane McGuire. “We got a tip through one of Davenport’s spies,” Jenkins said. “We found Atkins, but we’re not going anywhere with him. He’s a mean sonofabitch, just the kind of guy you’d go looking for, to do this. We’ve got him nervous, but he won’t talk unless we get something to squeeze him with.”

“What’s he do?”

“He’s a roofer, out of work for now. He says when spring gets going, he’ll get his crew back together. Right now, he sits on his ass.”

“What about McGuire?” Virgil asked.

“McGuire might talk, but he took off before we got there,” Shrake said. “We talked to his girlfriend. She said he was going on a road trip. We asked her if he helped beat you up, and she didn’t say no. She said, ‘I wouldn’t know anything about that.’ Which means yes.”

“But you don’t know where he went?”

“Not yet. But not far. His girlfriend knows where he is, but she’s not scared enough to tell us yet. She will be, though. When we get him, we’ll whip the dilemma on their young asses. One of them’ll crack.”