John Sandford - Mad River

“Let’s take a look,” Virgil said.

“This way.”

Virgil followed Duke inside, along a path through the narrow living room demarked by two lines of blue masking tape. Duke said, “We put down the tape to keep people from wandering off into other parts of the house. We cleared it, of course, but nobody’s been in the rest of the house since then. We’re hoping your crime-scene specialists can pick up some DNA.”

“Smart,” Virgil said. Never hurt to flatter a sheriff, for those who needed it. The inside of the house was a reflection of the outside: poorly kept except for a gigantic LG television that sat against the only wall big enough to take it, with a couple of green La-Z-Boy imitations facing it. A green plastic bowl sat between the chairs, as though it might have contained popcorn; the house didn’t smell like popcorn, but like years of bacon grease and nicotine.

Duke led the way to the kitchen. A fat man in a white T-shirt lay on the kitchen floor, looking up at the ceiling-eyes wide open-with a big bloody splotch in the center of his chest. A broken coffee cup lay on the floor beside him, with a damp brown splatter stain on the floor that probably had been coffee, but might have been something like apple cider. A woman lay in a doorway leading through what looked like a mudroom. She may have been running for the back door, but had been shot before she got there. She was facedown.

“Who found them?” Virgil asked.

“Neighbor lady. She’d been trying to talk to Miz Welsh all day, about changing shifts at the nursing home,” Duke said. “She walked over and knocked on the back door, about the fifth time she’d done it, and then peeked inside and saw Miz Welsh layin’ on the floor. She called us.”

“I’ll need to talk to her,” Virgil said.

“Sure. But she doesn’t have much to say.”

Virgil squatted next to each body, one at a time, and looked at them closely. The woman gave him nothing, but the man’s dark pants showed a flash of white against the floor. Virgil got his nose right down on the kitchen linoleum and saw that it was an inside-out back pocket. When he stood up, he found Duke and a deputy staring at him, as if he was about to pull a rabbit out of a hat.

“Have your guys figured out when this might have happened?” Virgil asked.

Duke said, “Well, George, there, was seen walking out of the Surprise market between nine and ten o’clock last night. Uh, Friday night. We haven’t been able to find anybody who saw him today. I mean, Saturday.”

“You know what he bought at the Surprise?”

Duke looked at the deputy, who said, “Well, no, I guess we didn’t ask that.”

The deputy was wearing plastic evidence gloves and Virgil asked, “You got any more of those? The gloves?”

“Yeah. . don’t you?”

“In my truck. I’d rather not go back, if you’ve got some handy,” Virgil said. Another prick; it always had something to do with the training.

The deputy glanced at Duke, who nodded, and the deputy said, “Two seconds.” He left, and Duke said to Virgil, “Haven’t seen much of you.”

“I’ve been busy back east. Besides, do you really want to see the likes of me?”

“Maybe not,” Duke conceded. “Not when it’s on this kind of business.”

They looked at the bodies for a few seconds, then the deputy was back and handed Virgil a pair of yellow plastic gloves. Virgil pulled them on, and stepped over to the kitchen sink and pulled open the cupboard beneath it. A trash can was there, and he pulled it partway out, found a plastic grocery bag near the bottom of the can, under a bunch of empty beer cans. He opened the bag, found a receipt from the Surprise with a time stamp that said 8:45 PM. It also said that $10.25 had been charged on a Visa card with a number ending in 4508 for a twelve-pack of Miller High Life.

“He bought the beer at eight forty-five,” Virgil said. He tipped the trash can back and forth a few times, digging around, found five Millers, plus three empty Bud Lights.

“Huh,” he said. He stood up, stepped to the refrigerator and pulled open the door, expecting to see the rest of the Millers. No beer. He said to Duke, “No beer.”

Duke asked, “What does that mean?”

“I don’t know. Maybe the killers took it with them.” He looked around for a few more seconds, then peeled off the gloves and said, “So, you said this family was trashy?”

“That’s what I’ve been told. Darrell here covers this area.”

Darrell, the deputy with the evidence gloves, said, “George never managed to hold a job for long. I guess Ann was down at the nursing home for quite some time now. George has anger issues, argues with the neighbors, doesn’t keep the place up. That sort of thing. You think that’s important?”

“What about kids, or in-laws?”

“Got a daughter, named Rebecca, she’s up in the Cities, as far as anyone knows. That’s the last we heard. Haven’t tried to get in touch with her yet, but we’re looking around for a contact.”

“Mmmm.” Virgil took another quick look around, then said, “I’ll tell you, Lewis, it feels like a domestic to me. This George guy bought a bunch of beer Friday night, and he and the old lady-or somebody-drank five cans of it, and maybe three more Buds. He’s wearing a T-shirt, and it’s been pretty cold out. He shaves, because I can see a little shaving nick under his ear, healing up, day or two old, but he’s not shaven here. Ann is wearing slippers. That all makes me think they’d been up late drinking Friday night, probably watching TV, got up Saturday morning and hadn’t been up long. They were killed early in the morning, while they were having coffee, before George had a chance to shave or Ann got completely dressed. No sign of a break-in, or anything. And if you were a robber, would you pick this place?”

Duke looked around and shook his head. “I guess not.”

“Whoever did it, took George’s wallet, I think. We’ll have the crime-scene guys check around for Ann’s purse, but I’ll bet it’s either gone, or the money’s gone. It looks to me like somebody came here, somebody they knew, but who might have been unwelcome. They have an argument, and boom. Whoever it was needed money, because they took the time to rob the bodies, even though they couldn’t have had much cash-I mean, George charged a twelve-pack on his Visa card.”

“So. . an argument about money, with somebody that they knew,” Duke said.

“Feels that way to me,” Virgil said. “Somebody who might have expected to get some money. I think we’ve got to take a real quick look at this daughter. . though, mmm, I’m not sure a daughter would have brought a gun in, to kill her parents. That doesn’t feel quite right.”

“We’ve got the names of a couple of her friends. We can find out where she is,” the deputy said.

“If she’s in the Cities, I’ll have somebody run over and talk to her,” Virgil said. “At the same time, we need to look at other possibilities. Friends, other relatives. People George has been hanging out with.”

“We can do that,” Duke said.

“I talked to the neighbors,” Darrell said. “I don’t think he had much in the way of friends. I can check out Ann, down at the nursing home.”

“Not much more we can do tonight, though,” Virgil said to Duke. “I’ll want to talk to the woman who found them. Have some of your people close the place up until Crime Scene gets here. They’re on the way, should be here in a couple of hours.”

Duke nodded and said, “I’ll take you over to the neighbor lady’s. The one who found them.”

The neighbor lady was named Margery Garfield, and she didn’t know anything. She’d wanted to talk to Ann Welsh about trading shifts at the nursing home the next Monday night, so she could go to parent-teacher night at the school, and had been trying to find Welsh all day. “I seen their car was still in the garage, but I never did see them. I was knocking on the front door, and I felt something funny might be going on, so I went around to the back, and peeked through the glass, and I could see Ann on the floor. I didn’t know it was a body, at first, but then, my eyes got adjusted, and I was pretty sure it was a body, so I ran back home and called the sheriff.”