John Sandford - Mad River

After a while, she got out and pulled the tar paper off the truck, threw it on the ground. She got back in and said, “Here we go,” but then, just as she started the truck, she had another idea.

She considered the possibilities, then climbed out of the truck, got the bags of money out of the back, looked around, walked over to a collapsed shed, picked up a piece of siding, and used it to scrape a hole in the soft earth. She put the money in it, then scuffed dirt back over the hole and put the siding back on top of it.

She thought, There. If they wanted their money back, they’d have to make a deal with her. And money talked. The one thing she’d ever learned from her father that was probably right: money talked.

She got back in the truck, touched Jimmy on the forehead, then pushed his head back and kissed him on the lips. A minute later she’d threaded her way back through the trees and out to the road. The sun was still below the horizon, but was close-she could see the sparkle that comes just before the rim lifts itself above the earth.

Going to be a nice day, she thought.

She looked both ways at the road, which was empty, and turned the red truck left toward Arcadia.

Virgil was moving fast, but somebody was moving faster, and a few minutes out of Arcadia, a sheriff’s car caught up with him, then fell in behind, and they ran the last few miles together. The sun was up now, a shiny silver half-dime on the horizon, too white to look at, throwing long shadows across the road and kicking up dew-sparkles on the grassy shoulders.

They crossed the Mad River bridge going into town, slowed down, then slowed more as they came into the gas station. The station was closed, but that didn’t matter: they weren’t there for the doughnuts.

Virgil got out of the truck and noticed for the first time that the morning was cold and a little damp. A deputy got out of the car behind him and said, “The sheriff is on his way. He’ll be here in seven or eight minutes.”

Virgil nodded and said, “I want you around behind that house over there. . in that side street where they won’t see you until they’re past it. I don’t want you lurching out at them, but when they go by-you know it’s a red Dodge pickup? — I want you ready to come in behind them, if necessary. Don’t crowd them.”

The deputy’s eyes shifted away as he nodded and said, “Okay.”

Then his eyes came creeping back and Virgil caught them and said, “And don’t go shooting them. You just let them through. I know everybody’s pissed, but Jimmy’s apparently unconscious, so there won’t be any resistance. And I need them. I need their testimony.”

The deputy asked, “Does the sheriff know that?”

“Yeah. He knows.”

Another car showed at the north end of the street, with headlights, and then the headlights died, and Shrake and Jenkins pulled in, in Jenkins’s Crown Vic. Virgil said to the deputy, “If they’re coming, they’ll be here soon. So you go on, like I told you.”

The deputy got in his car and pulled around the corner. Another patrol car came in from the north, as Jenkins and Shrake parked. Virgil said, “I want you guys with me, sitting on the cars, looking casual. Not too casual, but not like Airborne Rangers, either.”

They got that, and he went to the second car and told them he wanted them on the north end of town, out of sight, so when the truck came in, he could block off the street that way. The deputy nodded, did a U-turn, and went that way.

A moment later, Shrake looked down the empty street and said, “It’s like that cowboy movie High Noon . Everybody waiting for the shit to hit the fan.”

The town was very still, Virgil thought.

Becky Welsh’s heart was pounding like a mill. Like going to the dentist, but a thousand times worse, she thought. You were in your car and nothing hurt and the sun was shining, but you knew you were heading for something that was going to be bad, that was going to be painful; but instead of getting a tooth pulled, they were going to chain you up and treat you like an animal. . She’d seen it all on TV, the orange suits, the women who looked like witches-they didn’t even give them their makeup, she thought-and she started to cry.

For a moment, as she came over a hump in the road and saw the intersection ahead, the intersection where she’d turn toward Arcadia, and set everything going. . she thought about leaving Jimmy somewhere, on somebody’s doorstep, and calling the cops and then running back to the hole she’d just left. She fantasized about that for a moment: a good-looking woman wearing expensive sunglasses, walking down a beach somewhere, like she’d seen on TV, like Kim Kardashian or somebody, these colored waiters watching her strut. . No, erase that, some hot Mexican guys with loose white shirts.

She thought about it, but in her heart she knew she couldn’t do it. She’d never been outside of Minnesota, except those few times when she and some friends went to Hudson, Wisconsin, to drink and hang out.

That was so far away now, all those times.

She looked over at Jimmy as she pulled up to the intersection. Left or right? Left to drop him somewhere, left to run, or right into Arcadia, and chains and jail. Jail maybe forever.

But hell, she thought, it couldn’t be any worse than Shinder, could it?

She leaned across and kissed Jimmy again, but he made no sign that he even knew she was there. She turned right, for Arcadia.

Duke arrived, coming fast into town; he slowed, then stopped and backed up when he saw the patrol car parked on the side street. He didn’t get out, and Virgil could see him talking into his radio. After a few seconds, he came on. Virgil didn’t want the obvious cop car, with the lights, visible, and he gestured for him to pull in behind the gas pumps.

Duke did, and climbed out and said, “No sign of them yet. It’s been forty minutes. Didn’t she say thirty minutes?”

“She’s got my phone number, and she hasn’t called again,” Virgil said. “She didn’t know exactly where she was at, either. . And if she doesn’t come in, we should be able to get some idea about where she’s at from the cell towers. . if there’s more than one.”

“Probably only one out here. If he’s got a GPS chip, though, I think those go through satellites.” Duke stepped out to the street, looked south for a moment, then said, “I gotta listen in. .”

He went around and got into his car, and Virgil thought, Listen to what?

Jenkins said, “I thought there’d be more people here. . more cars. There were all kinds of cars running around all night.”

Then Duke called, through an open window, “They’re coming in.”

Virgil looked at him, frowned, looked down the street. Nothing moving. He called back, “How do you know that?”

Duke looked away for a moment, then said, “I thought it’d be best to have a couple cars down by the south bridge. . just in case.”

Virgil looked south again: nothing. He said, “You sonofabitch, that better not be an ambush. I need those two alive.”

Duke said, “That might be. . I’m not sure it’s possible.”

Virgil screamed, “You fuck. .”

He jumped in his truck, and Jenkins clawed open the passenger door, and Shrake the back door, and they were all in and Virgil took off, and Jenkins said, “What do you think? Are they going to kill them?”

“Unless we get there first,” Virgil said. “Ah, Jesus, these sonsofabitches. .”

Becky saw the Mad River bridge straight ahead, and steeled herself. Once across the bridge, in town, it was done. What should she say to the cop?

She was thinking about that when she saw the wink of a windshield reflection by the bridge. They were supposed to meet by the gas station. What was this? She slowed down, and saw a quick motion by the bridge, like somebody ducking out of sight.