John Sandford - Mad River

“Friend of Murphy’s?”

“No. Lance is a baker, he works at Bare Bakers. He’s an older guy, must be close to seventy. He went through the fast wash, and saw Murphy down there. As far as we know, he was the last one to see him,” Price said. “He said he saw Murphy shining up his headlights with a rag when he went into the automatic wash, and he was just going through the drier when Murphy drove out the exit lane.”

That was that. Murphy didn’t go to work the next day, and didn’t answer his landline phone or his cell phone, either one. His father went around to his apartment and let himself in, and there was no sign of him.

“Then, we found his car parked down at Riverside Park,” Price said. “It was unlocked, and we found that blood on the seat. Our crime-scene guy, Bob Drake, took a blood sample, just to make sure it was Murphy’s, along with some hair and what looked like semen samples from Murphy’s bed for comparison. Then we locked up the car so your guys could really get into it, if it turns out to be Murphy’s blood, as I expect it’ll be.”

Virgil nodded, and then said, “And nothing since?”

“He hasn’t charged anything on any credit cards, hasn’t used an ATM, left two hundred dollars in cash in the top drawer of his chest of drawers. Hasn’t used his cell phone. Doesn’t have another car that we know of.”

“You think he might have faked it?”

Price hesitated, then said, “I’m not smart enough to figure out what happened. It’s all weird.”

“Just asking what you think,” Virgil said.

“What I think is, there’s some chance he faked his own death, and his old pal Randy White set up a hideout and picked him up. Then I asked myself, ‘Why would he do that?’ As long as Randy is gone, Dick’s not going to go to trial for murder. And then, there’s Ag’s money. He still hasn’t gone to probate with the will. . Everybody’s been waiting for that, because they’re talking about the O’Learys suing for wrongful death. Anyway, he’d be leaving that money behind, at least for now, and that’s not the Dick Murphy we know and love. So, that would make me think he didn’t fake it.”

Virgil nodded. “I could buy that. Unless, maybe, he knew that Randy was coming back.”

“But why would he leave the money in the chest of drawers? Why wouldn’t he have done a better job of getting out of town?”

“I don’t know,” Virgil admitted. “Unless Randy called and said he was coming back the next day, and he had to throw something together.”

“But. . would he be throwing something together, and then go out and wash his car so he could ditch it an hour later?”

Virgil said, “Hmm.”

“But here’s something that’s sort of in favor of it being a fake: I can’t figure out what kind of a killing wound would put that blood on the car seat, where it is. If somebody pointed a gun in the window and shot him, why wouldn’t we find some evidence of a gunshot? If he was stabbed, why would he bleed backward into the seat back? Why wouldn’t there be blood anywhere else? What it looks like, tell the truth, is like he cut his arm, and smeared some blood on the seat. We won’t know for sure until your crime-scene people start taking the seat apart.”

They walked over to Murphy’s car and looked in the window, but nothing really came to Virgil. Would the O’Learys have taken the situation into their own hands? Had Ag O’Leary had some other relationship that Virgil didn’t know about, and Murphy was killed by some unknown actor, in revenge? Could Randy White have been that relationship?

They looked at the spot of blood on the seat, and Virgil did not get the feeling that it was obviously a fake. What it was, was odd.

Virgil asked Price, “Am I still stinking up the place in the Bare County sheriff’s office?”

Price grinned and said, “Barack Obama would run about forty points ahead of you, if there was an election.”

“And Barack is not exactly in deep favor around here.”

“Not exactly,” Price said. “But there are a few guys who’ve been willing to say, privately, when the sheriff wasn’t around, that the thing wasn’t handled right. The Becky Welsh/Jimmy Sharp thing. I think one of them might take the sheriff on, in two years.”

“Does the sheriff know that?”

“Oh, hell no,” Price said. “Maybe it won’t happen at all. We’ll see.”

“Does Duke know you’re talking to me? Or do I have to be careful about mentioning it?”

“Oh, he knows,” Price said. “When you asked the dispatcher to call me, he called Duke first. Duke told him to call me in. . but he doesn’t want to talk to you himself.”

They thought about that for a moment, then Price asked, “Are you gonna take this over? The Murphy thing?”

“What can I do?” Virgil asked. “You’ve done everything I’d do. Maybe Crime Scene will turn up some DNA, and that’ll take us somewhere. Maybe we’ll find a body and that’ll tell us something. Or maybe he’ll show up.”

Price sighed and said, “You know, if Jimmy hadn’t gone up there with that gun. .”

“If Murphy hadn’t paid him to. .”

“Yeah. Well, hell. Stay in touch,” Price said.

Virgil stayed in touch for two weeks, until the DNA came back on the blood: it was almost certainly Murphy’s, because it matched hair, blood, and semen samples from Murphy’s bed. Murphy had taken no money from his bank account, never used his cell phone or credit cards in that time. Then more DNA samples came back, on the car, and they were all Murphy.

A crime-scene tech who’d taken apart the car seat said, “I don’t know how he was killed, if he was killed, but there was more blood there than it looked like. It wasn’t just a spot. He bled through the spot for a while, and it ran down the inside of the fabric. Not a whole lot, but it wasn’t just a wipe, or a smear.”

“So what killed him?” Virgil asked.

“I’m thinking aliens.”

“You mean like, Canadians?”

Then, a day after the second set of DNA samples came back, Davenport called.

“You’re not on the TSA’s no-fly list, are you?”

“I hope not,” Virgil said. “Where am I flying to?”

“Houston. By God, Texas.”

“Why is that?”

“I thought you’d want to talk to Randy White, who was picked up yesterday afternoon after a DUI stop.”

“Sonofagun,” Virgil said.

Virgil flew into George Bush Intercontinental Airport the next morning, and two hours later was interviewing Randy White at the Harris County Jail.

When a guard brought White to the interview room, Virgil asked, “Randy, what the hell happened to you?”

White sat in the chair on the other side of the interview desk and said, “I couldn’t deal with it anymore. You gonna take me back?”

Virgil said, “I don’t know.”

“I got a decent job down here.”

“You know about Dick Murphy?” Virgil asked.

“Yeah. . I feel bad about it, but I just couldn’t handle it,” White said. “Everybody’s telling me that it’s my information that’ll send him up, but you know what? I really don’t know if he wanted to kill Ag. I’d be the one to send him up, but I don’t know . So I took off.”

Virgil looked at him for a moment, but saw no guile in his eyes. He asked, “You really don’t know about Dick?”

“Well, yeah: he got out,” White said.

“That’s not what I meant,” Virgil said. “What I meant was, he’s disappeared.”

“What?”

Virgil peered at him. White’s reaction was a little too dramatic. Off-key. “Goddamnit, Randy, if you’re lying to me, I’ll put you in Stillwater as an accessory to murder.”

“Virgil-when I took off, Dick was in jail, and I never been back,” White said. “I don’t know what happened up there. I don’t read the newspapers, I don’t have a TV yet. I just don’t know.”