Mad River

15

Virgil and Davenport hooked up at a restaurant across from St. Kate’s, a Catholic girls’ college where Virgil had done some of his best work in chasing women, when he was a student at the University of Minnesota. The thing about Catholic girls was, they had a deep feeling for sin, which made catching them a lot more satisfying than it might have been otherwise.

Davenport was waiting in a back booth, chatting with a woman sitting at an adjacent table; he was wearing one of his two-million-dollar suits, but was tie-less.

Virgil nodded at the woman, who looked mildly put-out by his arrival, and slid into the booth opposite Davenport. He said, “How y’ doin’?”

“Only fair,” Davenport said. “The governor says that if we don’t catch these kids in the next couple of days, it’ll knock two points off his popularity. He cut funding for the highway patrol, and the union’s been looking for something to stick up his ass.”

“He didn’t actually cut funding, he cut the funding request,” Virgil said. “The actual funding went up.”

“A technicality,” Davenport said. “Also, you’re starting to sound like a Republican.”

“Sorry.”

“So. .”

“Can’t go much longer,” Virgil said.

“But they could kill a lot more people.”

“I know, everybody knows. It’s a goddamn disaster, Lucas.”

They ate reubens, and Davenport said, “We’re getting a lot of credit for you arresting McCall, so anything you want. .”

“I’m heading back down as soon as I get out of here,” Virgil said. “I’ve got a few places to look now. If you could send me a couple guys, and we find them. .”

“What about the Murphy thing?”

“That’s why I want to find them. Because of the Murphy thing. I’m buying the idea that Murphy paid to have Ag murdered. I’d like to keep either Jimmy or Becky alive-both of them, if it’s possible-and get them to talk about Murphy.”

“Might not be possible,” Davenport said. “A couple of deputies down there more or less told the TV people that it’s a duck hunt. It’s shoot on sight.”

“They were going to kill McCall, too, but I got to him first,” Virgil said. “But if they get to Jimmy and Becky, it could be that Murphy walks on a murder.”

“I’ll send you Jenkins and Shrake. I’ll have them on the road in an hour, in separate vehicles. You need to turn over every rock you can find. Then, when it comes to our funding. .”

“See, that’s what we really needed,” Virgil said. “A good reason to catch them. Like funding.”

“You know what your problem is?” Davenport asked, jabbing a french fry at Virgil.

“I’m sure you’re about to tell me.”

“Yeah. You only think of one thing at a time. See, a smart guy, like myself, we know it’s important that we catch these kids, but we also know funding is important. There’s no conflict there.”

“I feel chastened,” Virgil said.

Virgil got out of the Cities, heading straight west, then cutting southwest. Davenport called as he was clearing 494 and said that Jenkins and Shrake would take a couple hours longer than he’d thought, but would definitely be in Bigham that night.

On the way west, it occurred to Virgil that if Sharp and Welsh were hiding in a farmhouse somewhere, they were probably watching television-and that he might be able to communicate with them.

He was working through that idea when he ran into his first National Guard patrol, twenty miles north of Bigham. Traffic was jammed for a half mile back from the checkpoint, and he used his lights to jump the line, driving along the shoulder. Two Humvees were working the checkpoint, with an M16-armed MP behind each vehicle, as a third MP checked the cars and waved them through.

When Virgil came up, the first MP stopped him, checked the truck, and then waved him through.

And this, he thought, was well out of the search area.

He was stopped three more times before he got to Bigham. At the last stop, he showed the MP his identification and asked, “Are you guys set up here permanently? Or are you roaming around?”

“We move around. Headquarters is set up in Bigham, and they move us.”

“Good.”

Virgil got to Bigham a few minutes after three o’clock in the afternoon. The Guard was working out of a field tent set up in the parking lot of the law enforcement center, and Virgil checked in with a red-faced major who was running the operation. The major, who was a lawyer from Moorhead in civilian life, showed him a map of the covered area, which included Bare and all the adjacent counties, with a bias to the west, to take in Marshall.

In addition, there were either Guard or sheriff’s deputies on the north side of every exit onto I-90, which was well to the south, to prevent Sharp and Welsh from crossing the highway and heading south into Iowa. There were also patrols at every bridge over the Minnesota River, which would keep them from going north. Mutual aid agreements had brought in other sheriffs’ deputies, highway patrolmen, and even town cops to patrol east- and west-bound roads out of the area.

The prison focus group had suggested a bias to the southeast. Virgil told the major about the group, but the major said they didn’t have enough patrols to extend very far to the southeast, unless they broke off patrols to the west. “I’d like to cover you, but we’ve got certain realities to deal with.”

Those realities, the major suggested, included the fact that two people had been executed in Marshall, and that the Guard needed to cover the areas where the politicians were screaming the loudest.

The major added, “The way we’re set up, they’ll hit some kind of patrol if they try to move, unless they’ve already gotten outside the interdiction area. Then, you know, all bets are off.”

Virgil stopped and saw Duke, who had nothing much to say except that everybody was working, and it was killing his overtime budget. When he walked out of the office he glanced across the street where a number of television trucks were parked, and at that moment, Daisy Jones came around the back of the truck, saw him, did a double take, and raised a hand. Virgil went that way.

Jones was thin, blond, and fortyish, or maybe forty-five-ish, and to Virgil’s knowledge had a fondness for little white truck-driver pills, which she bought from little white truck drivers. She was also one of the smarter on-camera people he’d met; a fairly good reporter, all told.

She met Virgil in the middle of the street and took his hand and said, “Have I mentioned recently just how attractive you are?”

“No, and I can use all of the flattery you’ve got. I’m feeling pretty ragged,” Virgil said.

“I might have a few teeny, tiny questions about this murder rampage, as well,” she said. “For the Twin Cities’ most important news outlet.”

“And I might have a few teeny, tiny answers for you, if you’re willing to deal.”

“If you want to meet back at your motel, I’m sure we can work something out.”

“I’m not strong enough for that,” Virgil said. “I was thinking more in terms of you putting up the BCA phone number when I tell you how Tom McCall and Becky Welsh had sex after killing one of their victims.”

“Oh, Jesus, that’s a deal,” she said. “As long as you don’t lie too much.”

“I’ll lie hardly at all,” Virgil said. “The other thing is, you have to make it look like you spontaneously caught me in the street.”

“Not a problem,” she said. “You go back in the sheriff’s office and look out the window, and when you see me doing a stand-up, you walk out and I’ll run over and grab you.”

“Two minutes,” Virgil said.

“Make it five minutes,” she said. “I’ve got to powder my nose and fix my lipstick-we’re also shooting for network.”

Virgil went back across the street to the LEC, down in the basement canteen where he spent a few minutes in the men’s room sprucing himself up, then got a Rice Krispies marshmallow bar from a vending machine, and a Diet Coke. He went back upstairs and ate the marshmallow bar and watched as Jones set up in the street, and started doing the stand-up. Virgil took a swig of the Coke, ran his tongue over his teeth to make sure no marshmallow was stuck between them, and walked outside.

Jones was looking at the camera, then half-turned to gesture toward the LEC, did another double take when she saw Virgil walking down the sidewalk, and called, “Virgil Flowers, Virgil Flowers.” She led the cameraman over, at the same time saying into the microphone, “This is Virgil Flowers, the unconventional Bureau of Criminal Apprehension agent who brought in Thomas McCall yesterday. Virgil, could you answer a question for our audience?”

“The, uh, media relationship is being handled through Sheriff Duke’s office.”

“Just one question,” Daisy urged. “There is a very strong rumor going around that Becky Welsh and Tom McCall may have had a sexual encounter in the bed of one of their victims, moments after shooting that victim. Is that true? Can you tell us if that’s true?”

Virgil seemed to consider for a moment, then said, “Uh, I had a conversation with Mr. McCall as we were driving to the Marshall law enforcement center yesterday, and he indicated that Becky Welsh had initiated a sexual encounter with him at one of the victims’ houses, shortly after shooting the victim. We do have some physical evidence for such an encounter, but I, uh, well, that’s all I’d prefer to say at the moment.”

“So you confirm that.”

“I’ll just stick with what I said. Nice to see you, Daisy.”

“Nice to see you, Virg.”

Virgil walked away and heard her pumping excitement into her voice as she recapped the interview. He was back in his truck, getting ready to pull out, when she rattled up next to the driver’s-side window in her high heels and said, “Thanks. I owe you. And thanks for using my name.”

“Remember to put the BCA phone number up,” Virgil said.

“Would you tell me why you’re doing that?”

“No.”

“You’re trying to get Becky to call you, aren’t you?” she said. “You’re trying to get her to call, because. . because you can track the cell phone tower, and then. . Oh, my God! You’re so. . manipulative.”

“If you put that on the air, I’ll strangle you and throw your body in the Minnesota River,” Virgil said.

“I won’t say a word, until you catch her,” Jones said. “Then I’ll say a lot of words.”

The days were growing longer as they moved deeper into April, but it was late enough in the afternoon that Virgil wasn’t inclined to start the road search he’d plotted out with the prison inmates. With Jenkins and Shrake running late, it’d be nearly dark before they arrived.

And then, since every farmer within two hundred miles was now guarding his property with a shotgun in his hand, approaching lonely houses in the dark did not seem like a good idea. And if you weren’t killed by a farmer, you just might find Sharp and Welsh, who’d light you up before you knew what was happening.

Virgil called Jenkins and told him to call Shrake, and that both of them should check into a motel somewhere close by. “Call me tonight and let me know where you are. We’ll head out on the road early tomorrow.”

“How early?”

“Right after it gets light.”

Virgil looked at his phone for a minute, then dialed. He got John O’Leary on the second ring. “This is Virgil Flowers, with the BCA.”

“You got the rest of ’em?”

“Not yet. I’m glad I caught you. I need to talk to you.”

“Come on over. We’re all here-the funeral’s tomorrow morning.”

“I don’t want to intrude.”

“Come on over, Virgil. I wanted to thank you anyway, for catching the first one of those little vermin.”

On his way over, he called the Lyon County sheriff, in Marshall, and asked if McCall had gotten representation.

“Yeah, he’s signed up with one of our public defenders, Mickey Burden. You need to talk to her?”

“Yeah, and maybe the county attorney. Got the numbers?”

He called the county attorney first, a Josh Meadows. “I talked to Mickey an hour ago. She’s a little pissed about that interview you did with Channel Three, and about the questioning of McCall, when you were driving him in.”

“It was all aboveboard,” Virgil said.

“That’s one of the things she’s pissed about. It’s all right there on the tape,” Meadows said.

“You gave her the tape?”

“No, but we described it to her, as a courtesy. We’re going to have to give it up pretty quick, though. She’s going for a court order right now.”

“As a personal favor to me, and since she’s going to get it anyway, could you give her a copy now? Or let her listen to it?” Virgil asked.

“I could, if you tell me why,” Meadows said.

“Because I want her to hear that McCall was holding out a critical piece of information-and that if I don’t get it, that’s another strike against him. I’ve got another thing going here, which I will tell you about when I see you, but it’s complicated. I need McCall to talk to me.”

“All right. I’ll talk to her, see what she says,” Meadows said.

“I’m going to call her and make an appeal. Maybe it’ll help,” Virgil said.

“Fine. Tell her to call me, then.”

He called burden as he pulled up outside the O’Leary house, and sat in the street and talked to her.

“You poisoned the whole jury pool when you said they’d had a sexual encounter,” Burden said, when she came up on the phone.

Virgil said, “No I didn’t. He was bragging to me about it. What can I tell you?”

“You should have kept your mouth shut,” she said.

“I’ve got reasons for doing what I did, and if I were to tell you about them, which I won’t, I think you might approve,” Virgil said. “Anyhow, I’ve called to tell you that I asked Josh Meadows to release the interview tape to you, and he agreed. You can get it right now.”

There was a moment of silence, and then she said, “I wonder why I’m so suspicious?”

“Because I want something,” Virgil said.

“Ah,” she said. “That’s why.”

“When you listen to the end of the tape, you’ll see I stop the interview when McCall asks for an attorney. He was about to give me some critical information, but then decided to withhold it, thinking maybe he could use it to get a deal. I need the information, but it has a very short shelf life. Short, and getting shorter by the minute. If he wants to get anything out of it, he better talk to me tonight. Tomorrow morning might be too late.”

“That’s outrageous.”

“Maybe, but it’s not my doing. It’s his, and Becky Welsh’s and Jim Sharp’s. If Welsh and Sharp shoot it out tomorrow, and get killed, then McCall’s value goes to zero.”

More silence, then, “I’ll talk to my client.”

Virgil said, “Do that. And let me give you my phone number.”

The O’Leary men were waiting for him in the living room again. Ag Murphy’s mother and her sister were at the funeral home. Marsha O’Leary refused to leave her daughter’s body until it was safely in the ground, John O’Leary said. Her children were taking turns sitting with her.

“I hope you all do well,” Virgil said, looking for the right words. “I know this has to hurt, but I hope you don’t let it do any more damage than it has to. You seem like a pretty great group.”

“We are a pretty great group,” said Jack, the oldest son. “We won’t get over it, but we’ll get on.”

“I hope so,” Virgil said.

After a moment, John O’Leary said, “So. . you have something specific you wanted to talk about?”

Virgil said, “Yes.” Then, after a moment, “When was the last time Dick Murphy was in the house, before the shooting?”

“Couple days before,” John O’Leary said. He looked around at his kids, who nodded. “Yeah. Two days before.”

“Was he in the kitchen?”

“I suppose. He was around the house. You think he had something to do with it? Is that where we’re going?”

“I’m trying to cover all the bases,” Virgil said.

“No, you’re not,” said Frank, the youngest kid. “You know something.”

Virgil knew they were smart; ducking away from the fact of the matter wouldn’t fool them, not for long.

“Look,” he said, “I don’t want this getting out of the house. Maybe not even to your wife or daughter, either, just because. . they’re a little emotionally tender, and I don’t want them giving away my case by confronting Dick Murphy before I’ve got it nailed down. And anyway, I could be wrong. Okay?”

They all nodded.

“I’m ninety-nine percent sure your daughter was shot and killed by Jimmy Sharp,” Virgil said. “Sharp, the night before, had so little money in his pocket that he was sleeping in his car. After shooting Ag, he had a thousand dollars in his pocket, and he told Tom McCall that he’d taken it from Ag’s bag.”

“That’s not right,” Rob O’Leary said. “Ag borrowed twenty bucks from me to go see a movie, because time was short and she didn’t want to run by the ATM. And when she went to the ATM, she never took out more than a couple hundred. She used credit cards for almost everything.”

“Tom thinks Sharp was paid to kill Ag,” Virgil said. “He said that Sharp referred to himself as a hit man.”

“That motherfuckin’ Murphy,” said James O’Leary.

John O’Leary stood up and walked around behind the easy chair he’d been sitting on and leaned on it: “What’s his motive? The money? I don’t know if you’re aware of it, but his old man’s one of the richest guys in town. He’s got more money than we do.”

“But he doesn’t give much of it to Dick,” said Frank. “He gave him a car, and maybe picks up the payments on that house, but other than that, he’s got him working a salesman’s job and getting salesman’s pay.”

“Money would be a factor,” Virgil said. “The other thing is. . Murphy apparently thinks that Ag went to a clinic and aborted their child. At least, that’s what he supposedly told one of my sources.”

That rattled them: John O’Leary shook his head and said, “That’s not possible. She’d never do that.”

Rob and Jack agreed, but James was more reticent: he said, when the others had quieted, “I don’t think it’s out of the question.”

His father said, “What?”

James said, “I don’t think it’s out of the question.”

“Why?” John O’Leary asked. “Explain that.”

James said, “That’s just what I think.” But Virgil thought he might know something; because of the anger flickering through the others, he didn’t press it, and John O’Leary bent the conversation away when he asked, “When are you going to pick him up?”

“I got this Murphy stuff from a guy who’s for sure a cop killer, and possibly a rapist, who’s looking for a way to make a deal. He’s not a reliable source. A jury won’t trust him,” Virgil said.

“But you suspect him,” said Jack O’Leary. “Maybe a little more than that.”

“I talked to a guy here in town who Dick Murphy sort of brushed by with a suggestion that Ag was a big problem for him. But he never got explicit about what he wanted. The guy thinks he knows what Murphy wanted, but who knows if we could ever get that into court,” Virgil said. “I can get that guy’s testimony. I can also show that Dick Murphy and Jimmy Sharp were shooting pool the night before the killing-not that night, but twenty-four hours earlier. I might be able to get some bank records that show Dick Murphy took a thousand bucks out of the bank, if he did that. Even so, I don’t know if that’s enough. It’d be strongly suggestive. . ”

“This other guy, it’s Randy White, isn’t it?” Rob O’Leary asked.

Virgil shrugged and said, “I don’t want to get into that.”

Rob said to his father and brothers, “It is.” He nodded at Virgil. “You can see it in his eyes.”

And Virgil thought they probably could. “I don’t want you talking to anybody about this. Not Murphy, not Randy White. What I need for you is, any further information you can provide about motive, specifics about Murphy going back into your kitchen, alone-and I don’t want you to make up any bullshit. That never works.”

“You need more circumstantial stuff,” said John O’Leary.

“That’s right. Anything you’ve got that would help build a case.”

“We’ll have to bring Mom and Mary into it,” James O’Leary said to his father and brothers. “We’ll have to tell them to man-up, suck it up. They can do it. They were the ones who were here the whole time Murphy was over that night.”

John O’Leary nodded. “But not tonight. Let’s wait until tomorrow. Until Ag’s gone.”

Virgil was an only child, and while his parents were loving, he’d never been part of the complex web of a large family. He was struck by the tribal vibe he got from the O’Learys, the all-for-one, one-for-all thing. Because the family was so big, the older kids had taken care of the younger ones, and Ag, as the oldest, had almost been a surrogate mother for them. Their bitterness was all-encompassing, and fed on itself as they talked about her.

Before he left, Virgil said, “Listen, I don’t want you guys checking around on Murphy on your own. Stay away from him. He’ll be at the funeral-I don’t want you hassling him. He doesn’t know I’m coming yet, and I want to keep it that way as long as I can.”

They all agreed they’d do that. “I’ll be okay, as long as I don’t have to talk to the sonofabitch,” Frank said.

“Try to avoid any open hostility,” Virgil said. “It’d scare him, and I don’t want him covering anything up, if there’s anything to cover.”

Virgil was thinking about the gun that Sharp had used to kill Ag Murphy. It was possible that Sharp had the gun all along, but if they were sleeping in a car. . a gun was money, if you knew where to sell it, and Sharp almost certainly did. On the other hand, it might have been the kind of asset that he couldn’t have let go of. Still, if it came off the street here in Bigham, it’d be nice to know who the previous owner was.

Back in the truck, Virgil called the public defender in Marshall, but was switched to her voice mail; he hung up without leaving a message.

He thought again about the gun, and about Honor Roberts, the fence he’d talked to at the bird sanctuary. He called him and asked, “You didn’t sell Jimmy Sharp a gun, did you?”

“Hell, no. I don’t deal in guns. That’s nothing but trouble.”

“If you needed a gun in Bigham, where’d you go?” Virgil asked.

“You know. . there isn’t anyplace, in particular,” Roberts said. “You might just ask around, or you’d hear somebody had a gun for sale. It’s not like in the Cities, where somebody makes a business out of handgun sales.”

“So the only way to get one here would be. . hanging out.”

“That’s about it,” Roberts said. “On the other hand, most people have a gun or two. If they didn’t buy it themselves, they inherited it. You could get one at an estate sale.”

“Well. . poop.”

The gun was still a possibility, if Murphy supplied it to Sharp, but not one that he could work through quietly. Once Sharp was taken down, he could have the sheriff make a public appeal for information, and maybe something would shake loose.

He decided to head over to Marshall, forty miles away by road, a half hour or so if you had police flashers. He did, but still got hung up on a half dozen Guard checkpoints. He had just cleared one of them when the public defender, Mickey Burden, called and said, “I see a missed call from you.”

“I was wondering if you’d heard the tape and had a chance to talk to McCall.”

“I did. And I talked to Josh Meadows, and he said that there’s not much of a deal available. He’d be willing to tell the judge that my client cooperated, but wouldn’t recommend any change in sentence in return for the cooperation.”

“I don’t think you can hope for much that way,” Virgil said. “I think the most you could really hope for is to create some doubt about what Tom actually did, and then point out that he cooperated when given a chance.”

“Oh, shit,” she said, suddenly sounding tired. “You know. . if you want to come talk to Tom, you can. I told him you’d be coming, and I recommended that he speak to you. To cooperate.”

“I’ll be there soon as I can be,” Virgil said.

Josh Meadows, the county attorney, turned out to be an affable guy who looked like he spent a lot of time on a golf course; he had short red hair, was wearing a polo golf shirt and white socks-no shoes-when he and a sheriff’s deputy and a court reporter met Virgil at Meadows’s office at seven o’clock. Meadows said, “You’re cutting into my dinnertime.”

“Mine, too,” Virgil said. “Had to be done.”

Burden arrived a couple minutes later. She was a short brown-haired woman in her forties, who carried a briefcase the size of a steamer trunk.

The pre-interview meeting was short. Meadows told Burden that he was not prepared to offer McCall any consideration whatever, but if Virgil wanted to take the stand as a defense witness and say that McCall had cooperated, he would make no effort to challenge that. “You have to consider, though, that I probably won’t be the prosecutor. We don’t know who the prosecutor will be. I would imagine that whoever is McCall’s final representative will try to get the trial moved out of Bare and Lyon counties because of the media attention.”

“For sure,” Burden said. “There really is no proof that McCall shot anybody-”

“Except that an eyewitness says he did, and it’s hard to think how anybody else might have done it,” Meadows said. “But it’s up to you, Mickey. It’s Virgil or nothing.”

“All right,” she said. To Virgil: “I’m going to place a limitation on the questioning: you can ask about James Sharp but you can’t ask about the shooting in Oxford, or about what part Tom McCall might have had in the robbery and shooting in Bigham.”

“That might be a little tough, but I think I can skate around it,” Virgil said. “Stop me if I step on your toes.”

“I will,” she said.

When they’d agreed on the rules, the deputy left, and came back five minutes later with another deputy and, between them, Tom McCall, who was wearing handcuffs and leg chains that allowed him only to shuffle along, rather than stride. Running would be out of the question.

The deputies sat him down, and Burden took him through the deal, although she’d already done that when she talked to him before the meeting. He nodded that he understood, and then said, aloud, “I got it, I got it,” though Virgil didn’t think he quite understood how little he was getting.

After a little more talk, Virgil said, “Okay. Tom, on the way back here-”

“You said you wanted me to rot in hell,” McCall said.

“Yeah, I sorta do,” Virgil said. “But that has nothing to do with the question. The question I have is, who was Jimmy Sharp hanging out with in Bigham? Anybody in particular?”

“We were only there for two nights. During the daytime, we went around to see if anybody had a job, and at night we’d go over to this pool hall. Bar and pool hall. Because they had free peanuts that we could eat if we all bought a beer. I ate about a pound of those fuckers.”

“So you were at the pool hall. Would this be Roseanne’s Billiards in Bigham?”

“Yeah, something like that. Yeah. Roseanne’s pool parlor.”

“And was Jim hanging with anyone in particular?” Virgil asked.

“Not the first night, but sometime on the second day we was there, he met up with this guy, Murph. He thought Murph might be able to get us a job because his old man was some kind of big deal in town. Well, that didn’t work out, but the second night, they were shooting pool for a long time.”

“This wasn’t the night when Ag Murphy got shot. This was the night before that?”

“Careful,” Burden said.

“Everybody knows when Ag Murphy got shot,” Virgil said. “I’m just asking about the date, not about the shooting.”

“Not that it makes any difference,” Meadows drawled. “We already got him on tape as admitting he was at the house.”

“That tape may be challenged, as would be your last comment,” Burden snapped.

Virgil made a time-out signal with his hands and said, “No lawyer stuff right now, okay? I’ll avoid the actual shooting. . unless Tom wants to talk about it.”

“He doesn’t,” Burden said.

“Okay,” Virgil said. Back to McCall: “So starting the second night in town, he was hanging out with Murph. Would you recognize Murph?”

McCall nodded. “Sure. I shot about six games of nine-ball with him.”

“Did you win?”

“No. He’s a pretty good nine-ball player. He was some kind of athlete at the high school.”

Good detail, Virgil thought. “Did Jimmy beat him at nine-ball?”

“Oh, shit no. Jimmy is terrible at pool. Any kind of pool.”

“So. . you say that the next night Jimmy had a thousand dollars. But he couldn’t have won that from Murph, shooting pool?”

“No fuckin’ way, man,” McCall said.

“So when would Jimmy have gotten the money?” Virgil asked.

“He didn’t have no money that night,” McCall said. “Didn’t have any the next day, until he borrowed ten bucks off some guy so we could get some breakfast. We went down to the IGA and bought a loaf of bread and jar of peanut butter and one of jelly, and we ate that, and then Jimmy and Becky went off somewheres, and I met up with them that afternoon, and they still didn’t have any money. Then Jimmy left Becky with me, and when he came back, late that night, we were in the car, he had this gun and he said we were going to do some robbing-”

“Stop,” Burden told him.

Virgil asked, “He didn’t have the gun before?”

“Nope. That was the first time I ever seen it.”

Virgil leaned back in his chair and said to Meadows, “I’ve got nothing more to ask at the moment. Mickey won’t let me get closer to the robbery, but I already know what happened there, anyway.”

“Okay,” Meadows said. “So let’s bring this-”

“Wait,” Virgil said. And to Tom: “You think he got the money from Murphy?”

Tom said, “Can’t think of no place else it could have come from. That money popped up like a gopher out of a gopher hole.”

“And you told me they were brand-new twenties. Is that right?”

“Yep. Brand-new and shiny. You could smell the money ink on them, when Jimmy flipped through them.”

Virgil spread his hands and said, “I’m done.”