Mad River

22

Virgil went to bed early, because he could. He hadn’t gotten a full night’s sleep for a while, and was starting to feel stupid. He slept like a dead man for the first part of the night, but at five o’clock his eyes popped open, and he was wide awake.

He didn’t want to be-a couple more hours of sleep wouldn’t hurt at all, but his mind was moving and he couldn’t get back. He tried a couple of sexual fantasies about Sally, but they didn’t catch fire, so he spent some time thinking about God, and why he made people like Jimmy Sharp and Becky Welsh.

What part could they have in God’s plan? Were they simply put here to kill people at random, because, for some people, people needed to be killed at random?

A mystery. He remembered a bumper sticker he’d seen in St. Paul that said: “Remember: Half the People Are Below Average.” That, he thought, was probably the key to Jimmy Sharp and Becky Welsh.

They were below average, and God had made them that way. There was no way that they were ever going to be anything but that; they could watch all the above-average people they wanted, on television, driving around in big cars and making enormous amounts of money out of nothing. . or just working at the post office, or going to trade school to be plumbers or carpenters. They’d never be able to do that. They were condemned from birth to a life of hard times and trouble.

If people were to tell the truth about Becky, her only route to a condition even resembling prosperity would be to sell herself for sex. That was all she had. The problem with that, morality aside, was that she probably wasn’t bright enough to make the most of selling herself.

As for Jimmy-Jimmy had no chance at all. Abused as a child, neglected in school, he probably couldn’t drive a nail. Or generate the ambition to do it.

Virgil rolled around for a while, thinking about it, blessed his parents for their genes. He was almost back to sleep when the phone rang, its screen popping to life, a brilliant white rectangle in the dark.

The duty officer was stressed: “Got Becky Welsh for you, calling on a cell phone that’s registered to David Gates. We’re trying to track it.”

Virgil sat up, dropped his feet to the floor, so he could think: “Put her on.”

Becky came up. “Hello? Is anybody there? Hello. .”

“Becky, this is Virgil. Are you okay?”

She was crying. “Aw, God, I think Jimmy is dying. He’s got big red streaks coming out of his leg.”

“You gotta come in. He needs a hospital, really quick. If he’s got red streaks, he could lose his leg. . or die. Where are you?”

“I don’t know, exactly. In a woods. I want to quit. I want to come in, and make people stop chasing us. I gotta get Jimmy in. .”

“Do you know about where you are?” Virgil asked.

She said, “I know where that town is. . the town with the gas station I was at. I’m down where you were looking yesterday, not too far, but kinda far, from that old man’s house.”

Virgil: “If you can get to Arcadia, I can meet you at the gas station. I can get an ambulance. We might have to take him to the Cities in a helicopter.”

“Okay. . okay. Don’t shoot us,” Becky said.

“We won’t. I will be in Arcadia in a half hour. Can you get there by then?”

“I have to take a bunch of shit off the truck. . We have a bunch of shit on the truck so the helicopters can’t see us.”

“This is Mr. Gates’s truck? A red Dodge?” Virgil asked.

“I think so. . yeah, it’s the old man’s truck. The last one we took,” she said.

“Becky: you’ve got to carry through with this. Meet me in a half hour at the gas station. It’s the only way you can save Jimmy’s life.”

She started weeping again, and said, “Oh, God. .” and then she was gone.

The duty officer came back and Virgil asked, “Did we get her?”

“I doubt we can get close to her. The GPS needs tracking satellites, and that takes a few minutes. We can see what phone tower she’s closest to, but out there in the countryside, that’s not going to give us much.”

“All right, but see what you can get,” Virgil said. “I’m going. I’m going.”

“Take care.”

Virgil got into his jeans and boots, pulled on a shirt and his jean jacket, got his gun, and went out the door, ran down the hall, and pounded on Shrake’s door. Shrake came to the door wearing a T-shirt and boxer shorts, and asked, “Where are they?”

“Arcadia. Becky’s meeting me there in half an hour. Get Jenkins and get moving.”

“You gonna call Duke? Might be sort of a diplomatic problem if you don’t.”

“Yeah, I’ll call him. . Fast as you can.”

Virgil hurried on, punched up Duke’s cell phone, and was instantly kicked over to an answering service. Phone was turned off. He called the Bare County sheriff’s office on the way to his truck, nearly running into a light pole as he jogged along looking at the cell phone, dodged it at the last minute, and when a deputy came up, he identified himself: “I need Duke’s home phone, right now.”

He got the number as he fired up his truck. He punched the number in, and a moment later a groggy-sounding woman answered the phone: “Hello?”

“Miz Duke?” Virgil realized he was shouting and tried to tone it down. “This is Virgil Flowers. I gotta talk to your husband.”

Duke took the phone: “You got ’em?”

“I talked to Becky four or five minutes ago. She says Jimmy’s dying of infection from the gunshot wound. She’s going to bring him into the gas station at Arcadia. She was down south of there, somewhere around the Gates place. I’m meeting her in twenty-five minutes or so. I could use some backup.”

Duke said, “Oh, man, oh, man. You got it.”

“No sirens, no lights, let’s not scare her.”

“Got it. See you there.” He was gone, and so was Virgil. He turned on his flashers, figuring they’d be okay for the first fifteen miles or so, and might keep him from clipping some farm lady out early, walking the dog. The sun was not yet up, and judging from the eastern sky, it probably wouldn’t be for ten or fifteen minutes.

They were done, he thought. Best of all, nobody else was dead, if Becky and Jimmy were really hiding out in a woods, and he believed her when she said they were.

A flock of Canada geese flew overhead, not high above the road, in a pretty V; if he’d been walking, he could have heard their wings, and their informational honking.

Damn, he thought. Damn: not a bad day to be alive.

Shrake called: “We’re coming. We’re. . seven minutes behind you.”

Then Duke: “We’ve got the roaming patrols headed into Arcadia. Not the Guard, just deputies. They’ll see you at the gas station. I’m on my way. I’m leaving the house now.”

Becky sat for what seemed like a long time before she could make herself move. Jimmy was dying. If he didn’t die, they’d put him in prison for sure. And probably her, too, unless maybe Jimmy took the blame. But if that goddamn McCall gave himself up, he probably told them that she killed that woman at the rape house. But two could play that game-she’d tell them that Tom did it, and then raped her. They knew he raped her. . and they knew he shot the cop. He was the killer-not her.

Goddamn him. She chewed on a thumbnail. Nothing was going to work-they weren’t going to make it to Mexico, they weren’t going to get married and have kids, it was all over. They wouldn’t be able to keep the money. . though maybe if she gave the money back, they’d go easier on her.

She tried talking to Jimmy again, but he was so deep that she knew it was impossible: he might never hear her again.

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.

Then, straight ahead, but a quarter mile away, she saw a truck coming toward her, moving fast, no red lights, didn’t look like a cop car, then another car behind that.

She slowed more, looked to her left. . saw a hat, then another hat, then a man down in the ditch, and he was pointing a gun at her.

She shouted at the window glass, “We give up. . we give up,” and fumbled for the window buttons, the truck coasting closer and closer to the bridge.

She never felt the bullets: the first ones shattered her skull and she was gone; Jimmy was with her an instant later.

Virgil was no more than a hundred yards away when he saw a deputy step into the road at the bridge, lift an automatic weapon to his shoulder, and open up on the truck. The truck was jumping and shaking, and he saw another man moving in the ditch to the left, and then a third, and they were firing and the truck was shaking and coasting and sliding off to the left. .

Virgil was pounding on the steering wheel and screaming, “No. .”

The red pickup rolled off the road, lurched crazily down through the weeds and brush, and stopped with its front wheels in the Mad River.

Becky and Jimmy didn’t know any of that; they’d been killed with the first volley, their bodies punctured forty and fifty times by the unending stream of.223 slugs.

Virgil jumped out of his truck and ran down the riverbank and looked in. The two lumps inside were a mass of blood and bone, hardly looked human; hardly even looked like remnants of humans.

Shrake and Jenkins were with him, and he turned and climbed back up the bank and brushed by Duke, who put up a hand to say something, but Virgil ignored him, and said to Jenkins and Shrake, “Get in the truck.”

Jenkins asked, “You okay?”

Virgil said, “I’ve never seen that. I’ve never seen a cold-blooded murder, firsthand.”

Duke said, “Hey, now.”

Virgil said, “Fuck you.”