So Virgil drove down to the end of the driveway and stopped at the edge of the road. Before he got out of the truck, he took his cell phone out of his pocket, pulled up a calculator, did a quick calculation, and wrote the number in the palm of his hand. The media guys were watching everybody coming down the hill, so when Virgil got out of the truck, walked to the middle of the road, and raised his hands in a “Come to Jesus” gesture, they stampeded over, not unlike a herd of hungry wildebeest.
He kept it simple: that state agents doing a systematic survey of remote farmsteads in conjunction with the Bare County sheriff’s office and the Minnesota National Guard had discovered the body of a male shooting victim. They’d also found signs that the house had been used as a hideout by the fugitives who robbed the Oxford credit union; the signs included blood-soaked bandages, which led investigators to believe that one of the robbers had been seriously wounded.
“When you say ‘fugitives,’ you mean Becky Welsh and James Sharp, correct?” one of the TV reporters asked.
“We would certainly like to talk to them about any involvement that they may or may not have had in these events,” Virgil said. He added that the victim had not yet been identified, and when he was, his name would not be released until next of kin were notified. That was routine cop-speak and drew no objections.
Ruffe Ignace, one of a half dozen newspaper reporters in the crowd, asked, “Virgil, do you have any idea when Sharp and Welsh left the farm-how far they may have gotten?”
“Can’t tell exactly, but we think they probably spent the night before last at the farm, maybe the day yesterday, and then left sometime between last night and this afternoon,” Virgil said.
A TV reporter said, “So you’re saying it was Welsh and Sharp.”
“No. I was replying to the substance of Mr. Ignace’s question, of when the fugitives left,” Virgil said.
Ignace said to the TV reporter, “Yeah, dumbass. And keep your mouth shut while I’m talking.”
The reporter said, “Hey, we’re live.”
Ignace said, “So am I.” To Virgil: “You cops are crawling all over the place, and if they went far. . somebody would have stopped them, or there would have been some shooting. So that means they’re close by.”
Virgil said, “Ruffe, that’s not exactly a question, but I’ll pretend that it was, and I’d love to be able to answer it. We don’t think they’ve been gone very long, but if they snuck out last night, at four in the morning, and killed the lights on the vehicle, and drove very cautiously at twenty miles an hour until it got light. . well, that’s forty miles or so. You know the formula: pi times the radius squared. If the radius is forty miles, square that, you get sixteen hundred, and you multiply that by pi. .” Virgil put his hand to his forehead and rolled his eyes up, as if making the calculation. “About five thousand twenty-six point, uh, point fifty-four square miles. That’s a lot of territory, which is our problem. Our biggest fear, of course, is that they’ve moved to another hideout, with the same kind of situation as we’ve got here.”
“You mean more dead people,” Ignace said.
“That’s our greatest fear,” Virgil said.
There were a few more questions, which Virgil answered or batted down, and then they went through the ritual of allowing each TV on-camera reporter to ask a question, mostly repetitive, so that cameramen could get a shot of them asking and Virgil answering.
That done, Virgil said, “We’re finished,” and walked back to his truck, where Jenkins had been waiting. Halfway back, Ignace cut him off and said, “I’ve got an exceptionally reliable source at Stillwater who said you did a focus group there, about where Sharp and Welsh might have gone from the robbery. Lo and behold, you and three other guys found this place, while two hundred people were looking elsewhere, and didn’t come up with jack shit. That’s a pretty interesting story, Virgil.”
“I really can’t talk about that right now,” Virgil said.
“Well, I’ve got all the information I need, and I’m going to write about it tomorrow morning, unless you say you’ll talk to me later,” Ignace said. “If you talk to me later, I’ll hold off until then.”
“You write what you want,” Virgil said, “but if you write that tomorrow morning, and it pisses off the people I’ve got to work with, then I will talk about it later. . but not to you. I’ll talk to Channel Three and the Pioneer Press.”
“It’s a shame you’re taking that attitude, because that means that I’ve got to leave the decision in the hands of the production-crazed morons on the city desk,” Ignace said. “If it were just you and me making a deal. .”
Virgil said, “Tell you what-you hold off, and I’ll talk to you later if I can clear it with my bosses. If I can’t, then you write what you’ve got, without me. But I’ll try to talk.”
Ignace thought about that for a moment, and then said, “Deal,” and walked away.
Back in the truck, Jenkins said, “Sweaty work,” and Virgil said, “Yeah,” and dug a Diet Coke out of the cooler in the back.
Jenkins said, “Davenport called and asked what you were up to. I told him to turn on the TV. Anyway, he wants a call back, when you can.”
Virgil called, and Davenport said, “Pretty good job on the press conference. Sincere yet uninformative.”
“Thanks.”
“I told Shrake he was in for a commendation, for the way he spotted that body at the Gates place.”
“Okay. And listen, it’s been nice talking to you. I’ll get in touch again later.”
“Virgil: that guy who beat you up, Duane McGuire. He’s hiding in his mother’s junk shop in Sleepy Eye.”
“Sleepy Eye? I’m twenty minutes away. Give me the address.”
Davenport said the information about McGuire came from one of his network of informants who saw McGuire leaving a Sleepy Eye convenience store with a bag of beer, heading back to his mother’s place.
They left Boykin with his patrol car, and Shrake jammed himself in the backseat of Virgil’s 4Runner. Shrake said, “We’ve still got nothing to work with.”
“I know,” Virgil said. “If Duane’s home, we’ll have to put on a little skit.”
They worked on the skit on the way over; came into town from the north, cut Highway 14 and took it down Main Street, spotted Martha’s Flea Market Creations, a small shabby shop with some lamps in the front window. They drove around the block, turned into a half-ass dirt alley that threaded behind the stores, and spotted the back entrance.
“Probably come running out of there,” Virgil said.
Jenkins said, “I’ll take it.”
“Don’t get hurt,” Virgil said.
Sleepy Eye was a fairly prosperous place, a railroad town, three or four thousand people, Virgil thought. Not much moving on a cold April day. Shrake and Virgil went around to the front of Martha’s, and parked and got out.
Always nervous going through a door. . but they went through, a bell ringing overhead as Virgil pushed the door open. Martha was sitting there, leaning on a glass-topped counter, reading a tabloid newspaper of some sort. McGuire was just coming into the room from the back, carrying a plate that held a piece of what looked like corn bread. His eyes met Virgil’s, and he dropped the plate and ran. Virgil shouted, “Stop,” and Martha shrieked, “Oh my God. Police, call the police,” and Virgil went through the inside door, with Shrake three steps behind him.
Virgil could see light coming through an open back screen door and, when he got through it, found McGuire sitting in the dirt, holding his hands to his face, Jenkins standing over him. Jenkins said, “He resisted.”
McGuire said, “Mmmpph.”
Virgil squatted next to him, looked up at Jenkins and said, “Put the cuffs on him.” To McGuire he said, “You’re under arrest for accessory to first degree murder, aggravated assault on a police officer, and so on.”
McGuire took his hands down and said, “What?” He was bleeding heavily from the nose, and at that moment, Martha came running out, carrying what appeared to be a very old.22-caliber revolver with a long thin barrel. She waved it awkwardly and said, “All-”
Shrake hit her in the forehead and knocked her down, then stood on the gun until Jenkins rolled her over and put another pair of cuffs on her.
“And Mom’s under arrest for aggravated assault on a police officer,” Virgil said to McGuire.
Martha groaned and then screamed, “Police.”
Shrake knelt next to her and said, “We are the police. We’re arresting your son for all these murders and shit you see on TV.”
“What?”
McGuire started babbling. “I had nothing to do with any murder, for Christ sakes. Did Royce tell you that? All we did was rough you up a little-hell, it was just a fight.”
Martha started crying and said, “My head, my head.”
“Probably ought to get her to the hospital,” Shrake said. “I didn’t have time to hit her easy.”
Virgil said, “Okay, ma’am, just take it easy, sit there. .”
A Sleepy Eye patrol car rolled into the alley, and a cop got out, a hand on his pistol, and Jenkins said, “Shit,” and took out his ID and shouted, “BCA, BCA. .”
McGuire said, “My mom’s hurt.”
Virgil: “I can’t feel too sorry about that. I’m still hurting from you trying to kick me to death.”
“We weren’t gonna kill you, man. Just supposed to smack you around a little.”
“I heard that Murphy wanted me dead,” Virgil said.
“No, no, nobody wanted you dead.”
Jenkins said, quietly, “Cop.”
Virgil said to McGuire, “You’re under arrest for assault. You have a right to an attorney. . ”
The cop was talking to Shrake when Virgil finished, and he went over and said, “Sorry we didn’t have time to call you, but we were afraid he was running. We just heard where he was a few minutes ago. We were over in Bare County with the search.”
The cop was a hefty man, with little hair on his head; he looked down at McGuire and said, “Duane, were you hooked up with all that?”
“No, man, I just. . Ah, shit.”
“He and a pal beat me up, over in Bigham,” Virgil said. “He admitted it before we could Mirandize him, just blurted it out. So. . we’re going to take him over to Bare County, drop him in jail.”
“What’d Martha do?” the cop asked.
“She saw us chasing her son and came running out with a gun. Probably. . misunderstood what was going on.”
“She under arrest?” the cop asked.
“For now. . we’ll get her over to the medical center. What we do after that depends a little on Duane, here. And, of course, what Martha has to say for herself.”
There’s a kind of arrest that’s simply tedious, with paperwork to be done and forms to be filled out, and care taken, and the arrest of the McGuires was all of that. A doctor at the medical center determined that Martha was not badly injured, and Virgil cut her loose after she signed a piece of paper that said she would not hold the state liable for any damage done to her, or her shop, during the arrest. A lawyer might later argue that the paper was signed under duress, but only if he was dumb: she’d come through the door with a gun, and might have been shot.
McGuire was cleaned up at the medical center, and got his nose taped and splinted, and they loaded him into the 4Runner and hauled his complaining ass back to the Bare County jail.
He’d never said, or even hinted, that he wanted a lawyer, and Virgil had Mirandized him, and he said he understood all of that, and that he’d been Mirandized before. So Virgil was in the clear when he asked, “How much did Murphy give you to beat me up?”
“Shit, I don’t know,” McGuire said. “He didn’t give it to me, he gave it to Royce. I just went along for the fun of it.”
“I can understand that,” Shrake said. “Just a good-ol’-boy thing.”
“That’s right.”
“So you didn’t get anything?” Virgil asked.
“Royce give me a hundred bucks afterward. I think he got more.”
By the time they got him to the jail, they had the whole story: Virgil, as he’d intended, had attracted Murphy’s attention when he started interviewing people in the bar, and asked about Murphy. He’d gotten more of an answer than he expected, but more than good enough.
At the jail, they did more paperwork, and then McGuire was taken back to a cell, the jail guard greeting McGuire with, “Hey, Duane, what you been up to?”
“Same ol’ shit,” McGuire said. “Listen, I don’t have no drugs stuffed up my asshole. Do you think. .?”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” the guard said.
“Aw, man. .”
Outside, Shrake asked, “What’s next?”
Virgil said, “Got to pick up Royce Atkins, and we’ve still got to find Sharp and Becky Welsh. That’s the main thing. Murphy, we’ll just leave him on the shelf for a few days.”
By the time they got McGuire stashed, it was late in the day. Duke was still out on the hunt, and Virgil talked with the chief deputy, who said there had been no more hints that they might be on the fugitives’ trail. “The sheriff just reoriented everybody around that farm you found, and people are working out from that. We’re assuming that since they ditched the Townes’ truck, they’re running around in Gates’s truck. Old red Dodge. We’ve got two choppers running a search pattern around the house, trying to see if they can spot it. Nothing so far, and with dark coming on. . probably not going to find it tonight.”
A helicopter flew over Gates’s truck and the abandoned farmstead just after full dark. A searchlight poked through the woods, then spent a moment probing the old sheds, then moved on down the road. Becky held her breath as she heard it coming in, and let it out when it moved on.
The beating blades woke Jimmy, who groaned and said, “This fuckin’ leg is killing me,” and, “What the fuck is going on?”
He sounded clear-minded, and Becky said, “A helicopter. Jeez, Jimmy, they’re using everything. It’s going away now.”
“Didn’t see us?”
“No, I put some old tar paper over the truck. We look like a pile of dirt.”
“Good. We got any more pills?”
“One.”
Jimmy took the pill and a long drink of water, and then asked, “What time is it?”
She said, “After seven. We’ve been sitting here a long time.”
“Gotta move before it gets light,” he said. “Get way south, toward. . Ohio or. . whatever.”
“Iowa,” she said.
“Farther than that. Ohio or. . Kansas. Those helicopters. . didn’t think they’d get no helicopters to chase us.”
“Got searchlights on them, just like in the Cities.”
“If we could get to the Cities, we could get lost,” he said.
“I don’t think we’d get that far,” Becky said. “That’d be running toward them. We’ve got to run away.”
“Okay.”
She was a little surprised by his acquiescence; he usually wanted to be the boss. She asked, “You want a cigarette?”
“Hell, yes.”
She found a pack of Marlboros, shook one out for him, lit it with a paper match. The smoke smelled good, though she didn’t smoke herself.
“I think I’m feeling better-my leg is better,” Jimmy said after a while. She thought he might be lying, but she nodded. He said, “All we need is one good break. Get out in the open country and run. Some of that country down there, it’s almost empty. That’s what my old man said. He drove down to Texas once, and he said it’s mostly empty. That’s what we need.”
“Okay,” she said.
“We’ll be set for life, starting with that money,” Jimmy said. “We might have to cross the border, you know, until this all blows over. Don’t think we could come back here.”
“I don’t want to come back here,” she said. The bitterness of the place almost choked her. “Nothing ever good has happened here. If we get down south. . get a place to live. You know, you could grow a beard, I could do up my hair different.”
“You’re not gonna be able to make yourself less pretty,” Jimmy said.
He startled her with that. She didn’t say anything right away, but then said, fishing for a little more, “Oh, I’m not really that pretty.”
“Yeah, you are,” he said.
They sat and he smoked and she eventually said, “I’d like a daughter. I mean, I’d like a couple of boys, for sure, but I’d like a daughter. I know a lot of shit that I could teach her. You could teach the boys.”
“I’d do that. Teach them to hunt,” Jimmy said.
“I could teach the girls how to take care of the house,” Becky said. “And cook. We could get some cookbooks. My mom, she couldn’t cook, and didn’t care. I ate so much macaroni and cheese it makes me sick when I smell it. And fish sticks. Man, I hate fish sticks.”
Jimmy giggled, and after a moment, said, “I know where you’re coming from. Macaroni and cheese. You know what makes me sick? Those little fuckin’ slippery shells with tomato sauce and mushrooms. I must’ve ate about fifty gallons of those things. My old man could eat that shit morning, noon, and night. Christ, you go into my house, that’s all you could smell. Those little fuckin’ shells.”
They talked about food for a while, and then Becky found a couple of Snickers candy bars and they shared them, and then Jimmy asked, “You think we oughta get married?”
She stopped chewing for a moment, startled again, then swallowed. “You askin’ me?”
“Well, yeah. I guess.”
“Well, okay. Yeah, I’d marry you.” And she laughed, and then clapped her hands. “I thought maybe nobody would ever ask me.”
“You’re so pretty, somebody was going to ask you. For sure. Lots of guys.”
“Jimmy. .” She moved closer to him and kissed him on the lips, and tried not to think about the porno films back at the old man’s house. He kissed her back-and tried not to think about the porno films.
“I shouldn’t have took that job, killing Ag Murphy,” Jimmy said. “That kinda fucked me up in the head for a while, you know? It felt. . pretty good. First time I ever felt that good, and then, you know, shooting that Negro. Just felt it right down to my balls. It was like I couldn’t stop. . But if I didn’t take that job, we wouldn’t be here.”
“You did all right,” Becky said. “We wouldn’t be here-we’d still be on the street, and starving to death. There wasn’t anybody going to save us from that.”
“Yeah, that might be right,” he said. “You got another cigarette?”
She said, “When we get married, I don’t think we should do it in a church. I don’t think we should make any big deal out of it, you know? Maybe we should just go to some guy down in Texas, or Mexico, you know, and just dress in regular clothes, and do it. If you do it in a church, they put your pictures in the newspaper.”
“We’ll have to think about that,” Jimmy said.
He was smoking the second cigarette when she heard the sound of somebody sneaking up on them. She whispered, “You hear that?”
He listened, heard the rustling in the brush. “Yeah. You got the gun?”
“Got three of them now,” she said. She found the pistol under the seat, then whispered, “Where are they?”
“Sounds like they’re in front of us,” he whispered back.
“What do you think?”
“If it’s the cops, then they know we’re here,” he said.
“How?”
“Maybe the helicopter?”
She listened, then whispered, “Right in front of us.”
There was a metallic scratching sound, and she said, “I gotta look,” and hit the headlight switch. A twenty-pound raccoon was sitting on the hood of the truck, caught flat-footed, looked at them for a second or two, then dove over the side, the big striped tail bushed out like a chimney broom. She switched the lights off, and they both started giggling.
Becky laughed until tears came, and she said, “That was so funny. I was so scared, I almost wet my pants.”
That started them laughing again.
The truck got cold. Jimmy slipped back to sleep when they stopped talking, and she made sure he was completely wrapped with blankets, then wrapped herself in the remaining blanket and tried to go to sleep. It was not easy, sitting mostly upright, but the night was quiet, and she dozed.
When she woke, she was freezing, blanket or no blanket. Jimmy was still asleep. She was so cold that she decided to turn the engine on and use the heater; she did it, and ten minutes later, the truck was warm again.
She slept off and on for the rest of the night, sat up when she realized that she could see tree trunks. Dawn. Jimmy had said that they should leave while it was still dark, but it was too late for that. She wasn’t sure she could take another day in the truck-they had water, but not much in the way of food.
She turned to Jimmy, and shook his shoulder: “Jimmy. Wake up. We gotta talk.”
Jimmy didn’t wake up. She shook him harder, and his shoulders rolled back and forth, but he didn’t wake up. She cried, “Jimmy. Jimmy. Wake up, Jimmy.”
When he still didn’t wake, she peeled the blanket off him and looked at the bandage on his leg. The bandage was dry, but long, fiery-red tendrils of infection snaked out from under the bandage and up and down his leg, which was swollen to half-again its normal size.
She said, “Jimmy? Jimmy? Oh my God, Jimmy, are you dead or alive?”