The satellite uplinks put the news of the shooting into the Cities within ten minutes, and every station in the state broke into their early-morning broadcasts to relay it. The video of Virgil was right behind that, and further video of Duke was ten minutes behind that.
Duke was uncharacteristically somber at the beginning of the press conference, and he lied like a motherfucker: “Gave us no alternatives. . turned the truck at deputies on the side of the road, accelerated toward them. . we weren’t planning to ambush them. We wanted to make sure we closed the gate behind them, so whatever happened in town, they wouldn’t get away to kill more people. . We’ll cooperate with any investigation. . proud of my men and what they accomplished today.”
Ruffe Ignace yelled, “What’d they accomplish? The state agents arrested McCall, and they would have arrested Sharp and Welsh if you hadn’t killed them.”
Duke raised his voice to say, “Unless they opened up on the people waiting in town. .”
“With what? They didn’t have any guns.”
“We didn’t know that,” Duke said. “They sure had enough guns during the last week. What were we supposed to do, wait until they opened fire on my men? Get some more people killed?”
It went rapidly downhill from there. Virgil, Shrake, and Jenkins watched reruns on the television in the motel lobby, along with a bunch of other guests who’d gathered around the television.
“You know what bothers me?” Shrake asked.
“Nothing,” Virgil said.
“That’s not true. I’m a very sensitive individual. What bothers me is, you could see the TV people pulling for a shoot-out. If you’d just arrested them and slapped them in jail. . what fun is that? They were a hundred percent in favor of a shoot-out. So then they got it, exactly what they wanted, and then they turn on the sheriff like a bunch of wolves. Now they’re like, ‘Oh, we’re all protecty about, you know, the right to a trial and innocent until proved guilty, blah blah blah.’”
“The sheriff deserves a bunch of wolves,” Virgil said.
“We’re gonna have to agree to disagree about that,” Shrake said. “I think those kids got pretty much what they deserved.”
“It’s not about the kids,” Virgil said. “It’s about us.”
“Aw,” Shrake said. “Poor little kids.”
Virgil said, “So you would have gunned them down.”
“They give me any excuse, damn right I would,” Shrake said.
“But that’s the point-they didn’t give them an excuse,” Virgil said. “They threw away the guns, called ahead, and were coming in to surrender. So you would have stood in the ditch and blown them up with a machine gun?”
Shrake sighed and said, “No, I guess not. Any excuse, though. .”
Virgil said, “Attaboy.”
But then a thin, gray-faced old man in a tan button-front farmer shirt and green Sears work pants stepped over to Virgil, poked a finger at his chest, and said, “I saw you on TV. You’re an asshole.”
“Thank you for your support,” Virgil said.
Davenport called and said, “Henry-I mean, they’re gonna have to send in an environmental clean-up team to hose out his office.” Henry Sands was the BCA director, a recent political appointee. “And Rose Marie is madder than a hornet. You’re gonna take some shit.”
“And where are you in all of this?” Virgil asked.
“I’m behind you,” Davenport said. “Like, way behind you.”
“Yeah. .”
“But you’re okay,” Davenport said.
“I’m okay?”
“Yeah. The governor called, and told me he didn’t want to call you directly in case anybody ever asked, but. . he likes it. As far as he’s concerned, you can be Queen of the May. And with Henry and Rose Marie being like they are, they will pay very close attention to what the governor has to say.”
“I don’t even see how they can hear him,” Virgil said. “You know, with their lips stuck so firmly to his ass.”
“Hey, hey. . let’s not have any of that kind of talk. Let’s be a little modest and self-deprecating. At least for a couple weeks.”
“Lucas, I wouldn’t turn down his help,” Virgil said. “I’ve got old men telling me I’m an asshole.”
“Yeah, well, you got the right old man behind you. He’s gonna call Rose Marie and chill her out. You’ll probably still take some shit, but you know. . the attorney general is already drafting a statement about investigating the circumstances of the shooting. How can you lose, in Minnesota, when the liberal do-gooders love your ass?”
They talked a few more minutes about managing the publicity, and then Virgil asked, “What do you think about Murphy? What do I do?”
“Investigate him,” Davenport said. “You’ve got some stuff: track it down. And tell Jenkins and Shrake to get back up here: vacation’s over.”
Virgil sent Jenkins and Shrake home, then went back to his room and stared at the ceiling for a while. Eventually, he got on the phone to Beatrice Sawyer, the crime-scene crew leader, and asked whether they’d recovered any money from the bodies.
“Yes. We got one thousand and six dollars from Sharp’s wallet,” she said.
“Twenties?” Virgil asked.
“Yes.”
“Might have come from an ATM?”
She said, “Could have, I guess. But this feels like it came out in one chunk, and most people have limits that are lower than that.”
There were three banks in town, a Wells Fargo, a Bigham First State Bank, and the Bare County Credit Union. Virgil made some calls and determined that Dick Murphy had three accounts at Wells Fargo. He called the BCA attorney and got a subpoena going.
“You gonna need it right away?” the lawyer asked.
“Tomorrow will be okay,” Virgil said.
“We’ll serve it up here, this afternoon, and you should be good to go, first thing tomorrow,” the attorney said.
Virgil made a list:
1. Sharp was seen shooting pool and talking with Dick Murphy the night before the night of the shooting.
2. Sharp had neither money nor gun as late as the afternoon before he murdered Agatha O’Leary.
3. By that evening, he had a gun and $1,000 in cash.
4. Sharp flashed the money at Welsh and McCall and bragged about being a hit man.
5. Randy White felt that Murphy had solicited him to kill Ag O’Leary, but he declined.
6. Ag told Murphy she wanted a divorce. Murphy believed he would inherit the best part of a million dollars if Ag died before the divorce.
He had to investigate it all, but just wasn’t up to it right at that moment. He lay on the bed, his brain churning through it. Eventually, he sat up and made a call.
“You got them,” Sally said.
“Not me,” Virgil said. “Listen, I gotta tell you. I got four flat tires and no way to get them patched here in Bigham.”
“Sounds like an emergency,” she said. “Have I told you about our emergency roadside service?”
They met in Marshall and walked along Main Street, looking in the store windows, bought Cokes at the drugstore and Virgil bought her a yellow rose at the flower shop, considered the pressure washers in the window of the hardware store, which would be useful for cleaning the hull of his boat, stopped to watch a funeral cortege go by, walked past the post office, and around and around, and Virgil told her about the ambush and the killings.
Sally said, “They shouldn’t have done that.”
“I don’t think so-but not a lot of people agree with me,” Virgil said.
“Maybe you ought to talk to your father.”
“I don’t really need the good Christian view. He’s a great guy but he sees both sides of everything, and mostly just confuses me,” Virgil said.
“Do you think you’ll get Dick Murphy?”
Virgil considered, then said, “No. Not unless something weird happens. If I could find the guy who gave or sold the gun to Murphy, then I’d have a better chance. If I find that Murphy took the money out of the bank, one thousand dollars the day that Ag O’Leary was murdered, that’d help. If I got both of those things, and the right jury, then. . maybe. But I don’t think I’ll get both of those things. I might not get either one. When Murphy made the pass at Randy White, he backed off instantly. So he’s not real stupid.”
“You have to be a little stupid to pay somebody to kill your wife,” she said.
“Yeah.”
They walked along and Sally said, “So when Larry and I were breaking up, and I found out about his little fling, I lay in bed for a couple nights and thought about killing him. I never would have done it, of course, but I thought about it, because it made me feel better. I came up with some general rules for killing your spouse. Number one: do it yourself.”
Virgil was interested: “Really.”
“Well, when you were getting all your divorces, didn’t you want to kill somebody?”
“Mmm, no. I just mostly wanted to avoid alimony. The longest I was married was a year. There weren’t any kids, no houses. . I couldn’t see why I ought to be on the hook forever.”
“Are you?”
“No. They were nice enough women, in their own way. They mostly just wanted a do-over,” Virgil said. “But I worried about it. One of them, we were married about ten days when I knew it wasn’t gonna last, and I kept obsessing about it: on the hook forever? For ten days? I could see myself supporting the next husband. I saw him as a big fat unshaven unemployed guy in a wife-beater T-shirt who sat around on a sagging couch and yelled at the kids-oh, yeah, eight ratty kids with drug habits. . I never felt like killing anybody, though.”
Sally laughed and said, “Well, did she do that? Marry a guy like that?”
“No, she married a small-business guy. He runs a grinder company, he has trucks that go around and pick up documents from big companies, that they’re getting rid of, and he grinds them up. He does all right.”
“Sounds fascinating.”
“That’s what I thought,” Virgil said, with the first smile of the day. Nothing like having the ex-wife marry somebody more boring than yourself.
They sat in the park for a while, and then went and got something to eat, and as they were finishing, Sally said, “I’m going back to the store. You, you have to go back to Bigham and get started.”
“That’s not really what I want to do,” Virgil said.
“I know what you want to do, but I’m not up for a nooner with a guy going through a depressive fit,” she said.
“Nooner,” Virgil said. “I haven’t heard that word since I left Marshall. Makes me laugh.”
“So. .”
He sighed and said, “Yeah. I’m going back.”