Mad River

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