Mad River

don’t want anybody messing with the scene,” Virgil said. “This was murder. I suspect they’ll get away with it, the way the politics run, but I’m not going to make it any easier than I have to.”
    “It’s not like Welsh and Sharp didn’t have it coming—”
    “That’s not for Duke to decide,” Virgil said. “And they murdered my case against Murphy, right along with Jimmy and Becky. Goddamn them. Goddamn them.”
    So they sat on the truck for an hour and a half, the Bare County deputies tiptoeing around them; every lawman and soldier in Minnesota wanted to look at the bodies, and Virgil chased them all off, until the crime-scene people showed up. Virgil briefed them on the possibility that somebody might try to mess with the scene; they said that wouldn’t happen.
    Virgil, Shrake, and Jenkins walked past a line of sheriff’s cars on the way back to Virgil’s truck, and when they passed Duke, who was standing with a Guard officer and a couple of deputies, Duke said, “You’re starting to seriously piss me off.”
    Virgil said, “You think so? Wait about an hour.” And he continued down the road.
    Duke called after him, “What’re you going to do?”
    Virgil called back, “Fuck you.”
    •   •   •
    BY THE TIME the crime-scene crew arrived, the town was full of cop cars, but no media trucks, because the media had been blocked out, not allowed across the Mad River bridge at the north end of town, and kept a half mile back from the road leading in from the south.
    When it became clear that the cops weren’t going to allow them in—at least not right away—they’d gathered by the north bridge, and that’s where Virgil went, with Shrake and Jenkins trailing behind in Jenkins’s car. The bridge was blocked by a deputy in a Bare County sheriff’s car, and Virgil waved him out of the road. He backed up, and Virgil and Jenkins went on through, to the cluster of media vans and cars that backed up down the road.
    Virgil pulled over and got out, and reporters hurried down toward him, and Shrake stepped close and said, “Bad idea, dude.”
    Virgil said, “I know. I’m gonna do it anyway.”
    The first reporters came up and Virgil said, “I’ve got a statement. I’ve got a statement as soon as you guys are ready.”
    A newspaper guy yelled, “What happened down there?”
    Virgil: “Wait for the cameras.”
    They were all set up and spaced out in five minutes, and Virgil said, “Okay,” and stepped out in the middle of the road, and he said, “This is going to be a very short statement, and doesn’t represent any state authority at all. It’s just me.”
    Everything had gone absolutely quiet, except for a couple of whirring machine sounds coming from a truck. Virgil went on.
    “Becky Welsh and Jimmy Sharp were just ambushed and killed by Bare County sheriff’s deputies, at the Mad River bridge on the south end of Arcadia. Welsh had contacted me by phone and offered to surrender. I called Sheriff Lewis Duke for backup, and arranged to meet Welsh and Jimmy Sharp at the convenience store in Arcadia, along with sheriff’s deputies. This was the store that Becky Welsh held up a couple days ago.
    “While we were waiting there, Sheriff Duke, without informing me or the other state agents, set up an ambush at the Mad River bridge on the south end of town. When Welsh and Sharp appeared, sheriff’s deputies opened fire with automatic weapons and killed both of them, without warning. We have not at this point found any guns in the truck, nor did Welsh or Sharp offer any sign of resistance: I was there to see it. It’s possible, from what Welsh told me on the telephone, that Sharp was unconscious when he was killed. Sheriff’s deputies fired what I believe to have been at least a hundred rounds through the truck. Welsh and Sharp were torn to bits by the heavy volume of gunfire.
    “In my opinion, this was a carefully planned execution that was tantamount to murder. If it were up to me, I would arrest Sheriff Duke and his deputies for murder, but that won’t be up to me. I also believe that there was another person involved in all these killings over the last few days, and Welsh and Sharp would have been critical witnesses to that. Because of Duke’s actions, a cold-blooded killer here in Bare County may very well go untouched by the law.”
    He stopped talking for a moment, and was met by total silence.
    Then he said, “That’s all I’ve got to say,” and the screaming