Mad River

current Missouri plates. There was nobody around the garage, and he turned to walk away when he noticed the bumper stickers. One side featured an oval Thizz Hands sticker, and the other a sticker that said, “Free Li’l Boosie.” Li’l Boosie, Virgil believed, was currently spending his days in the Louisiana State Pen for issues involving guns and drugs; and, judging from the house, he thought it exceedingly unlikely that Old Man Sharp—he didn’t know the old man’s first name—was a big gangsta rap fan.
    Which made the car, in the eyes of a perceptive law enforcement official, something of an anomaly. Virgil noted the car’s tag number, went back to his truck, called the number into the BCA duty officer, and told him to run it.
    After a moment, the duty officer asked, “Uh, where are you, Virgil?”
    “In Shinder. Minnesota. Out west,” Virgil said.
    “Where’s this car?”
    “Sitting in a garage out here,” Virgil said. “I’m looking at it.”
    “You got your gun with you?”
    “Yeah. What’s up, Dave?”
    “The thing is, people are looking all over for that car,” the duty officer said. “A guy was apparently murdered for it in Bigham, night before last. The same people probably murdered a young girl just a couple blocks away from there, about five minutes before that. . . . I mean, you need some backup, man, or get the hell out of there.”
    Virgil got the details, and said, “I’ll check with you later.”
    He looked at the house: still dead quiet. He thought about it, then called Davenport, who said, without first saying hello, “You’re about to fuck up a perfectly good Sunday morning, aren’t you?”
    “You know those murders in Bigham Friday night?” Virgil asked.
    “Just what I heard around the office, when Ralph came back. Why?”
    “Apparently the killers stole a car from one of the victims,” Virgil said. “So, I was out here looking at these two dead people, and tried to track down their daughter to see if she might know something. To cut the story short, I’m looking at that car. So now, we have four dead. We might have a spree.”
    “Ah, shit,” Davenport said. “Who’ve you told?”
    “You and Dave Jennings,” Virgil said. “I gotta tell Duke, but, uh, you might want to talk to the patrol guys and get the early warning system going.”
    “All right. You talk to Duke, I’ll start jackin’ people up. Who’re we looking for?”
    “Right now, I’d like to talk to a Jimmy Sharp and a Rebecca Welsh, who were both living somewhere there in the Cities. That’s about all the detail I’ve got, but I will get back to you with more.”
    “Do you think Sharp and Welsh . . . ?”
    “I don’t know, but it’s a possibility.”
    “Quick as you can,” Davenport said. “If it’s a spree, we gotta move.”
    •   •   •
    VIRGIL GOT ON THE PHONE to Duke, told him where he was, told him what had happened, and asked him to come over with some deputies. “There’s nothing moving here now, but that could change,” Virgil said.
    Duke said, “I’m activating the SWAT. And me’n a couple other men’ll be there in four minutes. You hang tight.”
    Not like he had some other goddamn pressing thing to do, Virgil thought, looking up at the weathered old house.
    •   •   •
    FOUR MINUTES IN THE CITIES and New York and Chicago and LA were different from four minutes in Shinder, where four minutes was quite literal: you could drive from one end of town to the other in four minutes, with a choice of routes, in a place where two cars in the same block was a traffic jam.
    Fifteen seconds after Virgil got off the phone with Duke, the sirens started, rapidly got louder, and four minutes after they talked, a shoal of sheriff’s cars piled into old man Sharp’s farmyard. Duke was alone in the lead car; he got out, walked around to the trunk, popped it open and took out an M16 and a magazine, and snapped the magazine into place.
    He said to Virgil, “I’m good.”
    Fifteen seconds later, Virgil was surrounded by six deputies and Duke. He pointed toward the garage. “We’ve got two dead at the Welsh house, two dead in Bigham, and the stolen car here. I think that’s enough to go into the house without a warrant—somebody could be dying inside. So. One of you guys come with me, and the rest of you post around the house in case we get a runner. Don’t shoot unless it’s in self-defense. We really need to talk to somebody.”
    Duke said,