Mad River

side street and said, “Let’s go.”
    They were going over to Lincoln, to a dark wood-frame house with a wide front porch and bridal wreath bushes down the sides: good cover. They’d scouted it earlier in the day, Jimmy and Becky, arm in arm down the sidewalk, Becky spitting, “Fuckin’ Hogans, they think they’re so hot-shit. Like,
not
.”
    “O’Learys,” Jimmy said. “O’Learys, now.”
    Marsha Hogan had grown up in Shinder, out on the prairie, her father the town pharmacist. Hogan had sent his virgin daughter up to St. Kate’s, the big Catholic girls’ college in St. Paul, and hoped for the best. A nice Catholic boy, he hoped, from St. Thomas, who might even be a . . . pharmacist.
    He succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. Marsha had met John O’Leary, a biochemistry major who had ambitions in medicine. She’d married him a week after their graduation, lived with him in dark apartments as he worked through medical school at the University of Minnesota, and then through an internship in Milwaukee. Back in Bigham, John joined a prosperous practice and Marsha bore him two daughters, Mary, named after her mother, and Agatha, named after his, and four boys, John Jr., called Jack, and James, Robin, and Franklin.
    Marsha was fifty-three years old when she went back to Shinder for her thirty-fifth high school reunion. She’d been on the court of the homecoming queen, back when, and had been her homeroom representative to the student council, had organized a school-wide charity to help support the county animal-rescue program. She still had friends in Shinder, though they mostly saw her in Bigham, which was only thirteen miles away.
    For the reunion dance, she wore her twenty-fifth anniversary necklace, possibly the most expensive array of diamonds ever seen in Shinder. Everybody commented on it, both approvingly to her face, and jealously behind her back. The homecoming queen, who rumor said was an alcoholic down in Des Moines, didn’t show, so Marsha was the belle of the ball.
    And had been served a square of chocolate sheet cake by Becky Welsh, the prettiest and hottest girl ever to come from Shinder, a girl who’d never had a diamond, or much of anything else.
    Becky had seen Marsha O’Leary in a Snyders drugstore right after they hit town, had recognized her immediately, though Marsha hadn’t shown a flicker of interest in Becky. She mentioned the diamonds to Jimmy, but he hadn’t been interested until that night, when he showed her a gun and said, “Let’s go get you them stones.”
    Lincoln Avenue was quiet and dark. Jimmy, Becky, and Tom sauntered along, looking far too casual for people on a midnight stroll. If a cop car had come along, they might all have died, for Jimmy had said he’d never give himself up to the law, and he meant it, which Becky felt was one of the exciting things about him.
He meant it.
No cop car came.
    They slowed as they came up to the house, taking a last look around, then Jimmy said, in a whisper, “Quick now.”
    They crossed the lawn in single file, their feet crunching on the blades of grass that had stiffened in the night chill. They stepped between the bridal wreath bushes, now invisible to the street, took cowboy handkerchiefs from their pockets and tied them over their faces. Becky and Jimmy pulled on the same type of cheap brown cotton work gloves that Tom already wore. Jimmy took out his pocketknife and unfolded the main blade, and in the dim light from the street, he led the way down the side of the house, checking out the windows.
    The windows were new, made of wood, some dark color that they couldn’t make out but that still smelled faintly of the paint. The house was old, and wood, and carefully preserved with its antique hardware, because the O’Learys were that kind of people, concerned with historical preservation. At the back of the house, Jimmy stopped at a window that was a little higher than the rest, and a little smaller. The blade went deep into the crack between the window and the sill and it lifted as though greased.
    Becky, surprised by the ease of it, said, “Whoa.”
    “I ain’t to be involved in anything but diamonds and cash, and gold rings,” Tom said, in a hoarse whisper that was way too loud.
    “Shut the fuck up,” Becky said.
    “Both of you shut up,” Jimmy said. “Give me a boost.”
    Tom made a stirrup with his hands. Jimmy disappeared through the window headfirst and found himself on a kitchen counter. The kitchen