Mad River

exhaustion. Her husband was with her. He talked to Marsha’s mother, Mary Hogan, who said that Marsha had been particularly friendly with two women from Shinder, classmates, Bernice Sawyer and Harriet Washburn, whom Marsha had known since before kindergarten.
    “For Shinder things, they’d be the best ones to talk to,” Hogan said. Her voice had an elderly scratch to it, but tough and dry, like a woman who’d seen some death.
    “I’ll do that,” Virgil said.
    •   •   •
    VIRGIL TALKED TO SAWYER FIRST. She was a thin, friendly woman with a big country kitchen. Her parents owned the local grain elevator, and her husband worked there. “I couldn’t believe it when I heard about Ag being murdered. I thought, my God, what are they doing up there?”
    Sawyer had gone to the class reunion, and the dance, and remembered that Becky Welsh had been working the food service, serving desserts.
    “Marsha was wearing her diamonds. I don’t know how Becky could have missed them—the most diamonds anybody around here ever saw. Marsha did it on purpose. She had a couple of old rivals here, who wound up leading pretty modest lives, and she was . . .” Sawyer smiled. “Sticking it to them, I guess you’d say.”
    She’d never heard of a Tom McCall. “He doesn’t live in Shinder, and I don’t believe he’s ever lived here, because I know everybody who lives here,” she said.
    When he was done with Sawyer, Virgil touched bases with Washburn, because he couldn’t think of what else to do, and Washburn confirmed what Sawyer had said. Becky Welsh had almost certainly seen the diamonds. Washburn, who also claimed to know everybody who lived in Shinder, agreed that there was no Tom McCall, either in the present or in the immediate past.
    Virgil left Washburn, went out and sat in his truck; then called Duke, learned that Duke had been in touch with the local media, and had been called by both KSTP and Channel Three television in the Cities.
    “You ever heard of a kid named Tom McCall?” Virgil asked. “About the same age as Sharp and Welsh?”
    “There are some McCalls in the county,” Duke said. “I haven’t specifically heard of a Tom.”
    “Get somebody to call around to the McCalls you know,” Virgil said. “There may be a Tom McCall running with Sharp and Welsh.” He told him what he’d gotten from Davenport.
    “Got any more ideas?” Duke asked.
    “I’m sitting here in my truck thinking some up,” Virgil said. “I’ll let you know as they come along.”
    “Do that.”
    Virgil called him back one minute later. “I just had an idea, though it’s slightly disturbing.”
    “Go ahead.”
    “I think you should call up all the rich people in town, and make sure they’re alive.”
    There was a moment of silence, then Duke said, “Mother of God.”
    “Yeah. These kids are flat broke, they don’t even have gas money, probably. They need money. They gotta be looking for it.”

5
    JIMMY SHARP, Becky Welsh, and Tom McCall had driven to Shinder after the O’Leary and Williams murders.
    Halfway back, Tom said, “I think we fucked up bad. The cops’ll never stop until they figure it out.”
    “Fuck ’em,” Jimmy said. “They got nothing to go on. And fuck those O’Leary assholes. Kill them again, if I could.”
    Becky patted his arm and said, “It just makes me so fuckin’ hot.”
    Jimmy glanced at her. Made her so fuckin’ hot: yeah, well, that was a problem he didn’t want to talk about.
    •   •   •
    AND TOM DIDN’T WANT to think about it. He’d been hanging around the edges of the Becky-Jimmy relationship for a while, and he knew something wasn’t quite right, but he didn’t know what it was. What he knew for sure was, he’d been hot for Becky since he’d first laid eyes on her in the ninth grade. After he left school, he hadn’t seen her for a while, but when he ran into the two of them in the Cities, it all came back.
    Tom had never slept with a pretty woman. Those he’d gone with had been the leftovers, and he was the best they could do. Every time he’d touched Becky—taking her arm, touching her shoulder to direct her at something—she’d flinched away, as though he were diseased.
    Why was that? Why did pretty women treat him like shit? Why did Becky look right through him as though he weren’t there? The longer it had gone on, the more his fantasy/dream sex had become mixed up with violence. He’d show them who the strong one was; he’d show