Mad River

Florida. Or Alaska. We need a map.”
    At the Boxes’, they ate Cheetos and watched more television, switching around local channels, and Becky found herself to be a star. The TV people had gotten her yearbook photo, which looked pretty damn good, she thought.
    “You’re famous now,” Jimmy said.
    At the end of the broadcast, the news channel put up two telephone numbers, one for the sheriff’s office and one for the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, “Ask for Agent Virgil Flowers,” and Jimmy laughed at Flowers’s name and said, “If I was going to give myself up, it’d be to somebody named Flowers. I sure as shit wouldn’t give up to that fuckin’ Duke. He’s crazier than we are.”
    •   •   •
    THE PHONE NUMBERS got Tom thinking. When the other two were in the kitchen, he went through Rick Box’s pockets and, sure enough, found a cell phone. Later, when he had a chance, he went through Nina Box’s purse and found another one. He made sure they were turned off, and put them in his inside jacket pocket.
    The next time Flowers’s number came up, he wrote it in the palm of his hand. He went in the kitchen a minute later, wrote the number on a piece of notepaper, and put it in his back pocket, and scrubbed off his hand.
    He was still in the kitchen, drinking a Pepsi, when Jimmy wandered in, looked at him. He said, “I think we got something. Got an idea.”
    Late that night, they went on a scouting trip to a town called Oxford, fifteen miles out of Marshall. They took both of the Boxes’ vehicles, and left the Lexus at the Walmart Supercenter on Highway 59, before they left town. If they needed to switch vehicles, it’d be there, Jimmy said.
    So they scouted Oxford, but there wasn’t much to see. When they came back, they couldn’t get through to the house. There were cops all over the streets—they were clustering around the Boxes’ place. Becky was driving, and took a left as soon as she saw them.
    “Goddamn, that was close,” Jimmy said, looking back. “Somebody must’ve seen that truck this morning.”
    “Now what?” Becky asked.

9
    VIRGIL WORKED INTO THE NIGHT: called the crime-scene crew out of Bigham, where they’d checked into a local motel for the night. Virgil listened while the Lyon County sheriff and a social worker talked to the two kids, and then got Duke out of bed and told him about it.
    “You think they’re gone from my county?”
    “I don’t know where they are, Lewis. They might be running for the West Coast. But they might be coming back to you, since that’s the country they know best. I just got no idea.”
    They learned that the Boxes had two cars, and that both were missing. Whether one might be in a shop somewhere, they didn’t know, but the killers now had access to either two or three vehicles, and they put out stop orders on all three.
    •   •   •
    A BIT BEFORE three o’clock in the morning, Virgil got back to the motel, beat, and had just taken his boots off when he took a call from the BCA duty officer in St. Paul, who said, “We’ve got an incoming call from somebody who says it’s an emergency, about those guys you’re chasing. He wants your number.”
    “Did he say where he’s calling from?”
    “He said he’s traveling, but he needs to call you right quick, or he’s got to turn his phone off.”
    “Is there an ID on the phone?”
    “Yeah, it’s a guy calling, but it’s a woman’s phone. A Nina Box.”
    “Give him my number,” Virgil said. “Jesus, give him my number. Then see if you can track the call, get all over the call . . . that’s one of the guys we’re chasing.”
    The duty officer went away, and fifteen seconds later Virgil’s phone rang. He said, “Yeah. Virgil Flowers.”
    “This is Tom McCall.”
    “How do I know that?” Virgil asked. He needed to keep McCall talking.
    “Jimmy shot the Boxes. He shot Mr. Box in the heart with one gun and then shot Mrs. Box in the head with another gun that he got out of the Boxes’ gun safe in the bedroom. That good enough?”
    “Tom, you’ve got to come see me,” Virgil said. “You are in deep, big trouble, but if you’re calling, I can probably help you out.”
    “Listen, I got nothing to do with this,” McCall said. “I was hanging with Becky and Jimmy in Bigham—we
are
friends, I admit that, or anyway, we
were
friends. Jimmy and Becky said they were going over to a guy’s house in Bigham because the guy owed Jimmy some money for dope,