Mad River

town; impossible, actually—he’d been caught out by all three of the women. Or girls. Or whatever they are when they’re still in high school.
    Crazy days. First time he’d ever smoked dope; remembered sitting up behind the Olson brothers’ barn, by the old abandoned cattle pen, smoking ditch weed and fooling around with Carol Altenbrunner . . .
    •   •   •
    THE CRIME-SCENE CREW had shifted to the Box house in Marshall, working with the Marshall cops. Virgil stopped there first, wending through a line of TV trucks to get there. All the major Twin Cities stations were there, and local stations from all over western Minnesota and eastern South Dakota. A Twin Cities newspaper reporter named Ruffe Ignace saw him go through the line and put a hand to his cheek in a “call me” sign. Virgil nodded, held up a finger, meaning “It’ll be a while,” and went on through.
    At the Box house, he learned from the crime-scene crew that the couple had been killed with two different guns, one an old-fashioned .38 revolver that shot one-hundred percent solid lead bullets, the other a 9mm shooting modern copper-jacketed hollow-points. They’d picked up the 9mm shell and could see a partial print on it, but hadn’t determined who the print belonged to.
    “Right now, I’m ninety-nine percent that the .38 was the same one used to kill the first several victims,” said Sawyer, the crew leader. “I’m just eyeballing it, but it’s the same kind of mungy old lead. I suspect he changed to the nine-millimeter because he’d run out of bullets for the .38. It’s a six-shooter.”
    “I’ll tell you what, Bea, you’re right. We got it from another source,” Virgil said, and he told her about talking with McCall.
    Duke had come over to Marshall from Bigham, and Virgil took him aside and said, “What do you know about the Murphys there in Bigham? Ag O’Leary’s husband—or Ag Murphy’s?”
    “Ag Murphy,” Duke said. “What’s up?”
    Virgil told him about the conversation with McCall, and McCall’s claim about the thousand dollars. Duke pinched his bottom lip as he listened, then said, “First time I ran for office, Stan Murphy—he’s the old man—gave five hundred dollars to my opponent because my opponent was favored to win. The next time I ran, he gave five hundred dollars to me. We had an old-timey Episcopal church there in town, and Stan was a member. They had a big hoorah about women being priests and homosexuals and all that, and the congregation split in half. Stan didn’t do anything until he saw which way a couple of the richest guys in town were going, and then he went with them.”
    “You’re saying . . .”
    “The old man’s all about money. Nothing else. Just money,” Duke said. “In fact, somebody told me that back in Butternut Falls, where he was originally from, he was a Catholic, and didn’t join up with the Episcopals until he got here and saw which way the wind was blowing. Where the money was.”
    “Okay. But what about Dick?”
    “I don’t know the boy that well,” Duke said. “He was a pretty good running back in high school, not good enough for college ball, but okay—he was honorable-mention all-conference, or something. But given his old man’s attitude, I’d say some of that must’ve rubbed off.”
    “So if Ag’s getting a divorce, and she dies before it gets done, the kid gets seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars,” Virgil said. “Does that engage your interest?”
    “It does,” Duke said. “But if there’s anything there, you’ll have to find it. You’ve met my investigator. He’s all right on some things, but this is out of his league.”
    “I may go over and talk to folks in Bigham,” Virgil said. “I wanted you to know.”
    •   •   •
    AFTER TALKING to the Marshall chief of police, and the sheriff, Virgil got back in his truck and called Davenport, and filled him in.
    “You made all the national talk shows,” Davenport said, when Virgil had finished. “They’re saying
Bonnie and Clyde
. They’re saying
Natural Born Killers
. You could probably sell an option on a movie, if you move fast. Everybody in the world is headed your way, and they’re all hoping for a big bloody shoot-out.”
    “Most of them are already here,” Virgil said. “I just saw Ruffe.”
    “That figures. He’s still trying to get to the
Times
,” Davenport said. “You want me to send you any help? Jenkins and Shrake are