Mad River

said. “I’ll tell you who I’m looking at, but if the word gets around town, and it goes back to you, I’ll bust you, and I’ll fix it so Davenport can’t save your ass.”
    Roberts tipped his head and said, “I can keep quiet.”
    Virgil: “I’ve been told that Jimmy Sharp was hired to kill Ag O’Leary Murphy by Dick Murphy. Murphy stands to inherit three-quarters of a million.”
    Roberts whistled and said, distractedly, “No wonder.”
    “No wonder what?”
    “I saw Dick shooting nine-ball down to Roseanne’s Billiards last night, and he seemed pretty goddamned cheerful for somebody whose old lady just got killed.”
    “That right?”
    “Pretty goddamned cheerful,” Roberts said.
    “This is not owned by Roseanne Bush, is it?” Virgil asked.
    “Yeah, she owns pretty much every low-life place in town,” Roberts said. “You know her?”
    “No, but I heard about her. That a lot of bad people hook up around her.”
    “She might find a killer for you,” Roberts said. His eyes narrowed in thought, and he asked, “If you think Dick hired Jimmy Sharp . . . why are you looking for another killer?”
    “Because Sharp’s kind of a dumbass, I’m told, and I’m not sure he’d be the first person you’d go to, if you were looking for somebody to do a good job on it.”
    Roberts said, “Huh. You’re smarter than you look.”
    “Thanks.”
    “You know, if Dick was gonna sneak up on somebody and ask that question, ‘Would you do a killing for me?’ I bet the first person he’d ask would be Randy White. They played football together, and they hang out some. Randy was a linebacker and a mean little jerk. He’d try to hurt people. Everybody knew it, but the coach is just as mean as he was. A fuckin’ rattlesnake. There was rumors he’d slip Randy ten bucks for every starter he’d take out of a game. I’m not sure I’d believe that—it’s just too goddamned wrong.”
    “And White is still around town?”
    “Oh, yeah. He works for the county road department,” Roberts said. “Digging holes, filling them in. Runs a snowplow in the winter. He runs with a crowd that’s too fast for him. Out to the Indian casinos and such. Needs money all the time.”
    “You ever done any business with him?”
    Roberts showed a thin smile. “Maybe. County’s always got some surplus equipment floating around.”
    •   •   •
    WHITE WAS THE only name that Roberts really had. “I keep thinking of all your qualifications,” he said. “There are two or three people around town who might kill for money, but every one of them’s a bigger fool than Jimmy. I can’t see Dick Murphy talking to them about it.”
    “What are the chances that Dick Murphy would do it himself?” Virgil asked
    Roberts laughed, almost a bark, sharply cut off. “Zero,” he said. “Dick’s one of those smarmy little assholes who goes greasing around town, spreading trouble. If you want somebody to goad a couple drunks into fighting each other, Dick’s your boy. He’s a real friendly sort, when you first meet him, but the longer you know him, the less you like him. Just like his old man.”
    “Maybe I oughta be looking at his old man.”
    Roberts shook his head: “Naw. His old man wouldn’t give five seconds to Jimmy Sharp. Or to Ag O’Leary’s money, either. He doesn’t need her money, and he sure as hell is too smart to try to kill her for it. Nope. It’s Dicky you want.”
    Virgil left him in the bird sanctuary, peering up into the trees with a pair of binoculars. He wasn’t, he said, looking for anything in particular, which seemed odd, but then Virgil didn’t know much about watching birds. Instead of educating himself, he went back to town, to talk to Roseanne Bush.
    •   •   •
    BUSH WAS A RUGGED-LOOKING young woman; dark-eyed and dark-haired, her hair streaked with silver and red like tinsel; she’d never be called pretty, but might be called magnetic. Virgil found her sitting in her tattoo parlor throwing darts at a target face on the men’s room door. Her shop smelled like patchouli oil and leather, and a smoker’s haze stuck on the windows.
    Virgil told her the same story he’d told Roberts, and she said, “I’m the same age as Ag was, two years older than Dick, and let me tell you something about little Dicky.” She pulled at her bottom lip for a moment, as if pulling her head together, and then she said, “He didn’t exactly rape me.”
    Virgil said, “Not