Mad River

might have been some sex going on there.”
    “I’m right outside. Just hang on,” Duke said. Virgil heard a screen door slam, and Duke saying something to somebody else, then Duke came up and said, “Well, something happened here. There’s some blood on a pillow. Not much. Like a cut or something. Looks like it’s been used, the blankets are all over the place.”
    “Get Crime Scene on it,” Virgil said. “Don’t let anybody else in there.”
    When he got off the phone, McCall said, “You believe me now?”
    Virgil said, “Maybe.”
    And after a minute, Virgil asked, “Tell me what happened at the O’Leary house.”
    “Okay. Okay. Jimmy didn’t have any money. Never did. Didn’t have a pot to piss in, nor a window to throw it out of. I had an apartment, up in the Cities, but lost my job, and was running out of rent, and Jimmy said if we could get to Bigham, he knew a guy who’d get us jobs. I had like eighteen dollars, for gas and some food. So we went there, in Jimmy’s old car—we actually spent a night living in the car, and it was colder ’n shit. The car was a piece of shit, and kept breaking down, the starter didn’t work, and the guy who was supposed to get us jobs didn’t know where we could get one. So then Jimmy said he knew this O’Leary guy, and me and Becky should come along with him . . . and maybe get a loan. We started out late, and we didn’t know exactly where it was, and the car was giving us trouble, so we left it in this parking lot and walked. It was pitch-dark when we got there. We went down the side of the house, and I sez, ‘What the hell is this?’ and Jimmy pulls out this gun and puts it up against my chest, and he sez, ‘You’re gonna open a window, big guy, or I’m gonna shoot you in the heart.’ He’s a short guy, and I’m not, so we went to this window, and I lifted it up, and he pointed the gun and said, ‘Get in there,’ so I went in there.”
    McCall said the three of them crept through the house, McCall quaking in his shoes. Jimmy forced him to climb the stairs, then pointed him to the front of the house, where they woke up two girls in a bed. “One of the girls started screaming, and Jimmy shot her. And somebody started yelling from another part of the house, and I ran, and they all come behind me.”
    Out in the street, they ran down the hill to the car, but couldn’t get it started. Jimmy completely freaked out, McCall said, but then they saw a man come out of the apartment house and walk over to his car. Jimmy jumped out of the car and ran over and shot him. “Just like that. Not even a howdy-do.” A minute later, they were on the way to Shinder.
    “They kept telling me, ‘Tom, we’re gonna kill you, you motherfucker, if you make one noise or try to get away.’”
    “But where did the money come in?” Virgil asked. “This money he had?”
    “Well, we got to Shinder, and we were going to hide in Jimmy’s house until things quieted down, but Jimmy, man, he was like, crazy, and he got in an argument with his old man and shot the old fucker down.
    “Jimmy said we’d have to run, sooner or later, and the old man’s truck was no good, we needed some money to get a better one, and I said, ‘Shit, where’ll we get any money?’ and Jimmy said, right out of the blue, ‘Well, I got a grand.’ And Becky and I both said, ‘What?’ and he pulled this roll of brand-new twenties out of his pocket. He said he took it off that girl he shot, but that’s bullshit. It was pitch-dark in there, and she was in bed. She had the money between her legs or something? I don’t think so.”
    “So where do you think he got it?”
    “That’s the thing. Becky kept giving him shit about it, so he whips out this old pistol and blows across the barrel, and sez, ‘Never thought you’d be fuckin’ a hit man, huh?’”
    “A hit man?”
    “That’s what he said. But that’s all I know about it. That he called himself a hit man,” McCall said.
    “If somebody paid him to kill the girl, who would that have been?” Virgil asked.
    McCall shrugged. “I got no idea.”
    “How long were you in Bigham?”
    “Three days . . . well, we got there late one day, then overnight, then another day, then overnight, then another day, and that night was the, you know, thing at O’Leary’s.”
    “Okay. When you lifted the window, did you have to force a lock?”
    “Nope. Went right up. Zip. Like it was greased,” McCall said.
    “Did Jimmy pick