Mad River

your fuckin’ brains out.”
    The kid was shaking like an aspen leaf, could barely punch in the numbers, but when it was answered, he said, “I gotta talk to Virgil Flowers. It’s an emergency.”
    Becky couldn’t hear the answer, but he looked at her and then blurted, “It’s an emergency. My name is Dale Jones, and I gotta talk to Virgil Flowers. . . . I can’t tell you that. No, I can’t tell you that. Listen, I gotta talk—”
    Becky lost her patience and said, “Give me the fuckin’ phone.”
    He handed her the phone and she snarled into it, “This is Becky Welsh. If you don’t put Virgil Flowers on this phone in fifteen seconds, I’m gonna kill this man.”
    The voice on the other end said, “I’m . . . Don’t do that, please don’t do that. I’m patching you through.”
    •   •   •
    AT THAT VERY MOMENT, Virgil was licking Sally’s nipples, and she was laughing at him because he was doing it, but he wasn’t inclined to stop, though he couldn’t have told anybody why. He’d been nursed by his mother when he was a child, so he probably wasn’t suffering from a lack of breast contact; but nevertheless, here he was, lapping like a yellow Lab, when the phone rang.
    He looked at the face of it, said, “Goddamnit, the most inconvenient . . . I gotta answer it.”
    He picked up the phone and the BCA duty officer said with a rush, “I’m patching through a woman who says she’s Becky Welsh and she says she’s going to kill a man if you don’t talk to her.”
    And he was gone and Virgil said, “Becky?”
    •   •   •
    BECKY SAID, “You sonofabitch, you said there was a sex encounter with Tom McCall, but there was no sex encounter—that motherfucker raped me.” She started crying again, and the muzzle of the gun was shaking, and the clerk backed up against the cigarette rack, his mouth hanging loose in white-faced fear.
    “Becky, Becky . . . I gotta know it’s really you and not a trick,” Virgil said. “Where’d he rape you? Where in the house?”
    “It was in that back room, down the hall to the left . . . no, to the right. It had a table with a big stack of magazines on it, and they had these pink shades on the bedside lamps.”
    She was exact. Virgil said, “Becky, don’t hurt anybody else. Tell me where you are and I’ll bring you and Jimmy in. The other cops around here, they want to kill you, because that police officer got killed in Oxford. They’ll do it, too: they’ll shoot you down like a couple of dogs, but I’ll bring you in, like I brought in Tom McCall.”
    “Fuck that, you’re gonna kill us anyway, one way or another,” she said. “But I want it straightened out, on TV. I didn’t have no sex encounter, he raped me . . . and I’ll tell you what, I’m so pissed off I might just kill this man here to prove to you how pissed I am—”
    “No, no, no, don’t do that. . . . Becky, I talked to some people who told me they thought you’d probably been raped. That a woman wouldn’t have voluntary sex under . . . those circumstances.”
    “That’s right, no way I was going to have a voluntary sex encounter,” Becky said.
    “This guy you’ve got, let him go, and I’ll fix you up to talk directly to the TV woman, so you can straighten her out,” Virgil said.
    “
You
straighten her out,” Becky said. “But I’ll tell you what, I’m going to kill somebody every day until this gets straightened out or you kill me. I’m gonna be watching.”
    “The man you’re with . . . what does he do?” Virgil asked. He could feel the desperation clutching at his throat. “What does he do?”
    “Runs a gas station store—”
    “Ah, for cryin’ out loud, Becky, you guys were trying to find jobs. Right? Weren’t you? Tom McCall said you were looking everywhere, this poor guy is just like you. Got a horseshit job and just trying to pull it together. Don’t shoot him, I’m beggin’ you.”
    “I’ll think about it,” she said. “But I will kill somebody every day until this sex encounter gets straightened out. Just pull up next to them in the truck and shoot them in the head.”
    “Becky . . . I’ll fix it. I’ll fix it.”
    •   •   •
    SHE WAS GONE. Virgil held on to the phone, said, “Becky? Becky? Becky?” and then a man said, “She’s gone, Virgil. I got the number. It’s a Verizon phone, and I got Verizon looking for the location, but it’ll be a few minutes—”
    Sally, at his