“Thanks,” Virgil said. “He was dead last night, too. Are you going to get anything off them?”
“Too early to tell, but I doubt that it’ll be anything conclusive if it’s a domestic. He was shot from eight to ten feet away, judging from the powder traces-there is some, but not much. The shooter was standing where you are, these two were standing where they fell. We’ll recover both slugs, and they should be in reasonable shape-not hollow points, they look to be solids. We’ll be able to identify the gun, if you come up with it. There were no shells around, and I won’t know for sure until we pull the slugs, but it was probably a revolver.”
“If you get DNA, why won’t it be conclusive?” Duke asked.
“Because if it’s a domestic, there’s a lot of reasons for the shooter’s DNA to be all over the place,” Sawyer explained. “There doesn’t appear to have been a struggle-no defensive or offensive marks on George’s hands or arms, which means that the killer didn’t close with him. Shot him from a distance.”
“But you might get some DNA that would narrow it down,” Duke said.
“Possibly,” Sawyer said. “But juries don’t usually convict on the outside chance that somebody committed a murder.”
“They do if I tell them to,” Duke said. He didn’t smile.
Another man, wearing a surgeon’s mask and yellow gloves, came in from the back and said, “Hey-ya, Virgie.”
“Hey, Don.” Don Baldwin was a tall, thin man with a sharp nose who wore heavy black-plastic fashion glasses because he played in a punk-revival band on his nights off. Like Sawyer, he was wearing a sweatshirt and blue jeans. “What’re you doing back there?”
“Looked like somebody might have slept in the back bedroom. We’re working it,” he said.
Virgil said, “Um,” and then, “You look at their car?”
“Yeah, we’ll process it. . I won’t say that I expect much from it.”
“All right,” Virgil said. He turned to Duke and said, “Let’s run down the daughter. I need to talk to her friends.”
“Darrell’s got the names.”
As it turned out, Rebecca Welsh didn’t have many friends. The Bare County deputies had come up with three names from high school, and only two still lived in the county. Nobody, including her parents, knew exactly where the third one was, but one of the deputies said he’d been told she was hooking out in Williston, North Dakota, among the oil crews.
Of the other two, Virgil spoke first to Carly Redecke, a short, dark-haired, dark-eyed girl whom he found working at the same store where George Welsh had bought his last beer. Though she wasn’t exactly working when he found her: she was in the back room, sitting on a couple of beer cases, smoking a cigarette.
“I haven’t heard from her since last summer,” Redecke said of Welsh. “She had a place somewhere up in the Cities and was doing night restocking at a Home Depot.”
“Do you have a phone number for her?”
“Yes, but she doesn’t have that number anymore,” Redecke said. “I called it at Christmas, and I got one of those messages that the phone had been disconnected. But I still got it, if you want it.”
Virgil made a note of the number, asked her if she knew anyone who might know better where Welsh would be.
“There’s a bunch of old Shinder people up in the Cities-I was up there myself for a while, but it scared me, so I came back. I’m thinking of trying over in Sioux Falls. There’s nothing here.”
“Of the old Shinder people, was she hanging with anyone in particular?”
“Wooo. . you might try calling Mickey Berenson. She keeps track of everybody. I got her number, I think it’s still good.”
Redecke didn’t have much more, other than to say that Welsh was “the hottest girl ever to come out of this place. She could be like a movie star.”
On his way over to see the second woman, he called Mickey Berenson, who was sleeping when he called. He explained the situation, and said, “. . so we’re trying to get in touch with her.”
“Oh, jeez, I haven’t seen her in a long time. You know, she was hanging out with Jimmy Sharp. He’s from Shinder, too, he was two grades ahead of us. I think they were getting serious.”
She didn’t have Sharp’s number, either, but said Sharp’s father lived in Shinder, and might know where his son was, and maybe Becky, too. Virgil thanked her, and went on to Caroline O’Meara’s house, and found her loading sacks of used clothing into the bed of a Toyota Tacoma. She and her mother, O’Meara said, were on their way to a flea market, and were already running late. “I talked to Becky, mmm, last fall, I think, about Halloween. She was back with Jimmy Sharp, they were cruising around town in Jimmy’s dorkmobile.”
“And that would be. .”
“A black Pontiac Firebird, about a hundred years old. Like he was king shit, or something. My boyfriend said he’d be lucky to get it back to the Cities before the tranny fell on the ground.”
“You sound like you don’t care for him,” Virgil suggested.
“Well, he’s an asshole. Ask anyone. He was the biggest bully the whole time I was in school,” she said.
“You know where he works?”
“No. I doubt that he works. Might sell a little pot or something. He had a job down at the Surprise for a while.”
“I was just there.”
“Yeah,” she said. “You come to Shinder, you wind up at the Surprise. If you live here, you wind up working there, sooner or later. Jimmy got fired after he got in a fight with Larry Panero. Larry wouldn’t hurt a fly, but Jimmy got on him and never quit.”
“Huh. Where could I find Jimmy’s father?”
Sharp’s father lived in an old wind-burned farmhouse at the far northwest corner of town. O’Meara had told him to look for the only red-painted place at the end of January Street, with a dirt track leading up to the side of the house: “Mean old redneck, is what he is.” A broken-down garage sat at the end of the track.
Virgil pulled into the dooryard and got out. There’d been a little breeze, early, but that had gone, and the place was dead silent-so silent that he paused, just to listen, and heard nothing at all. The nearest neighboring house was probably two hundred yards away, with an old car parked in front of it, but there was no movement there, either.
Virgil paid attention to the general vibe, then stepped back to the car, climbed inside, got his gun, and slipped it into his back waistband, under his jacket. Bad feeling. He went to the back stoop, knocked, got no response, knocked louder. Still no response. He backed off and looked toward the garage, with its antique side-folding doors. The doors were partly open, and after another look around, he went that way.
The car inside the garage was a newer Dodge Charger, with current Missouri plates. There was nobody around the garage, and he turned to walk away when he noticed the bumper stickers. One side featured an oval Thizz Hands sticker, and the other a sticker that said, “Free Li’l Boosie.” Li’l Boosie, Virgil believed, was currently spending his days in the Louisiana State Pen for issues involving guns and drugs; and, judging from the house, he thought it exceedingly unlikely that Old Man Sharp-he didn’t know the old man’s first name-was a big gangsta rap fan.
Which made the car, in the eyes of a perceptive law enforcement official, something of an anomaly. Virgil noted the car’s tag number, went back to his truck, called the number into the BCA duty officer, and told him to run it.
After a moment, the duty officer asked, “Uh, where are you, Virgil?”
“In Shinder. Minnesota. Out west,” Virgil said.
“Where’s this car?”
“Sitting in a garage out here,” Virgil said. “I’m looking at it.”
“You got your gun with you?”
“Yeah. What’s up, Dave?”
“The thing is, people are looking all over for that car,” the duty officer said. “A guy was apparently murdered for it in Bigham, night before last. The same people probably murdered a young girl just a couple blocks away from there, abou
t five minutes before that. . I mean, you need some backup, man, or get the hell out of there.”
Virgil got the details, and said, “I’ll check with you later.”
He looked at the house: still dead quiet. He thought about it, then called Davenport, who said, without first saying hello, “You’re about to fuck up a perfectly good Sunday morning, aren’t you?”
“You know those murders in Bigham Friday night?” Virgil asked.
“Just what I heard around the office, when Ralph came back. Why?”
“Apparently the killers stole a car from one of the victims,” Virgil said. “So, I was out here looking at these two dead people, and tried to track down their daughter to see if she might know something. To cut the story short, I’m looking at that car. So now, we have four dead. We might have a spree.”
“Ah, shit,” Davenport said. “Who’ve you told?”
“You and Dave Jennings,” Virgil said. “I gotta tell Duke, but, uh, you might want to talk to the patrol guys and get the early warning system going.”
“All right. You talk to Duke, I’ll start jackin’ people up. Who’re we looking for?”
“Right now, I’d like to talk to a Jimmy Sharp and a Rebecca Welsh, who were both living somewhere there in the Cities. That’s about all the detail I’ve got, but I will get back to you with more.”
“Do you think Sharp and Welsh. .?”
“I don’t know, but it’s a possibility.”
“Quick as you can,” Davenport said. “If it’s a spree, we gotta move.”
• • •
VIRGIL GOT ON THE PHONE to Duke, told him where he was, told him what had happened, and asked him to come over with some deputies. “There’s nothing moving here now, but that could change,” Virgil said.
Duke said, “I’m activating the SWAT. And me’n a couple other men’ll be there in four minutes. You hang tight.”
Not like he had some other goddamn pressing thing to do, Virgil thought, looking up at the weathered old house.
Four minutes in the cities and New York and Chicago and LA were different from four minutes in Shinder, where four minutes was quite literal: you could drive from one end of town to the other in four minutes, with a choice of routes, in a place where two cars in the same block was a traffic jam.
Fifteen seconds after Virgil got off the phone with Duke, the sirens started, rapidly got louder, and four minutes after they talked, a shoal of sheriff’s cars piled into old man Sharp’s farmyard. Duke was alone in the lead car; he got out, walked around to the trunk, popped it open and took out an M16 and a magazine, and snapped the magazine into place.
He said to Virgil, “I’m good.”
Fifteen seconds later, Virgil was surrounded by six deputies and Duke. He pointed toward the garage. “We’ve got two dead at the Welsh house, two dead in Bigham, and the stolen car here. I think that’s enough to go into the house without a warrant-somebody could be dying inside. So. One of you guys come with me, and the rest of you post around the house in case we get a runner. Don’t shoot unless it’s in self-defense. We really need to talk to somebody.”
Duke said, “I’ll be going in with you, and John Largas, he’ll come, too.” He nodded at an older deputy. “The rest of you take the corners of the house.”
Virgil looked around: there was a woodlot a hundred yards or so behind the house, and some scrubby lilacs along the drive, but no real cover other than the garage. He said, “Somebody can post up beside the garage, but you guys on the other side, stay close to the house. I mean, get your backs right against it. You don’t want to be standing out in the middle of the yard where somebody could shoot you down before you know it. All these places got deer rifles and shotguns. Okay? Everybody understand?”
They all nodded, and the group broke up, the deputies pulling their pistols, and Virgil led Duke and Largas to the back door. Virgil pounded on it for fifteen seconds, shouting, “Police. Open up. Open up.”
Duke said, “Kick it,” but Virgil didn’t. Instead, he reached out and turned the knob, and pushed the door open. They were looking at a mudroom, a half dozen ragged coats hanging from pegs, maybe fifteen ball caps moldering on a shelf, and four or five pairs of worn shoes and boots under a bench. Two beat-up umbrellas sagged in one corner, with an old single-shot.22 rifle with a rusty barrel. The place smelled like dirt and sweat.
Another closed door led into the kitchen; the door had a glass window in it, and Virgil looked through.
“Got a dead guy,” he said. Duke looked through the glass, and Virgil said, “Through the far door. You can see a shoe with a foot in it. He’s dead, unless he picked that spot to take a nap.”
Duke said, “I’m afraid to touch the doorknob.”
“Got to go in, in case he isn’t quite dead.” Virgil put his hand flat on the face of the knob, so he wouldn’t touch the parts that would have fingerprints, and turned it, and the door popped open. They stepped through the kitchen in a straight line, Duke leading with the M16; Virgil was not inclined to walk into a possible gunfight in front of a man with a machine gun. But the house was quiet. From the far door, to the living room, they could see the body-a middle-aged man with a five- or six-day beard, in a long-sleeved woolen undershirt and jeans, lying flat on his back with a bullet hole in his forehead.
Largas, behind Virgil, said, “That’s five. Good God almighty.”
4
They cleared the house, then Virgil told Duke, “We need to round up everybody in town who knew Rebecca Welsh and James Sharp, get them in one place so we can brainstorm with them. We need to figure out where Welsh and Sharp are, right now.”
Duke nodded, turned to a deputy, said, “Get those two girls we talked to, get them to name everybody who knows these people. We’ll meet up at the elementary school. . ” He looked at his watch. “At eleven o’clock sharp. Get Don Watson to open the place up.”
The deputy left, and Duke asked Virgil, “What else?”
“The neighbor’s house down the road has a car outside, but I didn’t see anybody there. We ought to check all the neighbors, make sure folks are okay.”
Duke said, “I’ll get that going. What are you going to do?”
“I’ll call the crime-scene people, get them over here, talk to the DMV and find out what James Sharp, the old man, drives, and get people looking at it.” He thought for a second, then said, “Then I’m going to call my boss. . And listen, I need everything you’ve got on those Friday murders in Bigham. Who’s working that?”
“Ross Price, he’s our investigator. I’ll hook you up with him.”
Virgil started with the DMV-James Sharp Senior drove a ten-year-old, extended-cab, silver Chevy pickup-and then called Davenport. “Jimmy Sharp and Rebecca Welsh hung with a bunch of people in the Cities. I’ve got one name you could call to find out exactly who that might be. . who else they know. I already spoke to her this morning, so she’s familiar with the situation.”
“You’re sure it’s Welsh and Sharp?” Davenport asked.
“It’s better than fifty-fifty. Sharp’s got a bad rep here in town as a bully who might sell a little dope. Welsh is his girlfriend. If you actually spot them up there, look to see if they might be driving his old man’s Chevy truck. I think the killers have it, whoever they are. Welsh’s folks’ car is still in their garage.”
“What’s your next move?”
“We’re having a seance over at the elementary school with everyone who knew Welsh and Sharp. If they’re running, I need to know which way they’re going.”
“Good luck with that,” Davenport said. “I’ll get things going here. Stay in touch.”
Virgil downloaded Jimmy Sharp’s and Becky Welsh’s driver’s license photos to his cell phone, and spent a few minutes looking at them. Jimmy was a kid who a lot of people would have said was handsome-he had the cheekbones and the squared-off chin, but there was something about the cast of his features that wasn’t quite right: he looked sneaky. Becky should have been pretty: blond,
small nose, big eyes, but there was a disappointment about her face-a disappointment with life-that made her look sad, and a little too hard.
But then, he thought, maybe makeup could fix it.
The gathering at Gerald Ford Elementary School brought in about thirty townspeople, who were sitting on metal folding chairs, talking quietly among themselves, when Virgil arrived. Virgil had told Duke about the silver pickup, and Duke had called back to his office and had an alert broadcast through the local sheriffs’ association, which covered eight counties in the western part of the state.
Virgil was wearing the black sport coat and collared shirt he’d worn to church, which passed for fairly sober wear in a country town. He smiled at the crowd when he came in, with Duke trailing behind, and picked up a folded chair, shook it open, and planted it in front of the group.
He introduced himself, and Duke, and said, “Y’all may have heard what’s going on, here. We’re trying to find Jimmy Sharp and Becky Welsh. I can tell you that Mr. and Mrs. Welsh and the senior Mr. Sharp were all found shot to death. We haven’t been able to find Jimmy or Becky. We don’t know whether they were involved in the shootings, or if they might be victims, or maybe they don’t even know about them. Anyway, we need to find them, and since you all know one of them, or both of them, we were hoping you could throw out some ideas about where they might be, or might be going, or who we might contact to find that out.”
A square-faced man with straw-colored hair raised a hand and asked, “Isn’t it a little. . abnormal. . to be talking to everybody at once like this?”
Virgil said, “This is an abnormal situation. We were hoping that if you folks listen to each other, and mix it up a little, we’ll spark off some ideas. We’re brainstorming.”
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