Duke came out to watch it, and said, as Virgil was leaving, “I don’t think you got him, unless there’s something I don’t know.”
“We’ll see,” Virgil said.
The next day, the local district court judge denied bail.
• • •
THE O’LEARYS WERE EXULTANT . . . for about two days. Virgil met them at the courthouse, and led the whole bunch to a conference room, for an interview with Hunstad and Thomas. When the attorneys finished, they told the O’Learys the truth: that a conviction was unlikely.
“You mean he’s going to get away with it?” John O’Leary asked.
“We’ll ruin him in the community, and the charge will follow him for the rest of his life. Then there’s the possibility of a wrongful death lawsuit, but that would be up to you.”
“Wrongful death, my ass,” Jack O’Leary exploded. “He’s responsible for the murder of Ag. And he’s going to walk away from it? I don’t give a shit about the money, I want him in Stillwater.”
“So do we,” said Hunstad. “I’m just telling you, it’s a tough case. If we had Welsh or Sharp . . . but we don’t. We’ve got hearsay and suggestions and some money they found on Jimmy Sharp. We’ve got a confirmed cop-killer as one witness, and a guy who used to hurt high school football players for money, as our second witness. It’s just tough.”
Frank O’Leary said, “That fuckin’ Duke.”
Then Marsha O’Leary started sobbing, and the whole family began to shake.
• • •
VIRGIL TIDIED UP what he could, and then was called to look at a situation in which a young woman, the daughter of a Rochester doctor, had gone missing. That ate up most of a week, until he established that she was living in Illinois with her rock guitarist boyfriend.
The next week, he was in Owatonna, where some high school dopers had broken into the veterinary medicine chest at the Fleet Farm store and run off with some serious shit: horse dope that would blow their hearts through their chest walls. Another week was gone.
But that same week, Tom McCall, on the advice of his attorney, pleaded guilty to one count of murder of the deputy sheriff Daniel Card, and was sentenced to life in prison. He was, however, because of past cooperation and the promise of further cooperation if it were needed, allowed the possibility of parole. He would be in his mid-fifties when he got out of Stillwater. Virgil’s only involvement had been written depositions, taken during sessions with McCall’s court-appointed attorney, describing McCall’s phone calls, his arrest, and the interview with Virgil in Virgil’s truck. They hardly mattered, given two eyewitness accounts of the shooting outside the bank. News reports said McCall showed no emotion at his sentencing.
• • •
A WEEK AFTER THAT, he was lying in bed, late at night, at home in Mankato, when Thomas, the special prosecutor, called.
“Randy White is gone,” Thomas said.
“What?”
“He’s gone. He was supposed to show up for a deposition today. We don’t know where. He didn’t show up at work either yesterday or today.”
“Ah, man.”
“We talked to Davenport,” Thomas said. “He says you should get over here and find him for us.”
• • •
SO THEN HE was back in Bigham.
White’s disappearance had the look and feel of something really bleak. He was gone, and his car was gone, but his apartment seemed lived-in—clothes in the closets, underwear on the floor. There wasn’t much food in the refrigerator, but it hadn’t been cleaned out, either.
Virgil had another talk with the newspaper editor, and got everybody in the county looking for White and his car.
The O’Learys asked Virgil, “What is this?”
Virgil couldn’t answer. He couldn’t even look full-time, because there was nothing to go on. There was no point in driving up and down the roads of Bare County, looking out the windows. . . .
May disappeared, and June came up.
And one day, Hunstad and Thomas said, “We can’t hold Murphy. It’s unethical. We don’t have a case. We’re going to drop the charges.”
Virgil said, “Give me a week.”
Thomas said, “Do you have anything more to work with than you did last week?”
Virgil shook his head. “No.”
“Then we’re going to call the O’Learys in and give them the news. If we can find White, we can refile.”
“What if Murphy had him killed?”
“You think you could prove that? You can’t even find his car, much less a body.”
“Goddamnit,” Virgil said.
Hunstad, who was kind of cute, gave him a hug. “Next time you’re in the Cities, call me and we’ll have a cup of coffee,” she said.
• • •
THE NEXT DAY, she went to court and told the judge that with their main witness gone, the state had decided that they could not sustain the case, and so the charges were being dropped. “We reserve the right to refile, if we find Mr. White,” she said.
Virgil was sitting across the street when Murphy walked out of the jail with his attorney. They talked for a minute or two, then the attorney clapped him on the shoulder and headed for the courthouse parking lot. Murphy jaywalked across the street into a newsstand, and a minute later reappeared with a fresh pack of cigarettes, stuck one in his face, lit it, looked around, and then walked away.
Virgil said a short prayer that he’d get lung cancer.
The newspaper later that week hinted that White might have been killed; the paper didn’t say by whom, but everybody knew.
• • •
ON THE TWENTY-SEVENTH of June, Virgil was sound asleep in his boat on a quiet backwater of Pool 4 of the Mississippi River, off Alma, Wisconsin, while his pal Johnson Johnson beat the water with an aging Eddie Bait. Virgil’s phone rang, and Johnson Johnson said, “I told you to turn it off.”
“A young woman may be calling me,” Virgil said, digging for the phone. “If she got out of Marshall early enough, we’re gonna meet in Minneapolis.”
“You’re going to celebrate life?”
“That’s right,” Virgil said. He looked at the face of the phone and the call was, indeed, coming from the Marshall area code—but from an unknown number.
“Virgil Flowers.”
“Virgil, this is Bud Wright, at the Bigham Gazette.”
“Hey, Bud.”
“Have you heard?”
Virgil sat up. “That fuckin’ White. That fuckin’ White is back, right?”
“No, no. No. Dick Murphy didn’t make it home last night, or come to work this morning. One of Duke’s boys found his car down in Riverside Park.”
“I know it.”
“There was blood on the seat,” Wright said.
Virgil closed his eyes. Then, “Shit. I’m on my way.”
“Do you have any comment?”
“Yeah: ‘Shit, I’m on my way.’”
26
WHEN VIRGIL GOT TO BIGHAM, Murphy’s car had been taken to the sheriff’s impound area. Virgil went by Duke’s office and was told that Duke was out. The chill in the office was still deep, and a deputy named Jim Clark only reluctantly showed Virgil the car.
The car was a BMW 328i. The small blood spot was just below the headrest; Virgil could see no sign of a bullet hole. He had the deputy open all four doors, and without touching anything inside, he looked at the back of the headrest and then the backseat. There was no sign of a bullet exit hole on the back of the headrest, or an entrance hole on the backseat.
“What are you doing about the blood?” Virgil asked.
“Our crime-scene specialist is driving samples up to the BCA,” Clark said.
“Is Ross Price around?” Virgil asked. Price was the sheriff’s investigat
or.
“Somewhere,” the deputy said.
“I need to talk with him,” Virgil said.
The deputy closed the car and locked it, and led Virgil back inside. The dispatcher got ahold of Price, who said that he’d be back in ten minutes or so. Virgil went down in the basement, got a Diet Coke and a Nut Goodie, then waited on the steps outside the law enforcement center.
Price was prompt: just about ten minutes after he talked to the dispatcher, he rolled into the sheriff’s parking lot, and Virgil went over to talk to him.
“So how did all this come up?” Virgil asked. “Who figured out he was gone?”
Price said that late on Monday evening, Murphy had been seen at a local self-serve car wash, detailing his BMW. “We talked to a guy who saw him there, Lance Barber.”
“Friend of Murphy’s?”
“No. Lance is a baker, he works at Bare Bakers. He’s an older guy, must be close to seventy. He went through the fast wash, and saw Murphy down there. As far as we know, he was the last one to see him,” Price said. “He said he saw Murphy shining up his headlights with a rag when he went into the automatic wash, and he was just going through the drier when Murphy drove out the exit lane.”
That was that. Murphy didn’t go to work the next day, and didn’t answer his landline phone or his cell phone, either one. His father went around to his apartment and let himself in, and there was no sign of him.
“Then, we found his car parked down at Riverside Park,” Price said. “It was unlocked, and we found that blood on the seat. Our crime-scene guy, Bob Drake, took a blood sample, just to make sure it was Murphy’s, along with some hair and what looked like semen samples from Murphy’s bed for comparison. Then we locked up the car so your guys could really get into it, if it turns out to be Murphy’s blood, as I expect it’ll be.”
Virgil nodded, and then said, “And nothing since?”
“He hasn’t charged anything on any credit cards, hasn’t used an ATM, left two hundred dollars in cash in the top drawer of his chest of drawers. Hasn’t used his cell phone. Doesn’t have another car that we know of.”
“You think he might have faked it?”
Price hesitated, then said, “I’m not smart enough to figure out what happened. It’s all weird.”
“Just asking what you think,” Virgil said.
“What I think is, there’s some chance he faked his own death, and his old pal Randy White set up a hideout and picked him up. Then I asked myself, ‘Why would he do that?’ As long as Randy is gone, Dick’s not going to go to trial for murder. And then, there’s Ag’s money. He still hasn’t gone to probate with the will. . . . Everybody’s been waiting for that, because they’re talking about the O’Learys suing for wrongful death. Anyway, he’d be leaving that money behind, at least for now, and that’s not the Dick Murphy we know and love. So, that would make me think he didn’t fake it.”
Virgil nodded. “I could buy that. Unless, maybe, he knew that Randy was coming back.”
“But why would he leave the money in the chest of drawers? Why wouldn’t he have done a better job of getting out of town?”
“I don’t know,” Virgil admitted. “Unless Randy called and said he was coming back the next day, and he had to throw something together.”
“But . . . would he be throwing something together, and then go out and wash his car so he could ditch it an hour later?”
Virgil said, “Hmm.”
“But here’s something that’s sort of in favor of it being a fake: I can’t figure out what kind of a killing wound would put that blood on the car seat, where it is. If somebody pointed a gun in the window and shot him, why wouldn’t we find some evidence of a gunshot? If he was stabbed, why would he bleed backward into the seat back? Why wouldn’t there be blood anywhere else? What it looks like, tell the truth, is like he cut his arm, and smeared some blood on the seat. We won’t know for sure until your crime-scene people start taking the seat apart.”
They walked over to Murphy’s car and looked in the window, but nothing really came to Virgil. Would the O’Learys have taken the situation into their own hands? Had Ag O’Leary had some other relationship that Virgil didn’t know about, and Murphy was killed by some unknown actor, in revenge? Could Randy White have been that relationship?
They looked at the spot of blood on the seat, and Virgil did not get the feeling that it was obviously a fake. What it was, was odd.
Virgil asked Price, “Am I still stinking up the place in the Bare County sheriff’s office?”
Price grinned and said, “Barack Obama would run about forty points ahead of you, if there was an election.”
“And Barack is not exactly in deep favor around here.”
“Not exactly,” Price said. “But there are a few guys who’ve been willing to say, privately, when the sheriff wasn’t around, that the thing wasn’t handled right. The Becky Welsh/Jimmy Sharp thing. I think one of them might take the sheriff on, in two years.”
“Does the sheriff know that?”
“Oh, hell no,” Price said. “Maybe it won’t happen at all. We’ll see.”
“Does Duke know you’re talking to me? Or do I have to be careful about mentioning it?”
“Oh, he knows,” Price said. “When you asked the dispatcher to call me, he called Duke first. Duke told him to call me in . . . but he doesn’t want to talk to you himself.”
They thought about that for a moment, then Price asked, “Are you gonna take this over? The Murphy thing?”
“What can I do?” Virgil asked. “You’ve done everything I’d do. Maybe Crime Scene will turn up some DNA, and that’ll take us somewhere. Maybe we’ll find a body and that’ll tell us something. Or maybe he’ll show up.”
Price sighed and said, “You know, if Jimmy hadn’t gone up there with that gun . . .”
“If Murphy hadn’t paid him to . . .”
“Yeah. Well, hell. Stay in touch,” Price said.
• • •
VIRGIL STAYED IN TOUCH for two weeks, until the DNA came back on the blood: it was almost certainly Murphy’s, because it matched hair, blood, and semen samples from Murphy’s bed. Murphy had taken no money from his bank account, never used his cell phone or credit cards in that time. Then more DNA samples came back, on the car, and they were all Murphy.
A crime-scene tech who’d taken apart the car seat said, “I don’t know how he was killed, if he was killed, but there was more blood there than it looked like. It wasn’t just a spot. He bled through the spot for a while, and it ran down the inside of the fabric. Not a whole lot, but it wasn’t just a wipe, or a smear.”
“So what killed him?” Virgil asked.
“I’m thinking aliens.”
“You mean like, Canadians?”
• • •
THEN, a day after the second set of DNA samples came back, Davenport called.
“You’re not on the TSA’s no-fly list, are you?”
“I hope not,” Virgil said. “Where am I flying to?”
“Houston. By God, Texas.”
“Why is that?”
“I thought you’d want to talk to Randy White, who was picked up yesterday afternoon after a DUI stop.”
“Sonofagun,” Virgil said.
• • •
VIRGIL FLEW INTO George Bush Intercontinental Airport the next morning, and two hours later was interviewing Randy White at the Harris County Jail.
When a guard brought White to the interview room, Virgil asked, “Randy, what the hell happened to you?”
White sat in the chair on the other side of the interview desk and said, “I couldn’t deal with it anymore. You gonna take me back?”
Virgil said, “I don’t know.”
“I got a decent job down here.”
“You k
now about Dick Murphy?” Virgil asked.
“Yeah . . . I feel bad about it, but I just couldn’t handle it,” White said. “Everybody’s telling me that it’s my information that’ll send him up, but you know what? I really don’t know if he wanted to kill Ag. I’d be the one to send him up, but I don’t know. So I took off.”
Virgil looked at him for a moment, but saw no guile in his eyes. He asked, “You really don’t know about Dick?”
“Well, yeah: he got out,” White said.
“That’s not what I meant,” Virgil said. “What I meant was, he’s disappeared.”
“What?”
Virgil peered at him. White’s reaction was a little too dramatic. Off-key. “Goddamnit, Randy, if you’re lying to me, I’ll put you in Stillwater as an accessory to murder.”
“Virgil—when I took off, Dick was in jail, and I never been back,” White said. “I don’t know what happened up there. I don’t read the newspapers, I don’t have a TV yet. I just don’t know.”
“Did Murphy pay you to leave?” Virgil asked.
“No, no. I just couldn’t deal with it.”
“I’m gonna want to look at your bank account.”
Randy laughed: “And you’ll see that the most I’ve had in it is about a hundred dollars.”
“Murphy paid Jimmy Sharp in cash. He paid some guys to beat me up, in cash. So he’d give you cash.”
“But he didn’t,” White said. He brushed hair out of his eyes and said, “I’ll tell you, Virgil—I liked Ag. More than I should have, since she was my buddy’s wife. I never would have lifted a finger to hurt her, for no amount of money. If I really thought that Dick done it, I’d hang him myself.”
Virgil looked at him, and then asked, quietly, “You didn’t do that, did you?”
White said, “No! No. I been here since I ran away. Virgil, I been here every day. You can ask. I’m working on a roof-tile crew.”
But again, a little flat, a little off-key.
Virgil stared at him, and White stared back; they were locked up, and White never flinched. Something going on here, Virgil thought. He denies everything, but he’s defiant. Had he arranged for Murphy to disappear? But White wasn’t smart enough to engineer that. He wasn’t smart enough to get Murphy out of jail, and then kill him. Not nearly smart enough.
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