passenger-side window. He was a thin man who wore a cowboy hat, a tan, western-style canvas sport coat, and rimless eyeglasses. Virgil ran the window down and the man said, “I’m Ross Price. I’m the-”
“Investigator,” Virgil said. “Hop in. We need to talk.”
Price got in and said, “Five dead. These kids have gone crazy.”
“If it’s them,” Virgil agreed. “I’ve talked to Duke about the murders Friday night, but I’d like to get the details.”
“I’ve been writing up everything. I’ve got files on my computer I could send you.”
“Do that. But just tell me what you’ve seen so far.”
Price looked out the window, scratched his forehead, then said, “It seems simple, but it feels complicated. I’ve never been the lead investigator on a murder where we really needed investigation. I’ve done two murders, but we knew who did both of them the minute we walked in the door. One was a bar fight, the other one was a domestic. But this one. .”
Virgil nodded: “I know what you mean. My first murder investigation, you know, a real investigation, I was so confused that I didn’t know if I was coming or going. But, after a while, it smooths out. So just tell me what you saw, and what people told you.”
The murder victim was named Agatha Murphy, shot in the head during what looked like a burglary gone bad. Or a robbery gone bad-Price wasn’t sure which it was.
“They came in like burglars. We think three of them, but it could have been two-the surviving witness wasn’t sure about that. At least one was a woman. But two men and a woman, that fits with what you’ve got going here.”
“Yes, it does,” Virgil said. “What kind of neighborhood was it? Was the house picked by chance?”
“I can’t say,” Price said. “They passed a lot of houses that looked as good as the O’Leary house. That had me confused. But now that it seems like these kids are from here in Shinder, it makes more sense. Mrs. O’Leary was from here in Shinder, and I guess she was flashing some expensive diamonds. . ”
Price repeated the story about O’Leary and her jewelry. He said one of the intruders apparently came in through a back window that had been left unlocked, and then opened a back door for the others. They’d crept through a sleeping house, eventually entering the front bedroom where two women, sisters, were sleeping. One of them, Agatha Murphy, was staying at her parents’ house after separating from her husband some months earlier. The other, Mary O’Leary, was a senior in high school, six years younger than Agatha.
“They came in the bedroom, said they were there to do some robbing,” Price said. “Ag Murphy-they call her Ag-got up in their face, and one of them knocked her down. That spooked them, and they ran for it. But before they went, the leader shot Agatha in the forehead and killed her. Medical examiner said death was instantaneous. Mary O’Leary says that Agatha was kneeling on the floor when she got shot, and was no threat to the killer. He shot her down in cold blood. Just. . nuts.”
Virgil: “Did they ask for money or jewelry?”
“Didn’t ask for anything. The leader said he was there to do some robbing, but then, the girl got on him, and he hit her and then shot her. Then they ran.”
“Can Mary identify them? Any way at all?”
Price shook his head. “The leader had a flashlight in their faces. Your crime-scene people couldn’t come up with prints, and we haven’t heard back about DNA but they weren’t too confident about that, either. They did find some denim threads on the windowsill, and some brown cotton threads that might have come from gloves. . so they were ready to do it.”
“The back window. . Did the O’Learys say why it was open?”
“They didn’t think it was. Everything else was locked. And I’ll tell you something-this is about the only bit of real detecting I’ve done: I saw that whoever opened that window pried it up with a knife, or maybe a screwdriver. A knife, I think. But I looked at all the other windows down that side of the house, and you know what? There’s not another knife-dent to be found. They went right straight to the open window and pried it up. It’s like they
“Nice piece of work there,” Virgil said. “Like the window had been spotted in advance.”
“The thing is, the windows have locking levers on both sides. They fold down to lock, up to unlock, but you can’t see what position they’re in from outside. You either knew the window was open, or you had to try them all. Or, you got a giant coincidence.”
“We got a saying about coincidences in the BCA,” Virgil said.
Price bit. “Yeah? Like what?”
“Nothing’s ever a coincidence, except when it is.”
“Jeez, I’ll write that down. That really helps,” Price said.
They talked for a few more minutes, and then Virgil said, “What I’d like is for you to do two things for me- hunt around Bigham and find out if Jimmy Sharp, Becky Welsh, and Tom McCall were staying there for the last week or so. They couldn’t make the rent in the Cities, so they had to be staying somewhere cheap, or free. Maybe with some friends? I don’t know. . But if you find them, have some backup.”
“I’ll put the word out. If they were there, we should know today,” Price said. “What’s the other thing?”
“Find out where Jimmy’s car is. It’s an old black Firebird, the DMV has the tags. They apparently drove here in the Charger and left here in the truck. So, where’s the Firebird? We can’t find his old man’s truck, either, so they might have a new set of wheels. . but maybe, maybe they went back to the Firebird. We really need to know how they’re traveling.”
“But if they had the Firebird when they hit the O’Learys’ house, why did they have to hijack a car?”
“I don’t know.”
“I wonder. .” Price scratched his forehead again.
“Yeah?”
“They go into the O’Leary house, planning to rob it. . I wonder how they thought they were going to get away? They couldn’t plan on finding a guy standing next to his car.”
Virgil said, “Huh.” They thought about that for a minute, then Virgil said, “Maybe they were planning to kill everybody in the house, and take a car. And panicked, instead.”
“Jeez. . you think? There were five people there.”
“But then, they’re nuts,” Virgil said.
Price left, and Virgil went back to the phones. He called the O’Leary house, now curious about the victims of the first crime, and found that Marsha O’Leary, Ag’s mother, was in the hospital, suffering from exhaustion. Her husband was with her. He talked to Marsha’s mother, Mary Hogan, who said that Marsha had been particularly friendly with two women from Shinder, classmates, Bernice Sawyer and Harriet Washburn, whom Marsha had known since before kindergarten.
“For Shinder things, they’d be the best ones to talk to,” Hogan said. Her voice had an elderly scratch to it, but tough and dry, like a woman who’d seen some death.
“I’ll do that,” Virgil said.
Virgil talked to Sawyer first. She was a thin, friendly woman with a big country kitchen. Her parents owned the local grain elevator, and her husband worked there. “I couldn’t believe it when I heard about Ag being murdered. I thought, my God, what are they doing up there?”
Sawyer had gone to the class reunion, and the dance, and remembered that Becky Welsh had been working the food service, serving desserts.
“Marsha was wearing her diamonds. I don’t know how Becky could have missed them-the most diamonds anybody around here ever saw. Marsha did it on purpose. She had a couple of old rivals here, who wound up leading pretty modest lives, and she was. .” Sawyer smiled. “Sticking it to them, I guess you’d say.”
She’d never heard of a Tom McCall. “He doesn’t live in Shinder, and I don’t believe he’s ever lived here, because I know everybody who lives here,” she said.
When he was done with Sawyer, Virgil touched bases with Washburn, because he couldn’t think of what else to do, and Washburn confirmed what Sawyer had said. Becky Welsh had almost certainly seen the diamonds.
