Marshall area code-but from an unknown number.
“Virgil Flowers.”
“Virgil, this is Bud Wright, at the
“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 investigator.
“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
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.
