power-washed the boat. It had last been in the Mississippi, and the Mississippi was now full of all kinds of weird flora and fauna, some of which hitched rides to other lakes and rivers in the scuppers of boats.
He’d just finished doing that, and was coiling the hose, when Davenport nosed into the driveway in his 911. “Out for a ride,” he said. A lame excuse. He looked at the boat and said, “You ought to call that
“Easy,” Virgil said. “I’m a little sensitive about that. So, you down here to give me a talking-to?”
“No, but I thought we might have lunch somewhere,” Davenport said. He was wearing a dark blue suit and a red-and-blue-checkered tie, the blue not coincidentally matching the color of his eyes. Virgil suspected the clocks on his socks would also match. “You can drive the Porsche, if you want,” Davenport said. “There may be women watching.”
“Mankato women don’t fall over for something as crass as a Porsche,” Virgil said.
Davenport shrugged. “That’s not my experience. Anyway. . you want to drive, or you want me to?”
Virgil took the keys: “On the off-chance you’re right.”
“What about your little sweetie in Marshall?”
“My little sweetie was too busy with work to go out last weekend. I have a feeling that we may be cooling off,” Virgil said.
“But you’ll still be friends.”
“Sure.”
“Good work,” Davenport said. “Keep them as friends, and there’s always a chance you’ll pick up a piece of charity ass sometime in the future when you need it.”
“If Weather heard you talking like that, she’d slap the shit out of you,” Virgil said.
“True, but Weather isn’t here,” Davenport said. “Listen, are we going to stand here and bullshit, or are we gonna get lunch?”
They went to a diner, and got the usual, for Minnesota, which was the New England equivalent of a Thanksgiving dinner, both of them going with Diet Cokes. “The thing about Diet Coke,” Davenport said, “is that nice chemical edge to it. It’s like drinking plastic.”
“And it’s non-fattening,” Virgil said.
Davenport: “You’re not going to get the O’Learys, Virgil. They’re probably as smart as you are, or nearly so. If they took out Murphy, they did it right. They’re the kind of people who know all about DNA, and fingerprints, and all of that. They took their time to plan it. If what you’re telling me about them is true, you can bet your life they won’t turn on each other.”
“Maybe I can turn White. .”
“If you turn White, and he says they paid him to disappear, you’d have to prove they knew that would end the case against Murphy, and that Murphy would make bail, and they did that explicitly to give themselves an opportunity to murder Murphy. Their side of the story would be, they realized that Murphy was probably innocent, and they thought they might as well end the agony for the husband of their late, much-loved daughter.”
“They couldn’t say that with straight faces.”
“But a lawyer could,” Davenport said. “The other thing is, you’re about to take on a clan of doctors. You know how hard it is to get doctors to practice in a place like Bigham? I bet that if you got a jury down there, even if they thought some O’Leary did it, they wouldn’t convict. They just wouldn’t do it.”
“Lucas. . you’re saying they’re going to get away with murder.”
“They will, if they did it. I’m not sure that they did it, and neither are you. You know your case against Murphy? That was ten times stronger than anything you’re likely to get against the O’Learys. You don’t even have a body. A jury won’t be sure, not given all the circumstances. You have one chance: that somebody confesses. What do you think the chance of that is?”
Virgil rubbed his forehead and admitted, “Slim and none.”
“And Slim is out of town,” Davenport said.
They ate for a while, and then Virgil said, “So you came down here to tell me to ditch the whole thing.”
“Nope. You have the best clearance record that anybody ever heard of, and I’d never tell you to stop,” Davenport said. “I just came down to tell you how it is. You won’t get them.”
Virgil: “Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.”
Davenport looked around the cafe with its red leatherette counter stools, big men in coveralls, waitresses with beehive hairdos, then down at his plate of sliced turkey, mashed potatoes, dressing, and cranberry sauce, all covered with cream of mushroom gravy, and said, “No. It’s sure as shit not Chinatown, Virgil. It’s just life.”
They thought about that for a bit, then Davenport asked, “What’s going on with the guys who beat you up?”
Virgil shrugged. “Nobody’s wanted to go to trial. The state guys don’t want to resolve anything until we figure out what happened to Murphy, and McGuire and Atkins apparently think that the more confused things get, the more likely they are to get a better deal. So. . it’s still out there.”
“So everything’s settled except the O’Learys. . as much as it’s going to be, anyway,” Davenport said.
“Yeah.”
They ate some more, then Virgil said, “I’m going to Bigham tonight. I’m going to take a shot at them. Just see if anything falls out.”
“God bless you, man,” Davenport said.
Davenport dropped Virgil at his house and said, “Watch the weather service. There’s some bad shit coming in from Nebraska.” Then he was gone, moving fast in the 911.
Davenport was right. Bad shit coming down.
Virgil saw it on his computer, the weather radars all across the northern plains. A line of thunderstorms showed up in a crimson streak from western Kansas to eastern North Dakota, and the fattest part of the bowed-out line of supercells was aimed right at southwest Minnesota.
He called his father to tell him to keep an eye on it. “We’ve been watching it coming since yesterday,” his father said. “This is a nasty one.”
Virgil packed his Musto sailing suit in the back of the truck, just in case, and at three o’clock took off. Fifty miles east of Bigham, the sky turned cloudy, with the downward bumps of mammatus clouds; never a good sign. The wind picked up, and the clouds overhead were churning like whipped cream in a blender, but there was no rain. That would come, Virgil thought, but not yet.
He was dry all the way to Bigham. Beyond Bigham, though, the sky was a dark wall of cloud, and the cottonwood trees in City Park were whipping and twisting in the wind.
Virgil was early. He checked into the same hotel where he’d spent his time during the hunt for Sharp and Welsh, went up to his room, and turned on the television. The Sioux Falls weather radar showed the storm plowing toward Bigham: the leading edge of the heaviest band was ten miles to the west and the weatherman was screaming about wall clouds and the hook signature.
There’d been two confirmed tornadoes out of the system, and a third one was suspected. Virgil called his father: “What’s happening there?”
“It’s something else,” his father shouted into the phone. “It’s a hurricane out there, and a light show. No damage, though. We’ll be out of it in twenty minutes. There’s supposedly a tornado down south of us.”
“Call me if you have a problem. I’m in Bigham.”
“Bigham? Virgil, this baby is coming right at you.”
Virgil got off the phone and went and looked out the window. He couldn’t see much, but the window was rattling in its frame from the wind; then the rain came, a violent, pounding downpour that would last less than an hour, but might dump two or three inches of rain.
Virgil looked at his watch: six o’clock. He’d meet the O’Learys in an hour, but if there was a tornado out there. .
