Mad River

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