Mad River

everything for you,” Davenport said. “Get some coffee, and when you’re down to a seven, take off. I’ll find out where the highway patrol is, and you can dodge them. I’m putting Crime Scene on the road, soon as I can.”
    “Still probably three hours before I can get there,” Virgil said.
    “Three hours is better than anybody else we got,” Davenport said. “And you know that country.”
    “How many dead?”
    “Two. Man and a wife, named, uh, let me look . . . uh, Welsh. Shot in their kitchen, probably last night or early this morning. The locals got nothing, except maybe their dicks in their hands.”
    “I’ll go,” Virgil said. “But I’ll be a little slow.”
    “You know about what happened Friday night?”
    “Friday night I was on Grand Bahama,” Virgil said, “fishing all day, and at night, playing beach volleyball with women wearing bikini bottoms.”
    There was a moment of silence, then Davenport said, “I might have to kill you. It was snowing up here.”
    “Yeah, well, what happened Friday?”
    “There was a double murder over in Bigham. I don’t know if these two are connected, but they’re over in the same corner of the state. Haven’t been four murders, that close, in that corner, in a hundred years.”
    “Who caught that?”
    “Ralph. But there wasn’t much to do after the crime-scene crew got finished. Nobody had any idea of what happened.”
    “Okay. Send me what Ralph got.”
    “I will,” Davenport said. “When you say they were wearing bikini bottoms, they were also, like, wearing the tops, right?”
    “Nope, just the bottoms,” Virgil said.
    “Fuck me,” Davenport said. “Anyway, you bring anything back home?”
    “Jesus, I hope not,” Virgil said.
    “I meant fish,” Davenport said.
    “Oh. No. No, I didn’t.”
    Cooper offered Virgil a ride home, but Bob-Bob said, doubtfully, “That don’t sound like a real good idea,” and Virgil said, “Thanks, anyway, Cornelius. I can use the walk.”
    •   •   •
    VIRGIL LIVED THE BEST part of a mile northeast of downtown, a cool walk in early April, but he was wearing an insulated Carhartt jean jacket over a black Wolfmother T-shirt, jeans, and boots, and was comfortable enough as he ambled along through the dark. He lived in a small two-bedroom frame house with a double garage. A fishing boat was usually parked in the driveway, in this case, an almost-new fishing boat, a Ranger. The boat had been purchased with some fear and trepidation about ethics, from a friend of the governor of the state of Minnesota.
    Virgil’s previous boat had been blown up by a mad bomber. Virgil had crawled away from the wreckage, unhurt, by the very skin of his teeth. The governor had offered to help out by locating the Ranger, two years old, but with only thirty hours on the motor. Virgil initially declined, because he thought that the boat broker might be doing a favor for the governor, some kind of political deal, and he didn’t want a part of that.
    But the governor had come back to him, said he appreciated Virgil’s ethical conundrum, and insisted that there was no deal, he’d only done it because he imagined that he and Virgil were friends and he felt bad about the bomb. No payback was expected or required from anyone. Virgil got a letter from the director of the BCA saying it was okay, and he bought the boat, because, the fact was:
    He hungered for it.
    It had been love at first sight. A Ranger Angler, red with black and gray trim, eighteen feet, six inches long with a ninety-eight-inch beam. There was a rod case under the front deck with space for six rods, plenty of storage in the side lockers, a Minn-Kota trolling motor on the bow, a 175 Merc on the back.
    Virgil had to put up the whole insurance payment on his old boat and motor, plus he’d financed twelve thousand dollars over four years through the state credit union. That was cheap, he thought, when it came to true love.
    And now, as the saying went, he could pad his ass with fiberglass, a big change from his old aluminum boat.
    •   •   •
    VIRGIL WAS A TALL MAN, an inch or two over six feet, slender, with blue eyes and blond hair worn long for a cop, but not too long for farm country, where he usually worked. Like country people, he had a tendency toward ball caps, barn jackets, and cowboy boots, especially in the spring, when he needed to be mud-resistant. He’d been born out on the prairie, in Marshall, Minnesota, where he’d