ever heard of a kid named Tom McCall?” Virgil asked. “About the same age as Sharp and Welsh?”
“There are some McCalls in the county,” Duke said. “I haven’t specifically heard of a Tom.”
“Get somebody to call around to the McCalls you know,” Virgil said. “There may be a Tom McCall running with Sharp and Welsh.” He told him what he’d gotten from Davenport.
“Got any more ideas?” Duke asked.
“I’m sitting here in my truck thinking some up,” Virgil said. “I’ll let you know as they come along.”
“Do that.”
Virgil called him back one minute later. “I just had an idea, though it’s slightly disturbing.”
“Go ahead.”
“I think you should call up all the rich people in town, and make sure they’re alive.”
There was a moment of silence, then Duke said, “Mother of God.”
“Yeah. These kids are flat broke, they don’t even have gas money, probably. They need money. They gotta be looking for it.”
5
JIMMY SHARP, Becky Welsh, and Tom McCall had driven to Shinder after the O’Leary and Williams murders.
Halfway back, Tom said, “I think we fucked up bad. The cops’ll never stop until they figure it out.”
“Fuck ’em,” Jimmy said. “They got nothing to go on. And fuck those O’Leary assholes. Kill them again, if I could.”
Becky patted his arm and said, “It just makes me so fuckin’ hot.”
Jimmy glanced at her. Made her so fuckin’ hot: yeah, well, that was a problem he didn’t want to talk about.
• • •
AND TOM DIDN’T WANT to think about it. He’d been hanging around the edges of the Becky-Jimmy relationship for a while, and he knew something wasn’t quite right, but he didn’t know what it was. What he knew for sure was, he’d been hot for Becky since he’d first laid eyes on her in the ninth grade. After he left school, he hadn’t seen her for a while, but when he ran into the two of them in the Cities, it all came back.
Tom had never slept with a pretty woman. Those he’d gone with had been the leftovers, and he was the best they could do. Every time he’d touched Becky—taking her arm, touching her shoulder to direct her at something—she’d flinched away, as though he were diseased.
Why was that? Why did pretty women treat him like shit? Why did Becky look right through him as though he weren’t there? The longer it had gone on, the more his fantasy/dream sex had become mixed up with violence. He’d show them who the strong one was; he’d show them Tom the Barbarian . . .
Tom didn’t know what to think about the killing of Ag O’Leary or the black guy. He did know that he had nothing to do with it. He was just walking along and Jimmy suddenly went crazy and killed them. He was clean.
Would he stay clean if he hung around with Jimmy? If Jimmy went down for a couple of murders, where would that leave him and Becky? With Jimmy out of the picture . . .
After he got kicked out of the navy, Tom had gone to work for a desperate home security agency, which mostly meant he drove around dark suburban neighborhoods looking for false alarms. He never did find a house that had been broken into—in fact, he’d found a fairly small percentage of the houses he’d been sent to, because he got lost easily. That shortcoming got him fired—or laid off, as his supervisor put it.
When the unemployment ran out, he had a two-week job as a pizza delivery man, but had the same problem as he did with home security. When he got fired by the pizza joint, he landed a job as a door-puller for another security company. Door-pulling was exactly what it sounded like: he spent the evening driving around to suburban office complexes pulling on doors to make sure they were locked. He got fired from that one when a late-working accountant found him sitting on a step smoking a joint.
After that, things got tough. He tried sitting at an interstate off-ramp with a cardboard sign that said: “Homeless Navy Vet, Please Help,” but
“There are some McCalls in the county,” Duke said. “I haven’t specifically heard of a Tom.”
“Get somebody to call around to the McCalls you know,” Virgil said. “There may be a Tom McCall running with Sharp and Welsh.” He told him what he’d gotten from Davenport.
“Got any more ideas?” Duke asked.
“I’m sitting here in my truck thinking some up,” Virgil said. “I’ll let you know as they come along.”
“Do that.”
Virgil called him back one minute later. “I just had an idea, though it’s slightly disturbing.”
“Go ahead.”
“I think you should call up all the rich people in town, and make sure they’re alive.”
There was a moment of silence, then Duke said, “Mother of God.”
“Yeah. These kids are flat broke, they don’t even have gas money, probably. They need money. They gotta be looking for it.”
5
JIMMY SHARP, Becky Welsh, and Tom McCall had driven to Shinder after the O’Leary and Williams murders.
Halfway back, Tom said, “I think we fucked up bad. The cops’ll never stop until they figure it out.”
“Fuck ’em,” Jimmy said. “They got nothing to go on. And fuck those O’Leary assholes. Kill them again, if I could.”
Becky patted his arm and said, “It just makes me so fuckin’ hot.”
Jimmy glanced at her. Made her so fuckin’ hot: yeah, well, that was a problem he didn’t want to talk about.
• • •
AND TOM DIDN’T WANT to think about it. He’d been hanging around the edges of the Becky-Jimmy relationship for a while, and he knew something wasn’t quite right, but he didn’t know what it was. What he knew for sure was, he’d been hot for Becky since he’d first laid eyes on her in the ninth grade. After he left school, he hadn’t seen her for a while, but when he ran into the two of them in the Cities, it all came back.
Tom had never slept with a pretty woman. Those he’d gone with had been the leftovers, and he was the best they could do. Every time he’d touched Becky—taking her arm, touching her shoulder to direct her at something—she’d flinched away, as though he were diseased.
Why was that? Why did pretty women treat him like shit? Why did Becky look right through him as though he weren’t there? The longer it had gone on, the more his fantasy/dream sex had become mixed up with violence. He’d show them who the strong one was; he’d show them Tom the Barbarian . . .
Tom didn’t know what to think about the killing of Ag O’Leary or the black guy. He did know that he had nothing to do with it. He was just walking along and Jimmy suddenly went crazy and killed them. He was clean.
Would he stay clean if he hung around with Jimmy? If Jimmy went down for a couple of murders, where would that leave him and Becky? With Jimmy out of the picture . . .
After he got kicked out of the navy, Tom had gone to work for a desperate home security agency, which mostly meant he drove around dark suburban neighborhoods looking for false alarms. He never did find a house that had been broken into—in fact, he’d found a fairly small percentage of the houses he’d been sent to, because he got lost easily. That shortcoming got him fired—or laid off, as his supervisor put it.
When the unemployment ran out, he had a two-week job as a pizza delivery man, but had the same problem as he did with home security. When he got fired by the pizza joint, he landed a job as a door-puller for another security company. Door-pulling was exactly what it sounded like: he spent the evening driving around to suburban office complexes pulling on doors to make sure they were locked. He got fired from that one when a late-working accountant found him sitting on a step smoking a joint.
After that, things got tough. He tried sitting at an interstate off-ramp with a cardboard sign that said: “Homeless Navy Vet, Please Help,” but
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