Holy Ghost

by John Sandford

  Ann was back to screaming. “You fuck, you goddamn . . . You motherfucker . . . I don’t want you here tonight. I want you out of the house and I want a divorce. I want a divorce right now. And I’m going to talk to that fuckin’ Flowers about this tomorrow, we gotta lot of shit to get straight.”

  More shouting, footsteps running up the stairs, screaming apparently from below. And Apel: “I’m getting my underwear. I’m getting my socks . . .”

  Five minutes later, he was out of the house, carrying an oversized gym bag.

  “His clothes,” Jenkins said. “Man, that Ann’s gotta mouth on her, huh?”

  * * *

  —

  They’d arranged to meet Apel at Skinner & Holland after whatever happened at his house, and he pulled up behind the store a few seconds after they got there.

  “Well, that was a waste,” he said, as they went inside. “That bitch wouldn’t budge. You know what she did when I went out the door? Do you want to know?”

  “I don’t know, do I want to?” Jenkins asked, as they peeled the wire off Apel’s back.

  “She stuck her thumb in her mouth and sucked it,” Apel said. Virgil checked: he wasn’t faking the anger. “Can you believe that? That fuckin’ Andorra, if he was still alive, I’d go over there and shoot him.”

  “Where are you going now?” Virgil asked. “We want to stay in touch.”

  “There’s a motel I can go to, over in Albert Lea; I got a friend there who’s the night manager, he’ll give me a rate. But I’ll tell you what, I ain’t giving up that house. I ain’t moving out. I’m going back after work tomorrow, I’m gonna put my bed in the office, and I’m gonna live there until the divorce. Say, can I borrow your recording for the divorce? I’m going to tell my lawyer about it. The bitch admits she was fuckin’ Glen . . .”

  “We’ll have to let your lawyers work that out,” Virgil said. “In the meantime, not a word about the wire to anyone, you understand?”

  Apel felt the threat. “Yeah, yeah, don’t worry.”

  When he was gone, Virgil ushered Jenkins out of the store. They looked after Apel’s disappearing taillights and then followed him, in Jenkins’s car, until he made the right turn onto the Interstate ramp toward Albert Lea.

  “Follow?” Jenkins asked.

  “No, back to town. To Apel’s place.”

  “You’re gonna talk to Ann tonight?”

  “Why not? We know she’s up.”

  “What do you think you’ll get out of her?”

  “Maybe nothing. I’m not counting on anything.”

  “Then why . . . ?”

  “’Cause I’m going to wire her up,” Virgil said.

  “Say what?”

  * * *

  —

  Ann Apel came to the door with a frown on her face but no sign of tears or even a flushed face. She was an attractive woman, in a fortyish, small gymnast pork ’n’ beans way. When she turned on the porch light and saw who was standing there, she yanked open the door and shouted, “You ruined my marriage!”

  Jenkins said, “Actually, you ruined your own marriage when you started playing house with Glen Andorra.”

  Virgil winced, and Apel tried to slam the door, but Jenkins got his foot in the door before it closed. He pushed it farther open, and said, “Stand back. Our search warrant is good until midnight, and I don’t think I got a real good look at your undies.”

  All right, Virgil thought, good cop/bad cop.

  * * *

  —

  Jesus, take it easy, Jenkins,” Virgil said. To Apel: “I apologize for this, but we’re tired. We were following your husband tonight, and we tracked him out to the Interstate. We need to talk to you.”

  She let them in, reluctantly, and gave the stink eye to Jenkins every time he said a word, but Virgil put her on a couch, and said, “Listen, I know this may come as a shock, but we think there’s a very good chance that your husband is behind these killings in town. In some way or another. And he’s behind the murder of Glen Andorra. We believe you may have had a relationship with Mr. Andorra . . .”

  She began to talk after Virgil outlined the evidence they’d accumulated on the brew pub loan. “We think Mr. Apel might have been worried about the payback prospects if Mrs. Osborne gave all her money to the church . . .”

  Apel told them about her own fears. That Davy had been acting odd, that he’d told her that he had an alibi for the shooting of Margery Osborne but that he had been worried Danny Visser would lie about the time he was there.

  “He was acting strange enough that I started to worry myself. I woke up one night, and I could feel that he was awake. When I opened one eye, I could see in the moonlight that he was staring at me. I started to think he might hurt me.”

  “During the search today, I mentioned that Mr. Andorra may have had a girlfriend,” Virgil said. “Is there any possibility that he knew about Mr. Andorra before I mentioned it?”

  She hesitated, then said, “I used to go out to Glen’s to shoot my bow. So did Davy, but we usually went separately, after work. That’s how me and Glen got together. He’d laid out this 3D range along the creek, and I’d walk up the creek toward his house. I was coming back one day when Davy rolled in and he saw me coming down the creek. I told him I’d been shooting on the 3D range, and he said, ‘Then how come you’re on this side of the creek?’—I was on the wrong side for shooting—and I told him something. But, I don’t know, he might have suspected.”

  “If your husband shot these people, you could be in danger yourself,” Virgil said. “Somebody murdered four people in cold blood, and there’s a lot of evidence against Davy. We were hoping you might help us out by wearing a wire . . . A wire is . . .”

  “I know what a wire is,” Apel said. “It seems like I’d be a traitor. We’re still married.”

  “It’s for your own safety,” Jenkins said.

  She gave him the stink eye again and turned back to Virgil. “But if he’s innocent, it could help get him off the hook, right? I mean, other people do have the keys to the Quonset.”

  “If he’s innocent, he’s innocent,” Virgil said. “We don’t want to send an innocent man to jail.”

  She looked at Virgil and nibbled on her lower lip, then said, “Okay. I’ll do it . . . When?”

  “When do you think he’ll be back?”

  “I imagine sometime tomorrow. He took work clothes with him only for tomorrow, and he’s too cheap to buy new.”

  “Then when he gets home, make an excuse to leave, call us, and we’ll wire you up. It takes two minutes.”

  “We can meet at Trudy’s Hi-Life,” Apel said. “I’ve got a few things I want to say to Trudy anyway.”

  * * *

  —

  Though the afternoon was shading into evening, Virgil got on the phone to his nominal boss, Jon Duncan, at home. “I need some more support. I need another warrant and I need another guy,” he said. “Get them to me, and we could finish this tomorrow.”

  He explained further, and Duncan said, “I’ll have him down there by noon, no later than. He’ll bring the warrant with him.”

  Virgil hung up and smiled. “All right,” he said. “We’re operating.”

  * * *

  —

  Virgil slept late the next morning, and he and Jenkins went over to Fairmont to check on Shrake and deliver another Subway. Shrake was healing, with no sign of infection, and he was anxious to get out. “They say maybe tomorrow,” he said, as he munched through the BMT. “What have you guys been up to? I know you’re handicapped with me being in here . . .”

  “We can barely function,” Virgil said.

  “He’s lying,” Jenkins said. “We could wrap this up today. You want to know why?”

  Shrake paused in his chewing, looked from Jenkins to Virgil and back to Jenkins, and said, “Because Flowe
rs is a sneaky little shit?”

  “Exactly,” Jenkins said. He looked at his cell phone, and said, “Couldn’t have said it better myself. It’s almost noon. Let’s go check on Ann.”

  * * *

  —

  The night before, Ann Apel told them that she’d be working all day on the farm ditch job. They’d had Zimmer’s patrol deputies looking for the site, and Zimmer had called before they left for Fairmont and told them where she was working. They drove cross-country to a hilltop a half mile away, and Virgil took a pair of binoculars up on top of the road cut and looked down at her. She was on her Bob-Cat but clearly visible.

  He watched her working, then went back to the Tahoe, got on the phone, and said, “Harry?”

  “Yo.”

  “Go.”

  * * *

  —

  They took the afternoon off. At Jenkins’s suggestion, they drove over to Albert Lea and played nine holes at the Green Lea Golf Course; Jenkins traveled with his clubs as religiously as Virgil traveled with his boat and so had them in the trunk of his car. They had to share the clubs, Jenkins shot a 37 and Virgil shot a 51, but Virgil had insisted on an 18-stroke handicap—“A course I’ve never played, and playing with your clubs? And you with a two handicap? Are you kidding? I ought to get twenty-four strokes”—and won four dollars. As the winner, he had to pay for drinks, which cost him eight dollars and change, so Jenkins walked away happy.

  They’d been waiting in Wheatfield for two hours when Ann Apel called. “He pulled in a minute ago,” she stage-whispered. “I’m going to start a fight. I’ll be down to Trudy’s in ten minutes.”

  “See you there,” Virgil said.

  They waited a block from Apel’s house, saw Davy Apel’s car in the street, saw Ann back out of the garage. They waited a couple of more minutes to see if Davy would follow, but he didn’t move, and then they drove over to Trudy’s.

  Ann was already inside, shouting at Trudy, who cowered behind a used-brassieres table.

  Jenkins said, “All right, ladies, time out, you can have your fight later. We’ve got business to conduct.”

  “We’re not done,” Ann told Trudy.

  As they’d done with Davy, they taped the transmitter to Ann’s back, above the waist of her skirt. She was wearing a loosely woven peasant blouse that completely concealed the transmitter and the microphone.

  Virgil rehearsed her, as he had Davy Apel, and said, “If you see a weapon, yell for help. If he gets physical in any way, yell for help. We want him angry, but if he goes over the top . . .”

  “I know: yell for help.”

  “We’ll be one minute away,” Virgil said. “Leave the side door unlocked when you go in.”

  * * *

  —

  They slid into position a few seconds before Ann Apel drove into the driveway and parked outside the garage. She inserted her key in the side door’s lock, opened the door, and disappeared inside. On the receiver/recorder, they heard the door close, then heard her walk up a couple of steps and shout, “I’m not talking to you!”

  Davy Apel: “We gotta talk. No matter what happens between us, we’re in deep trouble with Flowers. I don’t think he believes us.”

  “I don’t care. I’ve got my alibi, people who saw me when those people were shot—I was miles away, unlike you. You were, like, next door.”

  Davy Apel: “I had nothing to do with it. Nothing to do with it.”

  “I think you knew I had a relationship with Glen. I think you knew that . . .”

  “Not until that fuckin’ Flowers said something.”

  Jenkins laughed, said, “That fuckin’ Flowers,” and Virgil said, “Quiet.”

  “Well anyway, we’re done,” Ann Apel told her husband. “I don’t want you in this house. You scare me.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Davy Apel said. “I pushed my bed into the office, and I’m staying.”

  “Davy . . .”

  Davy Apel went to pleading. “Listen . . . babe . . . you know I wouldn’t hurt a fly. I mean, maybe a fly, but not a person. I never hurt anybody. Have I ever raised a hand to you, even when we had those bad fights? I’m a lover, honey, I’m not a fighter . . .”

  That went on for a while, and finally Ann Apel said, “You can stay, but I’m NOT going to get in your bed. I’m not going to feed you, either; you can get your own goddamn food. Tomorrow, I’m going to talk to Phil and get going on the divorce.”

  “You fuckin’ Phil now? Is that what . . .”

  “Fuck you!” Ann Apel shouted. “Fuck you . . .”

  * * *

  —

  Phil must be an attorney,” Virgil said, as they listened to the fight escalate. Ten minutes later, Ann Apel burst out of the house, got in her car, backed into the street, and sped away.

  “Skinner and Holland,” Jenkins said. “If worse comes to worst, we can always get a potpie.”

  At Skinner & Holland, Jenkins peeled the wire off Apel’s back, and she said, “I’m going to Fairmont to eat dinner. But I’m not leaving that house. I’ll be back there at eight.”

  “I’ll give you a direct phone number—you can put it on your speed dial—in case there’s a problem,” Virgil said. “Maybe . . . it sounds like he’s innocent. We should go look at those guys with the extra Quonset keys.”

  When she was gone, Jenkins said, “She has a nice ass. She could crack a walnut between those cheeks.”

  “You were supposed to be peeling the wire off her back,” Virgil said.

  “Yeah, right.” Jenkins looked at the time on his cell phone. “I hate waiting.”

  27

  They waited. Holland and Skinner came back, and, a while later, Janet Fischer turned up, her face still showing blue and yellow bruises despite heavy makeup. Again, Virgil warned them that he would have to kick them out. “When my guy gets here, it’s cops only.”

  They got around to talking about the Marian apparitions. Virgil wondered if they could expect more of them, but Skinner shook his head.

  “I’ve read up on them, and the Virgin usually only appears once or twice. There were several apparitions at Lourdes—sixteen or eighteen, I think—but only to one girl. There’s never been anything like Wheatfield, where people actually had cell phones and actually got pictures.”

  “It’s a miracle,” Jenkins said.

  “So, there probably won’t be any more,” Virgil said.

  “Well, we hope there might be,” Holland said. “You can never tell.”

  “Probably won’t be any until the pilgrim traffic starts to thin out,” Jenkins said.

  Fischer said, “Hey! If you’re going to think bad thoughts about the Blessed Virgin Mary, keep them to yourself, fathead. My ex-boyfriend disrespected her and he wound up dead.”

  “You think there’s a connection?” Virgil asked.

  “I hope not,” Fischer said. “I hope it’s something else. I hope the Virgin didn’t set something off.”

  * * *

  —

  A few minutes after 11 o’clock, they’d been playing poker for an hour, using a box of washers for chips. Holland lost most of his washers on the first hand and started to take off his shirt, and Fischer said, “Oh, no. Oh, no way.”

  Skinner was the big winner and he gloated; he was becoming seriously offensive when a man knocked on the back door. Before anyone could get up, the man pulled it open and stuck his head inside.

  He was tall, thin, balding, and dressed in dark gray coveralls. There was a red-bordered oval patch on the front of the coveralls, inside which was a name: “Bob.”

  “Hey, Harry, come on in,” Virgil said. To the others, “Sorry, guys, but you’ll have to go.”

  Holland led Skinner and Fischer out through the drapes that separated the back room from the store, but Virgil didn’t hear the front door close. They were all listening
from the other side of the curtain, but he didn’t care as long as he could testify that nobody but himself, Jenkins, and Harry Scorese were in the room, should anybody ask.

  Virgil asked Scorese, “So . . . what?”

  “I put them to bed. I guess they’re early to rise. Anyway, it’s interesting listening,” Scorese said. “We do have to get in there tomorrow and retrieve my mics.”

  “Bottom line?” Jenkins said.

  “You got them, cold,” Scorese said. “They were both involved.”

  “You were right,” Jenkins said to Virgil.

  Virgil said, “I hope you got the good stuff.”

  “I did,” Scorese said.

  He set his recorder on the table, along with a hand-sized speaker, and started pushing buttons.

  * * *

  —

  Davy Apel: “What do you think?”

  Ann Apel: “We’re okay, any way they cut it. No way they’re going to charge us, with our alibis stacked up like that. If they did charge us, they’d never convict. I’d like to move the rifle, but they could be watching. We should wait a few days.”

  Davy Apel: “I’m still worried about the cartridge. I can’t figure out why they didn’t print us. They had that warrant.”

  Ann Apel: “You know what I think? I think they were playing us. I don’t think they’ve got a fingerprint. We were awful careful.”

  Davy Apel: “I thought about that, too. But they better not have a print, because I don’t know how we’d beat that.”

  * * *

  —

  Here’s another good one,” Scorese said, looking at a digital counter on the recorder. More buttons.

  * * *

  —

  Ann Apel: “How long before we can get our money?”

  Davy Apel: “If Margery’s will is read in Florida, I don’t know how long that’ll take. But I think we submit our loan papers up here—I think the money has to be passed from Margery’s estate to Barry’s estate, and we submit to Barry’s estate. We need to get a lawyer involved, but I’m thinking six months, even a year?”