Holy Ghost

by John Sandford

  Ann Apel: “Stupid loan. I don’t know what the heck we were thinking.”

  Davy Apel: “We were flush with the money from your mom, and it sounded like a great idea . . . lots of traffic and all. Shoulda worked.”

  * * *

  —

  And another,” Scorese said.

  * * *

  —

  Ann Apel: “I’m not sure it was necessary to kill Barry. That could be our biggest problem.”

  Davy Apel: “Maybe I panicked. But he was looking at me weird, and . . . I don’t know . . . I think he would have said something to Flowers. If he had, then Flowers could have snuck up on us, somehow. Could have used Barry against us.”

  Ann Apel: “But if not for Barry, the cops would never have talked to us.”

  Davy Apel: “They would have, sooner or later. When they spotted the interest payments. You know what we could have done is, we could have gone to Margery, and said, ‘Look, Barry owes us almost a quarter million, and we need the money. Help us out.’ I think she might have. Then . . . I feel kinda bad about Glen. Not too bad, since you were fuckin’ him.”

  Ann Apel: “I don’t wanna hear—”

  Davy Apel: “I’ll tell you one thing. We’re gonna have an amicable divorce, split fifty-fifty. I won’t take a penny less. And I don’t want to hear you sneaking around the house at night or you could get shot as a burglar.”

  Ann Apel: “Fuck you, David. You better stay away from my end of the house or you’ll get the same thing that Glen did. I’ve still got that old Woodsman under the bed, and I’m carrying it during the day.”

  Davy Apel: “Well, fuck you back, bitch . . .”

  * * *

  —

  One more,” Scorese said.

  * * *

  —

  Davy Apel: “I hope to hell you didn’t touch that grille with your bare hands. Flowers said something about bringing a DNA guy down.”

  Ann Apel: “I had Tom Benson’s old work gloves on, when I climbed up and down, and I didn’t touch anything with my bare hands except the rifle. I hope you didn’t—you’re as clumsy as a circus clown. But, both our DNA is all over the machine, since we work with it every day. I don’t think that’s a problem.”

  * * *

  —

  There are some more bits and pieces, but those are the best ones,” Scorese said. He looked pleased with himself.

  * * *

  —

  It’s more than enough,” Jenkins said. “It sounded like they were all over the house. How many bugs did you stick in there anyway?”

  “Eighteen. We could have recorded a rock ’n’ roll record,” Scorese said. “I got one in the bathroom, Ann Apel took a leak that must have gone on for five minutes.”

  “Can’t wait to hear that one,” Virgil said. And, “I’ll call Zimmer.”

  “Take them tonight?” Jenkins asked.

  “Why not,” Virgil said. “They’ll be tired and disoriented. We’ll separate them, see if we can get them talking about who did what.”

  * * *

  —

  Scorese traveled in a van full of electronic equipment and didn’t like to leave it where somebody might break into it. “The recordings are digital. I’ll ship everything back to the office tonight and leave a thumb drive copy for you guys, and a copy of the warrant, and I’ll keep the originals. If we can get this done early enough, I might pull my mics and drive back tonight.”

  “Don’t run off the highway and kill yourself,” Virgil said. “We’ll need your testimony.”

  “From your lips to God’s ears,” Scorese said.

  Virgil had been looking past Scorese’s head, and he saw the curtain between the store and the back room twitch. To Scorese he said, “Listen, one more question. Suppose somebody made a recording of a person speaking but nobody knew whether it was an actual person speaking or another recording. Could a guy like you tell which it was? A recording or a natural voice?”

  Scorese said, “Maybe. If the original voice recording was good enough and there wasn’t much ambient noise between the second recorder and the first one . . . and if the acoustics were good.”

  “What if none of that was good? Bad acoustics, recordings done with iPhones, people screaming?”

  “Not a chance,” Scorese said.

  * * *

  —

  Holland stuck his head through the curtain, and said, “We were out here working on inventory, but I couldn’t help overhearing some of that.”

  “There’s a surprise,” Jenkins said.

  “So, what are we doing?” Skinner edged through the drapes, behind Holland, and Fischer poked her head out behind Skinner.

  “Who are these people?” Scorese asked.

  “Store owners. All three of them. Potpie pushers,” Jenkins said.

  “At the very most, you’re going to spectate,” Virgil said to Holland, Skinner, and Fischer. “We’ll get some deputies down here to help with the arrests. I don’t want you around before we actually go into the house and grab them. When we’ve got them, you could stand out on the lawn and watch.”

  “How’d you figure this out?” Skinner asked.

  “Jenkins kept saying the circumstantial evidence against them was too good, and he was right,” Virgil said.

  “Of course I was,” Jenkins said.

  “There was a case in California last year that failed because there were two possible suspects, both claimed to be innocent, both blamed the other guy, and the juries couldn’t manage to convict either one. Once they were acquitted, they couldn’t be tried again. This one felt like that. I bet they read that story when they were working this out. Anyway, if both the Apels had separate alibis and they did it, then it had to be both of them. When you look at their alibis, they never both had an alibi for the same shooting. One was always available to shoot.”

  “That’s one of the coolest things I ever heard,” Holland said. “Let’s call the cops.”

  * * *

  —

  Zimmer was in bed but said he’d be in Wheatfield in half an hour. “Hot dog! It’s about time. How many deputies do you want? I got five on the road right now.”

  “Five would be good,” Virgil said.

  * * *

  —

  The group sat around and told one another a few truths, but mostly exaggerations and lies, about other crimes they’d heard of, while waiting for Zimmer. The deputies began rolling in fifteen minutes after Virgil called the sheriff. They included Lucy Banning, who went into conference with Fischer about her injuries, and Darren Bakker, the deputy who’d been with Virgil on his visit with the Nazis. Bakker came in carrying a combat pump twelve-gauge and a box of shells and started loading up, which made Virgil and Jenkins nervous.

  “This will be smooth. Smooth, uncomplicated arrests,” Virgil said.

  “Of course it will be,” Bakker said. He jacked a shell into the chamber and clicked on the safety. To Holland: “I didn’t have a chance to eat tonight; you got any of them potpies?”

  So they cranked up the microwave, and when Zimmer arrived, Virgil had propped open the back door to disperse the odor of hot chicken and turkey. “You can smell that all the way down the block,” Zimmer said. “Smells good.”

  “If I ever see another potpie, I’m gonna kill myself,” Jenkins said. “Or maybe Skinner.”

  Virgil laid out the plan. One group of deputies, led by Jenkins, would drive over to Osborne’s house and park on the street, then walk around Osborne’s and spread out in the Apels’ backyard “in case one of the Apels is a runner.”

  The other group, led by Zimmer and Virgil, would arrive in front of the Apels’ house and cover the front and side lawns, while Virgil, Zimmer, and Banning would go to the front door and ring the bell and pound until they got an answer, and, if they didn’t, they’d ki
ck in the door.

  “Best to have a woman with us because we’re arresting a woman,” Virgil said.

  “And we need to have a sheriff there so he can claim credit for the arrest the next time he runs for reelection,” Zimmer said.

  “No shooting,” Virgil said. “It’s better that they get away than we get in a shoot-out. We can always pick them up later.”

  “They killed four people,” one of the deputies said. “They hurt a cop and two more people. I don’t have any sympathy for them.”

  Zimmer said, “Ronnie, if you shoot somebody, I’ll fire your ass.”

  Virgil said, “Yeah, and most of the time, when somebody gets shot, it’s because they think another deputy is the runner and they shoot him. Or her. We know the Apels have access to a gun, and some other weapons, and that makes me unhappy. If you see somebody with a gun or a bow, you get on your stomach and yell for help and point them out to us. Now, everybody have a flashlight that works?”

  * * *

  —

  A layer of clouds had rolled through during the afternoon but had cleared out, and the sky was burning with Van Gogh stars when they loaded into their cars and headed for the Apels’ house. For no other reason than the random arrangement of parking spots, Virgil’s group got out first. And because they didn’t have to go around a block, they arrived at the Apels’ house before Jenkins’s group got to Osborne’s.

  Ann Apel was lying on her bed with a laptop, reading a Cosmopolitan article about “7 Things to Know Before You Start Dating a Friend,” when she heard too many cars in the street. She was still dressed but barefoot. She put the laptop down and looked out her bedroom window and saw the line of cars pulling to the side of the street.

  She froze for two seconds, watching, then panicked.

  “David! The cops are here, the cops are here . . .”

  She grabbed her shoes and ran for the stairs.

  * * *

  —

  Davy Apel was sleeping in the home office, where he’d dragged his bed. He heard Ann scream and he rolled over. He heard her scream again; this time, he sat up, still not comprehending, heard her thundering down the stairs, heard her, clearly this third time, yell, “David! David! The cops are here, a whole bunch of them. They must be coming to get us . . .”

  He heard her running through the house, and as he got his feet on the floor, the back door slammed. Still confused, he pulled on his jeans and hurried through the house to the front room to look out the window at the street. As he got there, he saw Flowers, Zimmer, and a woman deputy walking up the porch steps.

  Then he heard some shouting, from the yard, and Flowers ran back down the steps, leaving Zimmer and the deputy standing there.

  Run, hide, or . . . what?

  Running and hiding would be pointless. The cops were all over the place. If he resisted, they might shoot him—you heard about that all the time, on the TV news, and Apel made a snap decision: he didn’t want to die that night. He walked to the front door, unlocked it, and looked out at Zimmer. “Karl? What’s going on?”

  Zimmer said, “Davy—Mr. Apel—you’re under arrest. Step out here, and keep your hands where I can see them.”

  Apel heard more shouting from behind the house, and asked, “Under arrest? What for? And what’s going on back there?”

  But he thought he knew: Ann had panicked. They’d talked about what to do if the cops, looking at the accumulated circumstantial evidence, had come for them. They’d keep their mouths shut, get a lawyer.

  But Ann had panicked. Was she going for the gun?

  * * *

  —

  When the shouting started, Virgil ran down the porch steps and around the side of the house to the back, trailed by Bakker, with his shotgun. In the backyard, one of the deputies—Ronnie?—shouted, “The woman ran for it. She went that way.”

  He pointed to the house next to the Apels’, which was dark.

  The deputy had a pistol in his hand, and Virgil shouted, “Put the gun away,” and then Jenkins ran around from the other side of the house, and called, “She must be inside the house; she didn’t run past it.”

  Virgil ran to the front of the house and up the steps and banged on the door. No response. Skinner and Holland had arrived in Holland’s pickup, and Skinner shouted, “Nobody lives there. It’s empty.”

  The door was locked, and Virgil shouted, “Check the doors, she must be inside,” and he ran back down to the side lawn.

  “This one’s locked,” a deputy called from the back.

  “Yeah, so’s this one,” another deputy called from the side of the house.

  “Then where did she go?” Virgil asked Jenkins. “You sure she didn’t get past you?”

  “Positive. I saw her running across the yard and I cut around the house the other way, thinking I’d catch her, but I never saw her.”

  Virgil was looking at the house, and said, “I bet she went under the porch.”

  Jenkins looked at the porch: its floor was four feet off the ground, with a railing around it; the lattice that skirted it to the ground looked shaky, at best.

  “That’d tell us why she disappeared so quick,” Jenkins said. “We need more flashlights here. You got your thermonuclear?”

  Virgil said, “Yeah, but . . . that could be where she stashed the rifle. Out of the house but right there, if she needed it.”

  * * *

  —

  Banning and Zimmer were on the street with Davy Apel, who had his hands cuffed behind him. Apel said, “I’d be careful. Ann can be violent. I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s the one who killed those people . . .”

  “Ah, shut up,” Virgil said. “Your house is wired for sound: we’ve heard everything you’ve said to each other since noon, you’re toast. But if Ann’s got a gun, and if she shoots somebody . . . whatever bad is going to happen to you will get a lot worse. So you better tell me: does she have a gun?”

  Apel put his head down, muttering to himself, looked sideways at Banning, then looked at Virgil, and said, “Maybe. I mean, it’s her gun, she said Glen Andorra gave it to her. I told her I didn’t want it in the house, and I think she might have put it over there, under the porch.”

  “We got eight cops here. If she starts shooting, we’ll kill her. You want to go over to the porch and tell her that?”

  * * *

  —

  He would, Apel said. “This whole thing, start to finish, was her idea. I have alibis, man. I mean, I didn’t know what she was doing until this morning . . .”

  “Bull,” Virgil said. “C’mon, we’re gonna talk to her.”

  * * *

  —

  They went to the far side of the porch, and Apel pointed to a section of the lattice skirt, and said, “I noticed one time that the skirt is loose there . . .”

  Virgil said, “Then talk to her.”

  Jenkins, Zimmer, and the deputies all had high-powered flashlights illuminating the latticework. Virgil and Apel approached from the side of the house, and Virgil said, “Stay behind the house . . . Call her.”

  Apel called, “Honey? Babe? You better come out of there. Flowers is saying they’ll kill you if you shoot the gun that Glen gave you.”

  Silence. “Sweetie, come out of there. They know you’re in there . . . Just say something. They won’t hurt you if you come out.”

  Even deeper silence.

  “Listen, Annie, honeybun, Flowers says they put bugs in the house and heard us talking today. It’s over with. Please come out.”

  Nothing, not even a rat rustling under the porch.

  Virgil said, “Goddamnit, let’s back up.” He led Apel away from the side of the house and circled around until they were behind the cop cars in the street, where he passed Apel to Zimmer, who passed Apel to Banning, and said, “Put him in your car.”

  Virgil looked at
his watch: 12:30.

  Jenkins came up. “What are we doing?”

  “Need to talk to the mayor.” Virgil, Jenkins, and Zimmer walked over to Holland’s pickup. Skinner and Holland were standing behind it, and Virgil asked, “You know anything about the house?”

  “Belongs to the county; they took it for taxes,” Holland said.

  “I suppose the electricity’s been turned off?”

  “Long ago. All the utilities are shut down,” Holland said. “Some Mexican folks took a look at it, but it wasn’t well maintained when the Boks lived there—they let it go to seed—so the Mexicans went somewhere else. The place is a wreck, from what I hear.”

  Virgil looked at his watch again, and said to Zimmer, “It starts getting light around five o’clock, the sun’s up at five-thirty. Since we’re pretty sure that she’s either under the porch, or in the house, I think we ought to wait until daylight. Trying to the clear the house in the dark, with flashlights, is a good way to get shot, if she’s inclined to shoot.”

  “Four and a half hours,” Zimmer said. “If it keeps somebody from getting hurt, I’d say the wait is worth it. Hope she’s in there.”

  28

  They walked Davy Apel to the house twice during the night, thinking that as time passed, and Ann had more time to think, she might call it quits. She never answered him. Quite a few of the deputies thought she’d gotten past Jenkins’s group and they started poking around the neighborhood.

  Another deputy came out of the Apels’ house with a piece of white typing paper that had been crunched into a ball and thrown in the wastebasket. He’d flattened it out and showed it to Virgil. Virgil read “I’m wearing a wire,” written with something like a broad Sharpie pen.