Holy Ghost

by John Sandford

  He showed it to Apel. “Were you tipping Ann or was she tipping you?” Virgil asked.

  Apel shook his head.

  Later, outside the house again: “She told me once that she’d never go to prison,” Apel told Virgil. “She’s an outdoor girl. The idea of being locked up scares her to death.”

  “She should have thought longer about killing people,” Virgil said.

  “When I began to suspect she was doing that, I told her . . .”

  “Don’t even start,” Virgil said. “You were in this up to your neck.”

  * * *

  —

  Dawn finally arrived an hour after people began asking “Is it getting lighter in the east?” which it hadn’t been, but by 5 o’clock it had. A crowd of Wheatfieldians had gathered across the street, and an ambulance from Fairmont had joined the cop cars, as a precaution.

  “We’ll wait until the sun’s up,” Virgil said. “Jenkins and I will clear the place . . . and”—he looked at Bakker, who was leaning against the fender of his patrol car, the combat shotgun resting behind him—“we’ll take Darren as backup.”

  “Ooo. Gives me a hard-on,” Bakker said.

  Banning: “’Bout time something did.”

  “Hey . . .”

  * * *

  —

  At 5:45, Jenkins kicked the side door.

  He, Virgil, and Bakker were armored up, Jenkins and Bakker both wearing helmets and leading the way in, Virgil trailing. They first went down to the basement, Bakker now leading the way with the muzzle of his shotgun. The basement had wall-top, dirt-grimed windows on all four sides, and they could see that one of the windows under the porch was hanging open. The basement floor was dusty and crisscrossed by woman-sized footprints, which finally went up the stairs.

  It appeared that she’d gone up and down several times—“maybe when Apel was talking to her,” Jenkins said. The basement was empty of anything useful. There were no lightbulbs in the sockets; an old workbench stood against one wall, not worth salvaging; and built-in shelves had been stripped of whatever they’d been holding, except for a pile of decades-old Tarweveld Advertisers. A hot-water tank was tilted on one rusty, broken foot. The centerpiece was a huge old coal-burning furnace, like the abandoned one in the Apels’ house, its heavy metal door hanging open; to one side was a coalbin. Virgil checked the bin, thinking that Apel might have gone out its door, but it had been nailed shut.

  “Gotta be upstairs,” Jenkins said.

  They turned toward the stairs. Virgil said, “Take it slow. Darren, if you want to lead . . . What?”

  Bakker was looking at the furnace, then put a finger to his lips, and said, quietly, to Virgil, “Remember that hotfoot at the Nazis’ place?”

  Jenkins said, “What?”

  Bakker stepped over to the pile of old newspapers, said, aloud, “If we gotta search the house, there’s no point in freezing our asses off while we’re doing it. Help me get some wood in the furnace.”

  He pointed at the ducts coming out of the ancient furnace; one of them was two feet in diameter.

  Virgil said, “Yeah, you’re probably right.” He wrenched one of the rotting shelves off the wall and banged the side of the furnace.

  Bakker took a cigarette lighter out of his pocket, muttered, “I’m probably gonna feel like an asshole,” lit the newspaper, got a smoky fire going on the crumpling newsprint, stuck it in the furnace, and waved it around.

  Ann Apel cried, “Don’t do that.”

  Virgil stuck his head in the furnace. “Ann! Come out of there.” She was in the largest of the ducts.

  Her voice wavered. “I’m going to kill myself.”

  Virgil: “Don’t do that. Ann, c’mon . . .”

  “Go away!”

  “We can’t go away, Ann. Listen, you’ve still got all your rights to a—”

  BANG!

  They all jumped, and Jenkins said, “Oh, no.”

  There was a metallic rattling in the furnace, and a rifle stock fell partway out of the duct where Apel had been hiding. From upstairs, Zimmer shouted, “We’re coming in!”

  Bakker reached into the furnace, grabbed the rifle stock, and pulled it out.

  Virgil was the thinnest of the cops, and he managed to crawl into the furnace up to his waist. Behind him, up the stairs, Zimmer was shouting, “What happened? What happened?”

  Virgil could see one of Apel’s lower legs. He grabbed her foot and pulled, and she slid slowly out of the duct and into the main chamber of the furnace. She was covered with soot and blood, and Virgil twisted her into a semifetal position, her feet toward the furnace door.

  “Help me,” he said to Bakker. Virgil’s hands were now slick with blood, and he and Bakker eased Apel out of the furnace. She was trying to speak but failing, making an ug-ug-ug sound, maybe swallowing blood or bits of her tongue.

  Zimmer looked over Virgil’s shoulder as they lowered her to the basement floor and he turned and shouted up the stairs, “Get those ambulance guys down here. Get them. Bring a stretcher.”

  Jenkins was looking at Apel with an experienced eye. “Put the muzzle under her chin and pulled the trigger. Kinda fucked it up, huh?”

  To Virgil’s somewhat less experienced eye, it appeared that she’d managed to shoot off the end of her jaw, chunks of her lips, and the end of her tongue and the end of her nose. Blood was bubbling from her mouth. Her eyes were open and aware but dimming with shock.

  Virgil shouted, “Hurry it up. Goddamnit!”

  * * *

  —

  After that, it was all medical and forensics—getting Apel up the stairs, bagging the rifle, calling for the crime scene team again; the process of taking statements from the witnesses would start later in the day. Virgil and Bakker went next door to wash off Apel’s blood and some of the soot, and Virgil said, “You did good, Darren. I never would have thought of that, that she might be hiding in the duct.”

  “My dad’s an HVAC guy, I saw him rip out a lot of those old furnaces when I was young,” Bakker said. “I knew you could get somebody inside one of those ducts because, when I was a kid, I made a fort out of them and I got inside myself.”

  Banning took Davy Apel to the lockup, and Jenkins called Shrake to tell him what had happened.

  Shrake said, “Wait, she shot herself? If she shot herself, man, that doesn’t count.”

  * * *

  —

  Virgil called his boss, who wasn’t yet at work, and left a message, telling him about the arrests. When he was done with the immediate routine, the sun was starting its climb up from the horizon, still orange but now tending toward yellow-white. The old house had lilacs growing down one side, and he wandered over to give them a sniff.

  The flowers’ perfume was heavy, and redolent of simpler times.

  Jenkins came over, and said, “You are a sneaky little shit. I gotta say, I admire that in a cop.”

  29

  Zimmer’s deputies took care of most of the paperwork, although Virgil’s share took three hours the next morning. Jenkins said, “Didn’t I hear you say a couple of times—and I quote—‘It’s a guy, and he’s a loner. There aren’t two people involved’—unquote?”

  “I never said anything remotely like that,” Virgil said. “You gotta stop messing with the weed, Jenkins. It’s a lot stronger than the stuff you smoked in school. It’s ruining your memory.”

  “That must be it,” Jenkins said.

  * * *

  —

  They were crouched over laptops in the back room of Skinner & Holland when Shrake wandered in. He was eating a Zinger, and said, “Hey, guys, I hurt too much to do paperwork.”

  “Fuck you, then,” Jenkins said.

  “Where’s my car?” Shrake asked.

  “Back in the alley,” Virgil said. “I got your keys in my Tahoe. I’ll get them.
”

  Shrake stepped toward the back door. He was wearing a beige cotton golf jacket and a pale yellow golf shirt. Virgil stepped up behind him, to follow him out, frowned, and said, “Hey, Shrake, take off your jacket.”

  “What?”

  “Take the jacket off. Here, let me help.”

  Shrake shook his head, said, “Stiff,” and let Virgil help him with the jacket. “What’re you doing?”

  Virgil pivoted him toward Jenkins, who stood up, and said, “Goddamnit.”

  Shrake: “What?”

  “You popped a stitch or two. Or eight. You’re bleeding through your shirt,” Virgil said. He looked at Jenkins. “You want to take him?”

  Shrake: “I’m not . . .”

  Jenkins: “Yes, you are. Don’t fight it; don’t be a jackass. C’mon.”

  The two big men went out the door, and Shrake spent another two days in a Fairmont hospital bed.

  Later in the summer, he told Virgil that Jenkins had been right: the scar tightened up his golf swing and took three strokes off his handicap.

  * * *

  —

  The plastic surgeons at the Mayo were fascinated by Ann Apel’s injuries, and she became something like a lab case. They could do a lot to help her because she hadn’t totally destroyed anything on her face, though she’d injured much of it. She would always speak with a severe impediment because of the damage to her tongue, which was impossible to completely fix. The combination of missing tissue and scarring, and the lack of suitable transplant tissue, meant it would be permanently twisted and rigid.

  Bone grafts repaired her jaw and made it nearly as good as new. Her lips had been ample, and after several surgeries, the bullet damage had been diminished to the point that strangers couldn’t see it at all. Skin and cartilage from her ears re-formed her nose.

  Not that it mattered too much. Disfiguration in a person is easily adjusted to by friends and coworkers, who become familiar with the situation. Since Apel would be in the same penitentiary until she was in her seventies, her friends and coworkers would have plenty of time to adjust.

  * * *

  —

  Davy Apel was tried simultaneously with his wife. They were both convicted and got identical sentences. Their lawyers submitted bills to the Osbornes’ estates and got all the money due to the Apels. Even that wasn’t quite enough: their house and heavy equipment was auctioned off, and the lawyers got that, too.

  The main evidence against them were the recordings picked up by Harry’s bugs, but the rifle, and the threads of fabric taken off a barbed-wire fence and matched to the fabric of Davy Apel’s coat, were the nails in the coffin.

  * * *

  —

  The Wheatfield pilgrims came back when the church reopened, and the numbers even bumped up after the History Channel did a documentary, The Mystery of Mary, in which Wardell Holland, J. J. Skinner, and Wheatfield played starring roles. One shot showed Holland sitting in an office chair with a photo on the wall behind him, the platoon he commanded before he was wounded, all the members looking fit, tough, and happy. After Virgil saw the movie, he recalled searching Holland’s trailer, finding not a sign of his having been in the Army. Passing through Wheatfield several months later, he asked Holland about the shot, and Holland said the movie people got it from a squad leader. “I don’t do memorabilia. Too many people wound up dead. When I start feeling nostalgic, I look at my foot.”

  * * *

  —

  Virgil had been passing through Wheatfield, mainly to get a haircut and shoulder rub from Danielle Visser. She said she’d been involved in a tiff with Holland because she’d exposed his price gouging on “Wheatfield Talk.” “He and Skinner were going over to Walmart and buying potpies for a dollar ninety-five and selling them here for four dollars each.”

  “So, you’re, like, an investigative hairdresser?”

  “Hadn’t thought of it that way, but, yes, that’s right,” she said.

  Roy Visser had been waiting in a customer’s chair, reading the Faribault County Register, and he said, casually, “Get your tit out of his ear, Danny.”

  Pat, the dog, who was sitting by his feet, panted in agreement, and Visser reached down and gave him a scratch.

  * * *

  —

  Margery Osborne hadn’t changed her will to benefit the church, so St. Mary’s got nothing from her. Barry Osborne didn’t have a will. The total of Barry’s estate, which included his mother’s, after everything was shaken out, amounted to a little over two million dollars. The lawyers got a third of it, and the rest went to some impecunious Arkansas cousins who hadn’t seen or spoken to the Osbornes in decades. For them, the money was Manna from Minnesota. They spent it all in four years and were broke again, though they still had four nice cars.

  * * *

  —

  Janet Fischer met a divorced instructor in wind generator repair at the local community college. She got pregnant and married, in that order. The baby had her yellow-blond hair and blue eyes, and she and her friends all sighed in relief, as did Skinner, then a student at the University of Minnesota. Fischer made a claim for an insurance company reward for turning in the Van Den Bergs on the Lego theft. After some threatened litigation in both directions, she collected seventy-five hundred dollars of the pledged ten-thousand-dollar reward, reduced because a portion of the Legos were not recovered. Of the seventy-five hundred, a lawyer got a third. With the remaining five thousand, Fischer bought herself a new, and larger, engagement ring, and a new clarinet for her then fiancé.

  * * *

  —

  Rose and Clay Ford did well in his business. He was not one for paperwork or bill collecting, but she was. Rose also pushed Ford into pistol competitions, which he hadn’t been much interested in since he was primarily a rifleman. She liked handguns, though, and by cross-training each other, they came to dominate their respective divisions of the Midwestern competitions of the International Practical Shooting Confederation. Rose might even have been a tad better with the lighter calibers.

  * * *

  —

  Father Brice couldn’t root the last vestiges of skepticism from his heart, but the archbishop of St. Paul and Minneapolis took him aside, and said, “George, accept what is. A poor parish has been revived, a town is given new life, and coreligionists from all over North America come here to celebrate the Virgin.”

  “You’re ordering me to believe?”

  The bishop shook his head. “No, I’m asking you to relax.”

  * * *

  —

  As Virgil was packing up to leave Wheatfield after finishing the investigative paperwork, Skinner wandered into the back room, and asked, “You want a free Zinger?”

  “No, thanks. How about you? What are you going to do? You gonna grow up and be a cop?”

  “I don’t think so,” Skinner said. “You know what? What you do would make me feel sad. I know you’re doing good, and that there’s a satisfaction and a thrill involved, but it would mostly make me feel sad. I don’t want to go through life feeling sad.”

  “You can’t work in this store your whole life,” Virgil said. “Man, you just can’t do that.”

  “I won’t. I’m stashing away the money, and I’ll figure something out. I can’t sing or play music, I can’t draw or dance, I’m not interested in architecture, but I’m a good writer. I might write books.”

  “Not exactly the fastest road to riches,” Virgil said. He looked around. “Where’d I put that Glock?”

  “I think I saw it on the radiator.”

  “Oh, yeah.” Virgil stepped across the room, picked up the pistol, and stuck it in his duffel bag. “So you have ideas for a book?”

  “Not yet. My biggest problem is, ignorance,” Skinner said. “I know all about this town and a little bit about women, but not nearly enough about women. Nothing a
bout children, except from having been one. I need to go to college; I need some street time. Maybe even some Army time, like you and Holland. I need to get out in the world.”

  “You’re a smart kid,” Virgil said. “Do all of that. When I told my father that I wasn’t going to be a minister of any kind, he said that I should never take cover in life, that I should stand out in the wind. Feel it. I’m trying to do that.”

  “Standing out in the wind,” Skinner said. “I like it. I’ll do that.”

  * * *

  —

  The next week, driving into Mankato for the much-anticipated ultrasound, Frankie said, “Listen, Virgie, I know what I’ve said . . . how I’ve been talking . . . I didn’t mean it . . . but I know what I’ve said about having a daughter, and it sounds like that’s all I want, but that’s not true. If it’s another boy, I think that’s wonderful. You’d be a boy’s greatest father. My boys think you’re a great dad. Sam worships you.”

  “Hey, I don’t care,” Virgil said. “Either one is absolutely great with me. I’m so looking forward to this—it’s an adventure. I’m praying that the kid’s healthy, that’s all. Boy, girl, I don’t care.”

  The doc, whose name was Karel, came out to meet them. They’d both known him socially for years. He was a jolly fat man with a Czech accent, and he called them Virgie and Frankie. He took Frankie away and made Virgie sit on a couch.

  Frankie was out of the lab in a half hour, looking concerned. “I could see the images of the video screen, but I’ve got no idea of what they were. They looked like potato salad,” she said.