—
The next morning was tedious, going back and forth from the cell like a trolley car, talking to the lawyer, signing papers for the cops and finally for his release. The local prosecutor stood in for the state at the bail hearing and agreed to release the brothers if they both wore GPS ankle monitors and put up their major assets—their houses—as bond for their later appearances in court.
In Larry Van Den Berg’s case, the judge agreed that he could continue to drive his tractor-trailer cross-country if he agreed to sign a waiver of extradition processes from whatever state he tried to hide in, if he did that. “I don’t want to deprive you of your source of income before you’re found guilty of a crime, but if you abuse this agreement in any way, I can assure you that I’ll put you in jail, and leave you there,” the judge said.
Van Den Berg agreed, and after his attorney gave him a forceful nudge, thanked the judge for his consideration.
Outside, the lawyer was up-front. “If we go to trial, I’ll need twenty thousand dollars. I’ll need a down payment of ten thousand, to cover expenses and all, and I’ll need it in the next couple of weeks. We can work out a schedule on the rest, but I’ll need the ten right away. If there’s no way you can get it, well, the public defender here is . . . okay.”
“Oh, fuck that,” Ralph Van Den Berg said. “I know that guy.”
Larry Van Den Berg said, “I’ll get the money. I got some of it now.”
He had to get back to Wheatfield. He had eight thousand dollars that he could get at, but it was hard-earned, and he was loathe to spend it if there was any alternative.
Which he now thought he had.
The Lewis County sheriff released his tractor unit, and Van Den Berg said good-bye to his brother and headed home, the GPS monitor already chafing his ankle. He had an hour on the road to indulge in fantasies in which he shot that fuckin’ Flowers and that fuckin’ Skinner, and even that fuckin’ Janet, who, if she’d kept her fuckin’ mouth shut after the accident—he was now thinking of the beating as an accident that was, basically, Fischer’s fault—nothing would have happened, and he’d be a free man.
But mostly he thought about money and about the Wheatfield shooter. He might not be absolutely sure he had the right guy, but he was fairly sure. While the guy was definitely a psycho—he had to be to do what he’d done—he was also a weenie: Van Den Berg would put the guy up against the wall and squeeze him. How much? The lawyer had said he’d need twenty thousand through the course of the trial, and the shooter could get that much, for sure, with a new mortgage on his house.
Maybe. If he really was the shooter.
* * *
—
Back in Wheatfield, he parked his truck in the yard, and as he turned to get out he saw a curtain move in a side window.
What?
He got a tire iron out of a door pocket and carried it with him to the front door, used his key to get in, and pushed through . . . and found Janet Fischer, staring at him from the hallway. Her arms were full of clothes and a pillow. “I’m leaving right now. I came to get my stuff.”
Van Den Berg’s eyes narrowed. He tossed the tire iron aside, and asked, “How’d you get in? You gave back the key.”
“The back door was open.”
“Bullshit. I locked up tight before I left, and I got good locks.” He stalked toward her, pushed the pile of clothing—hard—forced her back. Pushed her again, and again, until she was in the kitchen. He looked at the back door, which had little, diamond-shaped windows set at eye height, so he could see out to the porch. One of the diamonds had been broken in, and there was glass on the floor. “You fuckin’ broke in.”
“I wanted to get my stuff while you were away . . .”
Her black eye had started to turn purple, her lip was still swollen, but Van Den Berg didn’t even think about that. What he did was, he hit her in the other eye, and she screamed and dropped the clothes and put her hands up, and he hit her again, high in the stomach, knocking the breath out of her, and she sagged against the kitchen counter, and pleaded, “Larry, don’t . . . Larry, don’t . . .”
He hit her in the mouth again, and she went down, and he kicked her in the thigh once, twice, and finally thought, now what? And, I’m out on bail . . .
He looked at her, cowering on the kitchen floor, and backed away and took his cell phone from his pocket and dialed 911. When the county officer answered, he said, “I found somebody broke into my house and I’m holding her until a cop gets here. She attacked me . . .”
* * *
—
Virgil had talked to Frankie the night before, and she’d said he better come out to the farm. “I’m kinda hung up here.”
“By what?”
“You’ll see when you get here,” she said.
When he got there, he found a strange car, a new Chevrolet, parked in the driveway; and when he went inside, he found Frankie sitting in the kitchen with her sister, Sparkle, who was apparently the hang-up. Sparkle was a thin, pretty blonde of suspect morality with a freshly minted Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota.
She said to Virgil, “How ya doin’, good-lookin’?”
“Sparkle was going by on her way back to the Cities. She dropped in to see how I was,” Frankie said.
“So how are you?” Virgil asked, taking a chair.
“Today wasn’t bad, until Sparkle got here,” Frankie said. The sisters loved each other—maybe—but had a thorny relationship; Sparkle deliberately exacerbated the thorniness by flirting with Virgil.
Frankie asked him how the investigation was going, and Virgil said, “We might finally be seeing some movement,” and then had to explain it to Sparkle, and Sparkle asked, “Listen, if you were to arrest me for some reason . . . would you put handcuffs on me?”
“Probably around your ankles,” Frankie said. “Then you wouldn’t be able to spread your legs apart.”
Sparkle: “Says the woman who has five children with five different men and has a bat in the cave with a sixth guy.”
“Maybe I ought to go home and mow the lawn,” Virgil said.
* * *
—
Sparkle left a half hour later, after some further snarling and spitting, promising to return as soon as she could. Virgil and Frankie got Frankie’s youngest kid off to bed—the others could take care of themselves—and then they sat in the farmhouse living room and talked about the case. Frankie suggested they get a pad of paper and think up and list all the possible reasons for the murders in Wheatfield.
“There’s greed,” she said. “Money—that’s number one. Always is.”
“Or a religious kink in a crazy guy,” Virgil suggested.
“Outright love or hate,” Frankie said.
“Does somebody benefit if the town is ruined? Or was somebody damaged when it started doing well?”
“That should be under ‘Money,’” Frankie said.
“I’m not making that kind of a list, where there are subtopics,” Virgil said. “Besides, the benefit or damage wouldn’t have to be financial, it could be psychological.”
Frankie was skeptical. “Somebody got hurt when the Virgin Mary showed up? How?”
“Don’t know.”
“Something else you have to rethink,” she said. “You’re stuck on the idea that this whole thing goes back to the church and the apparitions and the change in the town. Maybe it has nothing to do with the town or the church or the Virgin Mary. Maybe it’s totally personal. Something completely off the wall.”
“That’s a thought,” Virgil said. “Maybe those people got shot because, you know, they were standing where the shooter could see them.”
* * *
—
No fooling around that night.