—
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 Flowers 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.”