—
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 kick 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?”
* * *
—