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.
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.”