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.
* * *