—
Janet Fischer met a divorced instructor in wind generator repair at the local community college. She got pregnant and married, in that order. The baby had her yellow-blond hair and blue eyes, and she and her friends all sighed in relief, as did Skinner, then a student at the University of Minnesota. Fischer made a claim for an insurance company reward for turning in the Van Den Bergs on the Lego theft. After some threatened litigation in both directions, she collected seventy-five hundred dollars of the pledged ten-thousand-dollar reward, reduced because a portion of the Legos were not recovered. Of the seventy-five hundred, a lawyer got a third. With the remaining five thousand, Fischer bought herself a new, and larger, engagement ring, and a new clarinet for her then fiancé.
* * *
—
Rose and Clay Ford did well in his business. He was not one for paperwork or bill collecting, but she was. Rose also pushed Ford into pistol competitions, which he hadn’t been much interested in since he was primarily a rifleman. She liked handguns, though, and by cross-training each other, they came to dominate their respective divisions of the Midwestern competitions of the International Practical Shooting Confederation. Rose might even have been a tad better with the lighter calibers.
* * *
—
Father Brice couldn’t root the last vestiges of skepticism from his heart, but the archbishop of St. Paul and Minneapolis took him aside, and said, “George, accept what is. A poor parish has been revived, a town is given new life, and coreligionists from all over North America come here to celebrate the Virgin.”
“You’re ordering me to believe?”
The bishop shook his head. “No, I’m asking you to relax.”
* * *
—
As Virgil was packing up to leave Wheatfield after finishing the investigative paperwork, Skinner wandered into the back room, and asked, “You want a free Zinger?”
“No, thanks. How about you? What are you going to do? You gonna grow up and be a cop?”
“I don’t think so,” Skinner said. “You know what? What you do would make me feel sad. I know you’re doing good, and that there’s a satisfaction and a thrill involved, but it would mostly make me feel sad. I don’t want to go through life feeling sad.”
“You can’t work in this store your whole life,” Virgil said. “Man, you just can’t do that.”
“I won’t. I’m stashing away the money, and I’ll figure something out. I can’t sing or play music, I can’t draw or dance, I’m not interested in architecture, but I’m a good writer. I might write books.”
“Not exactly the fastest road to riches,” Virgil said. He looked around. “Where’d I put that Glock?”
“I think I saw it on the radiator.”
“Oh, yeah.” Virgil stepped across the room, picked up the pistol, and stuck it in his duffel bag. “So you have ideas for a book?”
“Not yet. My biggest problem is, ignorance,” Skinner said. “I know all about this town and a little bit about women, but not nearly enough about women. Nothing about children, except from having been one. I need to go to college; I need some street time. Maybe even some Army time, like you and Holland. I need to get out in the world.”
“You’re a smart kid,” Virgil said. “Do all of that. When I told my father that I wasn’t going to be a minister of any kind, he said that I should never take cover in life, that I should stand out in the wind. Feel it. I’m trying to do that.”
“Standing out in the wind,” Skinner said. “I like it. I’ll do that.”
* * *
—
The next week, driving into Mankato for the much-anticipated ultrasound, Frankie said, “Listen, Virgie, I know what I’ve said . . . how I’ve been talking . . . I didn’t mean it . . . but I know what I’ve said about having a daughter, and it sounds like that’s all I want, but that’s not true. If it’s another boy, I think that’s wonderful. You’d be a boy’s greatest father. My boys think you’re a great dad. Sam worships you.”
“Hey, I don’t care,” Virgil said. “Either one is absolutely great with me. I’m so looking forward to this—it’s an adventure. I’m praying that the kid’s healthy, that’s all. Boy, girl, I don’t care.”
The doc, whose name was Karel, came out to meet them. They’d both known him socially for years. He was a jolly fat man with a Czech accent, and he called them Virgie and Frankie. He took Frankie away and made Virgie sit on a couch.
Frankie was out of the lab in a half hour, looking concerned. “I could see the images of the video screen, but I’ve got no idea of what they were. They looked like potato salad,” she said.
Virgil was instantly on guard. “There’s nothing wrong?”
“I . . . don’t know. He said everything was okay, but he was acting a little odd, said he wanted to look at the printouts.”
Karel came out five minutes later, carrying a piece of paper.
Virgil: “Everything okay?”
Karel: “Everything is fine. Everything is coming up tulips, as we say in my country.”
Frankie: “Oh, thank God.” She leaned across and kissed Virgil on the lips and then turned back to Karel, and asked, “So . . . boy or girl?”
Karel smiled. “Well, folks . . . it looks like we’ve got one of each.”
* * *
—
Frankie was jubilant.
She was on the phone all the way back to the house, calling everybody she knew. Sam, her youngest son, a nine-year-old, met them in the driveway, and asked, “Well, do I get another brother?”
“You get a brother and a sister,” Virgil said, still stunned. “We got twins.”
“Holy shit,” Sam said.
* * *
—
Later, Virgil, Sam, and Honus the yellow dog were doing baseball fielding drills in the side yard, under the apple trees, Virgil with the bat, Sam at second, Honus in the outfield.
Virgil hit what might have been a Texas Leaguer, and the dog and the kid ran into each other going after it, tumbled into a pile, and Sam started laughing, and the dog ran around him, licking his face, and Virgil felt a surge of happiness so strong that he had to turn away.
At that moment, Frankie wandered out of the house, looking terrific in a loose hippie dress with flowers on it. She came over, stood up on tiptoe, nipped him on the ear, said, “I love you.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
John Sandford is the pseudonym for the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist John Camp. He is the author of twenty-eight Prey novels, most recently Twisted Prey; four Kidd novels, eleven Virgil Flowers novels, and six other books, including three YA novels coauthored with his wife, Michele Cook.