Virgil had talked to Frankie the night before, and she’d said he better come out to the farm. “I’m kinda hung up here.”

“By what?”

“You’ll see when you get here,” she said.

When he got there, he found a strange car, a new Chevrolet, parked in the driveway; and when he went inside, he found Frankie sitting in the kitchen with her sister, Sparkle, who was apparently the hang-up. Sparkle was a thin, pretty blonde of suspect morality with a freshly minted Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota.

She said to Virgil, “How ya doin’, good-lookin’?”

“Sparkle was going by on her way back to the Cities. She dropped in to see how I was,” Frankie said.

“So how are you?” Virgil asked, taking a chair.

“Today wasn’t bad, until Sparkle got here,” Frankie said. The sisters loved each other—maybe—but had a thorny relationship; Sparkle deliberately exacerbated the thorniness by flirting with Virgil.

Frankie asked him how the investigation was going, and Virgil said, “We might finally be seeing some movement,” and then had to explain it to Sparkle, and Sparkle asked, “Listen, if you were to arrest me for some reason . . . would you put handcuffs on me?”

“Probably around your ankles,” Frankie said. “Then you wouldn’t be able to spread your legs apart.”

Sparkle: “Says the woman who has five children with five different men and has a bat in the cave with a sixth guy.”

“Maybe I ought to go home and mow the lawn,” Virgil said.

* * *

—

Sparkle left a half hour later, after some further snarling and spitting, promising to return as soon as she could. Virgil and Frankie got Frankie’s youngest kid off to bed—the others could take care of themselves—and then they sat in the farmhouse living room and talked about the case. Frankie suggested they get a pad of paper and think up and list all the possible reasons for the murders in Wheatfield.

“There’s greed,” she said. “Money—that’s number one. Always is.”

“Or a religious kink in a crazy guy,” Virgil suggested.

“Outright love or hate,” Frankie said.

“Does somebody benefit if the town is ruined? Or was somebody damaged when it started doing well?”

“That should be under ‘Money,’” Frankie said.

“I’m not making that kind of a list, where there are subtopics,” Virgil said. “Besides, the benefit or damage wouldn’t have to be financial, it could be psychological.”

Frankie was skeptical. “Somebody got hurt when the Virgin Mary showed up? How?”

“Don’t know.”

“Something else you have to rethink,” she said. “You’re stuck on the idea that this whole thing goes back to the church and the apparitions and the change in the town. Maybe it has nothing to do with the town or the church or the Virgin Mary. Maybe it’s totally personal. Something completely off the wall.”

“That’s a thought,” Virgil said. “Maybe those people got shot because, you know, they were standing where the shooter could see them.”

* * *

—

No fooling around that night.

Virgil hadn’t been gone long enough for reunion sex, and Frankie’s stomach was still unsettled. Still, it was nice to be back in a familiar bed, and one that was long enough for him. The Vissers’ bed was too short, and he couldn’t stretch out his toes.

He was so comfortable that he wound up sleeping late, and then lingered over breakfast with Frankie, and it was 10 o’clock when he headed south again, Honus the yellow dog and the youngest kid, Sam, standing in the driveway to watch him go. When he crossed I-90, he called Jenkins, who said that he and Shrake had driven to Fairmont to get breakfast. “We can be back in twenty minutes, if there’s a problem.”

“Take your time,” Virgil said. “I don’t know what the fuck we’re doing.”

* * *

—

Five minutes later, Zimmer called.

“We got a situation,” Zimmer said. “Are you in Wheatfield?”

“I’m a mile north, in my truck.”

“I got a deputy heading your way, but she’s ten minutes out.”

“What happened?” Virgil asked, thinking, another one?

“It’s that damned Van Den Berg. The way I understand it, Janet Fischer went over to his house to get some clothes, and other personal stuff, and he caught her. He says there was a fight. He beat her up again, but he’s saying he caught her in the house, that she broke in, and that he wants her charged with breaking and entering.”

“I’m on my way,” Virgil said.

* * *

—

When he got to Van Den Berg’s house, the front door was standing open, and Virgil stuck his head inside. He could see straight through to the kitchen, where Fischer was sitting on the floor with her knees pulled up to her chin, weeping, and Van Den Berg was hovering over her, his fists balled up.

Virgil knocked once and pushed inside. “Did you hit her again?” he asked.

Van Den Berg pointed off to his side. “Look at my door. She trashed my door, getting in, and was stealing stuff.”

“It’s my stuff,” Fischer cried. “It’s my clothes.”

“She broke in!” Van Den Berg shouted.

Virgil, stepping into the kitchen, looked at the door and saw the broken glass. He asked, “Did she break it or did you break it so you could blame her?”

“She broke it! Of course she broke it,” Van Den Berg screeched. “What the fuck?”

“He broke it,” Fischer muttered, “so he could beat me up.”

Virgil squatted to take a close look at her. Now her other eye was closed and going purple, and her lip was twice as large as it had been the last time he’d seen her.

Virgil stood up, and Van Den Berg barked, “Get the cuffs on her. I’m charging her with breaking and entering and . . . stealing stuff.”

Virgil said, quietly, “I think what we have here is a standard he said, she said domestic. Without outside witnesses, I can’t arrest her for breaking and entering.”

“Bullshit,” Van Den Berg said, pointing a finger at her. “She . . .”

“Larry, let me tell you something,” Virgil said. “There’s no way I’m going to arrest her. If you want to file charges, go down to the sheriff’s office and do it. And she can go down and file assault charges against you. And since you weigh, what, two hundred pounds, and she weights a hundred and twenty, guess what’s going to happen? They’re gonna yank your assault bail, and you’ll be sitting in jail until your trial. Then I’ll call Bell Wood and tell him that you committed a crime up here, and they’ll be waiting for you to get out of jail so they can hook you up in Iowa, and you’ll be sitting down there without bail . . . What’s it gonna be?”