“I don’t care. I’ve got my alibi, people who saw me when those people were shot—I was miles away, unlike you. You were, like, next door.”

Davy Apel: “I had nothing to do with it. Nothing to do with it.”

“I think you knew I had a relationship with Glen. I think you knew that . . .”

“Not until that fuckin’ Flowers said something.”

Jenkins laughed, said, “That fuckin’ Flowers,” and Virgil said, “Quiet.”

“Well anyway, we’re done,” Ann Apel told her husband. “I don’t want you in this house. You scare me.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Davy Apel said. “I pushed my bed into the office, and I’m staying.”

“Davy . . .”

Davy Apel went to pleading. “Listen . . . babe . . . you know I wouldn’t hurt a fly. I mean, maybe a fly, but not a person. I never hurt anybody. Have I ever raised a hand to you, even when we had those bad fights? I’m a lover, honey, I’m not a fighter . . .”

That went on for a while, and finally Ann Apel said, “You can stay, but I’m NOT going to get in your bed. I’m not going to feed you, either; you can get your own goddamn food. Tomorrow, I’m going to talk to Phil and get going on the divorce.”

“You fuckin’ Phil now? Is that what . . .”

“Fuck you!” Ann Apel shouted. “Fuck you . . .”

* * *

—

Phil must be an attorney,” Virgil said, as they listened to the fight escalate. Ten minutes later, Ann Apel burst out of the house, got in her car, backed into the street, and sped away.

“Skinner and Holland,” Jenkins said. “If worse comes to worst, we can always get a potpie.”

At Skinner & Holland, Jenkins peeled the wire off Apel’s back, and she said, “I’m going to Fairmont to eat dinner. But I’m not leaving that house. I’ll be back there at eight.”

“I’ll give you a direct phone number—you can put it on your speed dial—in case there’s a problem,” Virgil said. “Maybe . . . it sounds like he’s innocent. We should go look at those guys with the extra Quonset keys.”

When she was gone, Jenkins said, “She has a nice ass. She could crack a walnut between those cheeks.”

“You were supposed to be peeling the wire off her back,” Virgil said.

“Yeah, right.” Jenkins looked at the time on his cell phone. “I hate waiting.”

27

   They waited. Holland and Skinner came back, and, a while later, Janet Fischer turned up, her face still showing blue and yellow bruises despite heavy makeup. Again, Virgil warned them that he would have to kick them out. “When my guy gets here, it’s cops only.”

They got around to talking about the Marian apparitions. Virgil wondered if they could expect more of them, but Skinner shook his head.

“I’ve read up on them, and the Virgin usually only appears once or twice. There were several apparitions at Lourdes—sixteen or eighteen, I think—but only to one girl. There’s never been anything like Wheatfield, where people actually had cell phones and actually got pictures.”

“It’s a miracle,” Jenkins said.

“So, there probably won’t be any more,” Virgil said.

“Well, we hope there might be,” Holland said. “You can never tell.”

“Probably won’t be any until the pilgrim traffic starts to thin out,” Jenkins said.

Fischer said, “Hey! If you’re going to think bad thoughts about the Blessed Virgin Mary, keep them to yourself, fathead. My ex-boyfriend disrespected her and he wound up dead.”

“You think there’s a connection?” Virgil asked.

“I hope not,” Fischer said. “I hope it’s something else. I hope the Virgin didn’t set something off.”

* * *

—

A few minutes after 11 o’clock, they’d been playing poker for an hour, using a box of washers for chips. Holland lost most of his washers on the first hand and started to take off his shirt, and Fischer said, “Oh, no. Oh, no way.”

Skinner was the big winner and he gloated; he was becoming seriously offensive when a man knocked on the back door. Before anyone could get up, the man pulled it open and stuck his head inside.

He was tall, thin, balding, and dressed in dark gray coveralls. There was a red-bordered oval patch on the front of the coveralls, inside which was a name: “Bob.”

“Hey, Harry, come on in,” Virgil said. To the others, “Sorry, guys, but you’ll have to go.”

Holland led Skinner and Fischer out through the drapes that separated the back room from the store, but Virgil didn’t hear the front door close. They were all listening from the other side of the curtain, but he didn’t care as long as he could testify that nobody but himself, Jenkins, and Harry Scorese were in the room, should anybody ask.

Virgil asked Scorese, “So . . . what?”

“I put them to bed. I guess they’re early to rise. Anyway, it’s interesting listening,” Scorese said. “We do have to get in there tomorrow and retrieve my mics.”

“Bottom line?” Jenkins said.

“You got them, cold,” Scorese said. “They were both involved.”

“You were right,” Jenkins said to Virgil.

Virgil said, “I hope you got the good stuff.”

“I did,” Scorese said.

He set his recorder on the table, along with a hand-sized speaker, and started pushing buttons.

* * *

—

Davy Apel: “What do you think?”

Ann Apel: “We’re okay, any way they cut it. No way they’re going to charge us, with our alibis stacked up like that. If they did charge us, they’d never convict. I’d like to move the rifle, but they could be watching. We should wait a few days.”

Davy Apel: “I’m still worried about the cartridge. I can’t figure out why they didn’t print us. They had that warrant.”

Ann Apel: “You know what I think? I think they were playing us. I don’t think they’ve got a fingerprint. We were awful careful.”

Davy Apel: “I thought about that, too. But they better not have a print, because I don’t know how we’d beat that.”