Holy Ghost

by John Sandford

  “Speaking of women, if you read Danny Visser’s blog today, you’ll know that we’re looking for a woman who might have been having a relationship with Glen Andorra,” Virgil said. “Any idea of who that might be?”

  “Nope. But I suspected something was going on. I even kidded Glen about it. I was over there once, and there were some dirty dishes on the kitchen table, set for two. I even kinda thought the woman might still be in the house because I could smell something feminine—perfume, or deodorant, something that sure wasn’t Glen. He got kinda flustered, and pushed me right out the door. I’d stopped by to give him a check for my range dues, and he didn’t even want me to take the time to write it out. Said he’d get it later. That was not like Glen. Not a bad guy, but he did like his cash money.”

  “No idea who she might have been?”

  “No, because—you know what?—she wanted it kept a secret, which made me think she might be married.”

  “Yeah? Why?”

  “There was no car in the driveway. If she was still there, either her car was in the garage or Glen picked her up somewhere,” Ford said. “Why hide it if she wasn’t married? If she was single, nobody would care. In fact, everybody would have thought Glen getting together with a woman, that’d be great. He’d been divorced for quite a while.”

  “Huh.” Virgil thought about that, then grinned at Ford, and asked, “So, you like guns a lot. If you had to give up guns or women, which would you do?”

  Ford peered at Virgil, then said, “Fake question. You wouldn’t have to give up women unless they all died off, and that ain’t gonna happen. On the other hand, when the government starts kicking in the repressive measures—and that’s just a matter of time—IMHO, you’re gonna need the guns. I’d say, sure, women are important, but guns are fundamental. You know, our Constitution doesn’t even mention women, but it does mention our right to bear arms.”

  “Okay. Well, I’ll be going out there to visit the Nazis,” Virgil said. “I’ll tell Rose you could be interested.”

  Ford actually blushed and rubbed his nose, and said, “Well . . .” And a few seconds later, “She’s got dark hair. There are two dark-haired ones out there. She’s the one who doesn’t have swastikas tattooed on her earlobes.”

  “One of them has swastikas tattooed on her earlobes?”

  “Saw it myself,” Ford said. “The whole bunch of them were down at Skinner and Holland’s.”

  Virgil said, “Fuckin’ Nazis.”

  “You know what? They don’t know anything about being Nazis. They don’t know anything about history, about Jews and all of that. In fact, they don’t know shit about shit,” Ford said. “What they know is, Nazis are badasses who get on TV. That’s it. They want people to think that they’re badasses and they want to get on TV.”

  Virgil said, “Terrific . . . Listen, if you don’t mind, I’m going to come back and talk to you if I need more information about guns. I hunt, but I’m not a gun guy like you are.”

  “Happy to do it. That’s one fella we need to get off the streets, and in a hurry. I’m living here because of the food and water supply, because we’re big enough that we’d be a tough nut to crack for armed refugees from the Cities but small enough to be obscure. Can’t even see us from the Interstate,” Ford said. “We do need to start providing our own electrical service, and I’m trying to talk the city into buying some solar panels, but they never had the money. Now, if housing values go up, they might. I’d get the panels at cost; I’d even set the solar field up for them, no charge. But they’re dragging their feet. In the meantime, I’ve already got panels on my roof. You might have noticed.”

  “I’ll take a look on my way out,” Virgil said.

  * * *

  —

  Virgil took a look at the solar panels, but they resembled all the other solar panels he’d seen in his life so he didn’t linger more than three seconds. He was five or six blocks from the Vissers’, where he’d left his car, and was walking out toward the street when Ford stepped outside and called to him.

  “I thought of something,” Ford said. “As everybody knows, that CZ has a twist rate of one in nine, which is not what you’d want for the best accuracy with a solid boattail bullet like you’d use in the military or with a target. That gun’s made for shooting varmints with light, high-speed bullets. If you’re shooting that big boattail at longer distances, you’d want a faster twist—you’d want a 1:8, or even a 1:6, to stabilize the bullet, especially if there’s any crosswind at all.”

  “But how many people know as much about it as you do? I mean, he steals the gun, sees a box that says ‘Bullets,’ they fit the gun, and that’s it. He doesn’t know about boattails and twist rates,” Virgil said. “He’s shooting what Glen Andorra shot.”

  Ford considered, then nodded. “I give you that one. But it baffles me. Guns are some of the most common tools in America, and most people don’t know any more about them than point and shoot.”

  “They manage to kill their wives and kids at a pretty ferocious rate,” Virgil said.

  “That’s unfair, but I won’t argue with you. Maybe we’ll get a beer someday. In the meantime, I’m gonna go by the church and take a look. There are all those trees along Main, he’s gotta be shooting through them or under them . . . It’s an interesting problem, shooting-wise.”

  “Do that. I’ll tell Skinner or Holland to go with you so people won’t wonder why the best shot in town is lining up positions at the church,” Virgil said.

  Ford nodded again, and said, “I’ll talk to Wardell. And if you see Rose . . . I saw her win a women’s turkey shoot up at Madelia.”

  Virgil said, “Got it.”

  * * *

  —

  The Vissers’ place wasn’t far, but a detour over to Skinner & Holland would only take five minutes. Virgil thought about the ice-cream cone that the priest, George Brice, had been eating that morning, realized he was hungry, and decided to stop.

  On the way over, he called Sheriff Zimmer and told him he was going to visit the Nazis. “I ought to be there about one o’clock,” Virgil said.

  “You know your way around out there?” Zimmer asked.

  “More or less.”

  “More or less won’t work—they’re back in the sticks,” Zimmer said. “I’ll have a guy out at the Wheatfield interchange on I-90 at one. You can follow him out.”

  “Excellent.”

  When he got to the store, a heavyset, sixtyish woman who had a strawberry beret perched atop her iron-gray hair was shouting at Skinner and Holland, who were standing behind the cash register. Three embarrassed patrons, including a nun in a black habit, were standing behind her at the counter, holding individual serving sacks of fried crap. As Virgil walked in, one of them wandered off, apparently to hide at the back of the store.

  The woman turned away from Skinner and Holland, stormed toward the exit, where Virgil was standing. She snapped, “Out of the way, bum,” and steamed on past. Holland gave her the finger, which she didn’t see.

  “What the heck was that?” Virgil asked Skinner.

  “Holland’s mom,” Skinner said. “She told all her friends that they could come in and shoplift, and Wardell started asking them if they could pay for the stuff. A sack of Fritos here, a sack of Cheetos there—it adds up.”

  “She told them they could shoplift?”

  “Not exactly,” Holland said over Skinner’s shoulder. “She told them that her friends could eat free and that it was all right with me. It isn’t. She thinks it’s all right because she loaned us the money to buy the store.”

  “Okay. Not saying I agree with her, but I can see her thinking,” Virgil said. “She does you a favor, you do her a favor.”

  “She got us for nine percent interest,” Skinner said.

  “Nine percent. So, basically, fuck her,” Holland said. His eyes flicked over to t
he nun. “Excuse the language, Sister.”

  The nun said, “I can forgive the language. I’m not sure I can forgive your making an obscene gesture at your mother.”

  “Ya gotta know her,” Holland said. “If you knew her, you’d give her the finger, too. Let me get those Fritos for you.”

  As the nun’s Fritos were being rung up, Virgil asked, “If I buy a chicken potpie, can I use your microwave to heat it up?”

  “Sure, go ahead,” Skinner said.

  The nun, looking at her Fritos, said, “You’re lucky.”

  Virgil got the chicken potpie from the freezer, paid for it, went in the back room, popped it in the microwave, and was waiting for it to heat up, when Holland came in. “Plastic forks and spoons in the drawer under the sink. You figure anything out?”

  “Not much, except that your mom’s cafe sells sugar water as syrup.”

  “She puts sugar in it now?”

  “Okay, I couldn’t go to court and swear to it.” Virgil told him that Ford might drop by and ask for an escort down to the church, and Holland said he’d do it or get Skinner on the case.

  “What’s next?” Holland asked.

  “Nazis,” Virgil said.

  9

  The deputy was sitting in his patrol car, reading a John Connolly novel, Every Dead Thing, when Virgil pulled in beside him. Darren Bakker got out of the car, carrying the book, and said, “Good thing we’re going to talk to heavily armed Nazis ’cause now I can quit reading this book. It’s scaring the hell out of me.”

  “That’s a good one. I gotta say, reading it in a patrol car is the right way to do it,” Virgil said, as they shook hands. “You don’t want to read them at night in bed.”

  Bakker was a tall, thick man, with rosy cheeks, a blond brush mustache, close-cropped blond hair, and small blue eyes. He had a U-shaped scar on one cheekbone about the size and shape of a pull tab on a beer can. He was wearing a radio with a shoulder mic.

  Virgil had gotten the impression that there were only two Nazis, plus spouses or girlfriends, but Bakker said that there might be three. “Which is a problem,” he said. “The third one is a guy named Woody Garrett, and there are a couple of warrants out for him for assault and ag assault. Beating up his wife and daughter. He used a two-by-two on his daughter, told his friends he spanked her because she’d snuck out at night, but he managed to bust her pelvis. He’s got a substantial track record, too.”

  “Charming guy,” Virgil said. “Why’s he hanging out with the Nazis?”

  “He’s a cousin to one of them. We don’t know that he’s there for sure, but a farmer called in this morning and said he saw him in Jim Button’s yard last night, in the rhubarb patch. Button’s the cousin. And a Nazi. The other Nazi is Raleigh Good.”

  “Raleigh? It’s not pronounced ‘Really’?”

  “Nothing really good about Raleigh Good,” Bakker said. “He is an asshole of major dimension, believe me.”

  “Hate assholes,” Virgil said. “You can’t even put them in jail for that.”

  “That’s pretty hateful. I sometimes think we’d be better off if we put the assholes in jail and let the criminals go,” Bakker said. “Now, Jim and Raleigh are mean guys. Mean! They like to start fights in bars with guys they know they can beat up. They made a mistake with one old boy a couple of years ago; he just about beat Raleigh to death, and was starting in on Jim Button, when some people pulled him off. Jim and Raleigh—they usually know their limits, though. Black eyes and bloody noses. I don’t think they’d kill anybody, not on purpose anyway. The whole idea of prison scares them. The ‘Don’t drop the soap in the shower’ thing.”

  “Glad to hear it. Too many guys look on it as free health care,” Virgil said. “You want to lead the way?”

  * * *

  —

  Virgil followed Bakker down eight miles of blacktop highway, three miles of blacktop side road, and a half mile down a dead-end gravel road. Jim Button lived in a decrepit clapboard farmhouse that a Midwestern cartoonist might have drawn: it appeared to be taller than it was wide or deep, like an inhabited silo, and it had all gone crooked, as if the two floors had rotated in different directions. Virgil could see eight windows, none of them matching. The last flakes of paint were peeling off the boards, and the front steps had collapsed into the weeds beneath the porch. The only new-looking thing anywhere was a silver propane tank next to a stand-alone machine shed.

  A too-heavy blond woman was in the backyard, hanging clothes, and a red-and-black Nazi flag, on a clothesline. She stopped to look at them, and instead of running for the house, she took a cell phone out of her pocket and made a call.

  Virgil parked beside Bakker, who had gotten out of his car and was talking into his shoulder microphone. When Virgil came up, he said, “I let the boys in the office know that we got here alive.”

  As he said it, a man in a black wifebeater shirt came out a side door, looked them over, called something back inside, and started toward them. Behind him, another man and two women came out of the house and trotted after him to catch up.

  Bakker nodded at the leader—a thin, muscular man, with a fuzzy black beard and mustache—who displayed a variety of Nordic symbols tattooed on his arms, but nothing that would have impressed the average NBA player. Bakker said, “How you doin’, Jim? . . . Virgil, this is Jim Button.”

  “What’s up, Darren?”

  As the others came up, Bakker said Virgil was a BCA agent, and Virgil said, “You heard about those people in town getting shot, right? Apparently with a .223, and we’ve been told that you folks have a bunch of .223s, and a grudge against the town. I’m checking to see if you can tell me where you were on Saturday around four-fifteen, and about the same time the Saturday before that.”

  “Wouldn’t you fuckin’ know it?” Jim Button asked the air. “Somebody gets shot, so who’re you gonna blame? The National Socialists.” He turned to his friends. “Can you believe this?”

  Both the women who’d come out of the house had dark hair, but only one had swastikas on her earlobes. The other was prettier and had a dime-sized black rose tattooed on one side of her neck. She said, “I can tell you where I was the day before yesterday. I was at work, from three ’til nine, over in Austin. Raleigh dropped me off at three, and then he hung around for a while, bullshitting with my boss.”

  “Trying to get a cleaning job over there, after closing,” Raleigh Good said. “You can call up Bob and ask him.”

  “So what time did you leave there?” Virgil asked.

  “About four.”

  “You were bullshitting with the boss for an hour?” Bakker asked. “That’s a lot of bullshit.”

  “Wasn’t all bullshit,” Good said. “We were talking about how I wouldn’t be an employee, I’d be my own business, and I’d have to provide my own equipment and supplies; we also talked about what needed to be cleaned every day and what needed it once or twice a week. There was a lot of bullshit, but it wasn’t bullshitting, if you see what I mean.”

  “About four o’clock, then.”

  “At least. No way to get back to Wheatfield and set up and shoot somebody. And I didn’t have a gun with me—ask Rose.”

  “He didn’t have a gun,” Rose said. “They got two of them, and I saw both of them, in the rack, before we left.”

  Raleigh said, “See?”

  Virgil asked Rose, “Where do you work?”

  “Bob’s Spinners and Bells,” she said. “It’s a gym. I’m a spinning instructor.”

  Button said, “I was at an assembly plant over in Albert Lea, looking for work.”

  “On a Saturday?”

  “Weekend work. You can call and ask.”

  The clothesline lady said, “They had both cars. Me’n Marie stay home when they’re all gone.”

  Virgil asked, “Do you have WiFi out here?”

  Good, a
short, wide man who seemed to consist mostly of tangled black hair and who undoubtedly had a broken-down Harley somewhere, snorted. “We’re lucky we got runnin’ water out here.”

  “You don’t like it, you could always move,” Button snapped.

  “We got WiFi at the gym,” Rose said. “Why?”

  “Because you’re all talking about reasonable alibis, but I need to check. If you could email the names of people who saw you around those places, who you’d talk to, I’d appreciate it. If everybody backs you up, then we got no problem.”

  The five of them eye-checked one another, and then Button said, “Sounds okay. We’d appreciate it if you could skip over the National Socialist stuff when you talk to them. Hard to find jobs, with all the bigots out there.”

  Virgil nodded. “I can do that. Though I gotta say, this being Minnesota, you’d have been better off to pick Communism. If you know what I’m saying.”

  “Got that, all right,” said the unidentified, clothes-hanging blond woman. “I’m thinking about switching over.”

  Bakker gave Virgil a tap in the ribs with an elbow, and said, “Give me a minute, Virgil.” He walked a dozen steps away, and when Virgil came over, he whispered, “If you look behind the machine shed, you’ll see the back end of a black Chevy Camaro. Woody Garrett drives a black Camaro.”

  Virgil nodded, and said, “You want me to lead or you?”

  “You got a gun on you?”

  “As a matter fact, I do, at my back,” Virgil said. “You know, heavily armed Nazis.”

  “Right. I don’t think these guys are dangerous, but Garrett could be a problem.”

  * * *

  —

  They walked back to the group, and Virgil said, “Could you ask Woody to come out here?”