Holy Ghost

by John Sandford

  “She was making another scarf for me. I’ve got about a hundred of them, they’re the only thing she knew how to knit,” Osborne said, and he began crying again.

  A cat came out of a back room and looked at them.

  An hour after they arrived, they were back in the street.

  Zimmer said, looking at the house, “What a fuckin’ mess.”

  * * *

  —

  Virgil stopped back at the Vissers’ to use the bathroom and then sat on the bed and called the Tarweveld Inn to see if they had any available rooms for Jenkins and Shrake. They did. When Brice had closed the church, a dozen people had checked out, and whoever answered the phone at the inn seemed both surprised and grateful that somebody might want to check in. He almost signed up for a third room for himself but decided to stay with the Vissers. Not only were they friendly, they were a source of local information.

  Night was coming down. Virgil had decided he needed something real to eat, so he drove down I-90 to Blue Earth and got some decent barbecue and California sweet corn.

  Back at his room, he got out a legal pad and drew circles on it for a while, trying to figure out a rationale for shooting two out-of-towners, and then a well-known and well-liked local.

  He could think of only one: the calculated killing of Glen Andorra to get the tool he needed—the rifle—and then two more to establish a pattern that would appear random, and then Osborne, to accomplish some unknown task while appearing to be the third in a random sequence. If that were the case, the shooter might take down one more to draw attention away from Osborne, the real target.

  Of course, there might not be a rationale if the shooter were simply nuts. Maybe he’d been drawn to shooting at people at the church simply because that’s where a crowd could be found; or maybe he hated the idea of something miraculous happening there that hadn’t reached him.

  He’d have to dig around, disturb the community, if he were going to flush out a crazy man. If the shootings had a solid motive, he had one question to ask:

  Who benefits?

  * * *

  —

  Though it was late, he pulled up the emails sent by Clay Ford and the Nazis, lists of people who could support their alibis. With a bit of luck, he got through to all of them. And both Ford and the Nazis were cleared. It wasn’t absolutely definitive, but unless something else pointed to them, Virgil was willing to accept their alibis.

  * * *

  —

  Before he went to sleep, Virgil contemplated God and His ways, an effort to make sense out of the chaos that cops regularly encounter. Sometimes, the act of rigorous contemplation led to new paths of investigation. But not on this night.

  Instead, he spent some time thinking about Margery Osborne and what her son had said about her. She’d been born during World War II; her father was a veteran of the Pacific Theater and hadn’t seen his daughter until she was three years old. He’d suffered from every disease the Pacific had to offer, frightening her with his random onsets of malaria. She’d been in junior high school before the farm got reliable television reception—she’d missed the advent of Elvis Presley but was there for the Beatles. She lived through the Vietnam era as the wife of a small farmer who, like her father, was a war veteran. She’d had two children, one of whom died shortly after he was born. She and her husband had struggled with a noneconomic farm, and she’d gone to work as a health care aide in Fairmont, seen the farm sold, and her husband die . . .

  A world of experience and memories, all gone in an instant. For what? Money? What else could it be except the product of insanity?

  But he wasn’t getting that feeling, that edge of craziness.

  Margery Osborne, he thought, had probably been sent into the final darkness for nothing more than the God Almighty Dollar.

  11

  Larry Van Den Berg rolled into Wheatfield at midmorning, parked his truck beside his house, went inside, made himself a pimento loaf with mustard and onion sandwich, got a beer from the refrigerator, and checked his secret email account for messages from his brother. Lego sales were holding up, though they hadn’t gotten rid of them as fast as they’d hoped. But, then, there were a lot of them.

  The last note said “This week, $1,400.”

  Nice.

  He thought about the other iron he had in the fire: could he have been the only one to see the remarkable resemblance between Janet Fischer and the Virgin Mary? He’d give her a call. She didn’t go to work down at Skinner & Holland until later in the afternoon. Even if she didn’t confess, he might have time to rip off a piece of ass before she went to work.

  She answered her phone on the first ring. “I’m not talking to you anymore, after what you said.”

  “I don’t think you got any choice. Besides, you know you still love me,” Van Den Berg said. “Tell you what. You at home? I’ll come over, and we’ll talk about it. Maybe snuggle a little.”

  “Well, you can come over anyway,” she said, and she hung up.

  Van Den Berg looked at the phone. Not the first time she’d hung up on him, although lately it had been happening more often. Still, he was the confident sort. He jumped in the shower, hit his pits and crotch with some 212 Sexy Men deodorant, in orange mandarin scent, got dressed, smiled at himself in the bathroom mirror, and started off for Janet’s, smelling like an orange.

  Nice day outside, warm, and redolent of the oncoming summer. Lilacs blooming; he stopped to sniff one, closing his eyes, remembered his mother. Okay, that wasn’t good, but everything else was. A hot girlfriend, steady work, if not exactly the job of his dreams, money in the bank with the prospect of more. Maybe it was time to buy a boat. From Wheatfield, pulling a trailer, he could be at Lake Okoboji in an hour, and the Iowegians kept it stocked with walleye, pike, bass, and muskie.

  Of course, as is the way of the world, and most of his dreams, it all went straight into the toilet when he got to Fischer’s.

  * * *

  —

  Janet Fischer lived in a tiny house that looked exactly like a big house only shrunken; it was roughly the size and shape of a boxcar. The roof was peaked, with a small window at its apex; the roofline couldn’t have been more than twelve feet up; a narrow plank porch framed the front door.

  The house had been built by the same man who’d built all the town windmills, sometime after World War II. It contained a compact kitchen that was separated from the living room by a breakfast bar; the living room contained a two-cushion couch and two easy chairs, separated by a coffee table. The single bathroom had only a sink, toilet, and shower, no tub. The single bedroom contained a queen-sized bed. The bed frame butted against the wall at the head end, with not more than a six-inch-wide clearance on one side and two feet on the other, and no more than four feet at the end of the bed. When the sex got intense, the bed knocked on the wall between the bedroom and the living room and shook the entire structure.

  Van Den Berg crossed the porch and walked in without knocking, where he found both chairs at the coffee table occupied, one by Fischer and the other by Skinner. A laptop computer sat in the middle of the table.

  “What’s the kid doing here?” he asked.

  Skinner shrugged, and Fischer said, “I went over to your house to clean it up a little bit and I got curious and I looked in your computer and you know what I found? Porn. All kinds of disgusting porn. You pig. We are no longer engaged.”

  She had her one-third carat diamond ring in her hand and she threw it at him. He tried to grab it, but it bounced off his chest and landed on the floor. She threw something again, this time a house key, and he managed to catch it. “I’ll want my key,” she said. “Right now.”

  Van Den Berg was taken aback, and some of his confidence leaked away. He thought he might be able to talk his way out of it, but it’d be tougher with the kid sitting there. “We can chat about it,” he said, as he stooped to pi
ck up the ring. To Skinner, he said, “Get lost, dickwad.”

  “We’re waiting for Wardell,” Skinner said. “He should be here in a minute or two.”

  “Oh? He wants to talk about the Virgin Mary, huh?”

  “Not really,” Skinner said. “I’m making a movie, and I’m hoping you three will give me some criticism, to make it better.”

  “You’re making a fuckin’ movie? Of what? The Virgin Mary?” Van Den Berg hee-hawed, and at that moment they heard the odd, unmatched footfalls of the mayor on the porch. Fischer shouted, “Come in,” before Holland knocked and pushed through the door. He said, “Hey, Larry. Skinner. Jennie.”

  “Now that everybody’s here, let’s get the movie going,” Skinner said.

  Van Den Berg said to Fischer, “I’m not here for no movie. We gotta talk.”

  “Give me my key,” she said.

  “Everybody quiet down, the movie’s started,” Skinner said. “It’s only a minute or two long.”

  The movie started on the laptop, a shaky video of a farmhouse. There was a voice-over, recognizable as Skinner. Van Den Berg, much to his surprise, was immediately engaged.

  I’m at the farm of Ralph Van Den Berg, as you can see. Right here we’re crossing the ditch and fence into Ralph’s woodlot, but wait, what’s this? A trailer from a tractor-trailer, back in the woods? Wonder what that’s doing here? It’s almost new. Still has this year’s license plate.

  There was a close-up of the plate, and then a jump cut, and all the shadows shifted, as if a couple of hours had passed. A silver GMC pickup backed up to the trailer, and a man got out. A whispered voice said,

  I believe that’s Ralph. Wonder what he’s doing?

  That became clear when Ralph Van Den Berg took a padlock off the trailer, rolled the door up, and began loading boxes of Legos into the pickup.

  Oh, my goodness. Look at all the Legos. L’eggo my Legos . . .

  “What the fuck is this all about?” Van Den Berg demanded, as the movie rolled on and his brother unloaded more Legos into the bed of the pickup.

  Holland cleared his throat. “Well, you called Jennie and said you thought she looked a lot like our Virgin Mary. She’s not the Virgin Mary, but she does look a little like her. All you’d have to do to fuck up the town, Larry, is start talking it around. We can’t have that.”

  “Bullshit. What you mean is, you and this fuckin’ Skinner can’t have it,” Van Den Berg said.

  “However you want to cut it,” Holland said. “The Marian apparition is real. Jennie had nothing to do with it. But a few people think it was faked somehow, and if you start talking it around . . . well, you’ll wreck the town. So, as mayor, I’ll tell you what, Larry. You say one fuckin’ word about Jennie being the Virgin, and we’ll take this movie down to the Iowa cops. Me’n Skinner tried to figure out how much a trailer full of Legos was worth and we came up with a half million dollars minimum. And it could be a million, depending on which sets you got. That about right?”

  “You motherfuckers,” Van Den Berg said.

  “We’re the motherfuckers?” Holland asked, his voice rising to a dangerous growl. “You’re threatening to wreck the town, and we’re the motherfuckers? You stole a trailer full of Legos, and we’re the motherfuckers? l’ll tell you something else, Larry. We have a state cop in town, and I kinda casually asked how long somebody who stole a half million dollars’ worth of merchandise would go to prison for. He said maybe two years, unless there were exacerbating circumstances. There’s nothing like destroying a town’s economy to qualify as an exacerbating circumstance, Larry. You go to trial in this county, and I believe you’d get five to ten. Of course, you’d have your brother in there to keep you company.”

  Skinner said, “We’d hate to see anybody from our town go to jail, Larry.”

  “You know what I want? Does anybody know what I want?” Fischer asked. “Nine years with an engagement ring but no wedding?”

  Skinner said, “Uh, what do you want, Janet?”

  Fischer looked at Van Den Berg. “I want a cut of those Legos, that’s what I want, Larry.”

  “Oh, fuck you,” Van Den Berg said. He stalked out, across the porch, across the yard. He ignored the line of sweet-smelling lilacs.

  Fischer shouted after him, “I want my key.”

  They watched him go, and when he was out of sight, Holland said, “I think we’re okay.”

  Fischer said, “I’m sitting here thinking about it, and you know what? I do want a cut of those Legos. Nine years. What am I supposed to do now?”

  Skinner said, “Jennie, you’re the prettiest girl in the county, and one of the smartest. You’ll have all kinds of dating opportunities now that Larry won’t be around. I’d bet you a hundred dollars that you’ll have a husband and a kid in two years, and a whole happy life.”

  Fischer said, “Stick it up your ass, Skinner.”

  * * *

  —

  Skinner and Holland left, satisfied that they’d fended off the threat from Van Den Berg. Fischer sat on her two-cushion couch and thought about her nine lost years. She was now making great money down at Skinner & Holland, but who knew how long that would last? Van Den Berg was a man who liked his beer—make that beers, plural—and she’d bet that sooner or later he’d start talking about who the Virgin Mary resembled.

  If those Legos were worth a half million, and if the Van Den Bergs were selling them for twenty-five percent of their retail value, like Skinner thought, they’d be getting a hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars, no tax. And if they were worth a million, they’d be getting two hundred and fifty thousand.

  The longer she thought about it, the angrier she got—nine years!—until she finally put on her jacket and walked over to Van Den Berg’s house. There, she pounded on the door until a still-angry Van Den Berg opened up, and demanded, “What do you want?”

  “Nine years back, Larry, that’s what I want. You have been fooling around on me the whole time. That gentleman’s club out by Cheyenne, where you stop both coming and going, that’s no better than a whorehouse. I want my key. And I want some of that Lego money.”

  Van Den Berg had a beer in his left hand, and it wasn’t the first of the day. He glowered at her, then said, “There ain’t no more money. The Legos are long gone.”

  She knew he was lying because Skinner had maneuvered around the woodlot while Ralph Van Den Berg was hauling the Legos to his house for packing, and she could see from Skinner’s video that the truck was still more than half-full.

  “You’re lying, Larry. We got photographic proof.”

  “That fuckin’ . . .” He pushed the door open. “I’m not gonna stand here, arguing. You better come in.”

  She stepped inside as he stepped back, and she said, “All I want is my share.”

  “Tell you what I’ll give you,” he said. “How about this?”

  He hit her right in the eye—hard—and she bounced off the door, and then he hit her in the mouth, and she fell down. “Now, get the fuck out of here,” he said, kicking her hip. He was wearing steel-toed trucker boots, and she felt as though her hip had broken.

  She tried to crawl away, and wailed, “Don’t, don’t, Larry . . . Don’t, please . . .”

  He kicked her again, and she cried out, and as she crawled back through the door, he kicked her in the butt, and said, “Come back, and I’ll fuck you up. You tell your Skinner and Holland the same thing. They fuck with me, I’ll fuck with them. Now, get the fuck out of my yard.”

  Fischer managed to get to her feet. Her hip burned like fire, and she hobbled back to her house, crying as she went. At her house, she looked at herself in the mirror and began to weep, for her nine years, for her hopes that she’d have two or three bouncing babies by now. Maybe she wept even a little for Larry.

  12

  Virgil woke early but lay in bed, thinking about Sherloc
k Holmes and that whole Holmes thing—that once you’ve eliminated the impossible, then whatever remains, must be the truth. What Holmes never admitted was that there is a vast universe of the possible, and sorting through all the possibilities is often impossible. Holmes would have been better off, Virgil thought, working with the Flowers Maxims:

  If it’s criminal, it’s either stupid or crazy.

  Stupid people usually have guns, crazy people always do.

  In a choice between stupid and crazy, first investigate the stupid, because stupid is more common than crazy.

  In many cases, stupid is also more dangerous than crazy. You could sometimes talk to crazy, but there’s no dealing with stupid.

  None of the above is always true.

  Having established that the criminal was most likely dumb—with exceptions—the question became, how was he avoiding detection? A rifle shot actually makes two loud noises: the boom or bang caused by the exploding gunpowder and the loud crack when the bullet breaks the sound barrier.

  When he was in the Army, in Serbia, Virgil had once spent some time in the pits below the targets on a rifle range. He was six hundred yards out from the shooting line and became familiar with the difference between a muzzle blast and a supersonic crack. The two sounds were separate and distinct. The passing bullet produced a crack—some people described it as ZINGGGG! or WHIZZZZ!—that was quite loud, followed by the hollow boom of the muzzle blast. On the other hand, the ZINGGGG! didn’t sound like what most people thought of as a gunshot.