Holy Ghost (Virgil Flowers #11)(25)

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I need to talk to you about what you saw when Harvey Coates was shot,” Virgil said to Brice.

“C’mon in the back room,” Holland said.

Virgil and Brice followed him through the store, where a dozen people were lined up at the cash register. “Still going gangbusters,” Brice said.

“I’d cross myself, but you might think I was joking,” Holland said. “I wouldn’t be.”

As they went through the store, several of the customers reached out to the priest:

“Hola, padre.”

“God bless you, Father.”

“God bless . . .”

They settled into the three chairs in the back room, and Virgil asked Brice, “So, what did you see?”

“I was standing on the church steps looking right at him, at Coates. I saw him jerk like somebody had slapped his back, and then he . . . croaked . . . and looked around . . . and fell over. I thought maybe he’d had a stroke or a heart attack, but then people started screaming, but nobody else fell. I ran across the street, and a couple of other men were trying to get him, and themselves, behind an old concrete planter over there in case there was another shot. There wasn’t. One of the other men was from here in Wheatfield, and he had the sheriff’s department on speed dial and he called them and got an ambulance going. Then we just sat there and held some towels against the wounds to keep him from bleeding out. His wife was with him; she’s a nurse, she knew what to do but was pretty panicky and crying . . .”

“Didn’t hear a shot, or anything?”

“Nothing like that,” Brice said, shaking his head.

“Did you notice exactly how he was standing? Whether he was turned one way or the other?”

“No, I didn’t notice. Wardell was curious about that, too, but I didn’t notice.”

“I called Coates himself after Miz Rice was shot, and he didn’t know exactly how he was standing, either,” Holland said. “He thought he was more or less square to the street. He wasn’t sure, though.”

They talked for a while longer, but Brice had nothing to add about the shooting. He knew more about the wound. “Went right through his thigh, from one side to the other. I noticed that the exit wasn’t much larger than the entry, which I think probably means he was shot with a military-style non-expanding bullet,” he said.

“You know about bullets? Wardell told me the same thing about Miz Rice.”

“I was a chaplain at the Balad military hospital in the early days in Iraq,” Brice said. “I saw a lot of wounds. Most were shrapnel from roadside bombs, but some were bullets.”



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When they were done, Virgil and Holland followed the priest through the store to the front exit, and Virgil asked, as they stepped outside, “What about the apparition? What do you think?”

Brice half smiled, and asked, “What do you mean, what do I think?”

“Was it real or did somebody . . . fake something? Or what?”

Brice squinted across the street at the church. “Something happened. We know that for sure because we have photographs. Lots of photographs, quickly converted to postcards. We even have some partial voice recordings, which is more than we’ve ever had at any of the other apparitions. So something happened. And happened before one of the sincerest Catholic congregations in Minnesota. Or anywhere else, for that matter.”

“You sound the tiniest bit skeptical,” Virgil said.

“I believe in the possibility of Marian apparitions,” Brice said. “That doesn’t astonish me. What astonishes me are the other miracles in Wheatfield. It’s inevitable to wonder if they’re related.”

Holland and Virgil looked at each other, and Holland shrugged. Virgil asked, “What other miracles?”

“The miracle of Skinner and Holland, among others,” Brice said, gesturing at the store. “The town could barely support a gas station and yet this store appeared, like magic, barely minutes after the first apparition.”

“C’mon, George. You know the story,” Holland said. He turned to Virgil. “Right after the first apparition, Skinner came running to me and told me what was going to happen. I knew he was right, and we went to work. There was nothing magic about it: this store is the result of several people working like dogs for weeks.”

“I will admit that Skinner is an unusual young man,” Brice said. “Perceptive. In this case, perhaps even . . . clairvoyant.” He shook his shoulders, brushed off some nonexistent dandruff, tugged at his coat sleeves, and said, “I better get over to the church. The management committee is meeting in a few minutes.”

Brice started toward the corner to cross the street, and when he was out of earshot, Holland said to Virgil, “You see, that’s the kind of thing we have to deal with—skepticism, even from the Church. Or maybe he played a little too much football.”

“Yeah?”

“Notre Dame. Linebacker. Had a lot of head-to-head collisions,” Holland said.

“A university devoted to the Virgin Mary—interesting,” Virgil said. “I think he’s probably trying to protect the Church. Its credibility,” Virgil said. “If the apparitions turn out to be a fraud of some kind, they don’t want to be out front vouching for their authenticity. Gettin’ punked.”