Holy Ghost (Virgil Flowers #11)(34)

Virgil tiptoed across a worn carpet, with Bakker a couple of feet behind, and tried the doorknob. It creaked, and Virgil gave it a fast twist and pushed the door open. The room contained an empty, two-tier bunk bed, a dresser supported on one side by a two-by-four that was replacing a broken leg, and an open window whose curtain was blowing gently into the room.

“He’s run off,” Bakker said, and he turned to sprint to the front door. As he took his first step, Virgil hooked his arm, put a finger to his own lips, and pointed beneath the lower bunk. Bakker stooped and looked under the bed; he could see two jean-clad knees.

“What do you want to do?” Bakker asked.

“Ask him to come out of there. Be careful, though, he could have a gun.” Virgil stooped, and said, “We can see your knees, Woody. Don’t make us drag you out.”

A couple of beats later, “Fuck you.”

Rose had walked up behind them. “What a dimwit,” she said. “Woody, did you beat Anna with a board?”

“Fuck you, Rose. Did you tell them I was here?”

“No, dumbass. Your car was sticking out from behind the shed,” Rose said.

“You got a gun?” Virgil asked.

“Fuck you.”

“You go shooting at a cop, you’re gonna die right here,” Bakker said. “Keep that in mind.”

“Fuck you.”

Virgil walked to the end of the bed, noticed that it was bolted to the wall, and peeked under the lower bunk. He could see the soles of a pair of cowboy boots a couple of feet back. “I’m going to pull him out,” Virgil muttered to Bakker. “Get your gun. If the motherfucker shoots at me, kill him.”

“Happy to do it,” Bakker said.

“Fuck both of you,” Garrett said.

Virgil reached deep under the bed, grabbed one of the boots, and began pulling. Garrett kicked at him, and Bakker shouted, “Okay, there’s another felony—assault on a police officer.”

The boot came off, and Virgil fell back on his butt. The boot stank, and he threw it in a corner. “Come out of there.”

“Fuck you.”

Virgil reached back under and grabbed Garrett’s sock-covered foot and pulled. He could get Garrett stretched out, but couldn’t move him. Bakker peered under the bed, and said, “He’s holding on to the inside leg, over in the corner . . . Give me some room.”

Bakker knelt and grabbed Garrett’s leg just above where Virgil had him by the foot, and they both pulled. Garrett kicked at them with his other, booted foot, hit Bakker’s forearm, and Bakker fell back, and said, “Goddamn, that hurt.”

Rose, in the doorway, said, “This is better than clowns at the circus.”

Virgil said to Bakker, “Keep him stretched out. I’ll be right back.”

Virgil got up and jogged into the kitchen, where he’d seen an aging gas stove. Sitting on a shelf above the stove was the usual box of wooden kitchen matches. He carried the box back to the bedroom, broke one of the matches in half, said to Bakker, “Hold him tight,” and then jammed the match through the sock between Garrett’s big and second toes.

“What the fuck you doing?” Garrett demanded.

“I stuck a match between two of your toes,” Virgil said. “I figure that when I fire that mother up, you’ll let go of that bed.”

“That’s gonna hurt,” Bakker contributed. “Only got a hotfoot one time, in high school. If I had a choice between getting my nose broken again or a hotfoot, I’d take the nose every time.”

“Hold him tight, here we go,” Virgil said. He scratched a match on the ignition strip on the side of the box and it fired up with a puff of smoke. Virgil blew a little of the smoke under the bed.

“Wait, wait, wait—I’m coming out,” Garrett said. He let go of the bed’s leg, and Virgil and Bakker dragged him out from under the bunk. Then Virgil tossed Garrett his boot.

“I’ll put him in my car,” Bakker said. To Button he said, “I’ll be sending somebody to tow that Camaro. Don’t go putting it on Craigslist.”

Garrett to Button: “Better not fuck with my machine . . .”



* * *



—

The group followed behind Bakker and Garrett, who now had his hands cuffed at his back, out to the driveway. Virgil said to Rose, “Your friend’s got swastikas tattooed on her earlobes.”

“Yeah, well, she thought it was the thing to do at the time,” she said. “We were up in the jug at Shakopee, and this chick offered to do it for free . . . I said no. Shirley decided to go with it.”

“Bad life choice.”

“No kiddin’. She went to one of those tattoo doctors to get it erased, but they can’t do it. The doctor suggested she get her lobes cut off. He said trying to laser them would hurt worse than getting her tit caught in a wringer.”

“Ouch. A doctor said that?”

“Yeah. Not that much of a doctor, though. We’re still not sure what he was a doctor of.”

“How come you guys were in Shakopee?”

“We borrowed some cars,” she said.

“A lot of them? They don’t usually send you to Shakopee for car theft.”

“Two or three, and the people got them back. Not a scratch on them. But, the last one we borrowed belonged to a judge. We didn’t know that. A new Corvette. Red. We drove it over to Sioux Falls and back. The judge wasn’t the one who sent us to Shakopee, but judges hang together, you know?”