Holy Ghost (Virgil Flowers #11)(36)

“What?”

“I’d check to see if there’s a new showerhead. If there isn’t . . . then . . .”

“Got it,” Virgil said.

Virgil opened his mouth to ask another question, but there was a commotion out in the store, and then the young woman who’d been behind the cash register burst in and shouted, “They shot somebody! They shot—”



* * *



—

Virgil nearly knocked her down as he ran out the door. He saw people looking down toward the church, and a body in the street, and a woman shrieking, then people running away. He twisted around wildly, as though he were winding himself up, looking for somebody also running, but alone, or a car or van speeding away. There were at least a couple of dozen people on the street, but they were in clusters, nobody who looked like a possible shooter.

He ran to the body—an older woman, arms sprawled out on the street—stooped over her, and knew immediately that she was dead. He could see both the entrance and exit wounds; she’d been shot though the rib cage, behind her arm on one side, with the bullet exiting in front of her biceps on the other, probably passing directly through her heart.

Holland had run up behind him, a horrified look on his face, and Virgil shouted, “Keep everybody back—way back—and call the sheriff,” and then he sprinted down toward the business district, as best he could in cowboy boots, looking for anything that seemed wrong.

There were people on the street, coming out of Mom’s Cafe and the few open businesses, some now looking down toward the church and pointing, cluttering up his line of sight, and a few shouting or running back into the stores. The shot hadn’t come from there, he thought, or the people would all be running, or milling around, looking for the shooter . . . so it must have come from behind the business buildings. But from which side?

He could go left or right; he glanced back and realized that one side was as good a possibility as the other. He went right because the yards and houses on that side were more of a jumble, with more foliage for concealment, than on the left side, and because the Smits’ house was on that side. He was breathing hard now. He still had his pistol with him, since he’d been carrying it when he visited the Nazis, and he slipped it out of its holster and ran behind the first of the businesses.

Nothing was moving back there. He kept running, looking for movement, three hundred yards out, crossed a street and saw only two people, to his left, standing on Main Street, and they were looking down toward the shooting. It wouldn’t be two people, he thought, and not in the middle of the street. The shooter had to be a singleton.

Five hundred yards and another street, nobody to his left on Main, but, a block down to the right, a woman getting in a car. He ran that way, shouting at her, and when he got close, she saw the gun and put up her hands, and he shouted, “Police,” and, “Did you hear a shot? Did you see anyone running?”

She was twenty feet away, and she said, “No, no, I came out of my house . . . I just came out, I didn’t hear anything . . . Has there been another one?”

Virgil turned away and ran back to the street behind the businesses, and ran even farther out . . . He thought he must be six or seven hundred yards from the scene, and there was nothing moving.

He ran toward the scene of the shooting, swerved when he came to the house where the old man with the shotgun lived, kicked open the gate, and banged on the back door.

Laura Smit looked at him from well back in the house, then hurried to the door and pulled it open.

“Did you hear a shot? Is Bram here? Did either of you—”

“I didn’t hear a thing; I was using the vacuum,” she said. “Bram isn’t here, he went to the SuperValu over in Blue Earth.”

“Goddamnit,” Virgil said, and he spun around and ran out to Main Street, where people were still looking down toward the church. Virgil hurried over to the largest group, and said, “I’m an agent with the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. Did anyone hear a shot a few minutes ago?”

Nobody heard anything, everybody had questions, which Virgil ignored, and he ran farther up Main, away from the shooting, asking everyone in the street. He couldn’t find anyone who’d heard the shot.

Next, he crossed to the other side of Main, behind the storefronts. Nothing at the Eagles Club; the door was locked. He ran in widening circles and still found nothing. For the next fifteen minutes, he visited one store after another—there were only seven still open—asking if anyone had seen a man hurrying away in a long coat that a rifle could have been hidden beneath or with anything a rifle could have been concealed in. No luck.

He finally jogged back to the scene, where a single sheriff’s car was now parked. The deputy had pushed the now thin crowd well back, and Holland was standing at the edge of the circle of onlookers.

In the middle of the circle, George Brice was kneeling over the body, apparently administering the last rites, although Virgil had understood that could only be done with the living—but, then, he didn’t really know.

Holland grabbed Virgil by the arm, and said, “Not an out-of-towner this time. That’s Marge Osborne. She lives here in town. Nice lady. I don’t know who in the hell would want to do this to her . . .” A couple of tears trickled down his cheeks, and he wiped them away with the back of his hand. “Find anything?”