Holy Ghost (Virgil Flowers #11)(61)

“We gotta talk to him,” Jenkins said. “The Cities are two and a half hours from here, he could have gone back and forth easy enough, do these other shootings, take the spotlight off his old man.”

Shrake was tapping on his phone, looked up: “Including the house, and if he’s got average farm machinery, the place isn’t three million, it’s more than four. No tax.”

“Did his kid grow up here?” Virgil asked Holland.

“Yeah, he was here through high school, a couple of years ahead of me,” Holland said. “We both played basketball, but he wasn’t good enough for college ball.”

Virgil said to Jenkins and Shrake, “We need to track him down and push on him. Why don’t you guys figure out where he is right now? He could be down here. Or if he’s back in the Cities, go on back and find him.”

“Good with me,” Jenkins said. To Shrake: “We can get a decent pancake.”

Shrake asked Virgil, “What are you going to do?”

“We haven’t talked to any of the people who run the church, except Father Brice. I’ll track down some of the church council and see if they have any ideas of what might be going on.”

“Weak,” Shrake said.



* * *



—

Jenkins and Shrake were out of town in twenty minutes, having spoken to Jared Andorra on the phone: he was in the Cities and could talk to them as soon as they got there.

Virgil had gotten Brice’s cell phone number and called him to ask about the church council. Brice had gone back to the archdiocese headquarters in St. Paul; Virgil had gotten the impression that he worked there as a kind of troubleshooter. “There’s almost always somebody from the council around the church in the afternoon,” Brice said. “Go on across and knock on the door.”

Virgil did that, and a Hispanic man opened the door and peered out. “You are the Virgil?”

“Yes. I need to talk to some members of the council.”

“Come in,” the man said, pushing the door open. Inside, Virgil found two more men and a woman mounting an elaborately framed, life-sized photograph of the Wheatfield Virgin Mary on the wall of the narthex. The photo had been taken by somebody with a decent camera rather than a cell phone. Thinking back to what Van Den Berg had said, threatening to blackmail Holland, Skinner, and Fischer, Virgil thought that the Virgin did resemble Fischer, except that the Virgin had dark hair, Fischer was a blonde. Looking closer, Virgil noticed that the Virgin had blondish eyebrows, which would be unusual for a brunette Israelite in the first century.

Something to think about.

As it turned out, all four people were members of the ten-person council. Virgil sat them down in the pews at the back of the church and interviewed them as a group. He learned nothing: nobody knew of anyone who was jealous of the church’s sudden fame, or resented it, or who’d wish to slow the stream of worshippers.

“Only two churches in town, and the other church—the pastor was happy with this vision,” one of the men said. “More people go to his church, too.”



* * *



—

Virgil went back to Skinner & Holland. He’d had breakfast but no lunch, so he bought a chicken potpie and a Diet Coke and carried them to the back room. He tried to think about the case but found he didn’t have anything of substance to think about. When he finished eating, he drove out to Glen Andorra’s house, went in, and spent the afternoon looking for anything that might be relevant.

Anything.

He gave up at dinnertime, drove to Blue Earth, and ate at a Country Kitchen, then sat in his truck in the parking lot and talked to Frankie for a half hour. As he was talking to her, he saw Banning, the sheriff’s deputy, and a man walk into the restaurant. He said good-bye to Frankie and followed them in. Banning saw him and waved from her booth, introduced the man as her boyfriend, Gabe, and said that Fischer would be in the hospital overnight.

“She had a headache, and they thought she might be concussed, though . . . not badly. They also want a specialist to take a look at her eye. He wasn’t there today, so he’ll look in the morning.”

“Worse than I thought,” Virgil said.

She shrugged, and said, “We did the only thing we could—we took her to the hospital. Next, we get all over Larry’s ass. Sheriff Zimmer came by and took a look at Jennie, and said Larry’s used up all his rope. If he drives twenty-six in a twenty-five zone, he’ll regret it.”

Virgil drove back to Wheatfield, parked next to the Vissers’ house, lay on his bed for a while. An hour after dark, when everything was quiet, he went back out for a walk. Fischer’s tiny house was set back from the street; he checked around for obvious eyes, saw not much, tried the screen door, which opened up. The blade of his butter knife slipped the old lock, and he was inside.

He had a simple excuse, if anybody asked: he’d been walking by the house when he noticed the screen door standing open, and, when he tried the door, it was unlocked. He knew Fischer was in the hospital, but, given her history with Van Den Berg, he thought he’d better check the house.

Not search it, simply check it. He turned on the lights—nothing attracts the eye like a flashlight in a dark house—and checked it thoroughly, made sure that nobody was hiding in her closet or her bureau drawers or even under her unmade bed.