Holy Ghost (Virgil Flowers #11)(71)

He’d once gone to a hospital to interview a woman who’d been shot by her boyfriend. She’d said it was an accident, and after Virgil checked the circumstances, he thought she was telling the truth. He was chatting with her doctor when a teenager was wheeled into the emergency room with an injured neck and no feeling in his limbs. His girlfriend was with him, and she told Virgil and the doc that the kid had jumped off a boat into the Minnesota River and apparently hit an underwater log with his head.

An X-ray was taken, and Virgil and the doc wandered back into the radiology department as the on-duty radiologist was bringing the images up on a video screen, and the first thing he said was, “Goddamnit . . . Goddamnit . . .”

He tapped the screen with a fingernail, and Virgil could see an abrupt shift in the narrow line of the kid’s spinal cord.

Virgil: “Is he . . . ?”

“Yeah. He’s a quad. He’s done.”

Virgil was leaving the emergency room when the kid’s parents arrived, worried, and they spotted the girlfriend, and asked, “Is he okay?”

“I think he just hit his head a little,” the girl said.

They didn’t know yet, but Virgil did, and he felt like crying that night, and into the next week, every time he thought about it.



* * *



—

He got back to Wheatfield at 2 o’clock in the morning and managed to get to sleep by 3. At 8, Jenkins called, and said, “I didn’t want to wake you up, but I’m heading over to Fairmont.”

“Give me fifteen minutes. I’ll pick you up,” Virgil said. “You got the arrows?”

“No, the sheriff’s got them. Carbon fiber, identical; three broadhead blades, sharp as razors. When we get the guy, maybe he’ll have a few more to match.”

When Virgil had bought his Tahoe, he’d negotiated to get premium seat covers thrown in the deal. They resembled the real leather seats beneath them but were actually a skillfully manufactured vinyl, because Virgil often transported untoward people and occasionally things like bait buckets. That had paid off, because when he went out to get in the truck, he found the passenger seat covered with dried blood.

He spent five minutes, and used most of a roll of paper towels and half a bottle of Formula 409, cleaning it up. When Jenkins got in the truck, he sniffed, and said, “Four-oh-nine . . . Original, not Lemon Fresh.”

“The policeman’s friend,” Virgil said.

At the Fairmont medical center, they found Shrake awake and in a bad mood—but a groggy bad mood, more pissy than violent: “They say I’m staying here for three or four days. If I keep running my mouth, they’ll keep me for a week.”

“Must have some smart people running the place to shut you up like that,” Jenkins said. “So, you gonna live?”

“I don’t feel like it right now, but they don’t seem to be concerned about how I feel,” Shrake grumbled.

“Still hurt?” Jenkins asked.

“It’s more annoying, than anything, and I expect I’ll be annoyed for several more weeks, from what they tell me.”

“Any good-looking nurses?”

“Yes. They already worship me.”

Jenkins suggested that the scar would tighten up Shrake’s wild golf drive, and Shrake advised him to go fuck himself. “Attaboy,” Virgil said. “You’re on the way back.”

Virgil apologized again for setting up the trap to catch the shooter, but Shrake waved him off. “We had nothing, and it coulda worked, shoulda worked. I don’t know what the hell I was thinking, though, standing around in the night with a flashlight, looking for a guy in camo and carrying a bow. What’d I think was gonna happen if I found him?”



* * *



—

They talked for a few more minutes, said good-bye, and Virgil and Jenkins headed back to Wheatfield. When they got there, they found Zimmer and five deputies working the neighborhood where the shooter had been seen, going door-to-door. Virgil told Zimmer about Shrake’s condition, and Zimmer nodded, and said, “This guy’s local, and he’s a bow hunter and a shooter. There are going to be several dozen guys in town who fit that description, and a few hundred around the county.”

“What about Osborne?” Virgil asked. “Margery’s son. Is he a bow hunter?”

“I don’t know—I could ask. What’re you thinking?”

“I’m thinking that he lives up in that corner of town, where we last saw the shooter. And he’s directly connected to Margery.”

Zimmer said, “I’m not doing anything. Why don’t we go ask him?”

“I’ll come along, in case I have to kill him,” Jenkins said.

Zimmer looked at him strangely, then said, “If you do, don’t hit me with the ricochet.”

“It’ll be one of those bare hands deals,” Jenkins said. “If he’s the guy, I plan to yank his lungs out.”

“Okay, then,” Zimmer said. “Meet you there.”



* * *



—

At Osborne’s house, Zimmer was leading the way to his front door when Virgil glanced at the van in the driveway, noted the logo on the side, hooked Zimmer’s arm, and asked, “‘Steam Punk’—that’s a rug-cleaning company?”