Holy Ghost (Virgil Flowers #11)(87)

Virgil said, “Yes. Somebody shot and killed him. If you could talk to your neighbors, ask them if anyone saw any activity around Osborne’s house.”

“You don’t think . . . Maybe I should go someplace else for a while. If that killer thought I might have seen him . . .”



* * *



—

Jenkins was standing in the side yard, talking to two sheriff’s deputies, when Virgil got back to Osborne’s. He met Virgil in the front yard, and said, “The lawn mower guy . . .”

“Davy something or other . . .”

“Apel. He’s kinda hinky. He says he didn’t see anybody over there at the house, but I had the feeling that he knew something that he wasn’t telling me. Also, he shoots a bow, but he says not very well. Doesn’t own a gun, he says. I asked if you’d fingerprinted him yet, and he said not yet, but he was happy to do it, so . . . there’s that. I believe it’d be worthwhile asking around about him.”

Virgil nodded. “We can do that. Maybe Holland or Clay Ford would know something. I couldn’t find anyone who saw any activity around Osborne’s house . . . I can’t think . . . Did the killer walk in? There’s enough shrubbery around that he could almost make it in from the side street, but if anyone had seen him, he’d have been toast. He’s gotta be local; they would have recognized him, would have known that he didn’t exactly belong in those yards.”

“Apel says the two houses on the end are occupied by Mexicans who work at the packing plant. There’s nobody home during the day. If he’s local, he might’ve known that. He could have come in from that side, but that would have taken some serious balls.”

“We know he’s got balls . . .” Virgil pushed a hand up his forehead. “I gotta tell you, I’m kinda feeling disoriented here. How could this happen? Did we set it off when we came to talk to Osborne? I wonder . . . We gotta check his cell phone, see who he talked to, see if he talked to anyone after we left. We need to know where he was this morning, too. Did he tell somebody something that triggered the killer? We gotta get on this . . .”

“Whoa! Whoa! Slow down, man. You’re freakin’ out,” Jenkins said. “This ain’t our fault, it’s the killer’s fault. We’ll have the guy in the next day or two . . . He’s gotta be plugged in tight to what’s going on in town, him always being one step ahead of us.”

“One step ahead of me, you mean,” Virgil said.



* * *



—

Virgil got on his phone. Calling the crime scene crew back to town was a waste of time, but it was a part of the routine—and, after all, they had spotted the .223 shell at the Van Den Berg crime scene. That hadn’t amounted to anything, except fingerprint bait, but it might have.

The sheriff showed up, took a peek at the body, shook his head, and said, “Where are you?”

“Same place we’ve always been. There’s something going on that we don’t see, Karl. The guy is taking risks, but there’s a reason for it. It’s not just some crazy guy. I would bet that he’s finished killing because he’s achieved what he set out to do, whatever that is. He’ll get rid of that gun now, and that’ll make it a lot harder to get him into court.”

“No suspects at all?”

“Well . . . there’s the guy who lived behind him: Davy . . . Apel? He’s close enough to have snuck over, and he admits that he’s got a bow. Says he doesn’t have a gun, though . . . We have no motive.”

“Maybe some kind of feud?”

“Apel does have feuds . . . but Osborne let the killer in his house, and turned his back on him at the dinner table. That doesn’t sound like an enemy. That sounds like a friend.”



* * *



—

They talked for a few more minutes, then Zimmer left. Virgil went back into the house with Jenkins, eased past the body, and the two of them spent a half hour looking for anything that might give them a hint of who the killer might be—or even a hint that Osborne was worried.

Osborne’s cell phone was on the kitchen counter. It was password-protected but also had Touch ID. Jenkins said, “You once told me how you used a dead guy’s finger to open up a phone. I mean, we got a dead guy. And a finger . . .”

Virgil looked at the phone, the body, and Jenkins—in that order. “Bea would have a spontaneous hysterectomy if she found out.”

“I ain’t telling her . . .”

“We could handle both the finger and the phone with paper towels . . .”

They did that. Because of his prior experience, Virgil began with Osborne’s right index finger. Nothing happened. He tried the right thumb, and the phone opened up. He and Jenkins hovered over the “Recents” list, which had three calls that morning, and a half dozen the day before. Virgil wrote them down, then they shut off the phone and placed it back on the kitchen counter.

“What Bea doesn’t know won’t hurt us,” Jenkins said.

In the next few minutes, they learned that Osborne had called the Fairmont funeral home twice that morning, and there was a third call, earlier, at 8 o’clock, to a rug-cleaning client out in the countryside.

“If the client was involved, he’d have killed Osborne out there and dumped the body in the weeds somewhere instead of sneaking into the house and killing him here,” Virgil said.