Holy Ghost (Virgil Flowers #11)(97)

As he walked up to the house, carrying a grocery sack, Apel said, “I hope you can hear me.”

“We can,” Virgil said, though Apel couldn’t hear him.



* * *



—

They heard the door opening, and Ann Apel said, “Took you long enough. Where’ve you been?”

“I got a story about that. Let me put the frozen stuff away.”

Refrigerator door opening, paper and plastic rustling, then Ann: “What’s going on?”

After a lengthy pause, Apel asked, “How long were you fuckin’ Glen? Huh? How long was that going on?”

“What! I don’t know what . . .”

Apel was shouting. “I just wrung it out of Trudy. When that fuckin’ Flowers was here, he said Glen was fuckin’ somebody, but he didn’t know who, but I figured it out. It was you. I knew something was going on . . . Were you fuckin’ him and me on the same day or did you trade us off?”

Ann Apel screamed at him: “I wouldn’t have been fuckin’ him at all if you could still get it up . . .”

“Oh, yeah, if I could still get it up? I could get it up if you weren’t colder than a frozen fish stick . . .”



* * *



—

They went on.

Jenkins asked, “I wonder where they heard that ‘fuckin’ Flowers’ thing? I thought it was only us cops who said that.”

“Everybody says that, even Frankie. Now, shut up and listen.”



* * *



—

Apel: “. . . brushed your fuckin’ teeth when you got home anyway. But now I’m wondering, what else was going on? Did you have to get rid of him?”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“You shot him, bitch. I know that, and if you get real unlucky, that fuckin’ Flowers knows it, too. He’s gonna figure out who was there with Glen; he got some DNA stuff off the sheets . . .”

“You think I shot him? I didn’t shoot him. I thought maybe you did, you asshole, but I kept my mouth shut about it . . . Hey! What do you mean, brush my teeth . . .”

Sound of glass breaking.



* * *



—

Guy’s not bad,” Jenkins said. “They’re rockin’ out.”



* * *



—

I’m not the one who wanted the money from Margery,” Apel shouted. “Who was the one who was always going Margery, Margery, Margery: Margery’s gotta go. When’s Margery going to die? What I want to know is, why’d you kill Barry? You didn’t have to do that. The money was already on the way . . .”

Ann’s voice stayed loud but went cold, “Davy, you gotta know I didn’t kill anybody. I had no idea what happened to Glen, and it scared me. I was worried that it might be you, that I’d be next. Then when those people got shot at the church, and the word got around that it was Glen’s gun, I thought it was some crazy person. I was like everybody else in town: I had no idea. And why would anyone kill Larry Van Den Berg? What did that have to do with anything? Then Margery and Barry, I thought . . . That’s when I started worrying that you’d gone nuts or something. About the money. I almost moved out then.”

“You thought I’d gone nuts? You knew it wasn’t me who killed Margery. I told you about being in the barbershop. It couldn’t have been me.”

“I didn’t know you were telling the truth about that,” Ann shouted. “It’s not like I could go and ask Danny if you had an alibi. Then people would start wondering why we were trying to set up alibis.”

“You could’ve figured out a way.”

“Why don’t we talk about me for a while,” Ann shouted. “You know where I was when that lady got shot, and when that man got shot. The same fuckin’ place, down in Hargrove’s fuckin’ ditch with the Bob-Cat. Clayton Hargrove wouldn’t let me off the site one fuckin’ minute early, so you know I was down there until four-thirty and later . . .”



* * *



—

Virgil was getting discouraged. “Hasn’t given him an inch.”

“I’ll tell you something else—if we do find something and get them to trial, and Apel tells them about the wire, the defense is going to want to hear this recording. Then we will be truly fucked.”

Ann was back to screaming. “You fuck, you goddamn . . . You motherfucker . . . I don’t want you here tonight. I want you out of the house and I want a divorce. I want a divorce right now. And I’m going to talk to that fuckin’ Flowers about this tomorrow, we gotta lot of shit to get straight.”

More shouting, footsteps running up the stairs, screaming apparently from below. And Apel: “I’m getting my underwear. I’m getting my socks . . .”

Five minutes later, he was out of the house, carrying an oversized gym bag.

“His clothes,” Jenkins said. “Man, that Ann’s gotta mouth on her, huh?”



* * *



—

They’d arranged to meet Apel at Skinner & Holland after whatever happened at his house, and he pulled up behind the store a few seconds after they got there.