Holy Ghost Read online

  ALSO BY JOHN SANDFORD

  Rules of Prey

  Shadow Prey

  Eyes of Prey

  Silent Prey

  Winter Prey

  Night Prey

  Mind Prey

  Sudden Prey

  Secret Prey

  Certain Prey

  Easy Prey

  Chosen Prey

  Mortal Prey

  Naked Prey

  Hidden Prey

  Broken Prey

  Invisible Prey

  Phantom Prey

  Wicked Prey

  Storm Prey

  Buried Prey

  Stolen Prey

  Silken Prey

  Field of Prey

  Gathering Prey

  Extreme Prey

  Golden Prey

  Twisted Prey

  KIDD NOVELS

  The Fool’s Run

  The Empress File

  The Devil’s Code

  The Hanged Man’s Song

  VIRGIL FLOWERS NOVELS

  Dark of the Moon

  Heat Lightning

  Rough Country

  Bad Blood

  Shock Wave

  Mad River

  Storm Front

  Deadline

  Escape Clause

  Deep Freeze

  STAND-ALONE NOVELS

  Saturn Run

  The Night Crew

  Dead Watch

  BY JOHN SANDFORD AND MICHELE COOK

  Uncaged

  Outrage

  Rampage

  G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

  Publishers Since 1838

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street

  New York, New York 10014

  Copyright © 2018 by John Sandford

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  Ebook ISBN 9780735217331

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  CONTENTS

  Also by John Sandford

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  About the Author

  For Mickey

  1

  Wardell Holland, the mayor of Wheatfield, Minnesota, was sitting in the double-wide he rented from his mother, a Daisy Match Grade pellet rifle in his hands, shooting flies. His mother suspected he let the flies in on purpose so he could shoot at them. He denied it, but he was lying.

  He was tracking a bull-sized bluebottle when the doorbell croaked. Like most other things in the place, there was something not quite right with it, but not quite wrong enough to fix. In this case, the bell probably indicated that the beer had arrived. The kid had taken his own sweet time about it; school had been out for an hour.

  “Come in,” Holland shouted.

  The fly tracked out of the bedroom and lazily circled through the living room and toward the kitchen. He picked it up with the sight, and the kid outside yelled, “Don’t go shooting—”

  POP! A clear miss. The fly juked as the pellet whipped past, then circled around the sink and out of sight. The pellet ricocheted once and stuck in the fiberboard closet door by the entrance.

  “Hey! Hey! You crazy fuckin’ pillhead, you’re gonna put my eye out.”

  Holland shouted, “He’s gone, you can come in.”

  John Jacob Skinner edged through the door, keeping an eye on Holland, who was sprawled on the couch, his prosthetic foot propped up on the arm, the rifle lying across his stomach. Skinner, who was seventeen, said, “Goddamnit, Wardell . . .”

  “I won’t shoot, even if I see him . . . though he is a trophy-sized beast.”

  Skinner eased into the room, carrying a six-pack of Coors Light. “You want one now or you want it in the refrigerator? They’re cold.”

  “Now, of course. I shoot better with a little alcohol in me.”

  “Right.” Skinner pulled loose two cans, tossed one to Holland, put four in the refrigerator, popped the top on the last one, and took a drink.

  Skinner resembled his name: he was six foot three, skinny, with long red hair that never seemed overly clean, a razor-thin face, prominent Adam’s apple, and bony shoulders and hips. He had about a billion freckles.

  He’d shown a minor talent for basketball in junior high but had quit the game when he’d went to high school. He’d told friends that he needed nonschool time to think since it was impossible to think when he was actually in school.

  The coach had asked, “Now, what in the Sam Hill do you want to think for, Skinner? Where’s that gonna get you?”

  He didn’t know the answer to that question, but he did know that being the second man on the lowest level, the 1-A Border Conference would get him nowhere at all. He’d thought at least that far ahead.

  “One of these days,” Skinner said to Holland, “you’re gonna catch a ricochet in the dick. Then what? Army gonna give you a wooden cock?”

  “Shut up,” Holland said.

  * * *

  —

  Holland had been elected mayor as a gag played by the voters of Wheatfield on the town’s stuffed shirts. What made it even funnier was that after an unsuccessful first term, Holland was reelected in a landslide. He’d run for office on a variety of slogans his minions had spray-painted on walls around town: “No More Bullshit: We’re Fucked,” “Beer Sales on Sunday,” “I’ll Do What I Can.”

  All of which outshone his opponent’s “A Bright Future for Wheatfield,” and “Happy Days Are Here Again.”

  This, in a town whose population had fallen from 829 in 2000 to 721 in the last census, and now probably hovered around 650, leaving behind twenty or thirty empty houses and a bunch of empty apartments over the downtown stores. Half the stores were themselves shuttered, and some had been simply abandoned by their owners, eventually—and pointlessly—taken by the county due to lack of property tax payments.

  This, in a town where fifteen years earlier the city
council had purchased in a corrupt deal from the then mayor a forty-acre tract on the edge of town. The town had run water and an electric cable out to it, and advertised it on a lonely I-90 billboard as the “Wheatfield Industrial Park.” In fifteen years, it had not attracted a single business, and, in the estimation of voters, never would.

  Therefore, Holland.

  Holland, a former first lieutenant in the Army, had lost a foot in Afghanistan and lived on a military disability pension, which, in Wheatfield, was good enough. He’d refused the thirty-dollars-per-meeting mayor’s salary, and had rented out the industrial park to a local corn farmer, so the forty acres was finally producing a bit of money. Sixty-eight hundred dollars a year, to be exact.

  When he was feeling industrious, Holland would limp around town with a Weedwacker, trimming grass and brush from around stop signs, fire hydrants, and drainage ditches. Once a month or so, he’d run the town’s riding lawn mower around the local park and Little League ball field, which was more than any other mayor had done. None of that took too long in a metropolis of 650 souls.

  Skinner asked Holland, “Remember how you said you were gonna do what you can for the town? When you were elected?”

  “I was deeply sincere,” Holland said, insincerely.

  “I know.”

  Skinner dragged a chair around from the breakfast bar, straddled it backwards, facing Holland on the couch, and said, “I was walking by the Catholic church last night.”

  “Good,” Holland said. And, “Why don’t you open the door and let a couple more flies in? I’m running out of game, and that big bastard’s hiding.”

  “There was some Mexicans coming out of the church,” Skinner continued. “They’re meeting there on Wednesday nights. Praying and shit.”

  “I know that,” Holland said. He was distracted as the bull bluebottle hove into view. He lifted the rifle.

  Skinner said, “Honest to God, Holland, you shoot that rifle, I’m gonna take this fuckin’ can of beer and I’m gonna sink it in your fuckin’ forehead. Put that rifle down and listen to what I’m saying.”

  The fly reversed itself and disappeared, and Holland took the rifle down. “You were walking by the Catholic church . . .”

  The church had been all but abandoned by the archdiocese. Not enough Catholics to keep it going and not enough local hippies to buy it as a dance studio or enough prostitutes to buy it as a massage parlor. There was a packing plant forty miles down the Interstate, though, with lots of Mexican workers, and the housing was cheap enough in Wheatfield that it had lately attracted two dozen of the larger Mexican families.

  The diocese had given a key to the church to a representative of the Wheatfield Mexicans, who were doing a bit to maintain it and to pay the liability insurance. Every once in a while, a Spanish-speaking priest from Minneapolis would drop by to say a Mass.

  Skinner: “I got to thinking . . .”

  “Man, that always makes me nervous,” Holland said. “Know what I’m saying?”

  “What I thought of was, how to make Wheatfield the busiest town on the prairie. Big money for everybody. For a long time. We could get a cut ourselves, if we could buy out Henry Morganstat. Could we get a mortgage, you think?”

  Holland sighed. “I got no idea how a seventeen-year-old high school kid could be so full of shit as you are. A hundred and sixty pounds of shit in a twelve-pound bag. So tell me, then finish your beer and go away and leave me with my fly.”

  Skinner told him.

  * * *

  —

  Holland had nothing to say for a long time. He just stared across the space between them. Then he finally said, “Jesus Christ, that could work, J.J. You say it’d cost six hundred dollars? I mean, I got six hundred dollars. I’d have to look some stuff up on the internet. And that thing about buying out Henry . . . I think he’d take twenty grand for the place. I got the GI Bill and my mother would probably loan me enough for the rest—at nine percent, the miserable bitch—but . . . Jesus Christ . . .”

  “I’d want a piece of the action,” Skinner said.

  “Well, of course. You came up with the idea, I’ll come up with the money. We go fifty-fifty,” Holland said.

  “That’s good. I’d hate to get everything in place and then have to blackmail you for my share,” Skinner said.

  Holland’s eyes narrowed: “We gotta talk to some guys . . .”

  Skinner said, “We can’t talk to any guys. This is you and me . . . If we . . .” He realized that Holland’s eyes were tracking past him and he turned and saw the fly headed back to the kitchen. “Goddamnit, Holland, look at me. We’re talking here about saving the town. Making big money, too.”

  Holland said, “We’ll have to tell at least one more person. We need a woman.”

  Skinner scratched his nose. “Yeah, I thought of that. There’s Jennie. She can keep her mouth shut.”

  “You still nailin’ her?”

  “From time to time, yeah, when Larry isn’t around.”

  “You know, you’re gonna knock her up sooner or later,” Holland said. “She’s ripe as a plum, and I’d guess her baby clock is about to go off. What is she anyway, thirty-three? When that red-haired bun pops outta the oven, you best be on a Greyhound to Hawaii.”

  “Yeah, yeah, maybe, but she’d do this, and she’d be perfect. Who else would we get anyway?”

  “I dunno, I . . .”

  The fly tracked around the room again, and Holland said, “Shhhh . . . he’s gonna land.” He lifted the rifle and pointed it over Skinner’s shoulder toward the sink. Skinner lurched forward onto the floor to get down and out of the way as Holland pulled the trigger.

  The fly disappeared in a puff of guts and broken wings.

  Holland looked down at Skinner and whispered, “Got him. It’s like . . . It’s like some kinda sign.”

  2

  Five months later, Mayor Wardell Holland told Virgil Flowers that there weren’t any available motel rooms in Wheatfield, and not even over in Blue Earth, down I-90. He’d checked. “Your best bet is Mankato. It’s an hour away.”

  “I live in Mankato,” Virgil said. “That’s my best shot?”

  “Well, we’ve only got one operating motel, the Tarweveld Inn. It’s booked solid five months out, with a waiting list. There’s a Motel 6 coming online in a couple of months, but that won’t help. You need to get down here. And, I mean, right now. Today!”

  “I didn’t know things were that tight,” Virgil said. “I can do it, but it’ll be a pain in the ass driving back and forth every day.”

  “Okay, had a thought,” Holland said. “Let me make a call—gimme ten minutes.”

  Virgil hung up, dropped the phone in his pocket, dragged a spoon through the pot of Cream of Wheat on the stove, and shouted, “It’s ready.” At his knee, Honus, the yellow dog, looked up anxiously, always worried that he wouldn’t get his fair share, although he always did.

  A moment later, Frankie Nobles eased into the kitchen, barefoot, wearing a pink quilted housecoat straight out of Target. She was a short, blond woman, busty, with a slender waist, and normally rosy-cheeked. On this morning, her face was a greenish white, and she had one hand on her stomach. “Why don’t I remember these parts? Five kids, and I never remember.”

  Morning sickness. She burped, grimaced.

  “Bad?”

  She thought for a second, said, “About a four on a scale of one to ten. That’s not too bad. When I get to a seven, you’ll know it.”

  Virgil was spooning the Cream of Wheat into a bowl. “Tell me when.”

  “Keep going,” she said, “I’m starving. At least I can keep that stuff down.”

  All three of them—Virgil, Frankie, and Honus the yellow dog—were eating Cream of Wheat, and two of them were reading different pieces of the Free Press, when Holland called back. “Okay, I got you a place. Mother-in-law
apartment, the local hairdresser and her husband. Nice folks. Separate entrance, and you get a refrigerator and a microwave. Fifty bucks a day. Extra ten for housekeeping, if you want it.”

  “Aw, jeez, I dunno,” Virgil said. “What happened to the mother-in-law?”

  “Dead. Choked to death on one of those vegan fake-meat burgers. That was a few years back. And listen, this place isn’t exactly what you might think—it’s not a dump in the basement. They fixed it up nice, been renting it out to pilgrims. I’ve seen it. The only reason it’s available is, Roy’s picky about who they rent it to.”

  “All right, I’ll take it,” Virgil said. “I’ll be there by noon. Where will I find you?”

  “I run the local store,” the mayor said. “We’re a block north of downtown, across from the Catholic church. Skinner and Holland, Eats and Souvenirs. You can’t miss it.”

  * * *

  —

  When will you be back?” Frankie asked when Virgil got off the phone.

  “Any time you need me—it’s only an hour from here,” Virgil said. “With lights and siren, fifty minutes max.”

  “I’ll be out at the farm, the boys can take care of me,” she said. They were sitting in Virgil’s kitchen, the May sunlight streaming through the window over the sink, a pretty Sunday morning in Mankato.

  Less than a month away from summer and the longest day of the year, the spring so far had been cool and generously wet without being offensive, and through the window they could see the pink blossoms on the neighbor’s apple tree. “It’ll be a nice drive down there. You be careful. I always worry when you’re dealing with a nut.”

  “We don’t know he’s a nut,” Virgil said. “Or she. Could be a woman.”

  “Not likely. When was the last time you heard of a random sniper who was female?”

  “Don’t even know he’s a sniper,” Virgil said. “There might be a motive that ties the two shootings together. That would make him a shooter but not a random sniper.”

  “You just said ‘he’ and ‘him,’” Frankie pointed out.