Holy Ghost Read online

“I don’t know the last time that was opened, but it’s been a while. When we retarred the roof—that was, mmm, five years ago?—we did it with ladders from the outside,” Bilbija said.

  Virgil climbed the ladder anyway, got the hooks loose, and when he pushed up on the hatch a double handful of dust rained down on his hair and shoulders.

  He managed to heave the hatch up onto the roof and climbed outside. When he looked at the hatch, he decided Bilbija was right: the thing hadn’t been opened in years, and part of the problem with pushing it open was that it had been tarred shut.

  On the other hand, the roof had good sight lines to the places where the shooting victims had been standing. When Virgil walked around the roof, he found the second floor was built over half the structure, with the back half dropping to a single story. If someone had a short ladder—not even a stepladder but one of the three-step stools used to reach high cupboards—he could have climbed onto the back roof, then used the stool to climb to the top. Getting down would be even faster, if it had become necessary to flee. He could have gone from roof to roof with no more than a three-foot drop.

  If the shooter climbed up and down the back of the building, between the wall and the dumpster by the kitchen door, he might even do it unseen.

  Virgil put it down as a possibility. The roof didn’t show any footprints, discarded DNA-laden cigarette butts, a book of matches from a sleazy nightclub, an accidentally dropped driver’s license, or any other fictional possibilities, so he went back down the hatch and pulled it shut.

  “Find anything?” Bilbija asked.

  “A nice view, but . . . no.”

  “Didn’t think you would,” Bilbija said. “Say, you want a beer or a quick shot to keep you going? I got a nice rye.”

  * * *

  —

  Virgil declined the offer and worked his way back up Main Street, this time behind the stores on the west side, and found a more complicated situation, a mix of mostly ramshackle prewar houses and small businesses, some of them in converted houses. The ProNails place had a dusty, handwritten “Out of Business” sign in a window, but Auto Heaven, Buster’s Better Quality Meats, and Trudy’s Hi-Life Consignment were still operating; nobody had heard a shot fired.

  Because of the way the houses and businesses were mixed, there were multiple spaces and slots between hedges and behind fences where a rifleman could have hidden. Virgil was lining up a theoretical shot down toward the churches when a man’s voice called, “Hold it right there! I got a gun on you!”

  Virgil raised his hands: “I’m a cop. Don’t shoot.”

  A heavyset man in a blue T-shirt and a ragged pair of Dickies coveralls stepped out from behind a garage twenty feet away. He was maybe fifty, balding, with a wind-eroded face. He was aiming an ancient twelve-gauge double-barreled shotgun at Virgil’s stomach. “Cop, my ass.”

  “Call the sheriff, ask him. Call the mayor. My name is Flowers, I’m with the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.” Virgil was talking fast and trying to keep his voice from shaking, not entirely successfully.

  The guy looked less certain in his resolve but didn’t drop the muzzle of the gun; from Virgil’s point of view, the twin bores of the shotgun looked about the size of apples. Instead, the man half turned his head and shouted, “Laura! Call down to the store and ask somebody if they know a cop named Flowers.” To Virgil he said, “Keep your hands up.”

  Virgil kept his hands up, and said, “Point the gun somewhere else.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “You pull that trigger and you’re gonna spend the rest of your life in Stillwater prison for killing a cop,” Virgil said. “I’ve identified myself, and if you don’t point the gun somewhere else, I’m gonna bust you for aggravated assault, and that’s a minimum of five years. Now, point the fuckin’ gun somewhere else.”

  The muzzle moved a foot to the left, and Virgil took a breath. They stood there like that, and then, a moment later, Laura yelled, “Wardell says he’s a state police officer.”

  The guy considered that, then lifted the muzzle, pointing it at the sky. “I thought you were maybe that sniper guy,” he said, “a stranger sneaking around like that.”

  Virgil walked up to him. The guy was holding the gun in one hand, and Virgil snatched it away from him, then turned and kicked the guy in the ass—hard. “You fuckhead, you could have killed me. Jesus Christ, I oughta beat the crap out of you. I mean . . . Jesus, going around pointing a shotgun.”

  “I thought . . .” the guy moaned, squeezing his ass with one hand.

  “You think you see the sniper, call the cops,” Virgil shouted. He was still furious. He broke open the gun’s action and ejected two shells that looked as old as the gun itself.

  A woman came out from behind the garage and asked the heavyset man, “Now what have you done, Bram?”

  Virgil, shaking his head, shouted at him again, “You fuckin’ moron . . .”

  Bram said, “There aren’t any cops. You know how long it takes a cop to get here? A half hour, if you’re lucky. If you live in this town, you take care of yourself.”

  Virgil looked at him for another few seconds, then tossed the gun back to him. He kept the shells. “You point this fuckin’ gun at anyone else, I swear to God I’ll stick it so far up your ass you’ll blow your head off if you sneeze.”

  “I thought you was the sniper . . .”

  Virgil shook his head again. “Man!”

  * * *

  —

  Virgil turned to the woman. “Thank you for helping out. I apologize for the language, but he scared me to death.”

  “He didn’t mean no harm,” she said, anxiously twisting her hands together. She was also heavyset and also windburned; they had to be husband and wife, Virgil realized.

  “Doesn’t make any difference if he meant no harm,” Virgil said, his voice softening. “If he’d jiggled that trigger, he’d have cut me in half.”

  Bram and Laura Smit—“Not Smith, Smit, ending with the ‘t’”—disagreed about the sniper’s gunshots. They’d been home when the two shootings took place, and Laura Smit hadn’t heard anything that might have been a gunshot. Bram thought he might have, but was uncertain.

  Laura said, “That was your tinnitus, honey.”

  Bram shook his head. “I’ll tell you why I know I heard it. Because with the second one, I called it before we knew anybody was shot.”

  “That’s true,” Laura admitted.

  Now Virgil was interested. “What did it sound like, exactly? Was it close by?”

  “Couldn’t tell where it came from, how close it was, or anything, but it didn’t sound like a gun,” he said. “It sounded like when you’re downstairs and somebody upstairs drops a boot. More like a thump than a bang. Not too loud. With the first one, I went to see if Laura had fallen or something, but she hadn’t, so I almost forgot about it. Then, later that day, we heard about the shooting down by the church, and I wondered if I might have heard the shot.”

  “You tell anyone?”

  “Well, no, because I really didn’t think I had,” Smit said.

  “But the second shot . . .”

  “Yesterday afternoon, I had my head in the refrigerator and I heard that sound again. I went and found Laura, and said, ‘I heard it again,’ and she thought I was imagining it. Then we found out somebody had been shot again.”

  “Did you tell anyone about that?”

  “I talked him out of it,” Laura confessed. “I didn’t think, you know, it was any of our business . . . if there’s somebody around shooting people. Bram got his gun out . . . I mean, there aren’t any police around here, Virgil. Not since Wally left, and that was three years ago. We’re on our own, and I don’t want to go poking a stick in a hornet’s nest.”

  Virgil walked around the garage with them, into their house, which smelled like cookies because Laura had been
baking. Virgil accepted a peanut butter cookie and looked out some of the windows; from nowhere in the house could he see the place where either of the victims had been standing when they were shot.

  They went out in the yard, and he looked at the other houses in the neighborhood. As far as he could see, none of them had clear sight lines to the shooting scenes, but, then, the shooter wouldn’t need much of an opening. A .223 slug was about the thickness of an ordinary number 2 pencil—if the shooter could find an opening the size of a soup can, he’d be able to use a scope and have a clear line between the muzzle and the target. In other words, he could shoot right through most solid-looking trees, just as you can see blue skies through most trees if you look around a little.

  He accepted a second cookie, and said to Bram, “I’m sorry I kinda lost it there, but I’ve had too many guns pointed at me lately. I’m going to give you a card, and if you think of anything I might need to know, or if you hear the sound again, give me a call.”

  Smit nodded. “I will. We’re not Catholics, but that church saved the town. Everybody knows that. This crazy man could send us back to the poorhouse.”

  * * *

  —

  Virgil spent another half hour wandering around the area on the back side of Main Street but didn’t see anything that made him want to look closer.

  He went back to Main Street, got an exceptionally bad cheeseburger and even worse fries at Mom’s Cafe, the only restaurant he could find, then headed back to Skinner & Holland. Skinner was behind the cash register, and Virgil picked up a package of cinnamon gum to get the taste of the burger out of his mouth, paid most of a dollar for it, and dropped the change in a jar that said “Tips. Help the Deserving.”

  “You the deserving?” Virgil asked Skinner.

  “Maybe,” he said.

  “How come this place is called Skinner and Holland, Eats and Souvenirs, and the only eats you’ve got are Sno Balls and Cheetos and fake-cheese crackers?” Virgil asked.

  “There’re some frozen entrées in the freezer, and you’re welcome to use the microwave,” Skinner said. “That’s what me’n Wardell mostly eat. We’re talking about starting a diner, but we haven’t found the right venue. And Holland’s mom would get pissed. She owns Mom’s Cafe.”

  “She sure doesn’t need the competition,” Virgil said. “I ate the worst cheeseburger of my life there about five minutes ago.”

  Skinner winced, and said, “I wouldn’t wander too far from a toilet. They got three cooks there; we call them Hepatitis A, B, and C. That burger’s gonna hit the bottom of the bucket in one piece, if you know what I mean.”

  “I do,” Virgil said. “Maybe I ought to start a cafe if you’re afraid to piss off Holland’s mom.”

  Holland had come up behind him, and now he said, “Who’s gonna piss off Mom?”

  Skinner said, “Virgil got a cheeseburger down at the cafe.”

  “That’ll teach you,” Holland said. “God knows where the meat comes from. Probably from a veterinarian’s.” Then, “Figure anything out?”

  “Found a guy who thinks he might have heard the shots; I need to check some sight lines.” A couple of customers had edged up to listen in. Virgil said, “We can talk about it later.”

  “That’s more than anybody else has gotten,” Holland said.

  “If you could prove that it’s Holland’s mom who did the shooting, it’d benefit everybody,” Skinner said.

  “Except Mom,” Holland added. To Virgil: “You had a hepatitis shot?”

  “Already heard that joke,” Virgil said.

  Skinner and Holland looked at each other, and then Skinner said, “That wasn’t a joke.”

  “Ah, Jesus,” Virgil said.

  * * *

  —

  Virgil left Skinner & Holland, chewing his way through the pack of gum, walked around to his truck, opened his camera case and took out his Nikon and a long lens. He hung the camera on a shoulder and got a pair of image-stabilizing Canon binoculars out of the gear box in the back. After locking the truck, he trudged over to where the shooting victims were hit and glassed the west side of the business district, picking out spots where a shot might have come from.

  There were several. He took a series of photos that he could later review on his iPad.

  On his way back to the truck, he saw Skinner leaving the store.

  “Solved the restaurant problem,” Skinner said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Taco truck,” Skinner said. “Who doesn’t like tacos? On top of the tourists, we got a whole bunch of Mexicans in town, so that’d add to the market. Bet there’s a truck up in the Cities that we could buy—I’m gonna look at it this week. Get it going. Maybe we could find a Mexican lady to run it. I know there are some in town who make damn good tacos ’cause I’ve eaten them.”

  “Why don’t you start a corporation?” Virgil said.

  “Where would that get us?” Skinner asked.

  “It’d give me an opportunity to buy some of your stock.”

  “Ah,” Skinner said. “Hmm. Let me think about that.”

  4

  Virgil downloaded the photos to his iPad and walked back to the business district, checking the photographs for holes in the foliage or any other place where the shots might have come from. He discovered that the photos were a lot less help than he’d imagined they’d be. If the shot had come from that area, it could have come from anywhere.

  When he finished, it was late in the afternoon. He heard the bells from St. Mary’s, saw a rush of people cross the street to the church for the first Mass. Nobody had been shot, so he went back to his car, found the address where Holland had arranged a room, and drove over.

  An older Ford F-150 was parked nose in at the front door; a bumper sticker said “I dream of an America where a chicken can cross the road without having its motives questioned.”

  Maybe the Vissers had a sense of humor; or maybe they were sincere and deeply into fowl. He climbed the stoop and knocked. A woman opened the inner door, looked through the screen, and said, “You’d be Virgil. You desperately need a decent haircut, and, fortunately, I’m the gal to give it to you. You don’t need it a lot shorter, but it does need to be cleaned up. Get rid of those split ends.”

  Virgil asked, “Miz Visser?”

  “Yup, as in ‘real pisser,’ as my husband would say, if he were here,” she said. “Walk around back, I’ll go through the house and open the door for you. You can park your truck at the side, on the gravel.”

  Virgil parked on a gravel strip, got his bag, flipped the switch on what he believed was the loudest car alarm in the world, locked the truck, and walked around to the back door, where Visser was waiting. Virgil got a better look at her without the screen between them: a Netherlander blonde with pale blue eyes and nearly invisible eyebrows, she might have been a workout queen on a free cable channel. She was wearing a tight mock turtleneck, black yoga pants, and flats. She was pretty, in an earnest, small-town way.

  “We don’t serve food, but you’ve got a microwave, and a comfortable bed.”

  “It’s fine,” Virgil said, looking around the room. A compact bathroom, straight out of Home Depot, opened off the back wall, with a toilet, sink, and shower. The room smelled of pine-scented deodorizer.

  “Fifty dollars a day, and we take it any way you roll it—cash, check, or Visa. But if it’s credit card, you have to go charge it at Skinner and Holland, and it’ll be fifty-five, because the store adds a ten percent service charge.”

  “Of course they do,” Virgil said. “I’ll pay cash.”

  “Great. Now, about the haircut—that’ll be forty, and again, if you charge it at Skinner and Holland . . .”

  “Listen, Danielle—it’s Danielle, right?—I’m not sure I need . . .”

  “Virgil, you do need one,” she said. “In a position like yours, you have to l
ook professional or people won’t respect you.”

  In the end, Virgil caved. He’d never liked his Mankato barber especially, because in his heart the guy wanted to give Virgil a military buzz cut. Danielle guided him back through the house and into the front parlor, which had been set up as a hairdresser’s shop, with a chair, hair dryers, an oval mirror, and bottles of hair stuff.

  She pushed him into the chair, and Virgil said, “Not too much off, right? Neaten it up, that’s all I want.”

  “Correct,” she said, as she threw a nylon cape over his chest and pinned it tight around his neck. “Now, let me tell you what’s going on with these shootings, okay? We’ve got a lot of smart women in this town and they all sit right here, and we talk. I can boil down what they told me.”

  “I’d appreciate it.”

  She turned Virgil away from the mirror and started talking and cutting. The women of Wheatfield rejected all suspicion of outside interference. “Somebody we know is doing this. You know why?”

  “If I knew why, I could break the case,” Virgil said.

  “Then I’ll tell you why.” She leaned close to his ear, and said, “Money. One way or another, it’s money. Specifically, it’s going to be money that somebody isn’t getting that they think they should get.”

  “It’s a theory,” Virgil said.

  One of Visser’s breasts gave his right ear a brief massage, but the hair snipping never slowed. “You’re dismissing me. You shouldn’t. This whole town was doomed until we got the Marian apparitions. Not only was the town doomed, all of us residents were, too. Except for a couple of government people and teachers, we were all poor. Or getting that way. Now, all of a sudden, everything has changed. But . . . But . . .” She leaned close again. “Some people have been left out. They’re still poor. They’re still doomed. They hate that.”

  He got the ear massage again, as though for emphasis. He said, “That’s an interesting idea. Somebody who’s been left out but still owns a good, accurate rifle.”