“That’s one of the reasons I bought his alibi, that detail. When I talked to Danny Visser just now, she told me that when they ran out in the street to look down toward the church after the shooting, they saw me running around a corner. I was thinking they saw me down by the church—but the corner where they saw me, that’s gotta be five hundred yards from the church. Before I got there, I was looking in backyards, checking out people I saw, running around like a chicken with my head cut off. But I didn’t dash right down there. That must have been ten minutes after the shooting.”

Holland: “Visser’s place is a two-minute walk from the Quonset hut. A slow two-minute walk.”

Virgil nodded. “Doesn’t take that long. I walked it. Slowly. A minute, or a little more.”

“Takes some major balls to pull that off,” Skinner said.

“Whoever’s doing this has got some major balls—we already know that,” Holland said. “So Apel’s back in play. You guys scared him this afternoon, and he decided to throw his old lady under the bus.”

“Could be,” Virgil said. “On the other hand, he is the guy I saw standing on his porch when I was chasing the bow hunter.” And to Jenkins: “That creates a problem. You see it?”

Jenkins said, “If it’s the same one you see.”

Holland: “What’s the problem?”

—

Assuming that everything Apel said about his wife is true but he no longer has a solid alibi himself, how do we take her to trial?” Virgil asked. “Every single piece of evidence that we have against her also applies to him. No jury is going to find her guilty beyond a reasonable doubt if she testifies that he must have done it, because the evidence points in both directions. To him and to her.”

“Not only that, his alibi may have a flat tire but it’s not completely flat,” Jenkins said. “A good defense attorney would get that time all confused: get you up the street faster, get him in the shop earlier. Nobody could say it’s not possible.”

“He’s still taking an awful chance,” Holland said.

“Maybe he saw what was about to happen—that we had all of this circumstantial evidence—and he decided to move first and to blame her,” Virgil said. “I mean, the marriage is apparently on the rocks.”

“Plus, she was the one sleeping with Glen,” Holland said. “She’s the one who’d know about Andorra’s guns, and she could walk right up to him . . .”