At Skinner & Holland, Jenkins peeled the wire off Apel’s back, and she said, “I’m going to Fairmont to eat dinner. But I’m not leaving that house. I’ll be back there at eight.”

“I’ll give you a direct phone number—you can put it on your speed dial—in case there’s a problem,” Virgil said. “Maybe . . . it sounds like he’s innocent. We should go look at those guys with the extra Quonset keys.”

When she was gone, Jenkins said, “She has a nice ass. She could crack a walnut between those cheeks.”

“You were supposed to be peeling the wire off her back,” Virgil said.

“Yeah, right.” Jenkins looked at the time on his cell phone. “I hate waiting.”

27

They waited. Holland and Skinner came back, and, a while later, Janet Fischer turned up, her face still showing blue and yellow bruises despite heavy makeup. Again, Virgil warned them that he would have to kick them out. “When my guy gets here, it’s cops only.”

They got around to talking about the Marian apparitions. Virgil wondered if they could expect more of them, but Skinner shook his head.

“I’ve read up on them, and the Virgin usually only appears once or twice. There were several apparitions at Lourdes—sixteen or eighteen, I think—but only to one girl. There’s never been anything like Wheatfield, where people actually had cell phones and actually got pictures.”

“It’s a miracle,” Jenkins said.

“So, there probably won’t be any more,” Virgil said.

“Well, we hope there might be,” Holland said. “You can never tell.”

“Probably won’t be any until the pilgrim traffic starts to thin out,” Jenkins said.

Fischer said, “Hey! If you’re going to think bad thoughts about the Blessed Virgin Mary, keep them to yourself, fathead. My ex-boyfriend disrespected her and he wound up dead.”

“You think there’s a connection?” Virgil asked.

“I hope not,” Fischer said. “I hope it’s something else. I hope the Virgin didn’t set something off.”

—

A few minutes after 11 o’clock, they’d been playing poker for an hour, using a box of washers for chips. Holland lost most of his washers on the first hand and started to take off his shirt, and Fischer said, “Oh, no. Oh, no way.”

Skinner was the big winner and he gloated; he was becoming seriously offensive when a man knocked on the back door. Before anyone could get up, the man pulled it open and stuck his head inside.

He was tall, thin, balding, and dressed in dark gray coveralls. There was a red-bordered oval patch on the front of the coveralls, inside which was a name: “Bob.”

“Hey, Harry, come on in,” Virgil said. To the others, “Sorry, guys, but you’ll have to go.”