When the shouting started, Virgil ran down the porch steps and around the side of the house to the back, trailed by Bakker, with his shotgun. In the backyard, one of the deputies—Ronnie?—shouted, “The woman ran for it. She went that way.”

He pointed to the house next to the Apels’, which was dark.

The deputy had a pistol in his hand, and Virgil shouted, “Put the gun away,” and then Jenkins ran around from the other side of the house, and called, “She must be inside the house; she didn’t run past it.”

Virgil ran to the front of the house and up the steps and banged on the door. No response. Skinner and Holland had arrived in Holland’s pickup, and Skinner shouted, “Nobody lives there. It’s empty.”

The door was locked, and Virgil shouted, “Check the doors, she must be inside,” and he ran back down to the side lawn.

“This one’s locked,” a deputy called from the back.

“Yeah, so’s this one,” another deputy called from the side of the house.

“Then where did she go?” Virgil asked Jenkins. “You sure she didn’t get past you?”

“Positive. I saw her running across the yard and I cut around the house the other way, thinking I’d catch her, but I never saw her.”

Virgil was looking at the house, and said, “I bet she went under the porch.”

Jenkins looked at the porch: its floor was four feet off the ground, with a railing around it; the lattice that skirted it to the ground looked shaky, at best.

“That’d tell us why she disappeared so quick,” Jenkins said. “We need more flashlights here. You got your thermonuclear?”

Virgil said, “Yeah, but . . . that could be where she stashed the rifle. Out of the house but right there, if she needed it.”

—

Banning and Zimmer were on the street with Davy Apel, who had his hands cuffed behind him. Apel said, “I’d be careful. Ann can be violent. I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s the one who killed those people . . .”

“Ah, shut up,” Virgil said. “Your house is wired for sound: we’ve heard everything you’ve said to each other since noon, you’re toast. But if Ann’s got a gun, and if she shoots somebody . . . whatever bad is going to happen to you will get a lot worse. So you better tell me: does she have a gun?”

Apel put his head down, muttering to himself, looked sideways at Banning, then looked at Virgil, and said, “Maybe. I mean, it’s her gun, she said Glen Andorra gave it to her. I told her I didn’t want it in the house, and I think she might have put it over there, under the porch.”

“We got eight cops here. If she starts shooting, we’ll kill her. You want to go over to the porch and tell her that?”

—