They walked Davy Apel to the house twice during the night, thinking that as time passed, and Ann had more time to think, she might call it quits. She never answered him. Quite a few of the deputies thought she’d gotten past Jenkins’s group and they started poking around the neighborhood.

Another deputy came out of the Apels’ house with a piece of white typing paper that had been crunched into a ball and thrown in the wastebasket. He’d flattened it out and showed it to Virgil. Virgil read “I’m wearing a wire,” written with something like a broad Sharpie pen.

He showed it to Apel. “Were you tipping Ann or was she tipping you?” Virgil asked.

Apel shook his head.

Later, outside the house again: “She told me once that she’d never go to prison,” Apel told Virgil. “She’s an outdoor girl. The idea of being locked up scares her to death.”

“She should have thought longer about killing people,” Virgil said.

“When I began to suspect she was doing that, I told her . . .”

“Don’t even start,” Virgil said. “You were in this up to your neck.”

—

Dawn finally arrived an hour after people began asking “Is it getting lighter in the east?” which it hadn’t been, but by 5 o’clock it had. A crowd of Wheatfieldians had gathered across the street, and an ambulance from Fairmont had joined the cop cars, as a precaution.

“We’ll wait until the sun’s up,” Virgil said. “Jenkins and I will clear the place . . . and”—he looked at Bakker, who was leaning against the fender of his patrol car, the combat shotgun resting behind him—“we’ll take Darren as backup.”

“Ooo. Gives me a hard-on,” Bakker said.

Banning: “’Bout time something did.”

“Hey . . .”

—

At 5:45, Jenkins kicked the side door.

He, Virgil, and Bakker were armored up, Jenkins and Bakker both wearing helmets and leading the way in, Virgil trailing. They first went down to the basement, Bakker now leading the way with the muzzle of his shotgun. The basement had wall-top, dirt-grimed windows on all four sides, and they could see that one of the windows under the porch was hanging open. The basement floor was dusty and crisscrossed by woman-sized footprints, which finally went up the stairs.