“I might have visited Janet Fischer’s home when she wasn’t there,” Virgil said. “And . . . You’ll keep this strictly confidential . . .”
“Of course. I’d never rat out a colleague on a righteous burglary,” Jenkins said.
“I think I found the Virgin Mary costume under her mattress.”
“Think?”
“Ninety-five percent anyway.”
“So, there we are,” Jenkins said. “She also works at the store, making the big bucks. Big bucks for this town. Skinner, Holland, and Fischer set up the shuck. Osborne finds out about it. Thinks she’s figured out how it was done and lets it slip to one of those three. Holland knows where he can get the gun he needs and he kills to get it. He then shoots two innocent people to set up the real target, Margery Osborne. Then Van Den Berg gets some semblance of the truth out of Fischer and threatens to expose them. Holland kills him. Then he goes after you with a bow . . . wearing combat gear and showing some real nighttime combat mojo. Cold as ice, nails Shrake—who has a gun, for Christ’s sakes.”
After a moment, Virgil said, “That’s well thought out, but I don’t believe it.”
“Why?”
“Because Wardell’s a good guy, and I like him,” Virgil said. “So’s Skinner.”
Jenkins nodded. “That’s a problem, and that’s why I said you might not want to hear it.”
“Holland’s working all day,” Virgil said.
“True.”
“His trailer’s out on the edge of town . . . You could drop me,” Virgil said.
“It’s a risk. And you don’t have a key.”
“There’s no trailer on the face of the earth that I can’t get into with my butter knife,” Virgil said. “Even if I got caught, if I explained it right, I don’t think he’d turn me in.”
“I could watch him, tell you if he’s leaving the store.”
* * *
—
They cruised the trailer once and decided on a diversion. Jenkins would drive and would stop close to the front of the trailer. Virgil would get out of the backseat on the same side. Jenkins would go to the front door while Virgil slipped around the side to the back door. There were no other houses looking at that side, or the back, either. Jenkins would get in the truck and drive away when there was no answer at the front door.
Should work.
Jenkins dropped him, and Virgil tried to stay in the shadows until he got around to the side. He didn’t need his butter knife to get into the trailer because the back door wasn’t locked. He was inside ten seconds after Jenkins drove off.
The trailer smelled like microwaved everything—tacos, burritos, pasta, pizza, oatmeal—anything you could jam in a microwave. Even a few potpies. Holland was not the neatest man, nor the messiest.
The good thing about a trailer was that it was a metal box: a capsule. There weren’t a lot of innovative places to hide things. Virgil started with the bedroom, worked toward the kitchen, and took the place apart. He found a pellet gun in a closet, but Skinner had told him about Holland shooting flies. He glanced at a TV, apparently hooked to the satellite dish on the roof, and an old laptop computer.
The key find was in the bedroom, in a cardboard box; in it, a small Epson projector, the kind used for business presentations. Sitting on top of the projector, loosely wrapped to avoid wrinkles, he found a piece of fabric, the sheerest he’d ever seen—something that you might use to make nylon stockings.
The material was two feet wide and six and a half or seven feet long, with a thin Plexiglas rod glued to the top of it. Transparent nylon fishing line was attached to each end of the rod so that the material would dangle from the rod like a transparent banner. And finally, in the box itself, a CD.
He called Jenkins, “How are we doing?”
“I’m in the back room, with a Coke. Wardell’s behind the counter. You done?”
“Come get me in ten.”
He carried the CD to the MacBook, plugged the computer in, loaded the CD, and brought it up. There was only one thing on it: a two-minute movie of Janet Fischer—he was sure it was she—dressed as the Virgin Mary, lifting a hand to bless the crowd, and speaking—“Bienaventurados los mansos, porque ellos heredaran la tierra”—in her best Minnesota Spanish.
He put everything back, then did a six-minute review of the whole place, opening doors and drawers. No .223. rifle, no shells. If Holland had a .223, he could be hiding it somewhere off the premises, simply as a basic precaution.
But Virgil didn’t believe it. Holland was too nice a guy.
One oddity, though: nowhere in the trailer did Virgil see anything to indicate that Holland had ever been in the military—no photos, no memorabilia, no letters from the Veterans Administration.
* * *
—
Jenkins was outside the door eleven minutes after they spoke on the phone. Virgil climbed into the truck, and they headed back downtown. “We were right about one thing—it was Holland and Fischer who pulled off the Virgin Mary thing. It’s gotta be illegal, somehow, but hell if I know the exact statute.”
Jenkins said, “How about Skinner?”
“I’m sure Skinner was in there, too. Anyway, all three of them now have anti-motives for shooting somebody. Shooting anybody. Right from the start, they’ve seemed sort of panic-stricken by the shootings. They’ll lose their asses if the shootings continue . . . By the way, Holland doesn’t have a bow. Neither does Fischer.”
“Then what the fuck are we gonna do, man? We still got nothing.”
Then Holland called on Virgil’s cell, and Virgil took it on the truck’s Bluetooth connection.
“I got the call,” Holland said. “Woman’s voice. I got instructions for the drop spot.”
“How stupid is it?” Virgil asked.
“Surprisingly not stupid, if you’re stupid enough to do this in the first place,” Holland said. “There’s this place west of town, called the East Chain . . .”
“I know it,” Virgil said. “We’ll be at the store in two minutes. We’ll talk then.”
On the way to the store, Virgil called the phone guy at BCA headquarters to tell him the call had come in on Holland’s cell phone. The guy was ready for it, and he said he’d have the caller’s number in five minutes.
“What’s the East Chain?” Jenkins asked, when Virgil was off the phone.
* * *