John Sandford - Escape Clause

Virgil said, “Toby, I really hope you’re not involved in this. If I find out you were, I’m going to call up Maxine and tell her how to find you.”

“C’mon, man, don’t even joke about that,” Strait said. He looked nervously up and down the street. “In fact, I’ve been standing around too long. I’m getting the fuck out of here… but, uh, why don’t you get out first?”

“Don’t trust me?”

“I’m not saying that… but why don’t you pull out first.”

“All right, but give me a phone number. I might need to call you,” Virgil said.

“Don’t be giving this out. Maxine’s mad as a goddamn hatter.”

“You’re good with me,” Virgil said, as he entered Strait’s phone number into his cell phone’s contact list. “As long as you don’t have those tigers.”

Virgil pulled out first, going a block down Seventh Street to Broadway, got caught at the light. A left turn on Broadway would get him home in a half hour or so. As with any kidnapping, time was crucial in finding the victims alive… if they weren’t already dead. At that very moment, though, he didn’t know what he could do in the Twin Cities that he couldn’t do in Mankato.

Still, he thought, he was probably on the wrong side of the Minnesota River, which didn’t have a heck of a lot of bridges. If he stayed on the south side, where he was, he’d wind up back in Mankato-but if he left New Ulm on the north side of the river, back across the bridge, he could tend down toward Mankato, but also leave open his option of returning to the Twin Cities by a much shorter route.

He could try to call Peck again, and check with the BCA tip line, the zoo director, and whoever else might help, before he had to make a decision whether to go south to home or north to the Cities. How had he survived in the job before cell phones?

In his rearview mirror, he saw Strait driving down Seventh in the opposite direction, then turn a corner, on Minnesota Street. Minnesota didn’t lead out of town, and Virgil wondered if Strait might be hiding in New Ulm itself.

The woman in the car in front of him was texting and didn’t pull out when the light went green, and Virgil waited patiently for one-half second before tapping the horn, and the woman looked up, saw the green light, gave him the finger, and drove on through. New Ulm was getting more like LA every single day, Virgil thought.

–

He took the turn, drove a block, then took another left, around the Walgreens block, and then another left, back to Seventh, and a right turn toward the bridge. He passed Minnesota, looked down the street and saw that Strait was four blocks down, still heading west. A small gray car nearly cut him off as it turned down Minnesota, and Virgil went on, considering himself lucky not to have gotten another finger from its elderly driver.

He punched up Peck’s cell phone, and somewhat to his surprise, Peck answered on the first ring, sounding sleepy. Virgil identified himself, mentioned the tiger investigation, and said, “You were recommended to me by a number of people as an expert on traditional medical practices in Minnesota. I need to come talk with you. I’ll be in St. Paul in an hour, if you’re at the same address as on your driver’s license.”

“Well, yes, I am,” Peck said. “I could accommodate you, I suppose, but maybe… Could we make it two hours? I’m a writer and I work early and late: I just got up from a nap and I need to run out for dinner. So… seven o’clock?”

“That’d be fine,” Virgil said.

–

Took him a minute before he thought, Wait. A small gray car? Kind of a small station-wagon-looking car? A Subaru? With an elderly driver?

Virgil was in traffic, with a concrete center divider between himself and the opposite lane, but he did a screeching U-turn anyway, bumped over the divider and headed back toward Minnesota Street-and a black New Ulm cop car was on him like holy on the Pope, both lights and siren. Virgil said, “Shit,” out loud, and hit his own flashers and pulled over, hopped out, jogged back to the New Ulm car.

The cop didn’t get out, but looked worried, and Virgil held up his hands to show that they were empty, then made a rolling “window-down” motion with his finger and the cop dropped the window and Virgil said, “I don’t have time to explain, but there could be a shooting about to happen. My name’s Virgil Flowers, I’m with the BCA…”

“I’ve heard of you-”

“Call in and tell them you’re following me and we might need more help. Could be a woman with a rifle and she’s supposedly a good shot. Follow me now.”

Virgil ran back to his truck and took off, hit the siren as he did it, made the turn on Minnesota, didn’t see either the gray car or Strait’s truck, said “Shit” again, thumbed through his phone’s contact list, got Strait’s number, and called it.

Strait came up and Virgil shouted, “Man, this is Virgil. You got a gray car behind you?”

A second later, Strait said, “There’s a car, but it’s quite a way back. I think it’s gray.”

“That might be Maxine.”

“What?!”

“She might have followed me. I’m coming after you with a New Ulm cop,” Virgil said. “Where are you?”

“I’m on North Broadway, going out west on 14.”

“All right, we’re coming after you. If that’s Maxine and she has a gun in the car, she’s going straight back to jail, and this time, she won’t get out.”

“She did follow you, you silly shit,” Strait said.

“Yeah, yeah, we’re not sure that’s Maxine,” Virgil said. “Stay on 14, don’t let that car get too close. We’re coming…”

–

Up ahead, Strait dropped the hammer, unholstered his Beretta and stuck the barrel between the seat and back on the passenger side, so it wouldn’t slide off the seat if he had to hit the brakes hard. He cranked the speedometer up to a hundred, but backed off to ninety-five and then ninety because the highway couldn’t handle the truck’s weight and speed. He swooped around the wide turn where Broadway turned into Twentieth Street, past a couple of body shops, going out of town, the truck’s passenger-side tires running off the road at two spots, leaving his heart up in his throat.

Around the turn, past the cemetery and the liquor store, then a shallower turn took him into a straightaway and he ran it back up to a hundred and…

That piece-of-shit Subaru was gaining on him.

Up ahead of him, the highway narrowed from two lanes to one, and he picked up his phone and looked at the screen and punched up his most recent call and Virgil answered and Strait shouted, “It’s her: they’re chasing me. I’m doing a hundred and they’re still coming up on me and this truck don’t got no more.”

–

Virgil shouted back, “Keep going, we’re right behind you, got lights and sirens going, I’m hoping we can scare her off when she sees us in her rearview.”

He looked down at his speedometer: they were still in town and he was going seventy-five and scaring himself. If somebody poked out of a side street, he could kill them. He chickened out and slowed to sixty. That meant that Strait and Knowles were actually getting farther away by the second.

Virgil shouted into his phone, “Do you know the country out there?”

“A little bit,” Strait shouted back.

Even through the phone, Virgil could hear the wind noise ripping off Strait’s truck. “Is there any place where you could lead her around in a square, you know, take a right, take another right, take another right, and bring her back to us?”