John Sandford - Escape Clause

Must have run out of ammo , Virgil thought. He shouted, “Throw your gun into the road and come out in the open with your hands up.” The rifle landed on the blacktop and then she came out with her hands up. Strait wasn’t shooting and Virgil shouted, “Toby-she quit. Don’t shoot, but stay where you are until we check her.”

There was no reply and Virgil said to the New Ulm cop, “Let’s go. Keep the shotgun on her and if she pulls another gun when we get close, blow her up. Can you do that?”

“Yup.”

“Good man. I gotta check the other guy, make sure she didn’t kill him.”

They moved out from behind Virgil’s truck, Virgil around the front, the New Ulm cop around the back with the shotgun mounted to his shoulder, and they stayed that way as they jogged down the road toward Knowles.

Virgil hadn’t felt much during the chase except stress and intense concentration, but now the anger was coming on. He’d been chumped and because of that, he’d led a bona fide crazy woman to her victim-forget about the fact that the victim was a notorious asshole, Virgil had still been chumped and that had resulted in two people trying to shoot each other to death.

When they were close, Virgil shouted at the man in the ditch, “Up! Up! Hands in the air. Up on the road!”

“I don’t have a gun!” The old man stood up, hands overhead, and stumbled up to the road. Virgil recognized him as one of the men from Knowles’s farm, dressed in faded overalls and a tattered Vikings hat.

Virgil said to Knowles, “Get down on the ground.”

“Uh-uh,” she said, “I don’t bow down for anybody.”

Virgil was still moving fairly quickly and he came up beside her, grabbed her by the back of the neck, and used his shin to kick her legs out from under her. She went down, yipping in surprise. Virgil broke the fall with his thigh, then let her slip onto the road, when he pinned her with a knee between her shoulder blades, caught her flailing wrists, and cuffed her, as she sputtered into the blacktop, then patted her down for a pistol.

She didn’t have one. He pointed his gun at the old man and said to the New Ulm cop, “Cuff him and put him on the ground.”

That took three seconds and then Virgil walked to the Subaru and shouted over it, “Toby, we got them on the ground. Where are you?”

“Down behind the truck. I’m coming,” Strait shouted back.

Strait came up from behind his truck with his gun in his hand and Virgil went down to meet him and asked, “You okay?”

“No thanks to that bitch.”

Virgil: “I gotta take the gun.”

“Man…”

“I know, but I gotta take it,” Virgil said.

Strait reluctantly handed it over, then looked at his truck: “Shit. It’s ruined. It looks like the Nazis machine-gunned it or something. Then I hit a couple of trees.”

There were, Virgil estimated, dozens and maybe a hundred bullet holes in the side and back of the truck. “You were lucky.”

Strait bobbed his head and then said, “I got a whole load of snake hides in the back, all curled up in bundles. They soaked up the incoming when I was on the road. Then, when I ran off the road, she must’ve thought I’d stayed in the truck. She really hosed it down.”

They walked together to the road and around the Subaru and Strait took three fast steps toward Knowles, who was still face-down on the road, and cocked a leg to kick her in the face.

Before he could do that, Virgil caught him by the collar of his shirt and yanked him back. “Don’t do that,” he told Strait. “At this point, she’s going back to jail and won’t see daylight for fifteen years. You’ll complicate things if you kick her.”

“I was only going to do it because I was overcome with emotion,” Strait said. He sounded like he was asking for permission.

Virgil said, “Uh-uh. Stay back.”

–

More cop cars were closing in on them, lights and sirens. The New Ulm cop said, “I can’t believe that nobody got hurt. There’re six empty magazines in that Subaru and on the ground. That’s, what, a hundred and twenty shots?” He looked at Strait and asked, “How many did you fire?”

“Thirty,” Strait said.

“I did six, with a shotgun,” the cop said. “A hundred and fifty-six shots and nobody got a scratch.”

“I cut my lip on the steering wheel,” Strait said.

“You’ll take that,” Virgil said.

“I guess,” Strait said. He plucked at his lip. “Hurts, though.”

Knowles looked up from the ground and snarled at Strait, “Sooner or later, your luck-”

Virgil cut her off. “Shut the fuck up.” He was easily pissed off by gunfire.

The first of the backup cops arrived in a cloud of dust and the New Ulm cop who’d followed Virgil out said, “There’s one really good thing about this whole situation.”

“What’s that?”

“I got a total lock on ‘Officer of the Month.’”

The New Ulm cops said they’d handle the processing of the crime and the crime scene, which would be pretty straightforward. Given that, Virgil would be treated mainly as a principal witness, with the arrest going to New Ulm.

Knowles and her companion would be taken to the Brown County jail, eventually to be charged with attempted murder, then Knowles would be transferred to Steele County district court, which had freed her on bail. Bail would no longer be a possibility.

The elderly man began to sob as one of the New Ulm cops put a hand on his head and guided him into the back of a cop car. The cop said to him, “Look at the bright side. You’re going to get lifelong free health care.”

–

They were at the scene for more than an hour before Virgil could leave. He’d have to file reports with the BCA and the New Ulm cops, but not for a day or two.

The chase and the shooting had left him feeling disoriented, and as he drove back toward New Ulm, the anger began to burn out and he started to get scared: all those bullets flying around like bees. He tried to put the thought aside and called Peck. Peck answered-Virgil could hear the sounds of dishes and silverware clinking in the background, so Peck was at dinner-and Virgil said, “A major problem came up. I’m going to be a little late… probably half an hour.”

“I’ll still be around,” Peck said. He sounded impatient, though, put-upon.

–

Virgil called Duncan and told him about the chase and the arrests, and Duncan said, “Does this have anything to do with the tigers?”

“Only peripherally-I was checking out a possibility, and one thing led to another.”

“You gotta think tigers , man.”

“Thanks for the tip, Jon.”

“Hey, I’m not trying to be tiresome, but a lot of people are looking at us, and if something doesn’t happen soon, we could be headed for a pretty unhappy conclusion.”

“I know, I’m out here pushing the boulder up the hill. We’ll get there.”

–

Virgil called Davenport and told him what happened; Strait was Davenport’s guy and he needed to know.

“Did you have a gun with you?” Davenport asked.

“Yeah.”

“You didn’t shoot it, did you?”

“No.”

“There’s the fuckin’ Flowers we all know and love,” Davenport said.

“I was chumped,” Virgil said.

“Happens to everybody, all the time,” Davenport said. “At least you got Maxine off the street. She was goofier than a fuckin’ Packers fan who’s lost his cheese.”

–

Virgil pulled into Peck’s driveway shortly after seven-thirty and climbed the steps to the front door, where Peck was waiting, smoking the butt end of a cigarette. He was wearing a knitted cardigan over a T-shirt, black jeans, and slippers.