John Sandford - Escape Clause

“We heard you had some excitement over in New Ulm this afternoon,” Shrake said, as they waited for the cop. “What happened?”

Virgil told them about the chase and the arrest of Maxine Knowles. “There’s gonna be an ocean of paperwork.”

Jenkins said, “Yeah, but at least you had some fun. Nothing good like that ever happens to us anymore. Shrake hasn’t hit anybody since, what, June?”

Shrake was probing his large ceramic teeth with a toothpick, took it out to say, “Don Carmel. Wayzata.”

“Okay, since two weeks ago,” Jenkins said.

“A pretty long dry spell for you guys,” Virgil said.

“Yeah, not much you can really do about it,” Jenkins said. “Gotta be patient, wait them out.”

–

The St. Paul cop showed up in an unmarked car and parked behind Virgil. They all shook hands and the cop, Bowers, asked, “You don’t think they got the tigers in the apartment, do you?”

“There’s a question that hasn’t been asked,” Shrake said.

“No, I don’t. The two tigers together weigh more than a thousand pounds. Even if they were dead, getting them up to a second floor, without an elevator, is gonna be a load and a half,” Virgil said.

“That’s good, because I really don’t have my tiger-shooting vest with me,” Bowers said.

“Enough bullshit, let’s get it on,” Jenkins said.

–

Jenkins and Shrake took the Crown Vic across to the car wash. Shrake got out and put his back to the wall under the stairs and Jenkins took the car into the car wash, which started up with a roar.

Virgil and the St. Paul cop crossed the street and parked on the side of the wash unit, where they couldn’t be seen from the apartment. They joined Shrake next to the staircase, and Shrake asked Virgil, “You got your gun?”

Virgil patted his hip. “Right here.”

“Try not to shoot anybody with it; I mean, one of us.”

“Yeah, yeah. Let’s go.”

They went up the stairs walking quietly, in a single file, and found Apartment One at the front of the building. The apartment had a steel door and the two visible windows were barred with fake ornamental wrought-iron window guards. There were no lights on.

“Okay, so nobody’s gonna get through the iron bars,” Shrake muttered under his breath. “My question is, how do you get out if there’s a fire?”

“What’s gonna burn?” Virgil asked. “The whole goddamn place is made of concrete.”

–

They listened at the windows and at the door and heard nothing at all, though it was hard to hear anything over the noise from the car wash. Shrake whispered, “What do you want to do?”

Virgil shrugged. “The key. He won’t hear it with the car wash running.”

Bowers dug it out of his pocket and passed it over and Shrake slid it into the lock, turned it, and pushed the door open one-handed, while keeping his back to the wall. No sound, no reaction.

Virgil, on the other side of the door opening, reached around the wall, groping for a light switch, found it, and turned on the porch light, which fully illuminated all of them. “Damn it.” He turned it off, and found another switch, and turned it on.

Virgil backed up to the window. He could see the interior of the apartment now that the light was on, and it appeared to be empty. He could see a dark hallway leading to another room.

“Don’t think anybody’s home,” he said. The car wash suddenly went silent, and Virgil said into the sudden silence, “Let’s clear it.”

They did. The apartment door opened directly on the living room, and Shrake led the way in, both he and Bowers pointing their weapons at the hallway to the back. Shrake found a light switch that turned on the hall light; the hallway led to a small bedroom and a motel-style bathroom, tight and cheap, and both empty.

Jenkins had come up the stairs to join them, and now said, “Look at that fuckin’ TV set.”

They all looked at it.

“Lucky guy,” Shrake said. “Having an appliance like that. Football season coming up.”

The TV occupied most of the middle of the living room and must have been seventy inches across, perched on two metal folding chairs with a cable leading to a cable box that sat on the terrazzo floor under the chairs.

Bowers, who’d been wandering around the apartment, said, “Here you go.” Without touching it, he pointed at a paper map of the Minnesota Zoo, sitting on the breakfast counter.

“Okay, he’s the right guy,” Virgil said. “Wonder if he took off?”

“If he’s got any brains, he did,” Jenkins said. “Shrake and I were sittin’ in a bar…”

“No…”

“We must’ve seen his face twenty times between nine o’clock and the news. If he was here, watching that thing”-Jenkins waved at the giant TV-“he couldn’t have missed seeing himself.”

Virgil looked around at the bleak little apartment, the dirt-stiff ten-year-old chintz curtains, the dusty, rugless terrazzo floors, the few pieces of furniture, the near total absence of dinnerware: two cups that he could see, a glass, a couple of spoons, one knife, and a fork in the sink. “Let’s take the place apart. We need any kind of hint we can find about where he hid the tigers. Anything.”

–

What they found was an apartment that was little lived in. Almost everything looked like it came with the apartment, except the television, a few pieces of clothing hung in the single bedroom closet, and some underwear and socks packed into the single chest of drawers. A pair of new, unworn pointed-toe black dress shoes, with white sidewalls, lounged next to the chest.

“Guy must like to boogie,” Shrake said.

A green plywood box sat at the end of the bed, with a Master padlock fastened through a simple latch.

“It’s an old army footlocker,” Virgil said, touching it with his toe.

“I got a bolt cutter in the car,” Bowers said. “I’ll run and get it.”

He did, and they cut the padlock off.

–

Inside, they found a lot of junk-earphones; an old Apple iPod filled with music of a style Virgil was unable to identify; a short-barreled Smith & Wesson.38 that looked to be a hundred years old, though loaded with fresh cartridges; a short stack of printed porn, plus some car magazines; and at the bottom, a thin address book that contained no addresses, but did contain a list of what appeared to be passwords.

“This could be useful,” Virgil said. “If we can find his computer. If he had a computer.”

“I don’t see anything like a router,” Bowers said.

“I don’t think he lived here and I don’t think he expected to stay long,” Shrake said. “Looks like he came here for the job and planned to go back home when it was done.”

“Should have left sooner,” Bowers said.

Two-thirty in the morning on the St. Croix, the river air cool and redolent with the odors of beached fish and automobile exhaust. The sheetrocking Yoder brothers, Curt and Hank, known to their friends as the Yos, were expecting some serious channel-catfish action; they’d be fishing right up to daybreak, barring thunderstorms and zombie outbreaks.

The Yos had stopped at an all-night convenience store for a six-pack of Miller Lite, a tin of Copenhagen Wintergreen for Curt, and a couple of Fudgsicles before heading down to the water.

Once off the road, they sat licking the Fudgsicles and drinking the first of their beers, while Dwight Yoakam finished singing “Long White Cadillac” on Outlaw Country. When the song, Fudgsicles, and beers were finished, Curt stuck a plug of Copenhagen under his tongue and said, “Let’s get ’er done.”