John Sandford - Escape Clause

“What? Virgil! What happened?”

Virgil told her, and she pressed her hands to the sides of her head, and kept saying, “Oh my God! Oh my God!”

When she’d recovered a bit, Sparkle said that she hadn’t seen anyone following her that day; that her interviews had been congenial, but she had names of all the canning factory people she’d spoken to. Mattsson took notes and asked more questions, and Virgil realized that he wouldn’t be able to help much, wouldn’t do anything that Mattsson wasn’t already doing.

As Sparkle was answering questions, Frankie’s youngest son, Sam, came walking up the driveway wearing his Cub Scout uniform, carrying a BB gun, and trailed by Honus the dog. Virgil went to meet him and before he could say anything, Sam said, “I finished second.”

“In what?”

“Marksmanship,” Sam said.

“How many people in the competition?” Virgil asked.

“Seven other ones. I shoulda won…” He squinted, just a bit, and then asked, “What’s wrong?”

“Ah, man, your mom got hurt,” Virgil said. “Not real bad, but she’s going to be in the hospital for a couple of days.”

“What happened?”

Virgil told him, and Sam said, “If I catch that motherfucker, I’ll kill him,” and he was deadly serious.

“No, no, the cops are taking care of that,” Virgil said. “And don’t say ‘motherfucker.’”

“You say it.”

“Yeah.” Virgil slapped Sam on the shoulder and looked around and then said, “Basically, you’re right. The guy’s a motherfucker.”

–

Sparkle and Mattsson were still talking when Virgil left, driving back to Mankato and the clinic. Sparkle said she’d come as soon as Mattsson was finished with her. At the hospital, Frankie was soundly asleep and a nurse said she’d be down for a few hours.

He called Sparkle to tell her that, but Sparkle said, “I’m coming anyway. I called Bill and he’ll take the night off and stay here with the kids. I’ll sit with Frankie until she wakes up, whenever that is.”

Virgil sat with Frankie for a while; signed onto the hospital Wi-Fi and checked his e-mail. Sandy the researcher had left a note that said five meat dryers had been shipped to an address in St. Paul’s Frogtown, from Bug-Out Supplies, a St. Louis survivalist supplier. She left a link to a website, and when Virgil went to it, he found a red headline that said, “When the SHTF, BOS’s Got Your Back.” Virgil figured out that “SHTF” meant “shit hits the fan,” a refrain he found throughout the online catalog. The dryers Sandy highlighted cost $231 each.

She included the address to which they were sent, and the buyer’s name: Bob Smith.

“Bob Smith,” Virgil said to himself. “Right.”

Sandy added a note: “BOS said the order came in with a postal money order for the full amount. They said that’s not uncommon with survivalist types-apparently they don’t want you to know that they’re making survival jerky in the basement.”

–

Virgil headed back north toward the Cities as night was falling.

As he did that, Winston Peck VI was driving the remnants of Hayk Simonian out of the farm and onto a Washington County back road, heading south. He no longer much cared if the second Simonian’s body was found-he’d been afraid of Hayk, but now Hayk was dead. Killing Hayk wouldn’t mean much, in terms of penalties, if the police ever figured out who’d killed Hamlet Simonian.

His main objective was to get Hayk’s body well away from the farm. He drove south, slowly, not to attract the attention of any roaming cops, past small farms and orchards and truck gardens, crossed the bridge at Prescott, and drove into Wisconsin toward River Falls.

After a couple of random turns, he found himself in the middle of a long, shallow valley with a wet, overgrown ditch on one side. With no headlights in view, he stopped the truck, dragged the Simonian load out of the back, wrapped in plastic, then staggered over to the ditch, waded into the weeds, and finally gave the body a heave.

That would do it, he thought. If somebody wanted to fish it out of there, good luck to them.

–

Virgil called Jenkins and Shrake.

“If you guys got the time, I got a target,” he told Jenkins. “We’ll probably need Shrake to add a little IQ to the expedition.”

“Well, shoot-we were planning to go out drinking tonight and pick up some loose women,” Jenkins said.

“You can still do that, as long as you don’t shoot anybody while you’re with me and get stuck with the paperwork,” Virgil said.

“Fine,” Jenkins said. “Where do you want to meet?”

“At the office-we won’t be going far.”

–

When Virgil got to the office, the duty officer said, “Jenkins and Shrake are upstairs, but there’re some guys looking for you. They’re out in the parking lot in an RV.”

“I saw the RV,” Virgil said. “Who are they?”

“Don’t know,” the duty officer said. “They came looking for you, said they needed to talk to the guy in charge of the tiger investigation. We told them you were on the way in.”

“Huh. Call Jenkins and Shrake. I’ll take them with me,” Virgil said.

Jenkins and Shrake came down the stairs a minute later, dressed in their usual overly sharp suits, pastel dress shirts, Frenchy pointed shoes, and nylon neckties. “Where’re we going?” Jenkins asked.

“First stop’s out in the parking lot,” Virgil said.

–

Jenkins and Shrake flanked him as they walked out and down the slight hill to the RV. As they approached, Virgil could hear the engine running. At a lit back window, they could see four dark-haired men, apparently sitting at a table, playing cards.

Virgil knocked on the door. A minute later, the door popped open, and a swarthy, black-haired man in black slacks, a black T-shirt, and Frenchy pointed shoes, wearing a heavy gold chain around his neck, looked down at him.

“You’re this fuckin’ Flowers?”

“That’s not…”

“That’s what they said you were called,” the man said, nodding toward the BCA building.

“Yeah, this is him,” Shrake said.

Jenkins added, “Say, those are some nice-looking shoes.”

“Thank you. Yours are also attractive.” The man turned to the back of the RV and said, “This is the Flowers.”

A moment later, six heavyset men, all wearing gold chains, in T-shirts and slacks or black jeans, with muscles and ample guts but no visible tattoos, dropped down out of the RV and lined up facing Virgil, Shrake, and Jenkins. Like the OK Corral, Virgil thought, except that he didn’t have a gun.

“You have information about the tigers?” Virgil asked.

“No. We know nothing about tigers,” the first man said.

“Then what…?”

“We are the Simonians,” he said. “We are here for Hamlet. To get justice for Hamlet.”

Virgil looked at the six Simonians for a moment, then said, “I hope ‘justice’ doesn’t mean ‘revenge.’”

Their spokesman said, “They can be the same.”

“Revenge can be a crime-usually is,” Jenkins said. “Whatever your shoes look like.”

One of the other Simonians said, “We want to know what is being done to capture this killer of Hamlet.”

“Everything we can,” Virgil said. He did a little tap dancing; he didn’t mention he was the only investigator on the case full-time. “The three of us are on the way to do another interview in the case. In the middle of the night. We don’t take murder lightly in Minnesota.”

A third Simonian nodded and said, “This is good. We need to look in the face of this Hamlet Simonian you say is dead. We have Hamlet’s cell phone number, and the Apple company says it is presently traveling through Kansas City, Kansas.”