John Sandford - Escape Clause

“No. You have no arrest powers. You got a tip from a friendly cop and you’re just chasing it down like any reporter would. If you shared this with somebody from another station, that would be fine with me, as long as my name didn’t come up. I know you guys sometimes cover each other’s butts, no matter what anybody says about competition.”

After a moment’s silence, she said, “If I do this, I think I’ll owe you less, not more.”

“Let’s be adults for a minute,” Virgil said. “You don’t really owe me a fuckin’ thing, and you know it. We talk because we like each other and help each other out.”

“That’s true, but it’s fun to pretend. Okay, Virgie… Video at ten. Oh, I might call you for a comment.”

–

Frankie was in bed, propped up on a bunch of pillows, watching a movie on her old MacBook Pro.

“How are the ribs?” Virgil asked.

“Hurts when I torque them, cough, or laugh, so I try not to do that.”

“I’ve got a sleeping bag and an air mattress,” he said. “If you need me to sleep on the floor, I can.”

“We should be okay; you don’t usually flop around much,” she said. “Besides, this new mattress… why did we wait this long? This thing is wonderful, it’s like a cloud.”

Virgil sat on it, careful not to rock her, and told her about the day. When he finished, she asked, “What happens if this Peck sits on his ass? If there’s somebody else helping him besides the Simonians, they could be cleaning up while Peck has your attention. He does nothing. Then what?”

“That’s the worst case,” Virgil said. “I don’t need him to have a backup guy; I need him out in the open, shit-faced panicked.”

–

Virgil got his own laptop and checked on a couple of outdoors forums that he hadn’t had time to read in a couple of days, wrote a couple of quick notes, then went into the living room to watch the ten o’clock news. Channel Three led with the Peck story-Jones tried to interview him through the screen door. Peck’s face was barely visible, other than as a vaguely white oval, and he threatened to sue the TV station if they mentioned his name or used the video.

Jones mentioned Peck’s name about twenty times and even asked why he couldn’t practice medicine, and Peck slammed the door and Jones said, with one of her patented gotcha smiles, “Dr. Peck refused to answer any further questions about whether he was involved with the theft of the Amur tigers…”

Frankie had eased into the living room to watch over Virgil’s shoulders, and she said, “Man, she really screwed him, didn’t she?”

“Well, he’s a killer and a tiger snatcher,” Virgil said.

“Wonder where she got his name?”

“She’s got good sources,” Virgil said. “Lot of cops kinda like her looks.”

“And that BCA leaks like a sieve,” Frankie said, giving him a cuff on the head. She’d heard Jones mentioned before, and not in a critical way. “If you ever get appointed director, you have to stop that.”

“Yeah, I’ll get right on it, the day the promotion comes through,” Virgil said.

After Flowers left, Peck popped a couple of Xanax and sat on his couch and tried to think it over, although the drug fogged him up for a while-enough that he later realized that he’d lost some time. He came back when the doorbell rang. Thinking it might be Flowers again and feeling simultaneously angry and chemically mellow, a confusing combination, he went to the front door and yanked it open.

An attractive thirtysomething woman was standing there, a smile on her face. He didn’t immediately pick up the microphone in her hand or the cameraman standing off at an angle. What he felt first was the heat coming through the screen door; it was like opening an oven.

The woman said something and he frowned and asked, “What?”

She repeated herself: “Dr. Peck, we’ve heard from a number of law enforcement officials that you are suspected of being involved in the theft of the tigers from the Minnesota Zoo.”

As she said that, a light came on to his left, blinding him, and he realized that he was talking to a reporter.

“That’s ridiculous! Who are you? If you make this ridiculous charge public in any way, you’d better have a very good lawyer because I will sue you for every dime you have…”

He went on for a while and then slammed the door.

–

Outside the house, Daisy Jones said to her cameraman, “That’s about it; there ain’t gonna be no more.”

“Sounded pretty fucked up, man. That was drugs talking,” said the cameraman, who’d know.

They got back in their van and started away from Peck’s house, and a block and a half down the street, she noticed a familiar Crown Vic parked at the curb.

“Pull over next to that car,” she told the cameraman, who was driving.

The cameraman pulled over next to the apparently empty Crown Vic, and Jones hopped out and walked around the back of the van and knocked on the driver’s-side window. Jenkins had slumped over onto the passenger seat, trying to hide, but now he sat up and rolled down the window and Jones said, “You can’t do surveillance from a Crown Vic, Jenkins. You need a Camry or something.”

“Don’t fit in a Camry,” Jenkins said. “You get anything hot from Peck?”

“Yeah. A hot threat to sue us.”

“You going with it?”

“Well, he didn’t exactly deny taking the tigers; he said the charge is ridiculous and threatened to sue,” Jones said. “So-yeah, we’ll probably go with it. You and Virgie are using me to break him out, right?”

“We wouldn’t do that, honeybun,” Jenkins said.

“You call me ‘honeybun’ again, I’m going to jerk your tongue out of your mouth,” Jones said.

“Honeybun, honeybun,” Jenkins said. “You are a honeybun, Daisy. Anyway, why don’t you go away so I can go back to being alert?”

“Right. America needs more lerts,” Jones said. She looked down the street toward Peck’s house and said, “If we put it on the air that he’s under surveillance… could make him more nervous.”

“Yeah, but it’d embarrass me with my boss,” Jenkins said.

“Tough. I’ll let my editor make the call on that one. Anyway, give me a ring the next time you’re gonna beat up somebody. If it bleeds, it leads.”

“I’ll do that, if you don’t say that thing about Peck being under surveillance,” Jenkins said. “Now go away.”

–

When the TV reporter left, Peck staggered into the bathroom and took down the tube of Xanax and looked into it. There were only seven little blue pills left and in one clear corner of his brain he thought, “My God, there were sixteen pills in here yesterday.”

He put the tube in his pocket and tried to remember what he’d said to the TV reporter, but none of it was too clear. He went back to his reading chair and turned on the television, which was showing some horseshit cop show.

Another blank space went by, maybe an hour, and he came back when he saw his own face on the television, standing behind his own screen door. He sounded guilty in his own ears, and a little nuts, too: “I’ll put some sue on your shirt…”

“What?”

The woman said he was under surveillance. Really? He went to the front door and stepped out on the porch and looked both ways up and down the street. There were a few cars around, but he didn’t see anybody lurking. The clear spot in his brain, which had grown a bit larger, said to him, “You won’t see them, dummy. They’re hiding.”

He went back inside and sat in his reading chair. The weather report had come up on whatever TV channel he was on, and the weatherman, who looked like he’d been waxed, said it was hot outside. How hot was it? So hot that the hookers outside the Target Center were sucking on snow cones…