John Sandford - Escape Clause

“ Now there’s somebody home, if there wasn’t before,” Virgil said quietly.

“Probably a woman,” Mattsson said.

“Why?”

“Because this far out, with a large lot and a barn or a toolshed, a guy would probably be driving a truck, not a small sedan,” she said.

Virgil said, “Huh. Okay. That’s not necessarily good. I was thinking it’d be a place where they could kill the tigers and cut them up, not somebody’s home.”

“We’ll see,” Mattsson said. “I’ll get the truck.”

–

She jogged off through the dark, and Virgil saw the lights go when she opened the truck door. At that same moment, another truck turned the corner, slowed as it passed Virgil’s and Mattsson’s vehicles, then came on, slowed again, turned down the driveway. Virgil heard the truck door slam and somebody go into the house.

Mattsson followed a minute later, turned down the driveway, stopped her truck at the narrowest spot in the driveway, effectively blocking it.

When she got out of the truck, Virgil asked, “What do you think?”

“Well, you think the tiger thieves have murdered three people. We gotta be ready.”

“Let’s knock,” Virgil said. “Get your gun out; keep it out of sight behind me. Don’t shoot me in the back.”

–

They walked up to the door in that odd formation, Mattsson behind him but very close, Virgil’s Glock loose in its holster, his hand resting on the stock-inconspicuously, he hoped.

The interior door was open and Virgil heard a woman call, “Tom, I think somebody’s in the driveway.”

Virgil reached out and pushed the doorbell and heard the ding-dong inside. Mattsson whispered, “You step eight inches left and I’ll have a clear shot inside.”

A few seconds later, a man in a brown UPS uniform trotted down some interior steps and looked at them through the screen door. “Can I help you?”

Virgil held up his BCA identification and said, “We’re agents with the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. Are you Mr. Hall?”

“Yes.” He pushed open the screen door to come out and Virgil and Mattsson took a step backward, still locked in the too-close formation to hide Mattsson’s weapon. “What can I do for you?”

He was too… Virgil looked for the right word and came up with “querulous.” Hall was too questioning, too void of worry.

Virgil half-turned his head to Mattsson and said, “I think we’re okay.”

She said, “I do, too,” and Virgil felt her step back farther away.

“What’s going on?” Hall asked.

–

Virgil gave him a brief explanation, and Hall’s wife, Alice, came to the door, carrying a towel, and said, “The man was here? His telephone was here?”

She was disbelieving.

“That’s what came up on the phone,” Virgil said. “This specific address.”

“We’re gone during the day,” she said. “There hasn’t been any sign of anybody around. We don’t know anyone named Simonian.”

Virgil went to his phone, called up the BCA website, and showed the Halls the mug shots of Hamlet and Hayk Simonian, and they both shook their heads. “I’ve never seen them,” Tom Hall said. “We would have noticed strangers hanging around.”

Alice said, “Tom, take them out to the garage. Make them look in there, so they know there’s nothing out there…” And to Virgil, she said, “We wouldn’t be skinning tigers in the house, would we?”

Virgil had to smile. “Probably not.”

“So go out and look in the garage.”

Virgil knew it was pointless, but he and Mattsson went and looked, and found a bunch of lawn equipment and a workshop. They thanked the Halls and left.

–

Wonder what happened?” Mattsson asked, at her truck.

“Don’t know, but I can’t believe those guys knew anything,” Virgil said. “I’ll talk to Sandy, see what she has to say.”

Mattsson left, headed for home and a nap. Virgil watched her taillights as they disappeared around the corner and scuffed down to his truck.

He called Sandy, who said, “I can’t believe the address could be that wrong. I’ll look at the numbers again, maybe I got something backward.” She looked at the house numbers again, but they were correct.

“I can’t explain it,” she said. “Maybe… I don’t know… Maybe Hamlet was coming or going from somewhere else and he wouldn’t turn his phone on until he got to that address. You know, like he didn’t want to give away where he really was.”

“I haven’t gotten the impression that Hamlet was a big thinker,” Virgil said.

“Then I guess I can’t help,” Sandy said. “Actually, I don’t know exactly how the locator gizmo works. I’ll try looking it up on the ’net and get back to you if I find anything.”

Virgil told her to hang on to Hamlet Simonian’s cell phone and everything else. “When do you get back?”

“Tomorrow night, if nothing else comes up.”

“Probably see you then,” Virgil said.

–

Virgil thought about driving around some more, but it was so dark that he wouldn’t be able to see much at all. Discouraged, he headed out to I-94, saw a convenience store on the other side of the highway, and across from that, Red’s County Bar & Grill. He pulled into the gas station and filled up, went inside to pay and to get some cheese crackers and a Diet Coke.

Back in his truck, he opened the crackers and sat crunching on them, looked at the “Red’s” sign with its flashing neon red rooster. After a moment he said, “Huh,” and turned the truck that way.

There were maybe twenty trucks and cars, mostly trucks, in the bar’s parking lot. There were no other bars in the neighborhood, as far as Virgil knew. He clumped inside in his cowboy boots: Not much going on, a lot of people in booths eating hamburgers and drinking beer, two or three more on bar stools, and a couple of guys in the back shooting pool at a coin-op table. Nobody paid any attention to him, and he walked over to the bar and the bartender put a napkin in front of him and asked, “What can I get you?”

“Is the manager around?”

The bartender was a square white-haired man with a tightly cut beard and rimless glasses sitting on a round nose; he might have been Santa Claus except for the boxing scars under his eyes. “We don’t rightly have a manager,” he said. “What we have is an owner, who is me.”

Virgil pulled out his ID and explained his problem and how the bartender/owner might help him. “If you don’t mind…”

“Well, it’s weird, but I guess I don’t mind,” the bartender said. “Give us something to talk about when you’re gone.”

“Thanks,” Virgil said. He stepped to the middle of the bar and called out, loud enough to break through the chatter, “Hey, everybody! I’m a cop. I need your attention for a minute.”

The chatter stopped, and the pool players backed away from the table, and everybody looked at him, and Virgil said, “I’m with the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, and I’m looking for the stolen tigers. We think they might be in this neighborhood-well, on the other side of the highway, anyway. Someplace south of here. What I want to know is, have any of you seen anything even a little unusual in the area?”

He described the Halls’ place as the most likely general location and waited. There was a buzz, but people were shaking their heads, then a woman said, “I don’t know, but I know who would.”

“Who’s that?”

“Buddy Gates.”

Somebody said, “Oh, hell yes.”

“Who’s that?” Virgil asked.

The woman said, “The rural route carrier out here. He knows every single house.”

“Of course,” Virgil said.

–

Nobody knew how to get in touch with Buddy Gates, but somebody knew he worked out of the post office in Lakeland, which, of course, was closed. There was a general head-scratching until somebody said, “I think he does live in Lakeland. You could ask down there.”