John Sandford: Bad blood

Coakley stopped talking and turned to look at him and said, "You ready, cowboy?"

"Saddle up," Virgil said to the crowd. "We're going."

Fifty people were milling around in the parking lot, cars coming and going, lights flashing over the back of the courthouse; it looked like the half hour after a small-town carnival. Schickel climbed into Virgil's truck, because he knew where the old man's house was, a mile up the road and around a couple of corners from the Flood place.

Virgil waited in the street until the other cops were lined up and ready to go, and then led the way out of town to I-90. "This is gonna be something I'll tell my grandkids, when they grow up," Schickel said. "There's never been anything like this." He turned to look at the line of cop cars and trucks coming behind him. "We got a posse."

Virgil didn't have much to say about that, because he was thinking about the man he'd shot in the back at the Rouse farm. He'd killed a man once before, and that had shaken him. He'd been in a couple of shoot-outs, and once had shot a woman in the foot. This was different: what was bothering him this time wasn't so much the killing, but the way he'd done it without thinking.

Not that he'd been wrong, but that he'd internalized the problems of shooting and killing to the point where they'd become automatic, and there was something essentially wrong with that, he thought. Or maybe he felt bad because he wasn't feeling worse…

Schickel was going on, and finally wound up with some kind of question, and Virgil shook his head and said, "I'm sorry, I'm a little distracted."

"I am, myself," Schickel said. "We've been up too long. I was wondering, are you planning to go straight in, all of us? We could get ambushed going up his driveway."

"Have to see what the situation is. I don't think they'll take us on, after what happened at the Rouse place."

"I wasn't too clear on that. Lee was in the bathtub with the Rouse girl…?"

Virgil told him about it, and how he and Jenkins had cleared the house out with the M16s, and about the temporary high he'd felt after the fight, and the low that came on as the night continued. "You didn't have any choice with what you did, Virgil," Schickel said. "Any one shot could have killed Lee and the girl both. And the guy you shot, I mean, if you hadn't done that, if you'd fired past him or something, just sure as anything, he'da shot one of yours as he was getting away."

They rode along for a while, then Schickel said, "About feeling high after the fight… Sometimes I wonder if the people up in this country don't just like war. Kind of like the southerners. My old man was in World War Two, he signed up when he was seventeen. He'd tell all these stories about it, how tough it was, but when you boiled it all down, I think it was probably the best time of his life. He liked it, that's the only word I can come up with, for the way he acted. Same with a lot of his buddies. They'd get in the Legion Hall and the VFW and they talked about it forever, and when they died, they got sent off by a honor guard."

"Doesn't mean they liked it," Virgil said. "It was big and important, but that's not the same thing. My old man talks about Vietnam all the time, but he didn't like it."

"Well, sometime when you're not doing anything, think about the difference between liking something and sitting around and talking about it all the time. You might come to the conclusion that there isn't much difference… I knew one guy in my life-my godfather, in fact-who was a submariner in the war, out in the Pacific. He never talked about it. Somebody'd be talking about the war, and he'd walk away. He couldn't stand talking about it. That's somebody who didn't like it. That's somebody who hated it."

Virgil grinned into the dim light coming off the dash: "Are you saying I got some kind of gene that likes killing people?"

"Not exactly. But sort of over in that direction," Schickel said.

"You gotta quit smoking that shit, man."

"Yeah, I know. It makes my teeth all yellow."

They were flashing along the interstate, a long rosary of cars linked by their headlights, then up an exit and down to the right, out on the grid of farm-to-market roads, straight north, straight west, straight north again, another jog to the west, and then Schickel said, "That's it, off to the left."

He got on the radio, called the other cars. They were coming in from a long way out, and anybody at Einstadt's would see them coming and would know who they were.

"What do you think?" Schickel asked, when he got off the radio.

"I don't see much," Virgil said. "There's a light in the bottom floor."

"Could be full of people."

"Don't see any trucks."

But as he said it, taillights flared near the house, and then disappeared-the truck they'd been on had either driven into a barn or behind it. A yard light off to one side showed no more trucks, and Virgil said, "Fuck it," and turned up the drive and stepped on the accelerator. They were bouncing hard enough, in and out of frozen snow ruts, that they'd make a hard target for a sniper, and as they came up the rise to the house, Virgil saw the truck taillights out ahead of them.

"They're cutting cross-country, whoever it is," Schickel said, and he got on his radio again, sending some of the following cop cars on parallel roads, in an effort to get out in front of the runaway.

Virgil pulled up into the yard, and then through it, back toward the barn, couldn't pick out any tracks in the snow. A board fence loomed in front of them, and across it, he could see the taillights bouncing away from them. He braked to a stop: "How the hell did he get out there?"

Schickel said, "Maybe went behind one of the sheds? Or through them? Maybe went through the barn and pulled the door shut? He won't get too far, though, I don't think. He can't outrun the guys on the roads."

"If he gets down to I-90, he'll fade into the traffic."

"Well, we're not gonna catch him, Virgil, not us personally. I do think some of the boys will get him."

Virgil nodded and said, "Shoot. I wanted to put my own hands on him." And, a few seconds later, as the distant taillights suddenly disappeared behind an invisible hill, or into an invisible creek bed, "Let's look at the house." FOUR COP CARS were in the farmyard or in the driveway. Cops were arrayed on the far side of the cars, with rifles pointed at the house. Virgil backed up until he was across from the side door, watching for any movement from what would be the kitchen and living room windows. There was light in the windows, though not much, and Schickel said, "Doesn't look right."

Virgil put the truck in park, but left the engine running, and slipped out, ready to move fast at the first sign of any movement; but the night was as quiet as a butterfly, and cold.

Schickel had gotten out of the far side of the truck and was pointing a rifle at the upstairs windows. He asked, "What do you think?"

"Gonna go knock on the door," Virgil said.

He walked across the yard, the hair on his neck prickling, got to the door, and banged on it, loud. Nothing. He pulled open the storm door and tried the doorknob on the interior door. It turned, and he pushed it open.

And smelled the gasoline.

"We got gasoline," he shouted back at Schickel.

Another cop yelled at him, "Get out of there, Virgil."

Virgil sniffed at it: heavy, but not overwhelming. "I'm gonna take a quick peek," he shouted.

"Careful…"

He stepped inside, up the short flight of stairs, the gasoline odor heavier now. A light was flickering from where the dining room must be. A door creaked behind him, and he turned and saw Schickel standing there. He turned back to the kitchen, took a long breath, and walked quickly across the linoleum floor and looked into the dining room.