Escape Clause

by John Sandford

  Virgil thought for a second, then said, “Let’s keep Shrake in bed. I may need him tomorrow.”

  —

  Peck slowly got sober. He was being watched. That fuckin’ Flowers. Who did he think he was, anyway?

  Good question: Who was he?

  Peck got his laptop and typed in “Virgil Flowers BCA.”

  He still hit a few mental blank spots, when he found himself waking up without ever being aware that he had gone to sleep—or had gone somewhere, since he didn’t think his eyes had closed—but over the next couple of hours, he gathered information about Flowers, who turned out to be a fairly dangerous man. Peck even remembered some of Flowers’s cases, like the one with the Vietnamese spies and the one with the methamphetamine war out on the prairie with the maniac preacher.

  Most interesting were two stories in the Mankato Free Press. One had come from the day before, reporting that a woman identified as a “close friend” of BCA Agent Virgil Flowers had been beaten up at a convenience store, according to Mankato police.

  A BCA investigator named Catrin Mattsson had been sent to Mankato to determine whether there was any connection between the assault and Flowers’s law enforcement activity. Flowers, Mattsson, and the victim, identified as Florence Nobles, a businesswoman who ran an architectural salvage operation, all refused to comment to the newspaper.

  The other article, back a couple of years, reported that an unknown person had firebombed Flowers’s garage. The fire was extinguished, with significant damage to the garage, but the piece mentioned that Flowers had managed to save his fishing boat, which had been parked inside. The really interesting thing about that article was that it listed Flowers’s address.

  Peck closed the laptop and closed his eyes at the same time, and sank back in his chair. Thought about it—mostly thought about it, there were still a few blank spaces in his internal time sequencing. He turned the computer back on, went to Google, typed in “How to make a Molotov cocktail.”

  The instructions he found were clear and simple, and he further reviewed the possibilities on YouTube. He shut the computer and thought some more. Ten minutes later, he was on his feet, a much larger clear place in his mind now; large enough that he considered taking another Xanax, but didn’t.

  Instead, he dug around in his kitchen drawers and found the two lamp-switch modules he used when he was out of town, which turned his lights off and on. He got a lamp from the living room, connected the lamp to the timer, and plugged it into an outlet in his main bathroom, next to his bedroom.

  The other one he connected to a second lamp in the living room, and set it to turn the lamp off at two o’clock in the morning. The bathroom lamp would come on a minute later, and five minutes after that, turn off. From the outside, it would look like he quit working at two o’clock, had gone into the bathroom, spent a few minutes there, and then had gone to bed.

  —

  That done, he went into his bedroom and pulled on a dark blue shirt and black Levi’s, black socks, and black Nikes. He found the ski mask he’d made Zhang Xiaomin pull down over his face the first time they went to the barn. He hesitated, then went to his bedroom closet, dug out the box at the bottom of it, lifted out a photobook, and below that, found the .38-caliber revolver that had belonged to his grandfather, and the half box of cartridges that went with the gun.

  He loaded the gun carefully and put it in his sock. The gun pulled the sock down; that wasn’t going to work. He remembered some knee-high compression socks that he’d bought for airline flights, and those worked fine and held the gun snugly to his calf.

  There was still enough Xanax in his system to keep him calm about all of this, but he could feel a puddle of fear gathering in his stomach, ready to burst out. He pushed it down and went to the back door and sat and looked out the window. Do it, he thought, or not.

  He did it.

  When he saw neither movement nor light to his left or right, or in the house behind his, he slipped out the back door, into some bridal wreath bushes along the neighbors’ property line, and sat and watched and listened again. Nothing. Moving carefully, he crossed behind his house, snuck across the alley, then between the two houses that backed up to his.

  Emerging on the street on the other side, he set off for downtown St. Paul. Three miles, more or less, should take him forty-five minutes, if he moved right along.

  —

  And he moved right along, the gun seriously chafing at his calf; he was hot, but nearly invisible in the dark of night. Not invisible enough, though: he got mugged as he was walking down Selby Avenue, past Boyd Park, when a man stepped out of the trees and said, “Give me your fuckin’ wallet.”

  The guy didn’t look like a TV mugger: he was blond, well fed, was wearing a Town & Country Club golf shirt, tan pants with pleats, and tasseled loafers without socks. He crowded up on Peck, who tried to shrink away and cried out, “Don’t hurt me,” and the man said, “Give me your fuckin’ wallet,” and Peck fell on his butt and rolled on his side and said, “Don’t hurt me,” and the robber said, “Listen, man, give me your fuckin’ wallet or I’ll cut your nose off,” and in the shifty illumination of a streetlight, flashed what to Peck looked like a screwdriver.

  Peck had pulled up his jeans leg and he cried out, “All right, all right, don’t hurt me.”

  The man looked around nervously and said, “Keep your voice down, shithead, gimme the fuckin’ wallet. You got a watch. Is that a watch? Gimme the fuckin’ watch and the wallet.”

  Peck pulled the gun out of his sock, but kept it behind his leg. “Can I ask you one question?”

  “Give me the fuckin’—”

  “Why’d you bring a fuckin’ screwdriver to a gunfight?”

  A few seconds of confused silence, then: “Whut?”

  Peck pointed the pistol at the man’s heart and said, “Back off.”

  The man said, “Listen, dude . . .”

  Peck eased himself to his feet, kept the gun pointed at the man who was backing away, nervously watching the hole at the end of the gun’s muzzle, which was shaking badly, and the man said, “Dude, I just wanted to get something to eat.”

  “I’ll give you something,” Peck said. “Gonna give you three steps. You know that song? I’m gonna give you three steps and then I’m gonna shoot you in the fuckin’ kidneys. You better run . . .”

  The man turned to run and Peck said, “No, no. Not that way—the other way.”

  The man turned and ran the direction Peck had just come from. When he was ten steps gone, Peck ran toward downtown. A block along, he stopped to look back, saw he wasn’t being chased, and put the gun back in his sock. Now he really was hot, his shirt and socks soaked with sweat.

  Ten minutes later, he was at the parking garage where he’d ditched Hamlet Simonian’s car. He walked down a flight of stairs, which stank of years of damp and urine, and went to the car and pulled open the door. The keys were still jammed into the crack of the seat, and he got inside and closed his eyes.

  Good so far.

  25

  As Peck was running away from the mugger in St. Paul, Virgil and Frankie were falling asleep, holding hands. Virgil didn’t intellectually blame himself for Frankie’s injuries, but emotionally—well, he was supposed to take care of her, and she was supposed to take care of him. She hadn’t gotten fully taken care of, so a bit of guilt was dog-paddling through his subconscious.

  An hour and a half later, Frankie’s phone went off. Virgil started, his eyes popped open, and he asked, “What the heck is that?”

  “My phone . . . you’ll have to get it . . . it’s on the floor next to the bed. I forgot to turn it off.”

  Virgil walked around the bed and picked it up, as the ringing stopped. “It’s Sparkle,” he said. “She hung up.”

  “She knows better than to call now. There’s trouble,” Frankie said.

  Virgil’
s phone started ringing on the windowsill. Virgil picked it up: Sparkle.

  “Yeah?”

  “Virgil! Are you in the Cities, or . . .”

  “At my house, in Mankato.”

  “We’re locked in the back bedroom—people are running through the yard here. I’ve got Bill and the kids with me . . .”

  “What do you mean, running through the yard?”

  “What I said! People are running through the yard. We can’t see them, but we heard somebody yell. We don’t know what to do.”

  “Stay locked up. If something bad happens, call me again,” Virgil said. “I’m on my way, but it’s gonna be fifteen minutes.”

  “Hurry, Virgil!”

  —

  Frankie asked, “What?”

  “There’s somebody running through the yard at your place, and no, you’re not coming. I’m gonna have to hurry and the ride would kill you. I’ll call you every five minutes.”

  Frankie tried to get out of bed, but groaned and sank back down. “Don’t get hurt, Virgil. Don’t get hurt.”

  Virgil pulled on his jeans and a Polo shirt and his running shoes, and he was out the door. In the garage, as the door rose up, he opened the back of the truck, unlocked the storage bin and took out his twelve-gauge and a box of FliteControl double-ought shells, and a high-powered LED lantern.

  He stashed the gun and lantern in the passenger-side footwell and fifteen seconds later he was out of the garage and out of the driveway, hit the flashers, and rolled out of town at sixty miles an hour. Nice night, but hot, and late, not many cars on the road.

  He drove north on 169 for a couple of miles, and then cut cross-country to Frankie’s place. Since he drove it every day, he knew every pothole and bump in the road, but not every deer. He jumped a couple of does a few miles out, eye sparkle and a chamois-colored flash in a ditch. Hit his brakes as they ran through his headlights and bounded over a fence, still alive.

  He was driving one-handed, talking to Sparkle on the cell phone in his other hand: there’d been more people running through the yard. Were they trying to frighten Sparkle and Bill, or was something else going on?

  Virgil came up to the farm and saw, parked on the side of the road, a half-dozen vehicles, including one older pickup and five modest cars. His first thought was illegals: they looked like vehicles driven by illegal immigrants.

  He drove down the driveway, and far ahead, saw a running man in a red shirt disappear into the field past the barn. At the house, he gathered up the shotgun, loaded it, and the LED lantern, then hopped out of the truck and crossed the porch and said into the phone: “Sparkle, I’m outside.”

  A minute later, Bill popped the door, with Sparkle and the youngest three of Frankie’s kids crowded behind him.

  “Who are they?” Bill asked.

  “I don’t know, but I saw one of them,” Virgil said. “You guys stay here, I’m going to take a look.”

  “I’ll come with you,” Bill said.

  “I really don’t—”

  “I’m coming,” Bill said.

  Virgil was happy to hear that and didn’t protest any further. “C’mon then. They went out behind the barn.”

  —

  Virgil told Sparkle to lock the doors and then he and Bill crossed the yard to the barn and Virgil walked past it, the shotgun pointed in the air, and then they heard people talking . . . female voices . . . and laughter.

  “Ah, shit,” Virgil said.

  “What is it?”

  “The cars were kind of messed up, so I thought it might be illegals,” Virgil said. “You know, somehow pissed off about Sparkle. But it’s not.”

  “What is it?”

  “Best guess? High school kids skinny-dipping in the swimming hole. There are a few of them that know about it—they’ve been out here with Frankie’s older boys.”

  Bill listened and sighed, and said, “I think you’re right. I’m sorry we got you up. We didn’t even think of that possibility, with people being beaten up.”

  “I don’t blame you,” Virgil said. “I want to go down and make sure.”

  “Maybe I should go tell Sparkle . . .”

  Virgil held up the phone. “You can if you want. But I could call her.”

  “Maybe I’ll come, then. Call Sparkle and tell her to call Frankie.”

  —

  Virgil called Sparkle as they walked across the end of the hayfield in the moonlight, then walked past the “Occupied” sign and down the path to the swimming hole. It was dark in the hay field, and even darker back in the woods, but the people in the swimming hole had flashlights, so there was a bit of ambient light around, and Virgil and Bill emerged at the swimming hole where people were laughing and splashing in the cool water, and Virgil called, not too loud, “Hey, everybody! It’s the cops.”

  Somebody groaned, “Oh, no,” and Virgil turned on the LED lantern and found ten or twelve faces peering up at him from the water. A case of beer sat on the bank and the light scent of marijuana lay easily on the hot summer air. One of the girls, who wasn’t totally covered by the water, said, “We’re not causing any trouble. We wanted to get out of the heat.”

  “Yeah, well, you scared the heck out of the people in Ms. Nobles’s house,” Virgil said. “She was attacked a couple of days ago and beat up, and you know, running through the yard like that . . . they were afraid it was more trouble.”

  One of the boys said, “Jeez, I heard about that. You’re Virgil, right?”

  Virgil said, “Yeah.”

  The kid said, “I’m Cornelius Cooper’s son. We used to come down here with Tall Bear. I thought it’d be all right. I’m sort of responsible.”

  “Okay. It’s Chris, right? Listen guys, nobody drown, okay? And be quiet when you leave. Don’t run and yell, just sneak out.”

  The Cooper kid said, “We can do that. Thanks.”

  “And call ahead the next time,” Bill said.

  There was a chorus of “Yeahs,” and a few “Thanks, dude.”

  Virgil turned off the light and said, “Have a good time. Nice night for it. And . . . don’t pee in the creek.”

  —

  Virgil and Bill walked out of the woods, and Bill said, “You didn’t say anything about the beer. I’m not sure they were all twenty-one.”

  Virgil laughed and said, “I don’t think any of them were twenty-one. Chris Cooper was a senior last year, I think. I’m not really a good guy for arresting people for underage drinking. Or weed, either.”

  “You have some experience with that?”

  “A lot of experience, actually,” Virgil said. “You don’t want to talk to my old man about it—he still gets pissed.”

  “Say, did you see the . . . ah, never mind.”

  “Yeah, I did,” Virgil said. “Hormones gone wild.”

  “Beer, weed, and skinny-dipping,” Bill said. He sounded happy about it. “It is just sort of Minnesota in the summertime, isn’t it?”

  26

  There was something terribly wrong with the air conditioner in Hamlet Simonian’s car. The stench rolling out of the vents was so bad that Peck had to turn it off and roll the car windows down, as he motored east out of St. Paul to the farmhouse. Sweat began running in rivulets out of his hair and down his face, back, and chest.

  By the time he pulled into the barnyard and got out, he was gasping for fresh air.

  The farmhouse itself was barely functional and parts of it had actually been stripped out by vandals, but in the basement, there were at least a hundred Ball jars, once used for canning. He went down the basement stairs, batting face-sticking spiderwebs out of his way, and got the biggest jar he could see that also had a lid. The jar looked to be quart-sized, and old and delicate.

  Out in the barn, Katya hissed at him like an alley cat—a really huge alley cat. Peck ignored her. When the tiger p
rocessing was complete, Peck and the Simonians had planned to fill the house and barn with corrugated cardboard moving boxes, douse them with gasoline, and burn the buildings to the ground.

  The cardboard would guarantee a fast hot fire that would obliterate any sign of the stolen tigers, and Peck guessed that the fire—which would clearly be arson and which he didn’t care about—would be blamed on the absentee owner.

  Nice and tidy.

  In preparing for that, they had collected four five-gallon cans of gasoline. He popped the top on one of the cans and filled the Ball jar to the top, put the lid on, and screwed the top down. Hayk Simonian’s cotton-canvas butcher’s apron still hung from a nail in the wall, and Peck cut off a thick strip of it, and wrapped it around the jar, creating an efficient Molotov cocktail.

  With that done, he killed the barn lights and went back to the car, took it around the Cities exactly at the speed limit, and from the southwest corner of the metro area, turned it south down Highway 169 toward Mankato.

  Toward Virgil’s house.

  —

  His thinking was simple: he needed a day, or perhaps two, to finish as much as he was now planning to do with Katya. Most of Artur had come out of the dryer and needed to be run through the meat grinder, but that would only take a few hours at the most. He could do the work much more efficiently if he could get Flowers off his back. If Flowers’s house burned, he suspected Flowers would be off his back, at least for long enough, looking for the people who’d first beat up his girlfriend and now had tried to burn down his house. Once Peck had burned the farmhouse and barn, and the processed tigers were on their way to California, Flowers could suck on it.

  Peck had a vision of himself sitting in a rocking chair, smiling at Flowers, saying, “No, no, no, no, no . . .” He’d have to get a rocking chair.

  The heat in the car became insufferable. He turned the air conditioner back on and suffered the stink. It actually smelled, Peck thought, like Simonian had taken a dump on the engine. But why would anybody . . . ?