Escape Clause by John Sandford
Click.
“And very un-Virgil-like,” Jenkins said to the dead phone.
He went home.
—
At seven-thirty in the morning, Virgil was getting into his second round of REM sleep when the phone rang again and he vaulted out of bed, grabbed it, and shouted, “What?”
After a couple of seconds of silence on the other end, a man’s voice said, “This is Rudd. I’m the highway patrol guy who helped you follow that Zhang Ferrari into Minneapolis?”
“What?” Confused now, and quieter.
“I thought I should call and tell you, in case you hadn’t heard, the Minneapolis cops just pulled old man Zhang’s body out from behind a Dumpster at a strip club.”
“What?”
Rudd had gotten the news by monitoring his radio, and finally by a call to the Minneapolis cops because of his involvement with tracking the Ferrari. When he was told that Zhang was dead, he thought to call Virgil.
“Thank you,” Virgil said. “This is a big deal—this is the third murder in the tiger hunt.”
—
Frankie was awake now and she groaned and said, “Bad night.”
“I gotta go,” Virgil said.
“You okay?”
“I feel like somebody hit me on the head with a phone book.”
He stood in the shower for five minutes, switching between hot and cold, shaved, got back in the shower, and dressed. Frankie had eased out of bed while he was cleaning up and gave him a thirty-ounce Yeti Rambler container of coffee to take with him. Forty-five minutes after Rudd’s call, he was headed back north to the Cities; he’d had maybe four hours of sleep after a whole series of sleep-deprived nights and was feeling it. The coffee helped.
—
On the way north, he called the Minneapolis cops and talked to a homicide detective named Anderson Huber. “A garbage guy found him about five o’clock this morning when they were moving a Dumpster. Missing his wallet, a five-carat diamond pinky ring, and a watch that his kid says is worth a hundred grand, though that’s a little hard to believe. He said it was a Filipino something-or-other. My partner wrote it down, if you’re interested. Anyway, he’d been dead for several hours, but a good time of death might be hard to come up with because his body was superheated. . . .”
“How’s that?” Virgil asked.
“He was behind the strip club, that’s the Swedish Bikini Bar, and they got a stove vent that comes out of a wall right above the Dumpster. Warm enough that you get bums sleeping back there in the winter. Last night, might have been a hundred and fifty degrees back there, so . . . he was superheated. On the upside, he smells like a whole lot of expensive cheeseburgers.”
“Shot?”
“No. Strangled. Rope was still around his neck, nylon rope, pretty small diameter, that parachute-cord stuff, you can get it anywhere,” Huber said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the killer has rope creases or bruises on his hands, because this thing really got dragged on.”
“What does his son say?” Virgil asked.
“We’re talking to him now. He’s pretty screwed up. He tried to file a missing persons report last night; he called 911 a couple of times, but you know . . . the old man was an adult, nothing wrong with him, not mentally ill or incapacitated, and the son told the 911 operator that his old man sometimes liked to go out and look at girls. We thought maybe he’d found a hooker and was getting his ashes hauled.”
“You look at the kid’s hands?”
“Yeah. Nothing there. I’ll tell you what, Virgil, it’s possible, I guess, that the kid killed him, because as I understand it, the Zhang guy’s got a lot of money, and the kid stands to inherit. But when he freaked, it’s hard to believe that he was faking it. Me and my partner went to tell him—we knew about him because of the 911 calls—and if he was faking, he ought to get an Academy Award. We had to sit him down to keep him from falling down, and he was bawling like a little girl. Not fake bawling, real bawling. Then when we took him to identify the body, he started all over again.”
“All right, I’m going to tell you who did it, or at least who knows who did it.”
“I’d appreciate that.”
Virgil gave Huber everything he had on the tiger case and told him that he believed Peck was involved in at least two murders, and now, quite possibly, a third. “I believe if he didn’t do it, he knows who did. He does know the kid.”
“I’ll go ring his doorbell,” Huber said.
“Before you do that, ask the kid if he thinks Peck was involved in the murder. Sneak up on him, and then whack him with it. See what his face says.”
“Where are you at right now?”
“Highway 169 south of the Cities. I’ll be up there about nine-thirty,” Virgil said.
“How about we keep him here until then, and you whack him—since you’ve got the background, you might be able to riff on something we don’t even know about.”
“Happy to. I’ll see you then,” Virgil said.
—
Traffic was bad going into town, but Virgil found a police-reserved parking spot next to City Hall and put out his BCA dashboard sign, then hustled into what he believed might be one of the ugliest city halls in the country. He found Huber, who took him down to the office of a homicide lieutenant named Kevin Howser, where Zhang Xiaomin was sitting in a visitor’s chair, typing on a laptop, while the lieutenant was talking on his phone.
Zhang’s face looked raw, Virgil saw, as though he’d been weeping all night, and his eyes were bloodshot. He looked up when he saw Virgil and his eyes shifted. Virgil thought, Okay, he knows who I am.
Howser got off the phone and crooked a finger at them and said, “Virgil, how you doing?”
“Could be worse,” Virgil said. Then: “Wait—let me think about that.”
“You haven’t found the tigers.”
“Not yet,” Virgil said. Zhang was sneaking peeks at him. “I’m hoping Mr. Zhang can help us with that. He’s good friends with our leading suspect who we think might also have murdered his father and a couple of other people. What about that, Mr. Zhang?”
Zhang pretended to be startled, but he wasn’t, and the three cops exchanged a quick flicker of glances. Zhang said, “What are you talking about? Who are you?”
“You know who I am,” Virgil said. “We met in the Cub supermarket, but I didn’t know it at the time. Who tipped you off? Was Peck out in the parking lot?”
Zhang’s head seemed to sink an inch or two into his chest, and he said, “I don’t know what this officer is talking about. I know this Peck man, but I only get medicine for my father.”
“Tiger medicine?” Virgil asked. “Was your old man the West Coast distributor?”
Zhang’s head seemed to sink an inch farther into his chest: “I don’t know their business. My father didn’t tell me. I only bought small medicine from Dr. Peck, for my father.”
Virgil said, “You’re full of shit, Zhang. I know you’re involved and I’m gonna put you in prison for it. The big question now is, did you help kill your father?”
Zhang’s head came up and he shouted, “I did not kill my father. I did not. You go away. Go away.”
—
Virgil jerked his head at Howser and Huber to get them out in the hall, and Huber said in a low voice, “Okay, I see him now. He’s involved.”
Virgil said, “Do me a favor. Get your crime-scene guys to take a look at his dirty clothes and the driver’s seat in his car. If they pick up a single tiger hair . . .”
“We can do that,” Howser said. “I agree with Huber—he knows something that he’s not telling us. I didn’t see that in him until now. Since we talked to you on the phone, we took a look at old man Zhang online, and there’s an article in Forbes that said that he got out of China with more than a hundred million dollars, and another small item from a Chine
Howser asked Virgil to make a formal statement about his observations of Zhang; they could already go through the father’s belongings at the hotel because there wasn’t any question of a crime in his case, and because he’d ridden in a car under suspicious circumstances, they could also look at the car. What they needed from Virgil was anything that would allow them to look at the son’s possessions. Virgil didn’t have much, but with the right judge, they might get a warrant.
—
Virgil was making the statement when Catrin Mattsson called: “I think I found Blankenship. You still in bed?”
“No, I’m up at the Minneapolis PD,” Virgil said.
“Great. He’s at a biker friend’s house in Falcon Heights. I’m on my way up there. What are you doing up so early?”
Virgil told her about the murder of Zhang, and she whistled. “That’s three. The tigers don’t look so important anymore. You’ve got to get this guy off the street.”
“Yeah, I do. Did you hear about the fire?” Virgil asked.
“What fire?”
He told her about the fire, and the question of who might be behind it. “We’ll get Blankenship and squeeze his turnip-like head,” Mattsson said. “I got his location from his brother, who hates him. His brother got it from their mom, who also apparently hates him.”
“How far out are you?”
“I went through Jordan a few minutes ago,” Mattsson said. “What’s that, forty-five minutes?”
“I’ll meet you at the office in forty-five minutes. If this guy is with a biker friend, maybe I ought to get Shrake to back us up.”
“I’ll buy that.”
Virgil called up Jon Duncan, told him about the murder of Zhang and about the pending arrest of Blankenship. “I need Shrake, if I can get him.”
“I saw him here a few minutes ago,” Duncan said. “If you had to guess . . . how long before you wrap the tiger thing?”
“Tomorrow? The Minneapolis cops are going to squeeze Zhang the younger, and I doubt that he’ll hold out. Not completely hold out, anyway. I wouldn’t be surprised if he gives up Peck. I think Zhang will know about the tigers.”
“Good. That’s good,” Duncan said. “Man, three dead. This really turned into something. Virgil? Remember what I said about you and Blankenship. You can go, but let the other guys carry the load. We don’t need him walking around loose, but we don’t need him shoving a lawyer down our throat, claiming that you violated his civil rights or some shit like that. Don’t touch him.”
“I won’t even take my gun with me.”
“I wasn’t worried about you shooting him, Virgil. You couldn’t hit the side of a barn from the inside—”
“Hey!”
“I was worried about you breaking his face. Oh, yeah, I was supposed to remind you: you’re up to qualify again. Get your pistol and stop by the range as soon as you’re done with this tiger thing. So: day after tomorrow? At the range?”
29
Shrake had called Jenkins, who had been getting up anyway, so both the BCA thugs met Virgil and Mattsson in Jon Duncan’s office at BCA headquarters. Duncan himself was at a meeting to discuss security at the state fairgrounds, trying to figure out what might blow up, if anything might. The Secret Service wanted the state to hire septic system inspectors to put cameras down all the water lines, but the state was pleading poverty.
“If I was involved in that particular disaster, I might go looking for a security-guard job at the Mall of America,” Shrake said.
Jenkins asked Mattsson, “Blankenship’s brother hates him? What’d he do to his brother?”
“Both Brad Blankenship and his brother, George, were interested in the same woman, one Ellen Frye of Henderson, Minnesota. I talked to her yesterday. She’s a hot little number, but not entirely what you’d call a one-man woman,” Mattsson said.
Shrake said, “Ah. The brothers became competitive.”
“If it was only that, there might not have been any trouble,” Mattsson said. “Ellen Frye sees that Brad is not such a good risk, and so she slides on over to George. One thing leads to another, she gets pregnant, and George does the right thing and marries her. They’re married for two days when a DVD arrives in the mail, from Brad. Seems that she and Brad had done a little experimentation on camera. Even worse, it wasn’t a selfie porno. There was a cameraman in the room. George is an unhappy man right now.”
“It’s exactly this kind of thing that can create stress in a family tree,” Jenkins said.
Virgil raised a finger. “I’m as interested in porno gossip as the next guy, but uh . . . any hint that Blankenship might carry a gun? You know anything about his biker friend? I’d hate to run into some cop-hating Nazi without seeing it coming.”
They all looked at Mattsson, who said, “I ran the biker—name is Dougie Howe—and he’s been picked up a few times on dope charges, small amounts of weed and small amounts of heroin, and twice for DUI, plus a boatload of speeding tickets. That’s about it. No violence on the record. He runs a home-based motorcycle customizing business called Harley Heaven. Blankenship is the guy we have to worry about. He’s flashed guns a few times, but never pulled a trigger, as far as we know.”
Shrake asked, “Armor up?”
Virgil said, “It’s really hot.”
“I don’t think we’ll need it,” Mattsson said. “A Sibley County deputy told me Blankenship’s a puncher, not a shooter.”
Jenkins said, “Yeah, fuck it. Who’s driving?”
—
They went in two cars: Virgil’s 4Runner and Shrake’s truck. Mattsson rode with Virgil and said, “Alvarez is out of the hospital. She looked worse going in, but wasn’t actually as bad as Frankie.”
“Frankie’s gonna be hurting for a while,” Virgil said. “She can’t find a comfortable way to sleep.”
“I know—but don’t take it out on Blankenship. You really do have to be a little careful here.”
“I already got the lecture from Jon,” Virgil said. “I’ve also got the TV people hanging on me about the tiger thing. They haven’t figured out that Zhang is connected, but they will. I gotta get back on that, but I want to do this one, too. I want to be there when you get him.”
After a moment, Mattsson said, “You know, the only reason Blankenship is getting any attention at all is because you’re a BCA agent and the whole question of why Frankie was beaten up. We know the answer to that, and it doesn’t have anything to do with you. Or Frankie. They got the wrong woman. Ordinarily, an assault, even a bad one, isn’t going to pull in four BCA agents.”
“I know, I know. But when it’s all said and done, Frankie’s still hurt—and then, there’s the firebomb last night.”
“Yeah. The firebomb. You agree that it’s possible that the firebomb could have come from the tiger job, if it was aimed at you at all.”
“Possible. I want to see what Blankenship has to say about that. I want to see his face.”
—
Dougie Howe lived in a neighborhood of ranch-style houses a few blocks from the University of Minnesota’s golf course, where Virgil had whiled away some time as a bad golfer: he’d always preferred team sports to solo games like golf or archery. Howe’s house was visible from two blocks away. It didn’t exactly have a bluetick coonhound lolling in the shade of a short-block Chevy engine that hung from a sassafras tree in the front yard, but it was over in that direction, with bits and pieces of motorcycles lining the driveway and scattered around the front yard. A bumper sticker on the side of the mailbox said, “Forget the Dog, Beware of Owner.”
A red Ford pickup was parked at the curb in front of the house next to Howe’s, and Mattsson said to Virgil, “That’s Blankenship’s truck. He’s here.”
“Good,” Virgil s
Shrake called on Virgil’s cell, which Virgil switched over to the speaker: “Who’s gonna knock?”
Mattsson said, “You and me, Shrake. I want Jenkins on the side of the house to the left, because he’s the sprinter among us, and Virgil down the side of the house to the right. Everybody good with that?”
Everybody was good with it.
Shrake and Mattsson walked up to the house. The front door was open, although there was a screen door in front of it. Mattsson pushed the doorbell, which didn’t work, so she knocked on the aluminum screen door, and a man yelled, “C’mon in, whoever it is. I’m in the kitchen.”
Virgil got a phone call: a BCA number. He rejected it for the time being.
Out front, Mattsson and Shrake looked at each other and Mattsson said, “Sure.” Shrake pulled his pistol and held it by his leg, and they both walked back to the kitchen where Howe was sitting at a counter with a little girl, both of them eating bowls of cereal. Howe was a fat man, bald, with a blond beard that had been twisted into a number of pigtails; he wore rimless glasses, a T-shirt, and cargo shorts. He asked, “Who are you?”
“We’re with the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension,” Mattsson said. “Where’s Brad?”
Howe cocked his head back and asked, “Cops? He didn’t say anything about the cops looking for him.”
“Well, we are,” Shrake said.
Howe shrugged and shouted, “Hey, Brad, there are some cops here looking for you.”
Two seconds later, a door banged open in the back of the place and Howe said, “Shit, he ran out the back patio. . . .”
Shrake ran toward the sound of the door and Mattsson ran back out the front door and yelled, “He’s running, he’s running. . . .”
—
Virgil had some problems on his side of the house. He’d been standing near the back corner of Howe’s house when a woman screamed from the house next door, “Dan, Dan, there’s a man, there’s a man, there’s a man looking in the bedroom window.”
Virgil turned that way and a man shouted out the window, “What the fuck?”