Deadline

25

Virgil, Jenkins, and Shrake rendezvoused at Johnson Johnson’s cabin, decided that shotguns-only would be appropriate, along with body armor. “I’m thinking of inventing the world’s first office camo,” Jenkins said, as he dug his Kevlar vest out of a duffel bag. “I bet half of all shoot-outs are inside buildings — why would you want the shooter to mistake you for an oak tree? Have to be a dumb shooter. With my camo, you’d look like a file cabinet, or maybe a water cooler.”

“The way you dress now, they’d mistake you for a trash can,” Shrake said. “I’m not sure a file cabinet would be a big enough change to be worthwhile.”

“You’re already jealous of my incipient riches,” Jenkins said.

“My biggest fear is getting shot in the ass,” Virgil said. “He’s got to make some kind of move before we can take him. If I’ve gotta climb that ladder before he tries to jump me, he’ll be shooting up at me, not straight at me. And the armor doesn’t fit that well around my ass.”

“That could be Jenkins’s second product,” Shrake said. “Ass armor.”

“I gotta be honest, I don’t think he’s gonna fall for anything at all,” Jenkins said. “We tried to ambush Kerns, and he never showed up. Now we try to ambush Laughton… I’d be surprised if he shows up.”

“If he doesn’t, he’s given up,” Virgil said. “If he thinks I’m going to get a recording of the school board meeting, he’s either got to show up, or concede the fact that he’s going to prison for murder. There has to be something serious on that memory card or Kerns wouldn’t have murdered Will Bacon to get it.”

“But there isn’t a second memory card,” Shrake said. “There was only one.”

“But there are two slots. Whoever killed Kerns got one card — but can’t take the chance that there really is a second one. He can’t know that there isn’t a second one.”

“Maybe. I guess we’ll see.”

It was just getting dark when they started over to the school in Virgil’s truck. On the way, Shrake said that Jenkins’s talk of making his fortune with office camo reminded him of a rumor going around BCA headquarters. According to the rumor, a BCA team had been digging out financial information about a defunct investment company in St. Paul. Virgil knew about the criminal part of the investigation, because it had been handled by Lucas Davenport, his boss.

“The question was, did a bunch of other people take out money before the collapse, because they’d been tipped off by the owner that trouble was coming?” Shrake said. “And if so, should that money be reclaimed?”

“That’s the kind of shit that puts me asleep,” Jenkins said.

“Me, too,” Shrake said. “But that’s not what the rumor was about. Supposedly this team was looking at all these income tax returns, and somebody decided to take just a wee peek at Davenport’s returns.”

Virgil said, “Uh-oh. If they did that, and anybody official found out, they’d be fired.”

“Probably,” Shrake agreed. “But the rumor is, they took a peek, and as close as they can figure it, he’s worth something between thirty-five and forty-five million. Can you believe that?”

Virgil thought it over for a few seconds and finally said, “I honestly have no idea. I know he’s richer than Jesus Christ and all the Apostles. I know that two weeks ago, when he flew down to El Paso after Del got shot, he wrote a check for the plane he borrowed from the governor. I know he buys what he wants, he has expensive cars… but I don’t know a number. You could do all that if you had a half-million in the bank.”

“It’s not a half-million,” Shrake said. “He’s way, way on the other side of that. The question is, say the guy is worth something like the rumor says he is. What the hell is he doing working for the BCA? Why’s he going mano a mano with some psycho fruit in the basement of a torture castle? What the fuck is he doing? He could be living in… LA. Or Paris, if he likes cheese.”

“If he likes cheese, he could be living in River Falls, Wisconsin,” Jenkins said.

“You know what I mean, man.”

Virgil said to Shrake, “You know why he does it.”

Shrake said, “No, I don’t. I really don’t. Not if he’s got forty million…”

Virgil said, “Shrake, you’ve got a fuckin’ shotgun between your knees, you’re wearing an armored vest, and there’s a chance you’re about to shoot it out with a psycho killer in the dark. Why is that?”

Jenkins laughed, and said, “Yeah, why is that, putter boy? How come so many guys, including you, try to get on SWAT squads? Come on, admit it.”

Shrake tried to hold out: “It’s my job.”

“Oh, bullshit,” Jenkins said. “You do it because you like it, because you get that feeling in your balls like you’re in a falling elevator, and you like it. We all like it. We get all grim and warriored-up about it, but the bottom line is, we like it.”

“That’s somewhat true,” Shrake admitted.

“That’s why Davenport does it: it’s better than money,” Jenkins said.

“You guys bum me out sometimes,” Virgil said.

“Getting that feeling in your balls?” Jenkins asked.

“I’ve had it for about three days now,” Virgil said.

“Attaboy.”

As they came up to the school, Jenkins said, “The question is, is he inside waiting for us, so we get hosed the minute we go through the door, or is he planning to come in after you have a chance to find the memory card?”

“Or is he home eating fried chicken and trying to decide what to watch on TV?” Shrake added.

“I got a key from the crime-scene crew that’ll let us in the back door, all the way around by the ball diamond, where he won’t be expecting us,” Virgil said. “We go around there right quick, and in through the doors. Once we’re inside, we’ll be even.”

“What are the chances he’s got night-vision glasses?” Jenkins asked.

“Unlikely — no reason for him to have them. Besides, right inside the door there’s a whole bank of switches. I’m going to light up the halls all the way down to the auditorium. Then, inside the auditorium, there’s another bank that’ll light that place up.”

They thought about that for a minute, then Jenkins said, “Most likely hiding inside a classroom. Hard to know exactly where, but probably between the auditorium and the door he thought you’d come through. He’d make sure you’re alone, then he’d watch you go in there, and maybe peek to see if you were finding anything… and then, boom.”

“Or he could already be stashed in the auditorium. There are quite a few places on the stage, or in the projection booth, at the back, that’d give him cover,” Virgil said.

“So we go in, with full lights, and we watch for any classroom doors that are cracked open. Then we go into the auditorium in a regular clearance formation, ready to hose him. If he’s not there, we wait.”

“One of us up high, one low, while Virgil climbs up the ladder and looks for the chip. You know where the ladder is?”

“Still in the auditorium,” Virgil said. “The crime-scene guys were processing it, and I told them to leave it.”

At the school, Virgil said, “I haven’t seen his truck.”

“Probably wouldn’t show it,” Shrake said. “But he’d want to have it close, in case he had to run — so he’s probably not here yet.”

“Probably at home, eating chicken,” Jenkins said.

Virgil took the truck into the student parking lot, then swung onto the track that took them behind the school by the baseball practice diamond, then across some grass and right up to the back door. They piled out of the truck, jacking shells into their shotguns, and Virgil knelt below the windows in the door, and fitted the key into the door lock.

“Okay,” he said, and turned the key and the lock popped. The door was sheathed in thin steel; good against a shotgun, but not against a deer rifle. He pulled the door open, staying behind the door, waited, and then crawled inside, felt for the light switches, turned on five or six of them at once.

The lights flickered down the long hallway — which was empty. Jenkins and Shrake moved inside, and Virgil pulled the door shut. They walked cautiously forward, spread across the hall, their shotgun muzzles at chest height.

Fifty feet in, Shrake said, “Door on the left.” Virgil saw the crack between the door and the jamb. He and Shrake kept their weapons pointed at it, while Jenkins kept his tracking down the hall. As they came up to the open door, they moved to the door side of the hall. As they got to it, Virgil called, “If there’s anybody in room 120, you best come out, because we’ve got three shotguns pointed at it.”

There was no response, no sound, no feel of presence. Virgil, closest to the door, moved up and pushed it open with the muzzle of his gun. When it was fully open, he reached around the jamb, felt the light switches and turned them on. A conference room — empty.

They continued down the hall, around a corner, turned on more lights. Moving faster now, with the feeling that the building was empty. They turned the last corner, and Virgil said, “Auditorium is straight ahead, on the left.”

They continued, looking for open doors, Shrake now walking backwards, watching their backs, past the burned-out district offices, then into the hallway beyond, to the auditorium door.

Again, with the door and lights: and inside, the auditorium was empty. “No wild geese,” Jenkins said.

“Let’s get into the act,” Virgil said. “If he’s coming, he saw my truck pull around the building. Jenkins, you get up in the top row of seats, on the floor. Shrake, get between those curtain rolls at the back of the stage. Anybody hears movement, snap your fingers at me.”

Jenkins and Shrake set up; Virgil waited, listening, then went to the ladder, which had been left in a corner, and with a little nervous tickle between his shoulder blades, extended it and then set it against a crossbar in the light rack on the ceiling. He fussed over it a bit, giving Laughton a little more time to show, then climbed the ladder.

A couple of pieces of tape hung down from a crossbar where they’d mounted the camera. He muttered, “Anything?”

Shrake said, in a nearly inaudible grunt, “Nope.”

Virgil took a foot off the ladder rung where he was standing, then frowned: a piece of the gaffer’s tape seemed to rise above the rest. He climbed back up, pulled the tape off.

“My goodness.” The memory card was there, stuck under the tape. Kerns must have challenged Bacon while he was on the ladder, and Bacon had popped the card and hidden it under the tape, for Virgil to find.

Virgil, still talking low, said, “All right, guys, we’re not hiding anymore. My good buddy Will Bacon actually did leave the memory card up here, so just point your guns at anything that moves. I’m coming down.”

Virgil could hardly believe the luck — if it was indeed luck, if the card had anything worthwhile on it. Jenkins and Shrake had set up to cover both the stage entrance and the other two corridor entrances, and Virgil rattled down the ladder, and left it standing.

At the bottom, he picked up his own shotgun and said, “Let’s get out of here, but let’s take it easy. We’ve got the memory card, we just need to get it somewhere safe.”

They backed out the same way they’d come in, leaving the lights to burn. At the back door, next to Virgil’s truck, Shrake said, “This would be another obvious spot to ambush you. You had to come out sooner or later.”

Virgil looked out the window at the truck: “Jenkins, you go out first, but don’t go for the doors: just brace yourself up against the front bumper, ready to fire either direction. Then Shrake comes out, and he posts up to the right, and you take the left side. Then I’ll come out around to the left — instead of the driver’s side, I should be okay — and I’ll pop the door and crawl across to the driver’s seat.”

The procedure was fine, and one minute later they were bouncing back around the high school and out to Main Street, feeling a little foolish about all the guns and armor and entry and exit dramatics.

Shrake, from the backseat, said, “Now, if what you got on that chip is what you think you’ve got…”

“Then we’ve got it all,” Virgil said. “I’ve got a Mac program that’ll run the film. We can load it up as soon as we get back to the cabin.”

They were just coming to the turnoff for the cabin when Jenkins said sharply, “Hey, Virgil. Stop! Stop the car!”

Thinking Jenkins had seen something, Virgil yanked the car to the side of the road and asked, “What?”

“We’ve done everything right so far, but… If you really think about it, why would Laughton challenge you in the school? He’d have to creep down all those empty hallways, and if there was a shoot-out, he’d be right there in the middle of town, where everybody could see him coming and going. Same thing about ambushing you at the back door — he doesn’t just have to kill you, he has to find the chip, if you’ve got it. He’d want to get you someplace where he’d have at least a couple of minutes to empty out your pockets. Someplace a little private…”

Virgil looked into the darkness up ahead: “Like the cabin.”

“Like we thought Kerns would do,” Shrake said.

Jenkins said, “Shrake and I found that back way in. What do you say we drive around that way? Just… to take a look.”

“All right by me,” Virgil said.

He waited for a car to pass and then pulled back out on the highway. A bit more than a quarter-mile farther along, Jenkins pointed at a turnoff and said, “There it is — that’s where you go in, there’s a little boat launch just over there.”

There was a truck in the boat launch parking area, and Virgil said, “Well, I’ll be damned. That’s Vike’s truck. Jenkins, you probably just saved your own life.”

“Or yours,” Jenkins said.

“No, I always make you go first,” Virgil said. “I’m going to block his truck in, and then let’s see if we can locate Mr. Laughton back in the weeds.”

“This could be a little delicate,” Jenkins said. “It’s darker than a black cat’s ass in a coal mine, when you get back there.”

“There’s some light around the house,” Shrake said. “We know he’s got to be close to the house — probably around in front, so he’d have a clear shot at the porch when Virgil crosses it.”

Virgil crowded his truck up next to Vike’s until the bumpers touched; the nose of Vike’s truck was nestled in the riverside brush in front of it, and there was no way out. Virgil killed the truck lights, and they got out with their weapons, patting the armor back in place.

Shrake said quietly, “Sound carries along the track, we could hear you talking on your phone in the cabin when we were a hundred yards out. Then maybe a hundred yards in, give or take twenty or so, there’s a low spot that’s full of water — you can go in up to your shins in mud. Stay close behind me, off on the right side of the track, and I’ll get you past that. You can’t see much left or right, but you can see the stars overhead when you’re on the track, so watch the stars.”

Jenkins: “I’ll lead the way in. He’s gotta be out front, I think, or maybe where we set up, off to the side, although that’d be taking a chance. There’ll be some light when we get close, so don’t go waving your arms around, swatting mosquitoes. Just let them bite.”

“And don’t shoot me in the back,” Shrake said.

They started down the track, single file, moving slowly, not so much out of caution as blindness: the black cat/coal mine problem; the strongest sensory input came through their noses, which told them that there were lots of dead carp somewhere close. A hundred yards down the track, Virgil could sense Shrake but not really see him, and then Shrake reached back and pushed him to the right and whispered, “Puddle.”

Mosquitoes were bumping off Virgil’s face and the exposed part of his neck, and he flipped his shirt collar up and followed, keeping the muzzle of his shotgun pointed up and to the left.

They moved on, almost silently, then saw the light from the cabin, yellow against the gray/blue of the night. Virgil walked into Shrake, who’d bumped into Jenkins. Jenkins whispered, “There’s another truck in the driveway. My car, and it looks like a black pickup.”

“That’s Johnson,” Virgil whispered back. “Jesus, I hope he hasn’t hurt Johnson.”

“Could be a hostage deal,” Shrake suggested.

Virgil said, “No. He can’t afford a hostage deal. He can’t afford anyone be left alive to know he was involved in this… so he’s either in there with Johnson, or he’s outside.”

“Okay. Keep an interval… ten yards,” Jenkins said.

Virgil: “I’m going first. I can see now, and I know the layout better than you guys. No argument. Ten yards, I’m going first.”

He led the way in, Jenkins staying almost in the brush on the left side of the track. As he got closer, he had to make a decision: Would Laughton be behind the cabin, or in front? He stopped, and crouched, and let Jenkins and Shrake come up. As he waited, Virgil noticed that he was sweating.

“What do you think?” Virgil asked.

“It occurred to me that you should send a cell phone message to Johnson, is what occurred to me,” Jenkins said. “Tell him we’re here, that Laughton is here, and to lay low.”

Virgil said, “Why didn’t I think of that? Wait here for a minute. I’m gonna crawl back behind that bush and send one.”

They squatted in the dirt, a few yards apart, and Virgil eased backward, pulled his shirt up over his head, stuck his hands in under the front, with his cell phone, and tapped out a quick message. “Think Vike Laughton’s outside the cabin with gun. I’m coming for him. If you okay, not hostage, send me my girlfriend’s first name.”

Twenty seconds later, he got “Frankie.” And then, “I’ll break him out.”

Virgil tried to type “No!” but he’d only gotten the “N” typed in when a side window on the cabin flew open and Johnson bellowed into the night, “Hey! Vike! You’re surrounded! Everybody knows you’re out there. Give it up, you fuckin’ cocksucker!”

There was a moment of dead silence, then a six-inch flame reached out toward the cabin and blew out a window, and Jenkins and Shrake opened up on the muzzle flash, and were rolling away from their own flashes when there were three fast shots from the same point, or a little left, then a woman started screaming, and Jenkins and Shrake and Virgil opened up on the muzzle flash point, and the woman kept screaming, and Shrake screamed at Jenkins, “He’s got cover, go to slugs,” and Virgil emptied his shotgun at the point of the incoming muzzle flashes and rolled off behind a tree, and the woman kept screaming, and Virgil wished she’d stop doing that and wondered in a very thin stream of curious thought in the middle of a gunfight if Johnson and Clarice had been getting it on in the cabin.…

Jenkins’s first slug knocked a hole in the bottom of the boat that Laughton and Barns were using for cover, and also took a piece of Jennifer 1’s ass, and she dropped her shotgun and started screaming for help, and Vike said, “Sorry about this, Jen,” and he slid backward on his belly down the bank toward the river and then scuttled away in the dark. Incoming slugs were knocking holes in the boat and Jennifer 1 began screaming, “No no no no no… I give up give up give up…”

Virgil shouted, “Stop, stop, stop…”

When the shooting stopped, Virgil shouted, “Vike, throw out your gun. There are a whole bunch of us here. All you’ll get is killed, if you keep shooting.”

A woman’s voice: “Vike ran away. I’m shot, I’m hurt bad, I’m dying. Get me help, get me an ambulance, help me…”

They took a good two minutes closing in on her, and found her hiding behind Johnson’s upturned jon boat. She was bleeding heavily from a wound in the buttocks, and Virgil said to Jenkins, “Get an ambulance.”

Jenkins stepped back to call, and Virgil moved around behind the boat and picked up a shotgun and put it out of reach, and asked, “Who are you?”

Before she could answer, a light hit her in the face, and Johnson, standing behind the flashlight, said, “Hey, it’s Jennifer Barns, the honorable school board chairwoman or — person.”

“Where’d Vike go?” Virgil asked.

“He went down the river… down the bank,” she groaned.

And Johnson said, suddenly louder, “Hey, hey! That’s my boat. Jesus Christ, look what you assholes did to my boat. It’s all—”

“Shut up!” Virgil shouted.

Johnson shut up, and Jenkins came back and said, “Ambulance is on the way. They said they know the place, they’ve been here before.”

“I’m dying,” Barns screamed. “Get me a doctor. I’m dying…”

Jenkins said, “I got a little issue here myself. I might have caught some buckshot.”

Virgil: “Aw, shit. How bad? Where’re you hit?”

“Right in the calf. Could be gravel or something, but there’s some blood.”

Shrake said, “Let me look, get up on the porch…”

Johnson stayed with barns, and Virgil and Shrake followed Jenkins up to the porch. Jenkins sat down and pulled up a pant leg. A trickle of blood was flowing from a hole in his calf, but there was no exit wound.

“The red ones down low are where that fuckin’ Chihuahua bit me, but that big one—”

“Ah, you’re shot. Now we really need that fuckin’ ambulance,” Virgil said.

“It’s not that bad,” Jenkins said.

“They’re all fuckin’ bad,” Shrake said. “You know what that’s going to do to your downswing? You’ll have no fuckin’ follow-through for a fuckin’ month, and then the season’ll almost be over.”

Barns screamed, “Where’s the ambulance?”

Virgil got on the phone to the sheriff’s office, in eight crisp sentences told the duty officer what had happened, told him to get some deputies to the cabin. When he was sure the duty officer understood, Virgil rang off and asked Jenkins, “You got a problem with shock?”

“No, I’m fine, although my leg’s beginning to annoy me.”

“Could you stay with what’s-her-name? And talk to the deputies?”

“Sure. You going after Laughton?”

“Yeah — he’s running downriver, but he’s got no place to go. Half-mile from here, he’ll be hitting the town lights. It’s just a matter of flushing him out.”

“Take off. I’ve got it here,” Jenkins said.

Barns screamed, “I’m dying, I’m dying, where’s the goddamned ambulance?”

She sounded like a blackboard being run through a table saw.

Virgil ran inside for ten seconds, got his jacklight, and then he and Shrake started downriver in a measured jog, shotguns at port arms, Johnson following behind. Virgil called, “Go away, Johnson, we don’t want you.”

“Fuck you, you shot my boat. I’m coming.”

“Go away!”

“Fuck you!”

So they went down the track, slowly, until they came to an artificial harbor with a half-dozen barges inside, small lights at the corner of each barge, and three brighter pole lights scattered down the waterfront. The levee was coming in from their right, pinching them against the river, and Johnson climbed up the side of it and walked along the top as they got closer to town, and then Johnson shouted down, “There he is, the fuckin’ rat. He’s going for the marina.”

Virgil searched the waterline up ahead, and though there was some light, and the lights were getting brighter, he didn’t see Laughton until the fugitive made a sudden jog down a catwalk that led behind a row of boats, probably five hundred yards ahead.

Virgil, Shrake, and Johnson broke into a trot, and Virgil shouted, “Don’t forget, he’s got that shotgun.” He was almost instantly proven correct when they saw a flash and heard a BOOM from the marina, and Johnson shouted, “He shot someone.”

They were running hard now, and thirty seconds or so later they heard a buzzing noise, and Johnson shouted, “He’s got a boat. He’s running in a boat.”

Another half-minute and they were at the marina, which was basically an indentation in the shoreline with a rambling dock that ran alongside it, with a few finger docks attached. They found no bodies, but did find the remnant of a boat’s bowline that appeared to have been shot in half.

They could still hear the buzzing from the fleeing boat, and Johnson yelled, “This one, get this one, get the rope, get the line…”

He’d jumped into a jon boat with a small engine on the back.

“We need a faster boat,” Virgil shouted.

“Can’t. They all need keys,” Johnson shouted back. “This one’s just a rope pull.” To prove the point, he yanked on the starter rope and nothing happened. Johnson said something that would have embarrassed the entire state of Minnesota, had the entire state overheard it. He whacked the motor a few times, pulled again, and the outboard sputtered to life. “We’re good: get in.”

Shrake and Virgil jumped in the boat, and Virgil unwrapped the dock line, and Johnson backed the boat away from the pier and they took off, more or less.

“This is really fuckin’ slow,” Shrake said. “Can’t we get more speed?”

“You could jump overboard,” Johnson suggested. “That’d lighten the load.” And to Virgil: “Hey, Virgie, put your jacklight on that sucker.”

They couldn’t see Laughton’s boat, and they couldn’t hear it anymore, over the buzz of their own small engine, but had an idea of where he was. Virgil turned on the jacklight. Laughton was already a long way out, but the light pinned him, three or four hundred yards ahead, pointed out into the river. He was also in a jon boat, and also had a small engine on the back.

“All right,” Johnson shouted. “The chase is on.”

Virgil and Shrake were looking at Laughton’s back, trying to keep it in sight. Johnson, who was standing in the stern, pulled his Para-Ordnance .45 out of his beltline and fired two shots so quickly they almost blended into one, and almost inspired both Virgil and Shrake to jump over the side.

Virgil screamed, “Johnson, what the fuck are you doing?”

“Chasing him,” Johnson shouted back. “Is this a great country, or what?”