Deadline

26

Nothing like a slow-speed chase on a pleasant summer night on the Mississippi. They could see a towboat, but it was far upriver, and no immediate danger; far downstream they could see a hint of the lights on the lock and dam, and across the river, on the far bluffs, radio towers sending flashing red light out into the ether. Halfway across, Laughton fired a shot at them, but he was far enough away that they didn’t even see the shot hit the water.

“Wonder what the maximum range for shot is?” Virgil asked.

Shrake said, “There’s a range I shoot at in Wisconsin, they say four hundred yards to be safe. But everybody says not even buckshot carries much further than three hundred.”

Johnson said, “My .45’ll carry a lot further than that.”

Virgil: “Johnson, I swear to God, if you take that gun out again, I’ll throw both of you in the fuckin’ river.”

Shrake: “I wonder if he thinks if he makes it to Wisconsin, we won’t be able to follow because we’re Minnesota cops?”

“Only if he’s got his head up his ass,” Virgil said. “Though we probably ought to call the Wisconsin sheriff’s office, whichever one it is, and tell them we’re coming. Maybe we could get a little help.”

Virgil got on the line to Purdy’s office, and when the duty officer answered, gave him a quick explanation, and he said he’d call the sheriff across the river: “But don’t expect them too quick, this time of night, they’ll be coming all the way from Viroqua.”

“Call them, and have them call me, and I’ll tell them about it,” Virgil said. “They’re gonna have to take custody, anyway, I can’t just haul him back across the river.”

Virgil hung up, and Johnson, who was still standing up in the back of the boat and steering with occasional foot nudges on the tiller, said, “You see that tiny gold speck of light straight ahead?”

“Yeah?”

“That’s the Schlitz beer sign hanging outside of the Rattlesnake Golf and Country Club. They’d be closed by now, but there might still be somebody around. He could hijack a truck, maybe.”

Virgil went back to the phone, and after some fooling around, found a phone number for the club, but nobody answered: it clicked over to the pro shop’s answering machine. “No answer.”

“How much longer?” Shrake asked.

“At this speed… four or five minutes.”

“When we see him land, we can’t go straight in after him, we’ve got to unload either downstream or upstream, or he’ll take us all out with one shot,” Virgil said.

Virgil took a call from the Vernon County sheriff, and explained quickly what was going on. “We’re in hot pursuit,” he said for the sheriff’s recorder. “We’ve got him pinned in a spotlight. He’s coming up to the Rattlesnake golf club. We’ll keep you posted on what happens.”

“We’ll start a car that way, but we don’t have a hell of a lot of resources available to come that way, at this very minute.”

“You tell your people to be careful — he’s armed, and he doesn’t have anything to lose.”

“I’ll tell ’em.”

Thirty seconds later he took another call, this one from Davenport: “Yeah?”

“You busy?”

“Yeah, as a matter of fact, I’ve got a couple things going on right now,” Virgil said.

“Is that an outboard I hear in the background?”

“As a matter of fact it is, Lucas. I’m chasing a guy with a shotgun across the Mississippi River, because he and a woman ambushed me and Shrake and Jenkins at Johnson Johnson’s cabin, and Jenkins took a shotgun pellet in the leg, and the woman was shot in the butt, and they’re waiting for an ambulance — that should be there by now — so I’m a little fuckin’ busy and I gotta go. Talk to you later.”

He clicked off, and Shrake asked, “Think he believed you?”

Virgil’s phone chirped, and he pulled it out and looked at the screen. A message from Davenport that said: “OK. Call when you get a minute.”

Virgil said, “Yeah, I guess he did.”

Johnson: “Vike’s right at the shoreline.”

Virgil said, “You know the golf club, what do you think — upstream or downstream?”

“Down. It’ll be faster, and there’s a track that runs out to the river,” Johnson said. “We can tie up there and we can follow the track right into the clubhouse, even without light.”

Johnson started angling south, and a few seconds later Shrake said, “I think he just hit land.” In the light shaft from Virgil’s jacklight, they saw Laughton scramble up the riverbank.

As they got closer, they could see Laughton’s empty boat turning in the river, just offshore. “That’s Larry Gale’s boat. He’s gonna be pissed if it goes over the lock and dam. We oughta try to get it back,” Johnson said.

“You get it back,” Virgil said. “Shrake and I will go after Vike. I don’t want you there with a gun if the Wisconsin cops show up. At this point, we can just tell them you were the boat driver.”

Johnson grumbled a bit, but he was worried about the other boat. He put them ashore two hundred yards down from where Laughton had landed, and said, “Just angle in right toward the beer sign. The track is straight as an arrow. Don’t get shot, it’s a long ride back to the clinic.”

Shrake and Virgil climbed ten or twelve feet up the bank, found the end of the track. Virgil turned off the spotlight, which was way too bright, and they started following the track toward the clubhouse, staying ten or fifteen yards apart, moving slowly. They came to a circle of trees around a green, and Virgil said, “Find a place to take cover. I’m going to yell at him.”

They squatted behind separate tree trunks, and Virgil shouted, “Vike! There’s no point! The Wisconsin cops are on the way! There’s no way out, we know all about the house in Tucson, you can’t go there. Give it up before you get killed—”

Boom!

Laughton, who’d been waiting by the corner of the clubhouse, fired in their direction, and Virgil thought he might have heard buckshot tearing through the trees twenty or thirty yards to his left.

He heard Shrake move, and move fast, jogging hard to come in at the clubhouse from the back. Virgil went left thirty yards, found another tree, and shouted again. No response this time.

He moved forward: there was an overhead pole light at the clubhouse, in addition to the beer sign, enough light to see by. He moved forward another thirty yards: at this range, if Laughton showed himself, Virgil could reach him with the shotgun. His phone dinged, and he slid down on his side and pulled it out of his pocket: a note from Shrake: “Now what?”

Virgil texted back: “Wait just a bit, and I’ll start yelling again.”

He never had the chance.

Ten seconds later, there was another Boom! but from some distance away. Virgil shouted, “Shrake, don’t shoot me, I’m coming in.”

He started running toward the clubhouse, and saw Shrake come in out of the dark and peek around the corner. Down toward what appeared to be the entrance road, under another pole light, they could see a yellow corrugated metal shed.

“Must be a maintenance—” Shrake began.

A moment later, Laughton rolled under the light, and then out the exit driveway, away from them, driving a golf cart.

“You gotta be shittin’ me,” Shrake said.

They both began running after the golf cart, which had two tiny taillights. They saw the lights make a turn to the left, apparently out at the road, and Virgil shouted, “You follow, I’m going to try to cut across and see if I can catch him that way.”

Shrake grunted and Virgil broke away, running left as hard as he could, up a fairway distinguishable by starlight. The fairway was lined by trees and, Virgil suspected, a fence to separate it from the road. Before he got to the fence, he saw Laughton coming down the road — Virgil wasn’t close enough to stop him, but he hit Laughton in the face with the jacklight and saw him swerve to the far side of the road, blinded, putting a hand up against the light. Laughton passed in front of him, and on down the road, and Virgil kept him pinned in the light, watching for Laughton’s shotgun, and chased after him with no hope of catching up.

He went through the tree line, found the fence, clambered over, went down into a ditch and up the other side in time to see Shrake coming, in another golf cart.

Virgil shouted at him, and Shrake slowed just enough to get Virgil onboard, and Shrake said, “Get your gun out, we’re faster than he is. We’re catching him.”

They were running alongside the golf course, which stretched between the river and the road. Virgil could see the taillights on Laughton’s vehicle no more than a hundred and fifty yards ahead.

“Shoot one up beside him,” Shrake suggested.

The golf cart had a Plexiglas windshield, but Shrake poked it a couple times with the heel of his hand and it folded down, and Virgil aimed unsteadily off to one side of the other golf cart and fired.

They saw the tiny taillights swerve, maybe off the road, because it bumped hard a couple times, and they gained another thirty yards, and Shrake said, “Try that again. See if you can bounce it off the road behind him.”

Virgil fired again, and this time the other golf cart swerved hard left and went down into the ditch.

“Got him,” Shrake said.

“He’s got that shotgun,” Virgil said, and they pulled off sideways and got out, and Virgil shouted, “Vike, give it up.”

They heard him moving like a bear through the ditch. Virgil pinned him with the light again, as they ran forward, ready to shoot, but Laughton did a somersault over the fairway fence and they ran after him. Shrake said, “I think he lost the gun.”

Then came a strangled shriek from the golf course, and silence.

They crossed the fence and spread apart, moving slowly now, up a mound…

The mound was the top of a sand trap. In the brilliant illumination of Virgil’s jacklight, they found Laughton spread-eagled in the white sand below. He’d run right off the top of the sand trap, and had fallen in, maybe ten feet straight down, into fine white river sand.

Virgil ran around the trap, keeping the muzzle of the gun out in front of him, and asked, “You alive in there?”

“Heart attack. I’m having a heart attack,” Laughton groaned.

“Really?” Virgil asked.

“Oh, God, don’t let me suffer. Shoot me.”

“Could happen,” Virgil said. “You’ve got two shotguns pointed at your head.” He moved quickly around to Shrake and whispered, “Cuff his hands in front of him. We’re going to run him back to the boats, evacuate him to the clinic.”

Shrake whispered, “Why not just call an ambulance? He’s faking, anyway.”

Virgil whispered, “Because then he’ll be in Minnesota. And what if he’s not faking?”

So they climbed down into the trap, and Virgil said, “Think about the shotguns,” and he put his aside and helped Laughton roll over. Shrake stepped in with the cuffs, and Laughton groaned again, “It hurts so bad. This is the end.”

Shrake ran the cuffs under Laughton’s belt, and Virgil got out of the trap and waved the light in a circle. “Johnson! Johnson! Over here!”

Johnson shouted back, and, following the light, arrived a minute later, breathing hard, and asked, “What?”

“We have to evacuate Vike to the clinic. He’s having a heart attack. You guys get his body, I’ll get his legs.”

“Call an ambulance,” Laughton said.

“Not enough time. Time is critical,” Virgil said.

They picked Laughton up, and Johnson said, “Jesus, wide load, huh?” and they carried him three hundred yards, across two fairways and down the embankment where Johnson had tied up the boats. Laughton bitched every inch of the way: “It’s killing me. You’re killing me. Oh, God, I’m hurt…”

Virgil was almost, but not quite, convinced when they lowered him into the boat. Johnson and Shrake got in the boat with him, and Virgil followed in the second boat, and Virgil called the sheriff’s department and asked that an ambulance meet them at the marina.

Again, Virgil thought what a nice night it was, out on the river. The towboat passed in front of them, throwing out a healthy wake, which they rode up and over, and then they rolled on into the marina, where two paramedics were waiting. Shrake rode in the ambulance with them, so he could manage the handcuffs, and also shake Laughton down to make sure he had no more weapons.

Virgil and Johnson tied off the two boats, and Johnson said he’d call their owners with an explanation. “What I want to know is, who’s going to pay for my boat?”

“Your boat was a piece of shit,” Virgil said. “I do mean was. Right now it wouldn’t even make a good petunia planter. Had more holes in it than a fuckin’ colander. Looked like some kinda industrial sprinkler head. Looked—”

“Okay, okay,” Johnson said. “But somebody’s gonna pay.”

They walked back down the dark lane to the cabin, and Virgil went inside and washed his face and hands, while Johnson counted holes in his boat. “They picked it up and dragged it over here and used it as a fuckin’ armored duck blind,” Johnson said. “You were the duck.”

At the clinic, they found that both Jenkins and Jennifer 1 were on their way to Rochester, the nearest surgical hospital. The doc at the clinic told them that Jenkins had a buckshot lodged in his calf, and it might take a little surgery to remove it. Jennifer Barns needed to be cleaned up and repaired, and it would be some time before she’d be sitting up again.

Laughton had probably faked the heart attack, although the doc said, “Sometimes stress can give you chest pains that aren’t related directly to the heart. I understand he was under quite a bit of stress lately.”

Shrake said, “Not as much as he’s gonna be.”

Johnson: “Not much of a Viking, was he? More like a, more like a, more like…”

“A sissy,” Shrake offered.

“Yes,” Johnson said. “Like that.”