Escape Clause

11

The New Ulm cops said they’d handle the processing of the crime and the crime scene, which would be pretty straightforward. Given that, Virgil would be treated mainly as a principal witness, with the arrest going to New Ulm.

Knowles and her companion would be taken to the Brown County jail, eventually to be charged with attempted murder, then Knowles would be transferred to Steele County district court, which had freed her on bail. Bail would no longer be a possibility.

The elderly man began to sob as one of the New Ulm cops put a hand on his head and guided him into the back of a cop car. The cop said to him, “Look at the bright side. You’re going to get lifelong free health care.”

–

They were at the scene for more than an hour before Virgil could leave. He’d have to file reports with the BCA and the New Ulm cops, but not for a day or two.

The chase and the shooting had left him feeling disoriented, and as he drove back toward New Ulm, the anger began to burn out and he started to get scared: all those bullets flying around like bees. He tried to put the thought aside and called Peck. Peck answered-Virgil could hear the sounds of dishes and silverware clinking in the background, so Peck was at dinner-and Virgil said, “A major problem came up. I’m going to be a little late… probably half an hour.”

“I’ll still be around,” Peck said. He sounded impatient, though, put-upon.

–

Virgil called Duncan and told him about the chase and the arrests, and Duncan said, “Does this have anything to do with the tigers?”

“Only peripherally-I was checking out a possibility, and one thing led to another.”

“You gotta think tigers, man.”

“Thanks for the tip, Jon.”

“Hey, I’m not trying to be tiresome, but a lot of people are looking at us, and if something doesn’t happen soon, we could be headed for a pretty unhappy conclusion.”

“I know, I’m out here pushing the boulder up the hill. We’ll get there.”

–

Virgil called Davenport and told him what happened; Strait was Davenport’s guy and he needed to know.

“Did you have a gun with you?” Davenport asked.

“Yeah.”

“You didn’t shoot it, did you?”

“No.”

“There’s the fuckin’ Flowers we all know and love,” Davenport said.

“I was chumped,” Virgil said.

“Happens to everybody, all the time,” Davenport said. “At least you got Maxine off the street. She was goofier than a fuckin’ Packers fan who’s lost his cheese.”

–

Virgil pulled into Peck’s driveway shortly after seven-thirty and climbed the steps to the front door, where Peck was waiting, smoking the butt end of a cigarette. He was wearing a knitted cardigan over a T-shirt, black jeans, and slippers.

He pushed the screen door open, said, “Come in,” and led Virgil to the living room, where two beige couches, a faux-wood coffee table, and a blue reading chair made a conversation group. He stubbed out the cigarette, took the blue chair, pointed at a couch, and asked, “What can I do for you?”

“We’re trying to track down the tigers taken from the zoo,” Virgil said, resisting the temptation to wave away the secondhand smoke. “We’re trying to figure out who in Minnesota, or close to here anyway, would have the knowledge and ability to process a dead tiger into traditional medications. We understand that you’re an expert in the area and might have some ideas about that.”

Peck rubbed his forehead, thinking, halfway scowled, and said, “The compounders of traditional medications here in the Twin Cities area work with herbs and other vegetation. Roots and so on. Not with fauna. Well, there’s one exception that I’m aware of…”

“Toby Strait?”

Peck frowned. “Is he still working? I heard he’d been shot by some animal rights nut.”

“He was,” Virgil said. “He wasn’t killed and he’s up and around again. You weren’t thinking of him?”

“No, I was thinking of Bobbie Patterson-Roberta Patterson. She processes roadkill, the carcasses of animals trapped for their fur, and bats.”

“That’s… unusual.”

“Not a profession I’d choose for myself. She was a biologist, failed to get tenure a couple of times, and decided to make some money,” Peck said. “She has an operation over in Wisconsin, east of Hudson somewhere. Always been legal, as far as I know.”

“You have an address or number for her?”

“No, but I think she’s called Patterson Biologic Resources or something close to that. She has a website.”

“I’ll talk to her,” Virgil said. “Exactly what kind of equipment would you need to process biologics?”

Peck shrugged. “Not my area. I’m more interested in traditional medicine as an academic discipline. I publish books and papers in the field; I don’t engage in the production of herbal or animal compounds. And to tell you the truth, those that do, around here, are usually a bunch of shitkickers stumbling around in the woods, trying to get something for free. They’re not exactly high-end biologists. Bobbie Patterson is the exception there.”

“But you do use some traditional medicines from time to time, right? Or at least buy some?”

Peck nodded. “Sure. I have a small, select patient list. Some of these things have a long history of efficacy against certain kinds of illnesses. Rheumatism, for example, or gout. Karl Marx suffered from gout and so did Henry the Eighth.”

“Didn’t know that,” Virgil said. “Do your medicines work?”

“Like Western medicine, they work some of the time. Some of the time, they don’t,” Peck said. “But they do no harm.”

“Hmm,” Virgil said. Then, “I don’t mean to offend you, but I have to ask a few questions. We’re asking these of everyone we speak to. Could you tell me where you were two nights ago?”

“Well… here,” Peck said, waving toward a wall-mounted television. “Two nights ago, let me see, I was working here until midnight or so and watching some television-The Freshman was on, an old movie, but it always makes me laugh. Marlon Brando reprising The Godfather as a comedy. Anyway, I was making a few notes from a book, a catalog really, called Life in the Bengal, about primitive medicine in India, as it was preserved into the 1890s.”

Virgil would check the movie time later. “Nobody here with you? No visitors?”

“No… I did see my neighbor when I was pushing the garbage out to the curb. That’s Maxwell Broom, next house down the street. That was late, probably ten o’clock.”

“I’ve been told that a fully processed tiger would be worth quite a lot in terms of medicine, and again, not to be offensive, I understand that you ran into some financial difficulty recently.”

“Been doing some research on me, huh? Well, it wasn’t a difficulty, it was a goddamned disaster,” Peck said. “Started out simple, made a little money with an iPhone app aimed at people who are hard of hearing. Most ringtones are high-pitched, see, and people suffering hearing loss can’t hear them, even when they’re loud. I had an idea: ringtones based on lower-frequency sounds. I hired a coder, put together the ringtones based on lower-frequency tones, bought advertisements in AARP Magazine, which were quite expensive, and made some money. Then this coder started pressing me with this idea for an emoji-type figure. He said it would go viral and make us millionaires…”

“Nipples,” Virgil said.

“Don’t even say the word to me,” Peck said. “I must have been out of my mind. But: the Star Tribune article was wrong. I assume that’s where you got your information? I didn’t declare bankruptcy, the company did. I was the nominal head of the company.”

“Said they took your car.”

“They got it wrong. That was the company van,” Peck said. “Don’t ask me why we had one; my accountant suggested it. A tax thing. Anyway, I did have to sell it to pay off creditors, along with a couple computers and some office equipment. The company’s remaining assets, is what it was. I don’t deny that I was hurt, but… I still have considerable personal assets.”

Peck was up-front and calm, yet his left leg bounced against his toes for the whole time of the interview. Nervousness, Virgil thought, brought rigidly under control in his voice and face, but tipped off by the leg. Not necessarily an indictment: most people were nervous when being interviewed by a cop.

Virgil asked him, “If you had to throw out three names-you know, if somebody put a gun to your head-who’d you say, in the traditional medicine market, might do this?”

Peck frowned, and after a moment’s thought and a couple of facial scratches, said, “Well… nobody. Nobody here in this area. Most of these people involved in traditional medicine, to be honest, are somewhat timid. Backwoods people, the ones who actually produce the basic flora and fauna. They’re not the kind to be sneaking around stealing tigers. They tend to be reclusive, rather than aggressive. And I’d say… poor. They usually don’t have a lot of resources. I couldn’t see them organizing anything like this raid on the zoo.”

“So…”

“I think you’re looking in the wrong direction. You want somebody who’s more confrontational, somebody who’s not afraid to go to jail. Somebody with money and lawyers. I’m thinking the anti-zoo people or animal rights people. People who lie down in front of bulldozers. Not some lady who goes mushroom hunting.”

Virgil’s phone buzzed, and he looked at the screen. Bea Sawyer, the crime-scene specialist.

He said, “I’ve got to take this.”

Peck said, “Sure, walk into the kitchen, if you want some privacy.”

–

Virgil walked into the compact kitchen and, on the way, punched up the call.

“Virgil, this is Bea. Hey, we got a hit on those prints we took off the lightbulb, believe it or not. The feds say they’re from a small-time crook named Hamlet Simonian: three convictions for burglary and one for hijacking a Best Buy truck.”

Virgil was astonished. “Convictions here? Do we have an address?”

“No, not here,” Sawyer said. “He was busted in Brooklyn, New York; Camden, New Jersey; and Glendale, California, on the burglaries, and Phoenix, Arizona, on the Best Buy truck. He’s never done any serious time and has apparently either been clean or clever for a few years now, but we’ve got lots of mug shots.”

“Bea, let me call you back in a minute. One minute.”

“I’ll be here.”

Virgil checked through his list of contacts, found the name of the people who owned the house where the tigers had been taken: the Schmidts. He poked in the number he had, and Don Schmidt answered.

Virgil: “You know anybody named Hamlet Simonian?”

Schmidt: “Never heard of him.”

“He wouldn’t have installed a lightbulb in your garage door opener?”

“I don’t think so. Let me ask Marge.” A minute later, a woman came on the line: “No. I do that. I haven’t done it for a couple years, at least. It was still working the last time we were there.”

Virgil: “Thank you.”

He called Sawyer back and said, “We got one of them. Good job. You gotta get down to the office and start cranking out mug shots for the newspapers and TV stations. I want to get this on the ten o’clock news.”

“I’m there now, I’ll get it started.”

–

Virgil walked back to the living room and said, “Something’s come up, I’ve got to go. I’d like to talk to you some more, though.”

“Well, I’m working,” Peck said. “I’m usually most available after my morning writing session, after lunch.”

“I’ll stay in touch,” Virgil said.

–

Out in his truck, Virgil called Duncan: “Jon, we got a name on the tiger theft. A Hamlet Simonian. I’m going back to the BCA to look at his file. We’ve got mug shots. If you could… I’d like you to get in touch with the TV stations and get this guy’s face on the air.”

“Yes! Virgie, goddamn it, you’re rolling,” Duncan said.

“Bea Sawyer’s putting the mug shots together; she’ll tell you about finding them. You need to get the TV people to put up the pictures and our phone number, in case somebody knows where this guy is living.”

“Yeah, yeah, I got that. See you at the office.”

–

Winston Peck VI had handled the interview with Virgil with the aid of a double dose of Xanax, which was now leaving him feeling tired. He was stressed, scared, freaked out, but chemically calm.

He sat staring at the television for two hours, some baseball game, he was never sure which one, when Hayk Simonian called and said, “You better turn on the TV.”

“It’s on.”

“Did you see it?”

“What? I’m watching a ball game.” Maybe too much Xanax: he was having a hard time focusing.

“A teaser ad for Channel Three news. They have Hamlet’s picture; they say he stole the tigers.”

“What?”

“I don’t know how they got it, but he’s gonna have to run for it. If he can make it out to Dad’s place in Glendale, they can fix him up with a fake ID. He’s gonna need some cash. You got cash?”

“I could give him a couple of thousand, maybe,” Peck said. “How did this happen? How did they find him?”

“I don’t know. Shit happens. Anyway, I’ll tell him to come over to your place,” Simonian said. “He’s at the Olive Garden in Coon Rapids; he could be there in a half hour.”

“What about his license plates? If a cop spots his car…”

“Like I said, man, shit happens. Not real likely, though.”

–

Peck hung up and looked at his watch: two minutes to ten o’clock. He sat through a bunch of ads, then the news came up, Three at Ten, and the first thing on the news was a mug shot of Hamlet Simonian, taken by the Phoenix police, followed by another one, taken by the Brooklyn cops. The Brooklyn shot wasn’t so good, having been taken when Simonian was younger and fatter with short hair, and shiny with what appeared to be sweat.

The Phoenix photo nailed him, might have been taken by National Geographic: “Our Survey of Cheap Hoods.”

“Shit. Shit, shit, shit.”

The problem with the Simonians was that they got caught. He’d known that, from his talks with old man Zhang. Zhang had said that they could lift heavy weights, they could butcher a tiger, but they had the IQs of small rocks. They were that kind of guy, but their job in the tiger theft was so simple that Peck hadn’t worried too much. He should have.

Hamlet had always seemed to be the bigger liability, because he didn’t think. About anything. Peck didn’t know exactly how the police had identified him, but it would turn out to be something thoughtless and stupid.

Hayk, on the other hand, was a sixty-watt bulb, compared to Hamlet’s backup light, but Hayk had an honor problem. Almost any little thing could turn out to be a stain on his honor and would require revenge. He’d get his revenge and then the cops would come, and they’d take him away and fingerprint him, and everything he was wanted for would then come up on their computer screens.

Peck still needed Hayk for processing the tigers, at least for a while, but he didn’t need Hamlet anymore. He thought about it and started to sweat himself, but eventually went out to the garage, pulled a junk box out of the way, and dug the nylon bag out from behind it.

Inside the bag was the dart gun they’d used on the tigers. Still had two darts… didn’t make much noise.

He thought about it some more, exactly how this would work. He put the gun back in the nylon bag twice, and twice took it back out. Eventually, he left it sitting on the hood of the Tahoe, ready to go.

–

Hamlet Simonian didn’t make it in a half hour, leaving Peck in a constant and prolonged state of agitation that even another Xanax couldn’t help. Finally, an hour after his brother called, Hamlet Simonian pulled into Peck’s driveway. Peck had been waiting impatiently behind the access door to the garage and popped it open when Simonian got out of the car.

“Where in hell have you been?” Peck hissed. He checked the street: almost all the houses were dark. “You were supposed to be here half an hour ago.”

Peck backed into the garage as Simonian walked up to the door. “Shut the goddamn door,” Peck said.

Simonian stepped inside the dimly lit garage, pushed the door shut, and said, “Dark in here. Where are you?”

Thut!

The dart hurt. Simonian looked down at his chest, could make out the syringe sticking out of his shirt, right through the left nipple. “You motherfucker!” he screamed.

The garage was dark, but there was enough ambient light coming in through the back access door that he could see Peck, in his white shirt, crouched behind the hood of the Tahoe. Simonian yanked the syringe out of his chest and threw it on the floor, then lurched down the side of the truck and around the nose. Peck had run down the opposite side, and now stood at the back of the truck, waiting for Simonian to fall down: there was enough sedative in the syringe to knock out an eight-hundred-pound tiger.

Simonian pursued him. They did two laps around the truck before Simonian failed to make a turn and crashed into the outside wall, where Peck had hung some garden tools. He bounced off the wall, fell on the floor. A shovel fell on his head. Peck, afraid that he might be faking, waited for a minute or two, peering over the hood of the car, then reached out, grabbed a rake off the wall, and used the handle to prod Simonian. Simonian didn’t even moan.

Peck moved closer: he could hear the other man breathing. The thought flashed through his mind that maybe he ought to strangle him or hit him with the shovel, but his more rational mind told him that the sedative should be enough.

So he waited: and it was. Six or seven minutes after he shot Simonian, the breathing slowed, slowed, and finally stopped.

–

While he was waiting for Simonian to show up, Peck had worked out a plan to dispose of the body. Not a great plan, but it would have to do. At the back of his garage, he had a half-sized refrigerator that he’d bought for his office, when he had an office. Stripped of the shelves, he thought he could squeeze Simonian into it.

He pulled the refrigerator to the empty garage space. He had an ice chipper leaning against the wall, a six-foot steel rod with a point on one end and a one-inch blade on the other. He used it to punch a dozen holes in the refrigerator: he didn’t want decomposition gas to float it.

–

When he was sure Simonian was dead, he turned on the garage light, dragged the refrigerator around to the back of the Tahoe, and opened the hatch. The refrigerator wouldn’t fit upright, so he laid it on its side, with the door opening down. Then he dragged Simonian around to the back of the truck, removed his iPhone and wallet, and tried to stuff the body into the refrigerator. Didn’t fit. There was space, but like a wrong piece in a jigsaw puzzle, one lump or another always stuck out-either an arm stuck out, or a knee did.

As an actual medical doctor, Peck had never been queasy about other people’s blood. He got a meat cleaver from the kitchen and cut off Simonian’s left arm at the shoulder joint. That took a while, but there really wasn’t much blood because Simonian’s heart wasn’t beating anymore, and what blood there was, he managed to contain on a garbage bag. When the arm came off, still wrapped in a shirt sleeve, he tucked it behind the body, and tried to slam the refrigerator door. Still didn’t fit, though there was empty space inside.

“Goddamnit, these guys…” Hamlet remained an uncooperative pain in the ass.

He cut off Simonian’s other arm, and by rearranging all the parts, managed to get the body to fit. The door kept popping open, though, and he wound up using a half roll of duct tape, wrapped around the length of the refrigerator, to keep it shut.

Now for the scary part, he thought. The garage had been private: now he’d be transporting a murdered body on the public roads. If somebody rear-ended him, he’d be spending his life in Stillwater prison.

–

He ran the garage door up, backed the Tahoe out of the driveway past Simonian’s Buick, and began sweating heavily: fear sweat, the worst kind. He drove out to I-94, then east, turned north on I-35, drove precisely at the speed limit to Highway 97, took it east to Highway 95 along the St. Croix River, and turned north again to the Osceola bridge to Wisconsin. He was familiar with the bridge from winter ski trips. There was never much traffic across it, even in daylight hours. At two o’clock in the morning, there was nothing.

Unlike his brother, Hamlet Simonian hadn’t been a large man-probably a hundred and sixty pounds. The refrigerator added fifty or sixty. Normally, it might have killed Peck to lift more than two hundred pounds out of the truck, but all he had to do was swivel it over the railing of the bridge, and let go… and he was so pumped with fear and adrenaline that he hardly noticed the weight. He pulled, lifted, turned, and dropped.

He heard it splash and, one minute later, did a U-turn on the bridge and headed back to the Minnesota side. Waited for the blue lights to come up. None did. He allowed himself to begin breathing again.

What he would do, he thought, was drive Simonian’s car to the basement level of a downtown parking garage, where people often left their cars for extended periods. From there, he could take a cab home. By the time Simonian’s car was found, and Hayk Simonian realized his brother was dead, Hayk Simonian would also be dead. No other choice, at this point.

He left the car in the parking garage, threw Simonian’s wallet into a sewer, after taking out $106 and all the IDs. The IDs would go through a shredder and into the garbage.

But the iPhone…

Early the next morning, he drove over to a FedEx store and sent the phone to a Jack in the Box in Glendale, California, by FedEx Ground.

And he was done, he thought, with Hamlet Simonian.