Escape Clause

18

Virgil left a phone message for Jenkins and Shrake and suggested that they meet at the BCA building at eight o’clock the next morning for another trip over to Frogtown. Jenkins was still up and sent a text back, saying that Virgil wouldn’t make it to the BCA at eight o’clock unless he got up at five o’clock in the morning-“No fast way to get across the south end of the Cities at that time in the morning.”

Virgil thought it over, agreed, and changed the meeting time. “Nine o’clock or as soon after that as I can get there.”

–

Virgil made it to the BCA at ten after nine. He’d stopped at the Mayo before heading north again, but Frankie was asleep and he left her that way. Shrake, looking fresh and smelling of French cologne, said he and Jenkins hadn’t gone out the night before because the trip to the possible tiger den “broke our focus. You want to nail yourself a cougar, you can’t be thinking about tigers.”

They drove in Virgil’s 4Runner to the same neighborhood they’d been in the night before, the two thugs giving Virgil a hard time about his vintage black “Hole” T-shirt.

“I reject your ignorant criticism,” Virgil said. “Courtney Love had a terrific voice and a good band behind her.”

“Wasn’t that hard to look at, either,” Jenkins conceded. “That doesn’t mean your shirt isn’t ridiculous. For one thing, it’s a size too small.”

The conversation continued, but they got to the target house about two hours too late. When they arrived, a St. Paul cop car was parked in the street in front of the house. “I’m suffering from a sudden lack of confidence in our mission,” Jenkins said.

“Ah, man. Let’s go see what’s going on,” Virgil said.

–

A St. Paul police sergeant named Random Powers came out the door as they walked up to the house. Powers knew Jenkins and Shrake and said he’d just taken a missing persons report from the girlfriend of a man who’d disappeared that morning, two hours earlier.

“Is his name Barry King?” Virgil asked.

“Yeah. You know where he is?”

“No, I don’t,” Virgil said. “Goddamnit.”

Virgil told Powers about the BCA investigation and the cop said, “Go talk to Gloria. Be my guest. And… try to look in her eyes.”

Virgil, Shrake, and Jenkins found Gloria Ortiz sitting on the living room sofa, drinking a glass of green stuff. Ortiz was a pretty, brown-eyed woman with blond streaks in her dark hair and a gold crucifix dangling down her intriguing cleavage. She identified herself as Barry King’s live-in fiancée.

“I don’t know what happened. He got up, he said he was going out to run. He was wearing his running shorts and shoes and a T-shirt, and he went off. Then he didn’t come back. He’s supposed to be at work-when he didn’t come back, I got worried and called the police and asked if a runner had been hit by a car or anything.”

Powers, who’d followed them inside, said, “We got nothing like that.”

Shrake asked Ortiz, “You guys been getting along? Any chance he, you know… might be looking for a better opportunity?”

“No,” she said. “I can tell you that for sure. He left his wallet, watch, and iPhone on the bathroom counter. I promise you, Barry would never leave his wallet and cell phone behind, if he was planning to take off. There was a hundred and forty dollars in his wallet, and all his IDs and credit cards.”

Virgil: “Barry come into any money lately?”

Her eyes drifted sideways and Jenkins said to Virgil, “That looks like a big yes.”

“I don’t know where he got it, but he bought some neat new shoes last month-he likes shoes. I looked in his wallet and there was more than a thousand dollars in cash in there,” Ortiz said. “We had an argument about it. Oh… his shoes are still here. He didn’t take any of them, except his running shoes.”

“He ever mention the tigers to you? The missing tigers from the zoo?” Virgil asked.

Her hand went to her mouth. “Oh my God. Is that what this is about? You think Barry helped steal them?”

“We would like to talk with him,” Virgil said. “See if he had any ideas about what might have happened to them.”

“I don’t think Barry… he’s not the kind of person who could organize a thing like that. You know, stealing the tigers. Barry can be nice, when he tries, but he’s not the sharpest knife in the dishwasher.”

“Did he spend any time watching the news about the tigers?” Virgil asked.

She bobbed her head. “Oh, yeah, I guess. Everybody has been, right? Especially if you worked at the zoo.”

“Do you know… has he had any new friends? Anybody you thought might be a little unusual?”

“No, but he has his own friends. I don’t hang out with them much. The boys, you know, go drinking with the boys. I go out with my girlfriends.”

Shrake: “You didn’t talk about the zoo, about the tigers?”

“Only about how terrible it was, the tigers being stolen. Anything more, he hasn’t said a thing to me. Not a thing.”

–

King wasn’t saying much to the Simonians, either. He lay face-down in the RV and bled into the carpet, and occasionally groaned.

One of the Simonians had talked to Hamlet and Hayk Simonian’s mother, who’d given them two names: Larry King, who she said worked at the zoo, and Simpson Becker, who’d hired them.

Her mistakes with the names occurred because Mother Simonian had been born and raised in Iran and had fled when the revolution made things difficult for Christian Armenians. Surrounded by family in California, speaking Farsi and Armenian, she’d learned only basic English-but she had watched a lot of television, Larry King and The Simpsons included; she in fact may have unconsciously modeled her blue-tinted hair on Marge Simpson’s. When her elder son called and said she should take down a couple of names, “just in case,” he said Barry King and Winston Peck, and she heard Larry King and Simpson Becker.

The Simonians in the truck had managed to identify Larry King as Barry King by searching references to zoo employees, but hadn’t yet located any doctor named Simpson Becker.

Still, Barry King was a start. When he went for his morning run, they’d pulled him into the Simonian RV and proceeded to question him. When he failed to cooperate, they beat the shit out of him. When that didn’t work, the youngest and most violent of the Simonians suggested breaking his fingers, one by one, but one of the older men rejected the idea.

“I can’t stand that sound, you know? That popping, cracking sound.”

–

King let them beat him and never admitted a thing, except to moan and proclaim his innocence. He knew, from television news, that Hamlet Simonian had been murdered, and he suspected that Peck had done it. If he admitted any knowledge of it, he believed the Simonians would throw him off a bridge or some even more colorful Armenian equivalent, like off a bridge in front of a train.

He took the pounding and eventually the Simonians got tired of doing it, gave him a paper towel to wash off his face, and dropped him off on St. Paul’s East Seventh Street with a wad of toilet paper to block up his bloody nose.

As they let him go, the young, violent Simonian asked, “Why you got a fly tattoo on your neck?”

King said, around the toilet paper, “I thought it looked cool.”

The Simonian said, “You ever go to Amsterdam?”

“What? No, I never go any farther than Wisconsin. Amsterdam?”

“The Amsterdam airport, all the urinals in the men’s rooms got flies like that, right down in the bottom. You’re supposed to aim at them. You got a piss-pot fly on your neck, man.”

“Goes with the daisy tattoo I got around my asshole,” King said.

The Simonians all laughed and slapped him on the back and said he wasn’t a bad guy, but if they found out he’d had anything to do with Hamlet, of course, they’d find him again and kill him.

“Got that,” King said. “If I hear anything, I’ll call you first.”

–

Once free, King walked to a convenience store, told the clerk that he’d been mugged, and the clerk reluctantly allowed him to use the house phone. He called home, and Ortiz told him that the state cops had been looking for him. He told her to collect his clothes, shoes, phone, wallet, and car keys, and bring them to him at the convenience store.

“You’re gonna get me in trouble, aren’t you?” she asked. “Did you steal those tigers?”

“Of course not. I was home with you when they were stolen,” he said.

Ortiz agreed to come get him. She did, in his car.

“Tell me what happened,” she said.

He told her: “A total mistake. I had nothing to do with those tigers. They must be going around picking up zoo employees and beating them up.”

Ortiz figured he was lying. He was in the backseat, as they drove across town, and she watched him in the rearview mirror as he got dressed and stuffed little twists of toilet paper in each nostril.

He had her pull over six blocks from the house, took the driver’s seat, and told her to walk the rest of the way. “I’ll call you when I’ve got this straightened out,” he said.

In the six-block walk back to the house, Ortiz gave the situation serious consideration. Somehow, she thought, King was involved with the tiger theft, and at least one man involved with the tiger theft had been murdered.

Ortiz was a hairdresser with a wide breadth of knowledge involving men, lying, and criminal justice that beauty shops generated through their daily panel discussions. If the cops busted King for any aspect of the crime, they might get him for the murder as well. They would take a long look at her, too, to see if she was an accomplice. She was sitting out there like a clay pigeon, she thought, totally ignorant of the crime, but also totally exposed.

She got Virgil’s business card out of her bureau drawer and called him.

“I found out what happened to Barry,” she said. “Some guys in a big RV picked him up off the street and beat him up.”

“Big RV? He’s there now, with you?”

“No, he took off.”

“What kind of car is he driving…?”

–

Virgil got off the phone with Ortiz, called the duty officer, and told him to call the local emergency rooms in case King went to one of them. Then he got the registration for King’s car from the DMV and put the make, color, and license plate out to Twin Cities police agencies and the highway patrol. He cursed himself for not getting the make and license plate of the Simonians’ RV.

But the Simonians had landed on King, which meant they knew something. They’d had at least one name, so they might have more.

He called his Simonian contact. When Levon Simonian answered the phone, Virgil could hear traffic sounds in the background: they were in the RV.

“We need to get together and chat,” Virgil said.

“We’re going fishing in Wisconsin,” Simonian said. “We will call when we get back.”

“We need to talk now,” Virgil said. He lied a little: “I’ve got a description and make on your RV, and your license plate number. If we can’t get together and talk, I’ll have the highway patrol track you down.”

Simonian said, “Good luck with that. And don’t call us any more today; we’re busy.”

“Wait! What are you fishing for?” Virgil asked, trying to keep the conversation going.

“Marlin,” Simonian said. He hung up.

When Virgil tried to call back, he didn’t even get a ring. Something bad, he thought, may have happened to the Simonians’ cell phone.

–

King, in the meantime, had called Peck.

Peck was working at the barn, drying tiger meat. The smell was awful, nothing at all like barbeque, and now mixing with the funky stink of tiger poop. Katya was sitting in her cage, staring at him. Hayk Simonian’s femurs, tibias, fibulas, patellas, and a number of foot bones were scattered around the cage. The femurs had been cracked open, and Katya had scratched out all the marrow.

When King called, Peck listened to his complaints, then said, “I’ll meet you. Uh, I’m not at home right now, but I can meet you at the Cub supermarket parking lot off Radio Drive. You know where that is?”

King could find it, he said.

They met an hour later. When King got out of his car, Peck looked at him and said, “I don’t believe you didn’t tell them my name. Did you tell them my name?” He looked wildly around the parking lot, saw nobody approaching. “Is this a trap?”

King said, “If I’d told them the truth, they would have killed me. They’re here to kill whoever killed Hamlet, and there’s only one way they could have gotten my name-Hamlet must have given it to them. If he gave them my name, he must have given them yours. Anyway, I’m going to Chicago. Right now.”

“What’s in Chicago?”

“Not the Simonians,” King said.

–

Peck had been considering the situation since the moment that King called him. The conclusion was straightforward: King had to go.

The cops would believe, correctly, that the tiger thieves had to be the killer of Hamlet Simonian. King could tell the cops that there were only four people involved in the theft: the two Simonians, Peck, and himself. Hayk’s body would be found sooner or later, which meant the killer had to be either Peck or King. If King talked to the cops, he might convince them that he neither participated in the murders nor knew that they were coming. He might, in other words, roll over on Peck, make a deal for his testimony in return for a lighter prison sentence.

He might not even wait to be caught-he might talk himself into approaching the cops preemptively.

He had to go.

But at the moment, Peck asked, “You didn’t tell your girlfriend about this, did you? Gloria what’s-her-name?”

King had been thinking about that himself. “No, of course not. We need to hold this tight.”

“Okay. Thank God for little favors.”

“I gotta tell you, I’m a little nervous about this. I figured you’d killed him. Hamlet.”

“No! No! I didn’t kill him! I didn’t kill Hamlet! I’m not a fruitcake,” Peck shouted. He turned away, ran both hands through his hair. He was sweating like a steam pipe. He turned back to King. “I paid him off, I gave him ten thousand dollars and when the cops found his body, I asked Hayk what the fuck had happened. Hayk and I were processing the tiger that whole time; he knew I didn’t have anything to do with Hamlet’s death. Hayk said Hamlet had made a deal to buy a couple pounds of meth and run it back to Glendale. He could make five hundred percent on his money. He could turn ten thousand into fifty thousand. That’s how he got killed: he tried to hook up with some meth dealers and he wasn’t smart enough to pull it off. I didn’t kill him, Barry. I’m actually a goddamn doctor, you know. Do no harm and all that shit.”

King said, “I’m sorry, then. I didn’t really think you did it. I had to consider the possibility.”

Peck said, “Listen, Barry, if you run to Chicago, you’ll be skipping out on your job and the cops will know exactly who gave us the key to the tiger den. Then they’ll hang you for Hamlet’s murder, even though you didn’t do it and I didn’t do it. You’ve got to go back to work, pretend nothing happened.”

“How am I going to do that?” King asked. “The cops are gonna find out that the guys in the RV kidnapped me and beat me up. I should be talking to them right now, asking them why I got picked up. If I don’t go to them, they’ll know I was involved.”

“Ahhh… shit. Then maybe you ought to go to them… you could say… I dunno.” Peck looked around the parking lot; an elderly couple, pushing a shopping cart and pulling along two towheaded boys, paid no attention to them. He said, “Look. We’re processing the tigers out at a farm, not far from here. Five miles. Let’s go talk to Hayk, see what he thinks. He knows how to deal with cops. You can follow me out.”

–

King agreed, and as they left Cub supermarket and turned east on the interstate, Peck watched in the rearview mirror to make sure he didn’t change his mind.

As they drove to the farm, in addition to monitoring King, Peck considered his own psychological condition. Was he now a serial killer, or about to become one? You probably had to kill three, didn’t you, to be considered serial?

On the whole, he thought he was not a serial killer. Serial killers got off on the killing. In Peck’s case, he didn’t feel much at all. Killing didn’t get him sexually excited or emotionally wrought. Killing was simply a work-related task.

Would he be classified as a spree killer? Again, he thought not. Spree killers didn’t kill as work-related tasks. They went nuts and killed everybody they could see.

Peck had no political motives, wasn’t interested in politics, held no grudges, so he wasn’t that kind of psycho. No, he decided, he was clearly a sociopath whose life had been shoved into a difficult corner. Lots of people were sociopaths, some of them very successful in life.

–

Furthermore, killing people was actually a pain in the ass. Kill somebody, and there were all kinds of logistics to work out: how to keep your DNA off the victim, how to get rid of the body, what to do with the dead man’s car. The last matter was particularly perplexing. You could drive the car someplace and drop it off, though you’d have to be careful about DNA and fingerprints. But you wouldn’t want to drop it off near the murder scene, and if you didn’t, how did you get back to your own car? Walk? That seemed inefficient. Take a taxi? Then you had a witness. He was sure there were ways to do it, but he’d have to research it on the Internet.

–

When they turned into the farmyard, Peck pulled up to the barn, hopped out, and waved at King, who’d pulled up behind him. Peck walked straight to the barn door, and as he pushed it open, called, “Hayk? Hey, I’ve got Barry King here. We need to talk.”

Hayk didn’t answer, being dead, and now lying in a ditch fifteen miles away. The rifle was leaning against the wall next to the meat-cutting table, along with a box of cartridges. Peck picked it up, pulled the bolt, slipped a cartridge into the chamber, and walked back toward the door.

When King pulled it open and stood there in a halo of sunlight, Peck shot him in the chest. King fell heavily against the door and slid down it, closing the door in the process. When Peck tried to get out, he found the body was blocking the door, and because there was a small cavity in the earth outside the door, and King’s body was in it, he couldn’t immediately get the door open. He had to kick it, and then push it, and then kick it some more, growing increasingly panicky-the body was in plain sight if somebody drove past the farmhouse-until finally he could squeeze through the crack between the door and the doorjamb.

When he did get outside, he found that King was unconscious but not yet dead. Peck dragged King’s body out of the cavity, got the door fully open, and pulled him inside.

Still breathing.

Peck walked around the barn, looking at the body. Still breathing. He didn’t want to risk another shot, so finally, impatient, he went over and kicked the wounded man in the head. King sputtered out some blood, and Peck lost it, and kicked him in the head another half-dozen times. That did it and the breathing stopped.

Being a doctor, he also checked for a pulse in King’s neck. Nothing.

“I feel much better after the workout,” Peck told Katya. He needed the conversation; a way, he thought, to resolve the situation in his own mind. The big cat stared at him from behind the chain-link fence and didn’t contribute a thing. “You know, you figure out what you have to do and then you execute. That’s so important. Execution is. You have to carry through. A lot of people can’t do that.”

The cat said nothing.