Bloody Genius (Virgil Flowers, #12)(102)

“What’s her mom’s name?” Virgil asked.

“I . . . I don’t know. I doubt it’s Quill. I think she remarried . . .”

“We gotta go,” Virgil said. “We gotta go.”





CHAPTER





TWENTY-SIX



They went together in Virgil’s truck, lights and siren. Virgil took three seconds to dig his Glock out of the backseat gun safe. “I might need this, God help me.”

Trane was on her cell, trying to track down Quill’s mother’s name, without luck. Virgil was on his own hands-free phone, talking with the BCA tech guy.

“We might have a desperate situation here. If we can’t track Krause, we’ve got to see if we can locate a Megan Quill. I have her phone number but I don’t know which service.”

“I’ll find her.”

“Gotta be fast. Gotta go, man.”



* * *



—

“Where’re you going, where’re you going?” Trane snapped at Virgil, pulling her face away from her phone. “You’re going the wrong way.”

Virgil said, “I’m not taking city streets. Even with the lights, they’ll be slower. I’m going over on 94 and then up 35E.”

Trane said, “Okay, I see . . . Go! . . . Go! . . . I can’t get anybody to tell me her mother’s name. It must be somewhere.”

“St. Thomas probably has it.”

Virgil fought his way out to I-94 and sped east toward St. Paul as Trane, who tried to talk to somebody at St. Thomas, wound up shouting, “So I’ll have the fuckin’ nine-one-one operator call you. Jesus, this is . . .”

She hung up, called 911, identified herself, explained the situation, and gave the operator the number for the woman she had spoken to at St. Thomas. The operator said she’d call back after she talked with St. Thomas.

Virgil was trying to drive fast and thumb-dial his car phone, got it done, talked to the BCA duty officer. “Call the Faribault cops and have them check the house of one Connie Krause. If she’s home, check to see if her son has her car and, if so, the make, model, and license. This is an emergency. We need the information as fast as we can get it.”

Virgil got stuck behind a pair of cars pacing each other side by side at exactly fifty-five miles an hour. He got the truck’s bumper a foot behind the Prius’s in the fast lane and laid on the horn in case the idiot didn’t hear the siren or see the flashing lights, and the Prius reluctantly sped up and moved over, and Virgil hammered on by, and Trane, clutching her phone, said, “I’ve never driven a hundred and ten down I-94 in the middle of the Cities . . . Kinda pretty, the way all the lights blur.”

“Where in the hell is nine-one-one? Where in the hell . . .”

He blew past a five-liter Mustang.

Nothing but silence from their phones until Virgil’s buzzed, as he turned north on I-35E in St. Paul, and the BCA phone came up, and the tech said, “I’ve got your girl, but she’s not in White Bear Lake. She’s moving, she’s on Highway 61 going south from White Bear toward 694. She could be with Krause, but I think she’s ahead of him.”

“Stay on her. We’re just north of 94, heading north on 35E, and we should run into her if she keeps coming south.”

“Yeah, she’s coming up to the intersection of 61 and 694. If she heads your way . . .” A minute later, the tech said, “No, she’s turned east on 694. She’s going away from you. She moving pretty fast . . . Got a heavy foot.”

Trane’s phone buzzed, and the 911 operator came up. “Quill’s mother’s name is Trixie Hahn. I have her home and cell phone numbers.”

Trane called Hahn’s cell phone. She answered after a few seconds, and Trane identified herself, and said, “We’re trying to find Megan. We think she might be in danger. Do you know where she’s going?”

Hahn, sounding frightened: “She’s meeting a friend at the Maplewood Mall. What happened? Why—”

“We think a man who she believes is a friend might pose a danger. We’re tracking her phone, though it’s turned off. We can see her going east on 694.”

“Yes! She’s going to the mall. The Maplewood Mall. She’s meeting Kaitlin Chambers there, Kaitlin’s a friend from way back in kindergarten.”

“She’s driving your car?”

“Yes.”

“Give me a description, please.”

“It’s a one-year-old green Subaru Forester, sort of a moss green . . . Wait a minute, I’ve got the insurance paper, I can get you a license number.”

Hahn went away from the phone for a moment, and Virgil asked Trane, “I know where the mall is, but how far do you think we’re behind her?”

“Six or eight minutes . . . We’re probably ten minutes from the mall. Maybe. Shoot, I don’t know, I’ve only been there, like, twice in my life.”

Hahn came back with the license plate number, and Trane thanked her and told her that she’d call back later when she had more information. She punched off Hahn’s call and dialed 911 again, and told the operator to contact the Maplewood police to find and stop the Subaru as it approached the mall or in the mall parking lot and to hold and secure Quill.