Bloody Genius (Virgil Flowers, #12)(103)

She called Hahn again. “Do you have a phone number for this Kaitlin, Megan’s friend?”

“No, no, I don’t.”

“Okay . . . We’ll check back.”

A few minutes later, Virgil rocketed through the intersection of I-35E with I-694, heading east, and Trane, who was now doing something with her phone’s map app, said, “We’re maybe three or four miles out. Take the White Bear Avenue exit. The mall’s right there.”

There was traffic, and while it did move aside, they were slowed down anyway. The four miles seemed like they took forever, a bit less than three minutes, before they came off the entrance ramp and charged across the intersection into the mall parking lot. As they did, they got a call from the 911 operator. “We’ve got Maplewood calling back. They’ve located Quill’s car in the west parking lot.”

“We’re coming into the west parking lot now,” Trane said. “Tell them to turn on their flashers.”

A few seconds later, the flashers popped on, and Virgil steered around the aisles of parking slots to the Maplewood police car, where a single cop was standing, and Virgil and Trane piled out of the truck.

Virgil: “Any sign of her?”

The cop shook his head. “No. I spotted the car pretty quick because the door was open. Her purse is inside.”

Trane: “Purse?” She turned to Virgil. “He’s got her. He grabbed her. He’s going to kill her.”

Virgil said, “He’s probably got his mother’s car. He doesn’t have one of his own.” To the cop, he said, “His mother is Connie, or maybe Constance, Krause, of Faribault.”

The Maplewood cop slid back inside his car, and, a moment later, said, “Okay, I got her. I’ll get the information out, we’ll get all the local departments and the patrol looking for it . . . A 2017 silver Chrysler.”

And as they stood there, Virgil took a call from the BCA duty officer, who said, “The Faribault cops checked with Mrs. Krause. Her car is parked outside her house.”

Virgil: “Damn! Damn! Now what?”

Trane was inside Quill’s car, backed out, and said, “Her phone is gone. She’s still got it.”

“What?” Virgil went back to the phone tech. “You still see Quill’s phone?”

“Yeah. You’re right on top of her. I mean, a few blocks. She’s not moving now.”

“Where? Where is she?”

“Go south on White Bear a couple blocks to Beam Avenue, take a left. There’s a park there. Let me see . . . Maplewood Heights Park—”

“We’re right there,” the Maplewood cop said. He hustled around his car, and shouted, “C’mon. Follow me!”



* * *



—

Jerry Krause backed the unfamiliar car out of the garage carefully, easing it into the street, watching the nearby houses for anything that looked like an alarm. He didn’t see anything. He drove back to Megan Quill’s apartment, planning to take her out—at knifepoint, if necessary. He got there just in time to see Quill get in the car with her mother.

He went after them.

He tracked them out to I-94, allowing them to get well ahead in the lane three lanes to his left. The ride to Quill’s mother’s house in White Bear Lake took half an hour. He’d been there twice. He watched as they left the car in the driveway. Quill had told him that she was meeting a girlfriend to go to the mall. He wasn’t sure which mall that was, but he could wait.

The wait wasn’t long. At a quarter to seven, Megan Quill walked out of the house and got in the car, backed out of the driveway, and drove past him out toward Highway 61. He followed, down 61, remembering then to cloak his phone with the Faraday bag, and onto I-694 East toward the Maplewood Mall. He’d been to the mall twice, both times with Quill: it was her go-to shopping destination. The possibilities played through his mind; his best bet, he decided, would be to take her in the parking lot.

He could probably kill her there, he thought, if there weren’t too many people around. The sight lines at a mall were always broken up by the ranks of cars, especially the taller SUVs and pickups. Quill had to die, but her death wasn’t the only thing he wanted.

Krause moved closer, as she got off the highway at White Bear Avenue and drove into the crowded parking lot. He took the X-Acto knife out of his pocket; it had a cylindrical cover on the blade, and he pulled it off and dropped it on the passenger seat.

Quill slowed to a creeping pace, looking down the rows of parked cars for an empty space. When she spotted one, she rolled down the aisle, with Krause thirty feet behind her. She pulled into the empty slot, with a pickup on the mall side and an SUV on the other, and Krause stopped behind her car, blocking the view of his driver’s side with the SUV.

He picked up the X-Acto knife and popped his door, and when he saw the door of Quill’s car opening, he rushed it. She was still turning out of the driver’s seat and didn’t see Krause until he grabbed her hair, yanked her out of the car. She screamed, but not loud enough to attract attention—they were, at best, a hundred yards from the mall’s entrance—and he forced her to the ground and held the X-Acto knife in front of her eyes.

“We’re going for a drive,” he said. “If you scream or fight me, I swear to God I’ll cut your fuckin’ face off.”