Bloody Genius (Virgil Flowers, #12)(104)

“Jerry—”

“Shut up!” He dragged her by the hair, and she half screamed again, and tried to scrabble along behind him. He turned the corner at the front of the SUV and pushed her into the driver’s seat, then climbed in behind her and shoved her shoulders, forcing her over the center console, and said, “On the floor. On the fuckin’ floor!”

She dropped to the floor. He let go of her hair long enough to switch the X-Acto knife to his right hand, now in front of her forehead where she could still see it, then quickly shifted the car into drive and started out of the parking lot.

“What are you doing?” Quill asked. She began to cry. “Why are you doing this?”

“You’re gonna tell the cops that you think I killed Brett. I can’t let you do that.”

“Did you?”

“Yeah, but I can’t let you tell.”

“You killed Brett?”

“He came busting into my room and saw me with the laptop. Nothing I could do about it. I told him I took it from your dad’s house when I heard he’d been killed. I said, ‘Why shouldn’t I get it if he’s never going to use it again?’ He said you told him the cops said the computer was stolen at the library and that the killer stole it. He said he’d talk to you in the morning. I couldn’t let him do that. I knew he was going out for some heroin that night, and he always slept for a long time when he did that. I also knew he usually got two or three hits at the same time, so, if he died in his sleep, it’s not like he couldn’t have overdosed—”

“Jerry, you killed your best friend—”

“—who was going to turn me in to the cops,” Krause said. “For murder. For an accident.”

They were out of the parking lot and around the corner in the park. There were some dog people there with lights around their necks, and Jerry took the SUV up on the walking path and around the lake.

“You’re going to kill me, aren’t you?”

“Maybe, maybe not. One thing I’m going to do first is finally get in your pussy. And I’m gonna like it.”

“I won’t tell anybody.”

“You might be lying.”

“DNA.”

“Got that covered.”

He stopped the truck and grabbed her hair. “Come up out of there. Come across that console.” He popped the truck door and began dragging her out, and she was crying and half screaming, and he wrestled her out of the car, and she flopped onto the ground.

“Please don’t do this. Please!”



* * *



—

Virgil and Trane, in Virgil’s truck, slewed out of the parking lot behind the Maplewood cop. They ran fast through traffic a couple blocks, cornered left around a Walgreens, went another block to a left turn into an empty parking lot next to a basketball court. Just off the court, a half dozen people were throwing Frisbees in the twilight, with a half dozen dogs running around them, both dogs and people with multicolored lights around their necks, chasing down lighted disks.

Virgil got back to the BCA phone guy, who said, “I still see her phone, on the north side of the park.”

“No time to fuck around,” Virgil said to Trane. He shouted at the Maplewood cop, “We’re taking the trail. See if you can get more cops up here. Go around the other direction. Her phone is here in the park, but on the other side.”

The cop yelled back, “The trail goes around a lake.”

A hard-surfaced walking trail, wide enough for a car, went both left and right past the parking lot. Virgil went right, toward the people with the dogs. He stopped when he got to them. Trane rolled her window down, and shouted, “Did a car just take the trail?”

“Yeah, a black SUV,” said a thin, bearded man. His dog woofed a couple of times as the man pointed farther to the right. “He went around the lake. We wondered—”

Virgil didn’t wait to hear any more, instead hammered the accelerator, leaving the dog people looking after them. The trail was perhaps ten feet wide and circled to the left. Clumps of trees, half visible in the growing darkness, dotted the banks of the small lake, and they were halfway around when they saw a black SUV pulled into the trees along the north shore.

Virgil: “That’s one of Quill’s cars. He took the Mercedes.”

Trane said, “Huh,” pulled her pistol, and pointed with her free hand. “Put me there, right next to the car.”

Virgil swerved off the trail onto the grass, aiming at the Mercedes. The car appeared to be empty, the offside door open, interior lights on, nobody on the close side. Trane popped her door, and when Virgil hit the brakes, she was out and running toward the black car. Virgil was out right behind her, running, and when Trane went left around the back of the truck, he went right.



* * *



—

Quill was on her back in the weeds, Krause standing over her with the X-Acto knife in his hand, when a truck came barreling around the lake and hit them with its headlights. Had to be cops, Krause thought. He was fucked.

He grabbed Quill by the hair and physically lifted her off the ground, Quill screaming and struggling to get away. A handful of hair ripped out, but he grabbed another handful, yanked open the car door, and backed up until his butt was pressing against the driver’s seat. Margaret Trane rushed around one side of the Mercedes, gun in hand, and he jerked Quill’s head back between Trane and himself, and shouted, “I got a razor. On her neck. I’ll fuckin’ slice her open.”