Bloody Genius (Virgil Flowers, #12)(105)

Virgil Flowers came around the front of the truck, also with a gun, but he’d be shooting through the window, and he slid sideways until he could see enough to shoot around the edge of the door. Flowers shouted, “Give it up, Jerry. C’mon, man, you don’t want to hurt her. She’s your friend.”

Quill shouted, “He killed Brett, he told me.”

Krause shouted, “Shut up!” and sliced Quill’s face from her hairline next to her ear down to her jawline. Blood poured out of the wound and down her neck, and she began screaming and frantically slapping at her face.

Trane shouted, “I’m taking the shot,” and she edged in closer, gun up in a two-handed grip, but Krause, still holding Quill’s hair, bent her head back far enough to cover himself, and shouted back, “I’ve got the razor on her artery. I’ll cut her throat. Back up in one, two, three, or I’ll cut her. And who gives a shit if you kill me? Nobody gives a shit about me anyway.”

He had the X-Acto knife on Quill’s throat to the left of center. He shouted, “One . . .”

Virgil backed away, “Okay, Jerry. Man, take it easy, we’re backing up, we’re backing up, let’s talk it out. Nobody has to get hurt.” He sounded a little stupid to himself, with the blood gushing out of Quill’s face, but he shouted it again. “Nobody has to get hurt . . .”

“We’re going in the car,” Krause shouted. He boosted himself backwards into the car, onto the driver’s seat, now his head was behind the B pillar, from Trane’s perspective: she had no shot. Krause pulled Quill after him, the knife jabbing her in the throat, and he screamed, “Up, up, up,” until she was on his lap, and he reached past her for the door handle and slammed the door. “Crawl,” he shouted at Quill. “Get out of my way. Crawl, or I’ll cut your fuckin’ throat. Crawl. Get over there!”

She crawled over him, screaming, weeping, her face and neck and hands covered with the blood streaming from the cut on her face. Krause squeezed himself down in the car seat, pushed the starter button, put the truck in gear, and accelerated toward the walking track, then left, then out on an intersecting track to the north. The track eventually merged with an actual street that ran between suburban houses.



* * *



—

Virgil and Trane were a hundred feet behind, and Trane was on her phone to the Maplewood cops. More cops were coming in, but Krause drove out to the end of the street, took a hard left, and, seconds later, a hard right back onto White Bear Avenue. Virgil held close behind, focused on driving, as Trane shouted into her phone. Virgil hit his grille lights and the siren, as much to warn off other drivers as anything else, as Krause bulled his way through mall traffic and then past Mattress Firm and Verizon stores and, with a hard right, onto the I-694 eastbound ramp.

Trane said, “We got cops coming from everywhere. We’ve got a highway patrol trooper coming up behind us. I can see him. He’s motoring—”

“If Krause jumps on the gas,” Virgil said, “I can’t stay with him. He’s probably got an extra twenty miles an hour on me.”

“The trooper can stay with them. The nine-one-one guy’s got everybody up to date on the situation. Goddamnit, I should have taken the shot. I had an opening, but he was jerking her head around.”

“You did right . . . You did right . . .”

Virgil saw the highway patrol car coming up behind him and he moved right to let it pass. The Tahoe was doing the best it could, but it topped out at a hundred and ten, and Krause was probably doing close to a hundred and twenty, weaving through the traffic.

“What’s the trooper doing, do you think?”

“Dunno. But they’re generally pretty crazy motherfuckers.”



* * *



—

The trooper was probably moving five miles an hour faster than Krause. And Krause, who had the Mercedes in the right lane, saw him coming in the left wing mirror. He had the pedal to the floor, and the Mercedes had topped out, and then the trooper was even with him. Krause couldn’t see the cop’s face because he was sitting higher, and then the highway patrol car began edging right until the two speeding vehicles were only two or three inches apart, and Krause shouted, “Jesus,” and the patrol car scraped the side of the Mercedes, pushing it toward the shallow ditch on the right side of the road.

Krause hit the brakes, but the patrolman had anticipated that and stayed with him, came back and bounced against him again, fender to fender. Quill had sunk down off the passenger seat, into the footwell again, holding her hands to her bloody face, sobbing in fear. When the cop hit the Mercedes the second time, Krause said, “Shit!” and the car’s right wheels went off the main lane and began rattling over gravel and roadside debris. Then, with a third hit, the right-side wheels ran off the road entirely and began bouncing over the unpaved roadside rocks and dirt.

Krause hit the brakes again, bringing his speed down—sixty, fifty, forty—as he struggled for control. He yanked the wheel to the left, trying to knock the patrolman off, but the cop was ready for that and swerved left and came back and gave the Mercedes another whack.

Krause, who’d been holding the X-Acto knife in his right hand, dropped it and grabbed the steering wheel with both hands, struggling to hold the heavy SUV in a straight line. Quill saw the knife as it dropped, and, after a second, when Krause turned his head away from her and toward the highway patrol car, she groped for it on the floor, found the thin aluminum shaft, figured out which end held the blade, pushed herself up with her left hand and with the X-Acto in her right, stuck the blade deep into Krause’s right eye.