Bloody Genius (Virgil Flowers, #12)(86)

“I’m the security guard here,” the man said, as he put his hands on the wall above his head.

“We know, Allen. I’m going to take your pistol. Keep your hands on the wall, I’m nervous here, and this trigger is pretty light. Take it easy, and we’ll all be fine.”



* * *



—

Jenkins piled down the second flight of metal stairs, thirty feet behind the runner. The two large men hit the treads hard, making a racket like somebody beating on an oil drum with a ball-peen hammer. At the bottom of the stairs, the runner, who’d been carrying a black bag, dropped it. Jenkins vaulted over the bag and kept closing in on the man and caught him as they got to the back door. He pushed the man hard on the back of the neck and the man lost his balance and fell face forward, nearly colliding head-on with the door. Jenkins knelt on the man’s back, wrenched one of his arms up and back, clicked on a cuff, said, “Gimme the other arm, Boyd. C’mon, don’t make me dislocate your shoulder.”

“How’d you know my name?”

“We know all,” Jenkins said. Nash relaxed his other arm, and Jenkins snapped on the second cuff. “See, that was easy. Let’s go back upstairs, see what’s what.”

On the way back up, Jenkins retrieved Nash’s bag. When they got back to the engineering office, Young, the security guard, was sitting on an office chair, his hands cuffed behind him, while Booker was peering at a computer screen and chanting: “Those fuckers. Those fuckers. Those fuckers . . .”



* * *



—

Red lights flashed off the dim interior walls, and Jenkins said, “One runner, one bag, and the Eagan cops are here.”

Virgil said, “Leave Mr. Nash. Run down there and tell the cops to come on up, we’ll need them to transport these guys.”

Jenkins pushed Nash into another office chair, as Young said, “Listen, I don’t know what this is all about.”

Nash said, “Shut up. Keep your mouth shut. We want an attorney. You don’t want to say another fuckin’ word, believe me. We can settle this.”

Young dropped his head, and said, “Okay.”

Booker, still peering at the computer: “If they were working through this file by file, they already got a lot. We need a major investigation here. We need to know what they’ve already taken out. We need to know who they were taking it out for.”

“Attorney,” Nash said.

“You’ll get an attorney,” Virgil said.

“You’re gonna need more than an attorney,” Booker shouted at Nash. “You’re gonna need a fuckin’ miracle. You’re going to prison, you got that? So are the guys you’re selling this to. You’re all going to jail, you motherfucker!”

Virgil said, “Easy, there,” and he squatted and looked in the black bag. A Sony video camera was sitting on top of some bubble wrap, a GoPro, and some other gear.

“That’s private property,” Nash said.

“It’s burglary equipment,” Virgil said. “But I’m not going to mess with it. Because, you know, your prints are all over it. I wouldn’t want to smudge any of them.”

“We need to know what’s in the camera,” Booker said.

“We will,” Virgil said. “Not right now, though. We’ll turn this stuff over to the Eagan cops, let them transport these two to the Dakota County Jail and get with the prosecutors tomorrow. We have a lot of business with Mr. Nash. We’ll need you to come and look at the photos. I’ll call you in the morning after we know what we’re doing, let you know what time we can get together.”

“My whole life is in that camera,” Booker said. “These two need to go to prison. Forever.”

Young whined, “Mr. Booker . . .”

“Shut up,” Nash said.

Virgil smiled at Booker. “I even think we might have a cooperating witness.” He slapped Young on the back. “We’ll take care of you, Al. Don’t pay any attention to Boyd. He can’t help you. But we can.”



* * *



—

The Eagan cops came up. The cop in charge, a sergeant, looked at the two cuffed men, and then Virgil, and said, “Tell me everything.”





CHAPTER





TWENTY-ONE



When the Eagan cops had taken Nash and Young away, Virgil said to Jenkins, “We’ve got to go back to Nash’s place. We need to see if there’s anybody there. We need to grab his home computers and any paper we can find that might tie him to Quill. We’ll probably have to sleep in the cars until we can get a search warrant.”

Booker asked, “Who’s Quill?”

“He might have been another one of Nash’s targets,” Virgil said.

“What about my place?”

“We’ll look for that, too. We’ll see if we can spot who the buyer was, if he already had one. If we see anything that looks right, we’ll call you for identification,” Virgil said. “What you should do now is go home and go back to bed.”

“I won’t sleep,” Booker said. “You don’t know how bad this is.”

“Try to sleep. I’ll set us up with the Dakota County Attorney’s Office tomorrow morning. They’ll want to talk to you and you’ll want to be sharp,” Virgil said. “Nash might be prepared for something like this, might have a lawyer ready to launch.”