Turbo Twenty-Three (Stephanie Plum #23)(34)

After ten minutes I was completely confused.

“We’re going around in a circle,” Lula said. “I keep seeing the same houses.”

“I don’t know how to get out of here. It doesn’t matter if I turn left or right, I still get back to here.”

“You need to pull your map up.” Lula looked at my dashboard. “Hold on here. You haven’t got a map. You haven’t got no screen at all. How old is this car?”

I stopped at a cross street. “You should be able to get a map on your smartphone.”

“Okay, I have us on the map. We’re the little red dot. Looks to me that you turn right at the next street and go as far as you can until you come to a T intersection.”

I turned right at the corner, and half a block away it looked like King Kong was lumbering down the street.

“That’s Winkle!” Lula shouted. “Run him over.”

“I’m not going to run him over. I’m going to drive up behind him. We’ll jump out of the car and take him by surprise.”

“How about you?” Lula asked. “Do you have a stun gun with you?”

“It’s in my messenger bag.”

She got my stun gun out of my messenger bag and handed it over to me.

“Power up,” Lula said.

Winkle had freed himself from the plasti-cuffs and was ferociously huffing along, eyes focused forward. I jerked to a stop about twenty feet behind him. Lula and I jumped out and ran. I reached him first and tagged him with my stun gun. He turned and looked at me. Surprised.

“What the . . .” he said.

Lula pressed the prongs of her stun gun against Winkle’s arm. Zzzzzt zzzt!

“That stings,” Winkle said. “Stop it.”

He grabbed the stun gun from Lula and threw it across the road.

“Hey, you big moron,” Lula said. “That’s an expensive stun gun. It’s not like they grow on trees.”

Winkle backhanded her and knocked her off her feet. I shoved my stun gun into my sweatshirt pocket and pulled out the pepper spray.

“Hey!” I said to Winkle.

He turned to look at me, and I sprayed him in the face at close range. I jumped back away from the toxic cloud, catching a small amount of spray. Uncomfortable but not incapacitating.

“Yow!” Winkle yelled, hands to his face, rubbing his eyes, making it worse.

He staggered back off the curb, lost his balance, fell into the street, and started rolling around. Lula and I were standing back, not sure what to do with him. Unless she shot him or I ran over him, I couldn’t see any way to get the plasti-cuffs on him.

A black Rangeman SUV pulled up beside us, and Hal got out. Hal was a good guy who looked a little like a stegosaurus. He was one of Ranger’s most competent men unless he saw blood. Hal tended to faint at the sight of blood.

“What have we got here?” Hal asked.

“He’s FTA,” I said. “I gave him some pepper spray, but I can’t get him cuffed.”

“No prob,” Hal said.

Hal got cuffs and shackles from his SUV and brought them to Winkle, who had managed to get to his feet and was bellowing like an enraged bull gone nuts.

Hal kicked Winkle’s feet out from under him and had him hog-tied in fifteen seconds. Winkle’s eyes were red and watering, and he was covered in snot. Hal hoisted him to his feet and held him at arm’s length.

“Do you want me to take him in for you?” Hal asked.

“Yes,” I said. “That would be great. Thank you. We’ll follow you and take care of the paperwork.”

“Lucky us that you came along,” Lula said.

Hal jerked Winkle over to the Rangeman SUV, trundled him into the back, and secured the ankle shackles to iron rings bolted onto the SUV’s floor.

“The control room saw that you kept going around in circles and asked me to check on you,” Hal said. “I was doing a patrol in the neighborhood anyway.”

We stopped at Cluck-in-a-Bucket on the way back to the office. I got a Hot and Crunchy Clucky Meal and Lula got a Supersized Bucket of Cluck with the Works. The Works included mashed potatoes and gravy, biscuits, coleslaw, fried okra, and an apple turnover.

“I feel much better now that I have a good meal inside me,” Lula said. “That whole Winkle thing was a depressing experience.” She swiveled in the booth and looked back up at the menu that was over the counter. “I might need some ice cream as a palate cleanser.”

She got a giant cup of soft serve, and we headed out.

“I still got a headache, I chipped some of my nail varnish, and I think I got a bruise on my derriere,” Lula said. “I’m leaving early today.”

“Are you okay? Do you need a ride home?”

“I’m not going home. I’m going to get my nail varnish repaired.”

I parked in front of the bail bonds office, told Lula I’d see her on Monday, and took my body receipt in to Connie.

“I just got off the phone with Carolyn Freeda,” Connie said. “Her son Mickey is an EMT, and he was at the ice cream plant this morning. Did you know another guy got frozen?”

“Ranger told me. The man’s name was Gus. He was the foreman on the loading dock. I worked for him yesterday.”

“The whole thing gives me goose bumps. I have an uncle who whacks people for a living, so I’m not exactly squeamish about murder, but there’s something really disturbing about these ice cream killings.”