—
And so on. Aarle came out after ten minutes and said, “Well, I spread the word. I expect you’ll be hearing from him. You’re welcome to stay for dinner if you like.”
“Had a McDonald’s up in Young America; thanks anyway,” Virgil said. “I’d kind of like to get home before dark.”
“Mr. Flowers lives in Mankato,” Mrs. Aarle said, as they walked over to Virgil’s truck.
“That must be real nice,” Aarle said. “Nice town. We’ve talked about retiring there.”
“Probably not for a while yet, though,” Mrs. Aarle said.
Virgil waved and got the fuck out of there before his ears fell off.
—
He was three miles out of the Aarles’ gate when Strait called.
“This is Toby. Who are you, again?”
“Virgil Flowers. I got your name from Lucas Davenport.”
“He quit,” Strait said.
“Yeah, but he’s still got his database,” Virgil said.
“All right. I’m going to call Davenport and I’ll call you back if he says it’s okay.”
“Do that,” Virgil said.
Strait called back five minutes later: “He says you’re okay. Where are you?”
“I left the Aarle snake barn maybe ten minutes ago, heading south,” Virgil said.
“Then we could meet up in New Ulm. You go straight on south until you hit the river, take a right, come across the bridge,” Strait said. “There’s a Taco Bell off on the right side of the road, couple blocks in.”
“When?”
“I’ll be waiting for you,” Strait said.
—
Beans and corn, beans and corn, beans and corn, all the way down.
Strait was leaning against the back of his Chevy pickup, a soft drink cup in his hand, when Virgil pulled into the Taco Bell parking lot. Strait was a short, husky man in a canvas outdoors shirt, worn loose, and jeans and boots. He was wearing a camouflage PSE hat and mirrored sunglasses.
Virgil climbed out of his 4Runner and noticed the lump under Strait’s elbow and said, “You’re carrying.”
Strait lifted his shirt to show Virgil the butt of a full-sized Beretta, and said, “Wouldn’t you, if you were me? I still can’t walk right and maybe never will. I do got a carry permit.”
“Where’d she hit you?”
“Back of both legs. Didn’t lead me enough.”
“Looks like she got the elevation wrong, too,” Virgil observed.
“Well, it was a snap shot, and I was running. I got to give her that much,” Strait said. “She ain’t a bad shot. I saw her get out of her truck and I knew what was coming—this was back at my place in Owatonna—and I started running to get behind my truck. I was carrying, then, too, and when I went down, I got behind the tire and emptied a whole goddamn magazine at her. I measured it off later at three hundred and twelve yards. I gave her about six feet of elevation shooting my Beretta, which turned out to be right. That was the clincher when they arrested her—bullet holes and bullet dings on her truck. They got a slug with rifling marks that matched my gun.”
“Lucky that she didn’t have time to get set up,” Virgil said.
“You’re telling me,” Strait said. He hitched up his pants. “What can I do for you?”
“I’m looking for those stolen tigers.”
“I don’t have them. I got enough to do with my bears and my snakes,” Strait said. “To tell the absolute truth, you’d have to be crazy to snatch those tigers. I mean, Jesus Christ, didn’t those people know what was gonna happen? That they were gonna have a world of shit rainin’ down on their heads? All of our heads. I knew goddamn well that when somebody stole those tigers, somebody would be coming around to give me a hard time. It’s just ain’t fair to legitimate businessmen to get painted with this broad brush.”
“I don’t know what they were thinking,” Virgil said. “That’s something I’d like to know.”
“They wouldn’t have done it, if they knew about my situation—that goofy twat Maxine hunting me down like I was a rabid dog.”
“You’re an expert in this stuff,” Virgil said. “If they’re processing these tigers for medicine, how long would it take?”
Strait took his hat off, brushed his hair back with one hand, and looked up at the sky. After a while, he said, “They were full-grown, right? I’d say a couple, three days apiece, if they got access to a good commercial dryer. That’s if they’re processing the whole animal. With tigers, over in Asia, sometimes the poachers will only take the eyes, heart, whiskers, teeth, penis and balls, and femur bones. You could do that in an hour, maybe, put everything in a sack. When you do that, you leave a lot of money on the ground.”
“What are the femurs for?”
“Well, all ground up, they’re supposed to cure about anything,” Strait said. “Everything from ulcers to burns. Then there’s the baculum—that’s a bone in the penis. You could get anything up to five thousand dollars for an Amur tiger baculum alone.”
“Really?”
“That’s the fact, Jack.”
“Who would you look at for this?”
Strait stuck a pinky finger in his ear, wiggled it around, then said, “Well . . . Amur tiger’s gonna be worth some serious money, but you’d have to be able to prove it was real. That’s probably why they don’t care about the publicity—maybe even want some of it, to prove it’s real Amur they’re talking. There’s a premium for endangered species. What I’m saying is, I don’t know anybody local who could handle two tigers, but there’s enough money involved that it could be an outsider. Crew goes around, looks at a bunch of zoos, picks out the most likely one, hits it.”
He hesitated, then said, “Of course, grabbing the tigers seems totally batshit anyway. Too much risk, no matter what the payoff is.”
“Nobody local.”
“There are some local people who handle animal products, I just don’t see them hitting the zoo.”
“Give me some names,” Virgil said.
“Three that I can think of. There’s a company in St. Paul called Carvin Exports, which mostly deals in wildlife hides—not furs, but deer hides, wolf skins, bear skins, that kind of thing. I sell them bear hides and some snake, though they’re at the lower end of the market. I can’t see them involved in this because they’re too corporate. Too many people would know, although I suppose the company business could have given the employees some ideas, and they went off on their own. . . .”
“But doesn’t seem likely to you?”
“No, it doesn’t. Then there’s a guy in St. Paul named Winston Peck . . . a doctor . . .”
“I’ve been looking for him already,” Virgil said. “Haven’t been able to find him.”
“All right. I don’t think he could handle a tiger on his own. He buys in small amounts for his retail clientele. You know, for patients, and for people who go to his traditional medicine website. There’s a woman over in western Wisconsin who does deal in animal musks and so on. Her name is Bobbie Patterson, don’t know exactly where she lives.”
Virgil said, “Toby, I really hope you’re not involved in this. If I find out you were, I’m going to call up Maxine and tell her how to find you.”
“C’mon, man, don’t even joke about that,” Strait said. He looked nervously up and down the street. “In fact, I’ve been standing around too long. I’m getting the fuck out of here . . . but, uh, why don’t you get out first?”
“Don’t trust me?”
“I’m not saying that . . . but why don’t you pull out first.”
“All right, but give me a phone number. I might need to call you,” Virgil said.
“Don’t be giving this out. Maxine’s mad as a goddamn hatter.”
“You’re good with me,” Virgil said, as he entered Strait’s phone number into his cell
phone’s contact list. “As long as you don’t have those tigers.”
10
Virgil pulled out first, going a block down Seventh Street to Broadway, got caught at the light. A left turn on Broadway would get him home in a half hour or so. As with any kidnapping, time was crucial in finding the victims alive . . . if they weren’t already dead. At that very moment, though, he didn’t know what he could do in the Twin Cities that he couldn’t do in Mankato.
Still, he thought, he was probably on the wrong side of the Minnesota River, which didn’t have a heck of a lot of bridges. If he stayed on the south side, where he was, he’d wind up back in Mankato—but if he left New Ulm on the north side of the river, back across the bridge, he could tend down toward Mankato, but also leave open his option of returning to the Twin Cities by a much shorter route.
He could try to call Peck again, and check with the BCA tip line, the zoo director, and whoever else might help, before he had to make a decision whether to go south to home or north to the Cities. How had he survived in the job before cell phones?
In his rearview mirror, he saw Strait driving down Seventh in the opposite direction, then turn a corner, on Minnesota Street. Minnesota didn’t lead out of town, and Virgil wondered if Strait might be hiding in New Ulm itself.
The woman in the car in front of him was texting and didn’t pull out when the light went green, and Virgil waited patiently for one-half second before tapping the horn, and the woman looked up, saw the green light, gave him the finger, and drove on through. New Ulm was getting more like LA every single day, Virgil thought.
—
He took the turn, drove a block, then took another left, around the Walgreens block, and then another left, back to Seventh, and a right turn toward the bridge. He passed Minnesota, looked down the street and saw that Strait was four blocks down, still heading west. A small gray car nearly cut him off as it turned down Minnesota, and Virgil went on, considering himself lucky not to have gotten another finger from its elderly driver.
He punched up Peck’s cell phone, and somewhat to his surprise, Peck answered on the first ring, sounding sleepy. Virgil identified himself, mentioned the tiger investigation, and said, “You were recommended to me by a number of people as an expert on traditional medical practices in Minnesota. I need to come talk with you. I’ll be in St. Paul in an hour, if you’re at the same address as on your driver’s license.”
“Well, yes, I am,” Peck said. “I could accommodate you, I suppose, but maybe . . . Could we make it two hours? I’m a writer and I work early and late: I just got up from a nap and I need to run out for dinner. So . . . seven o’clock?”
“That’d be fine,” Virgil said.
—
Took him a minute before he thought, Wait. A small gray car? Kind of a small station-wagon-looking car? A Subaru? With an elderly driver?
Virgil was in traffic, with a concrete center divider between himself and the opposite lane, but he did a screeching U-turn anyway, bumped over the divider and headed back toward Minnesota Street—and a black New Ulm cop car was on him like holy on the Pope, both lights and siren. Virgil said, “Shit,” out loud, and hit his own flashers and pulled over, hopped out, jogged back to the New Ulm car.
The cop didn’t get out, but looked worried, and Virgil held up his hands to show that they were empty, then made a rolling “window-down” motion with his finger and the cop dropped the window and Virgil said, “I don’t have time to explain, but there could be a shooting about to happen. My name’s Virgil Flowers, I’m with the BCA . . .”
“I’ve heard of you—”
“Call in and tell them you’re following me and we might need more help. Could be a woman with a rifle and she’s supposedly a good shot. Follow me now.”
Virgil ran back to his truck and took off, hit the siren as he did it, made the turn on Minnesota, didn’t see either the gray car or Strait’s truck, said “Shit” again, thumbed through his phone’s contact list, got Strait’s number, and called it.
Strait came up and Virgil shouted, “Man, this is Virgil. You got a gray car behind you?”
A second later, Strait said, “There’s a car, but it’s quite a way back. I think it’s gray.”
“That might be Maxine.”
“What?!”
“She might have followed me. I’m coming after you with a New Ulm cop,” Virgil said. “Where are you?”
“I’m on North Broadway, going out west on 14.”
“All right, we’re coming after you. If that’s Maxine and she has a gun in the car, she’s going straight back to jail, and this time, she won’t get out.”
“She did follow you, you silly shit,” Strait said.
“Yeah, yeah, we’re not sure that’s Maxine,” Virgil said. “Stay on 14, don’t let that car get too close. We’re coming . . .”
—
Up ahead, Strait dropped the hammer, unholstered his Beretta and stuck the barrel between the seat and back on the passenger side, so it wouldn’t slide off the seat if he had to hit the brakes hard. He cranked the speedometer up to a hundred, but backed off to ninety-five and then ninety because the highway couldn’t handle the truck’s weight and speed. He swooped around the wide turn where Broadway turned into Twentieth Street, past a couple of body shops, going out of town, the truck’s passenger-side tires running off the road at two spots, leaving his heart up in his throat.
Around the turn, past the cemetery and the liquor store, then a shallower turn took him into a straightaway and he ran it back up to a hundred and . . .
That piece-of-shit Subaru was gaining on him.
Up ahead of him, the highway narrowed from two lanes to one, and he picked up his phone and looked at the screen and punched up his most recent call and Virgil answered and Strait shouted, “It’s her: they’re chasing me. I’m doing a hundred and they’re still coming up on me and this truck don’t got no more.”
—
Virgil shouted back, “Keep going, we’re right behind you, got lights and sirens going, I’m hoping we can scare her off when she sees us in her rearview.”
He looked down at his speedometer: they were still in town and he was going seventy-five and scaring himself. If somebody poked out of a side street, he could kill them. He chickened out and slowed to sixty. That meant that Strait and Knowles were actually getting farther away by the second.
Virgil shouted into his phone, “Do you know the country out there?”
“A little bit,” Strait shouted back.
Even through the phone, Virgil could hear the wind noise ripping off Strait’s truck. “Is there any place where you could lead her around in a square, you know, take a right, take another right, take another right, and bring her back to us?”
“I already went by Highway 12, I got a left turn coming up pretty quick that I could take down to 27 and back to 12 and circle around past the airport and bring it back, but she’s gaining on me, man, she’s way faster through the corners. . . .”
“Take the turn,” Virgil said. “Don’t let her pass you, it’s hard to shoot out of a moving car, take it back to 12. We’ll come down 12 the other way, so we’ll meet you.”
“Aw, shit, here I go . . .”
Strait must have dropped the phone or tossed it on the passenger seat, Virgil thought, because he could hear the bumping of the truck and what might have been a round of cursing from Strait, then the roaring sound of the truck engine being overstressed.
Virgil and the New Ulm cop car were coming up on Highway 12, and Virgil slowed and took the turn and headed on south, the cop car right on his tail. A minute later Strait was back on the phone. “We’re both on whatever this road is and they’re still closing up on me. I lost some yardage going around the corner.”
—
Maxine Knowles was in the Subaru, but she wasn’t driving it. What she was doing was crouching on
the passenger seat, trying to get her rifle out the open sunroof without dropping it. She was using a cheap but accurate .223, with a twenty-round magazine. The first time she shot Strait, she’d done it with a Remington .243, and she much preferred that rifle and that caliber, but the cops had the gun.
Now she screamed down at the driver, “Get in the middle of the road where it’s smoother. Where it’s smoother. Smoother. This ride is rattling me around too much, I can’t get a decent sight picture.”
“I’m trying, I’m trying. I don’t see the cop,” the driver shouted back.
“Don’t worry about the cop. I’m going to try to stand up now. Stay in the middle . . .”
She was too thick to fit easily through the sunroof, but once up, the tight fit helped brace her upright. She lifted the rifle, clicked off the safety, and aimed at Strait’s truck, which was a hundred yards or so ahead of her and bouncing even more violently than her car.
The front gun sight wobbled wildly over the back of the truck, but she took a breath, softened her stance as much as she could to absorb the bumps, and opened fire. She worked through the first twenty rounds in ten seconds, pulled the mag, dropped it into the car, and the driver handed her a second magazine.
Up ahead, the back panel on Strait’s camper-top seemed to be showing some holes, but it was hard to tell: she was aiming at the window on the back, and what could be bullet holes could also be reflections and dust. Strait, in the meantime, had put his right tires onto the shoulder and was kicking up dust and gravel, which started hitting Knowles in the face. She squinted into the dust, slammed the second magazine into place, and emptied it at the fleeing truck.
—
Strait shouted into the phone, “She’s shooting at me, man, she’s shooting at me, I can hear the slugs hitting the back of the truck . . .”
“We’re on 12, we’re coming fast, stay ahead of her, get down in your seat as far as you can . . .”
Strait did that, which cramped up his right leg, and so he missed the brake when he tried to make the turn onto Highway 27, and he lost the road and crashed through a ditch and out the other side and tried to switch his foot over and sideswiped a tree, and then another one, and the steering wheel seemed to rise up and hit him in the lower lip, slicing his lip on his upper teeth, and then he was in a dense windbreak, rolling over brush, and then his car stopped, involuntarily: he was jammed up between trees and thought maybe he’d lost a tire.