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.