Bloody Genius (Virgil Flowers #12) - John Sandford Page 0,120
truck door and began dragging her out, and she was crying and half screaming, and he wrestled her out of the car, and she flopped onto the ground.
“Please don’t do this. Please!”
* * *
—
Virgil and Trane, in Virgil’s truck, slewed out of the parking lot behind the Maplewood cop. They ran fast through traffic a couple blocks, cornered left around a Walgreens, went another block to a left turn into an empty parking lot next to a basketball court. Just off the court, a half dozen people were throwing Frisbees in the twilight, with a half dozen dogs running around them, both dogs and people with multicolored lights around their necks, chasing down lighted disks.
Virgil got back to the BCA phone guy, who said, “I still see her phone, on the north side of the park.”
“No time to fuck around,” Virgil said to Trane. He shouted at the Maplewood cop, “We’re taking the trail. See if you can get more cops up here. Go around the other direction. Her phone is here in the park, but on the other side.”
The cop yelled back, “The trail goes around a lake.”
A hard-surfaced walking trail, wide enough for a car, went both left and right past the parking lot. Virgil went right, toward the people with the dogs. He stopped when he got to them. Trane rolled her window down, and shouted, “Did a car just take the trail?”
“Yeah, a black SUV,” said a thin, bearded man. His dog woofed a couple of times as the man pointed farther to the right. “He went around the lake. We wondered—”
Virgil didn’t wait to hear any more, instead hammered the accelerator, leaving the dog people looking after them. The trail was perhaps ten feet wide and circled to the left. Clumps of trees, half visible in the growing darkness, dotted the banks of the small lake, and they were halfway around when they saw a black SUV pulled into the trees along the north shore.
Virgil: “That’s one of Quill’s cars. He took the Mercedes.”
Trane said, “Huh,” pulled her pistol, and pointed with her free hand. “Put me there, right next to the car.”
Virgil swerved off the trail onto the grass, aiming at the Mercedes. The car appeared to be empty, the offside door open, interior lights on, nobody on the close side. Trane popped her door, and when Virgil hit the brakes, she was out and running toward the black car. Virgil was out right behind her, running, and when Trane went left around the back of the truck, he went right.
* * *
—
Quill was on her back in the weeds, Krause standing over her with the X-Acto knife in his hand, when a truck came barreling around the lake and hit them with its headlights. Had to be cops, Krause thought. He was fucked.
He grabbed Quill by the hair and physically lifted her off the ground, Quill screaming and struggling to get away. A handful of hair ripped out, but he grabbed another handful, yanked open the car door, and backed up until his butt was pressing against the driver’s seat. Margaret Trane rushed around one side of the Mercedes, gun in hand, and he jerked Quill’s head back between Trane and himself, and shouted, “I got a razor. On her neck. I’ll fuckin’ slice her open.”
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