Deadline

by John Sandford

  Purdy said, “We’ve got to stop this shit.”

  Virgil nodded and said, “The guy who shot him was inside the truck, probably in the passenger seat. Kerns was either talking to him or turned his face to him just as the killer pulled the trigger, and that knocked the hole in the window. The killer dragged Kerns into the passenger seat, then ran around to the other side, got in, drove the truck here, and walked away.”

  “That’s what we think,” Sawyer said. “Since the killer was in both seats, there’ll be DNA. We’ll sample everything in sight.”

  Purdy said, “Kerns lived by himself. We’ve got a car outside his house, but we haven’t been inside it yet.”

  “Let’s go over there, then. . . . But give me a minute.” Virgil got a flashlight from his truck and looked through the heavily smoked windows on Kerns’s camper-back. Kerns had packed up, ready to run—two big suitcases, a duffel bag, and a half-filled plastic garbage bag lay in the back. The garbage bag interested Virgil.

  Virgil said to Sawyer, “Since the back is isolated from the front, where the shooting happened, maybe we could open the back. I want to look in that garbage bag.”

  “The keys are in the ignition, but I don’t want to touch them, because the killer had to use them, at least to turn the engine off,” Sawyer said.

  “You got a pry bar?” Virgil asked Purdy, looking at the lock on the camper-back doors. “This lock isn’t too much.”

  “Be right back,” Alewort said.

  He came trotting back a moment later with a crowbar, and after some screwing around in which Alewort tried not to do much damage, Jenkins took the bar from him, jammed it in the crack between the door and the frame, and yanked the door open, breaking the lock loose. “There you go.”

  Virgil took some vinyl gloves from Sawyer and used them to pick up the end of the garbage bag. The video camera was inside.

  “Excellent,” he said. But when he pulled it out, the memory card was gone. “Shoot. Okay, guys, the number one thing we’re looking for now is the memory card.” He hastily corrected himself: “The memory cards, they’re CompactFlash cards, two of them. They’re red and black, I don’t know, maybe an inch and a half square. We find them, we break everything open.”

  “Could be in his pockets,” Alewort suggested.

  “We’ll look there first,” Sawyer said.

  Alewort got some tape and taped the door shut, and Virgil said to Purdy, “Let’s go look at his house. Maybe the cards are there.”

  “Not likely. Probably trashed them.”

  “Gotta look.”

  —

  VIRGIL GOT KERNS’S ADDRESS from Purdy, but on the way out to the highway, stopped at Wendy McComb’s house. She came out and leaned in the truck window and said, “So somebody shot Randy Kerns?”

  “That’s what we believe,” Virgil said. “You hear anybody going past here last night or early this morning?”

  “Yes. I already told the sheriff. Last night, late—after midnight—and it sounded heavy, like Randy’s truck. I listened for it coming back out, but it never did. Didn’t hear anything else, either. No shot, or anything. The thing is, you wouldn’t come down here at night unless you were coming back out the same way. The rest of the road just wanders around past nothing.”

  “I’ve been down it,” Virgil said.

  “Sometimes kids go down to the turnout to park, but that’s not common,” McComb said. “Too dark and spooky down there. The only ones we usually see down there are catfishermen. They’ll haul their jon boats down there, in their pickups, and throw them in the river. But that didn’t sound so much like a pickup last night—they usually rattle. And it was too late—the catfishermen are usually coming in then, not going out.”

  “You never saw the truck?”

  “Never did. It went past, and that was all.”

  “You didn’t have any visitors at the time?” Virgil asked.

  “Nope. Just me. And my gun, of course.”

  “You keep the gun close, Wendy,” Virgil said. “Just in case the killer starts to worry that you might be a witness.”

  As they drove out to the highway, Jenkins said, “That young lady . . . ?”

  Virgil said, “Yeah, she is. Conley, the first guy killed, was one of her clients. He left a message with her. That’s why I wound up looking in that tire swing.”

  Jenkins said, “Good detectin’, there, Flowers.”

  —

  THEY NO LONGER needed a warrant for Kerns’s house, since nobody else lived there, and Kerns had been murdered. Virgil was most interested in the garbage—was there any possibility that he’d simply thrown away the memory card from the camera? With Alewort’s help, he dug through every wastebasket and garbage sack in the house, as well as the garbage can in back, and found nothing.

  “It was always a pretty thin possibility,” Shrake said. “It was the one thing that could hang him for sure.”

  “Didn’t get rid of the camera,” Virgil said. “You’d think he would have gotten rid of them both at the same time.”

  “Maybe Bea will find something in his shirt pocket.”

  But Bea didn’t.

  —

  IT WAS NEARLY six o’clock before Virgil, Shrake, and Jenkins walked out of Kerns’s house for the last time. They stopped to see how the work was going on Kerns’s truck, but again, it would all come down to lab work—there was nothing obvious lying about.

  “No hope in tracing the pistol—or very damn little,” Sawyer told them. “I checked, and it’s seventy years old. It’s an old military model from World War Two. The shells themselves are probably twenty years old.”

  “How about the keys?”

  “Wiped—or the killer was wearing gloves, or used a hankie or something.”

  Virgil sighed: “Why can’t this be easier?”

  They were still talking when his cell phone rang. The BCA duty officer. “A kid name Muddy just called, and said you should call right back. He said you have the number.”

  21

  VIRGIL FOUND the Ruff phone number on his cell phone’s “recents” list, punched it up, and Muddy picked up on the first ring. “Dad’s over in La Crosse with Dog Butt, and I was sort of out walking around, and guess what? D. Wayne Sharf is back.”

  “Where?” Virgil asked.

  “I don’t know exactly what’s going on, because I was inside practicing when he got back, but now he and somebody else, a woman, are sneaking in and out of his house. I think they’re taking stuff out.”

  The house had been sealed by the DEA, but “sealed by the DEA” meant that there was some tape on the doors. Everything Sharf owned, aside from a few pounds of methamphetamine, was still inside.

  Virgil said, “Okay—Muddy, you stay there at your house. Don’t go fooling around with this guy. We’ve been looking for him, federal agents are looking for him. He could be seriously dangerous.”

  “I’ll tell you, he doesn’t seem to have a car with him. He’s either sneaking over the hills, or somebody’s going to come pick him up. If you go crashing in there, he’ll take off in the night, and you won’t see him again.”

  “Right. Tell you what, we’ll come up to your house and walk down. It’s an old car, not a truck. We’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

  —

  JENKINS: “WHAT HAPPENED?”

  “We gotta get back to your car. You guys are gonna need to get out of those suits, and we gotta do it in a hurry.”

  They made a flying stop at Johnson’s cabin. On the way, Virgil explained the dog situation and the DEA interest in the case, and Sharf’s fugitive status. After a quick change of clothes, Virgil got two flashlights from his truck, including the jacklight, and Jenkins got his six-cell Maglite, and then Jenkins drove far too fast north up Highway 26, slowing only when they were a mile south of Orly’s Creek. At that point, V
irgil and Shrake slumped over in their seats, so only Jenkins was visible at the wheel, and they took the turn on Orly’s Creek Road.

  “Rough road,” Jenkins said, as they bounced past the first trailer, the one Johnson had called the lookout. “Good thing we took a well-sprung car.”

  “Good thing we’re driving a piece of shit, so we don’t have to worry about breaking it,” Virgil said from the backseat.

  As they came to the end of the road, Jenkins said, “I haven’t seen a single soul. Hope the guy didn’t split.”

  They made the Ruffs’ house in a little over twenty minutes, rather than the fifteen that Virgil had promised. Muddy was sitting on the porch, in the dark; the only light was from the back of the house, through a window onto the porch.

  “Virgil,” Muddy said.

  Virgil introduced everybody and asked, “You see any cars?”

  “Nothing. D. Wayne is about as lazy as a man can get, so there’s no way that he’s going to walk if he can ride. He’s still there.”

  Shrake looked back down the valley and said, “Dark out there. I’m more of a snatch-him-off-the-barstool type.”

  “I’ll take you down,” Muddy said. And quickly, to Virgil: “I’ll get you there and then I’ll come right back here. Promise.”

  Virgil said, “All right. You just get us close.”

  —

  INSTEAD OF TAKING the road, they went through the woods. Virgil passed around the insect repellent before they went in—Muddy said, “This stuff still stinks”—and then they followed Muddy along a game trail that paralleled the creek, on the opposite side from the road. The going was slow, with Muddy whispering warnings at two shallow ravines and a fallen tree trunk, and ten minutes after they left Muddy’s house, they were behind Sharf’s place, looking down the hill.

  There were at least two people inside, because they could see the light from at least two flashlights, one on the bottom floor, one in the upstairs bedroom. Virgil sent Muddy back home, and after he disappeared, he, Jenkins, and Shrake began easing down the hill.

  They were fifty yards away when somebody came out of the house. Whoever it was had turned off his flashlight before leaving the house, but turned it on briefly, two or three times, as he crossed the bridge to the road. They could see that he was carrying a bundle, which he left by the road. Then he hurried back to the house, and Jenkins, leaning close to Virgil, said, “That looked like a woman.”

  Shrake: “Yeah. If your Sharf guy is in there, he’s the one upstairs.”

  —

  AS THEY CLOSED on Sharf’s cabin, they could hear what sounded like a dresser drawer opening and closing, and then a man’s voice calling: “Get the TV.”

  At that moment, a dog started barking. Not a big dog, a small, yappy dog, starting inside, and then, from the sound of it, moving out on the side stoop. They couldn’t see it, but it sounded like it was barking right at them, and a woman called, “Wayne! There’s somebody out there. Wayne!”

  “That’s our guy,” Virgil said. “Let’s go.”

  Virgil turned on his jacklight, illuminating the entire cabin and a good piece of the woods around it. Jenkins went right, and Shrake went forward, as Virgil shouted, “Police! Police! D. Wayne Sharf—you’re under arrest!”

  Shrake, who’d run ahead, called, “I’ve got the front door, watch the side door, Virg—”

  A woman screamed, “Don’t shoot, don’t shoot! We give up.”

  Jenkins came in from the dark, into the lighted circle, gun out, to the side door, where a Chihuahua was jumping up and down and barking its tiny heart out. Jenkins peeked in the door and shouted, “Come out of there, keep your hands over your head. Come out of there!”

  The woman shouted, “I’m coming, I’m coming, don’t shoot me. Don’t hurt my dog.”

  The dog was still yapping and the woman appeared at the screen door, hands over her head. She was a large woman, with shoulder-length brown hair, wearing jeans and a long-sleeved man’s shirt. Behind her, they heard a POP! and she half-turned and screamed, “Wayne! Wayne! Come out of there.”

  From the front, Shrake shouted, “Fire! There’s a fire!”

  Virgil saw the flickering lights of a fire, and the woman bolted out on the porch, stumbled off the side, and fell flat on her face, screaming for her dog. Her hands were empty, and Jenkins grabbed her by the collar of her shirt, and the small dog launched itself at Jenkins’s ankle. Jenkins shook it off and the woman screamed, “Don’t hurt the dog, don’t hurt the dog . . .” and wrenched free and crawled toward the dog, trying to catch it. The dog eluded her and went after Jenkins again.

  Jenkins shook it off again and the woman scooped it up as Virgil pushed through the screen door and shouted, “Sharf. Where are you? Sharf?”

  From the front of the house, Shrake was yelling, “Get out of there! Virgil, get out of there.”

  Virgil took one more step, holding his shirt to his nose and mouth against the smoke, and saw that the living room had become a furnace, six-foot-high flames eating through the old knotty-pine walls. Both Shrake and Jenkins were screaming at him, and he backed up, decided that running was better than walking, and ran out of the place.

  The woman was shouting, “Get Wayne, help Wayne, get Wayne.”

  She’d moved to the edge of the yard and was peering in horror at the tiny one-room upper floor, and windows began popping around the house. No sign of D. Wayne Sharf. Shrake ran around to the far side of the house, and a second later, shouted, “Virgil! Virgil! Here!”

  Virgil ran that way. The upper floor had a window in it, which was open, and dangling from the window was a thick bright-yellow nylon rope, the kind sold to apartment dwellers as fire escapes.

  “He set it on purpose,” Shrake yelled.

  Jenkins shouted, “Give me some light,” and dashed into the woods, to the east of the cabin. Virgil still had his jacklight and lit the place up again, and at the farthest extreme of the light’s penetration, saw the back of D. Wayne Sharf rapidly fading into the trees. Virgil ran after Jenkins, hoping to give him enough light to keep up the chase. Jenkins was a fast and nimble runner, and was pulling away from the light when he suddenly broke left, toward the creek, and Virgil pivoted that way. Then Jenkins burst through some trees and fell into the creek, with an impact like that of a breaching whale.

  Farther down the road a set of headlights swung off the highway and accelerated toward them, suddenly braked, swerved, and did a three-point turn. Virgil had a clear-enough sight line to see D. Wayne Sharf break from the tree line, run alongside the car for a few steps, yank open the door, and throw himself inside.

  The car accelerated away, turned left on the highway, away from Trippton, and was gone.

  Shrake had run down to the creek and shouted at Jenkins, “Backstroke, backstroke!”

  Jenkins stood up in knee-deep water and said, “Fuck you,” and, “Somebody’s got to call the fire department.”

  Virgil turned to look at Sharf’s cabin, which looked like a burning haystack, flames shooting up into the sky. He fished out his phone, but failed to get a signal. They were three hundred yards from the mouth of the valley, and he said, “You guys go collect that woman. I’m going to run down to the highway and see if I can get a signal.”

  But at that moment a man and a woman ran into the road from the opposite side of the valley, saw the three of them, and yelled, “We called the fire department, they’re on the way.”

  The three of them jogged past the neighbors, and Virgil said, “Call the sheriff, tell them that Virgil Flowers said we have a situation here.”

  “You sure do,” the woman said, and, “You’re a police officer?”

  “Yes. Tell him we need a couple of cars.”

  —

  WHEN VIRGIL, Jenkins, and Shrake got back to the cabin, the Chihuahua was gone, and so was the woman.

  “They�
��re on foot, so they’ve gotta be around here someplace,” Shrake said.

  Jenkins had taken his wallet out of his pants pocket and was pulling out damp pieces of paper, spreading them on a rock next to a weed garden. “Goddamn job, I’m gonna quit. That fuckin’ dog bit me twice. I’m putting in for disability leave, or maybe retirement.”

  “If you do that, you won’t be able to beat up people,” Shrake said.

  Jenkins said, “Oh . . . yeah.”

  Virgil looked past them, down at the road, where a dozen neighbors had gathered to witness the festivities, and as a lone fire truck turned the corner at the end of the valley, saw Muddy ambling along, looking up at them.

  “Talk to the fire guys,” Virgil told the other two. Then he stared at Muddy until he was sure Muddy was looking back at him, and tilted his head toward the woods. Muddy nodded, and drifted back up the road where he’d come from.

  The fire truck arrived, and another one turned the corner at the end of the valley, and a fireman ran up the hill, and Jenkins and Shrake went to meet him. The cabin was more than fully involved—the fire was actually beginning to slow, from lack of anything more to burn, and smoke, and the stink of burning insulation, suffused the air.

  Virgil nodded at Shrake and backed away from the fire into the woods, until he was out of sight of the road, then hurried deeper in. A hundred feet from the cabin, Muddy stepped out of the dark, and Virgil said, “There was a woman with Sharf. When the cabin caught fire, she must’ve run into the woods. I’d like to find her.”

  Muddy said, “All right. You think she went deeper into the valley, or out toward the highway?”

  Virgil had to think about it for a moment, then said, “If she’s like everybody else, she’s got a cell phone, and once she can get some damn reception, she’ll be calling somebody to come get her. I expect she’d either go higher, or toward the highway. She was a pretty big woman, and didn’t look like she was in that good of shape.”

  “So she probably walked up a ways, to get around the cabin. . . .”

  —

  MUDDY KNEW THE TRAILS around the place, took them up a hundred feet or so, behind the cabin, and then along the valley wall. The light wind was in their faces, and after they were clear of the cabin, they were also clear of the smoke. They moved slowly, stopping to listen, and eventually were out of range of the voices around the burning house, but not out of range of the sound of the heavy engines on the fire trucks.