Bloody Genius

by John Sandford

  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 up, we’re backing up, let’s talk it out. Nobody has to get hurt.” He sounded a little stupid to himself, with the blood gushing out of Quill’s face, but he shouted it again. “Nobody has to get hurt . . .”

  “We’re going in the car,” Krause shouted. He boosted himself backwards into the car, onto the driver’s seat, now his head was behind the B pillar, from Trane’s perspective: she had no shot. Krause pulled Quill after him, the knife jabbing her in the throat, and he screamed, “Up, up, up,” until she was on his lap, and he reached past her for the door handle and slammed the door. “Crawl,” he shouted at Quill. “Get out of my way. Crawl, or I’ll cut your fuckin’ throat. Crawl. Get over there!”

  She crawled over him, screaming, weeping, her face and neck and hands covered with the blood streaming from the cut on her face. Krause squeezed himself down in the car seat, pushed the starter button, put the truck in gear, and accelerated toward the walking track, then left, then out on an intersecting track to the north. The track eventually merged with an actual street that ran between suburban houses.

  * * *

  —

  Virgil and Trane were a hundred feet behind, and Trane was on her phone to the Maplewood cops. More cops were coming in, but Krause drove out to the end of the street, took a hard left, and, seconds later, a hard right back onto White Bear Avenue. Virgil held close behind, focused on driving, as Trane shouted into her phone. Virgil hit his grille lights and the siren, as much to warn off other drivers as anything else, as Krause bulled his way through mall traffic and then past Mattress Firm and Verizon stores and, with a hard right, onto the I-694 eastbound ramp.

  Trane said, “We got cops coming from everywhere. We’ve got a highway patrol trooper coming up behind us. I can see him. He’s motoring—”

  “If Krause jumps on the gas,” Virgil said, “I can’t stay with him. He’s probably got an extra twenty miles an hour on me.”

  “The trooper can stay with them. The nine-one-one guy’s got everybody up to date on the situation. Goddamnit, I should have taken the shot. I had an opening, but he was jerking her head around.”

  “You did right . . . You did right . . .”

  Virgil saw the highway patrol car coming up behind him and he moved right to let it pass. The Tahoe was doing the best it could, but it topped out at a hundred and ten, and Krause was probably doing close to a hundred and twenty, weaving through the traffic.

  “What’s the trooper doing, do you think?”

  “Dunno. But they’re generally pretty crazy motherfuckers.”

  * * *

  —

  The trooper was probably moving five miles an hour faster than Krause. And Krause, who had the Mercedes in the right lane, saw him coming in the left wing mirror. He had the pedal to the floor, and the Mercedes had topped out, and then the trooper was even with him. Krause couldn’t see the cop’s face because he was sitting higher, and then the highway patrol car began edging right until the two speeding vehicles were only two or three inches apart, and Krause shouted, “Jesus,” and the patrol car scraped the side of the Mercedes, pushing it toward the shallow ditch on the right side of the road.

  Krause hit the brakes, but the patrolman had anticipated that and stayed with him, came back and bounced against him again, fender to fender. Quill had sunk down off the passenger seat, into the footwell again, holding her hands to her bloody face, sobbing in fear. When the cop hit the Mercedes the second time, Krause said, “Shit!” and the car’s right wheels went off the main lane and began rattling over gravel and roadside debris. Then, with a third hit, the right-side wheels ran off the road entirely and began bouncing over the unpaved roadside rocks and dirt.

  Krause hit the brakes again, bringing his speed down—sixty, fifty, forty—as he struggled for control. He yanked the wheel to the left, trying to knock the patrolman off, but the cop was ready for that and swerved left and came back and gave the Mercedes another whack.

  Krause, who’d been holding the X-Acto knife in his right hand, dropped it and grabbed the steering wheel with both hands, struggling to hold the heavy SUV in a straight line. Quill saw the knife as it dropped, and, after a second, when Krause turned his head away from her and toward the highway patrol car, she groped for it on the floor, found the thin aluminum shaft, figured out which end held the blade, pushed herself up with her left hand and with the X-Acto in her right, stuck the blade deep into Krause’s right eye.

  Krause screamed and grabbed the shaft of the knife. Quill fell back, and the truck went right, Krause heavy on the brakes, down into the ditch, sideways for a few dozen yards, up the other side, where it crashed into a chain-link fence and stopped. When it hit the fence, the driver’s side air bags blew into Krause’s face, knocking him back.

  Virgil had caught the Mercedes, as it had slowed in the chain of side-by-side collisions, and he pulled onto the shoulder of the highway, as the Mercedes went into the ditch, and braked hard. Then both he and Trane were out and running, Trane shouting into her cell phone, a gun in her free hand. Virgil got to the Mercedes first, the passenger side. He yanked open the door, saw Quill on the floor, and grabbed her by the shoulders, and pulled her out of the truck.

  Trane ran around to the driver’s side as Krause lurched out of the truck, clutching the X-Acto. Trane shouted, “Drop the knife, drop the knife,” and Krause, bleeding heavily from his eye, took a step toward her, lifting the knife, and Trane shot him.

  Virgil jumped at the gunshot, then shouted at Trane, “What happened?”

  “Krause is down,” she shouted back.

  Virgil: “Megan’s bleeding, I gotta get my kit . . .”

  He ran up the bank, popped the door, and got his medical kit, pressure bandages, ran back down, ripping the covers off the bandages, knelt beside Quill, and pressed one of the bandages hard to her face. He said, “You’re gonna be all right, honey.”

  The highway patrolman, who had stopped forty or fifty yards up the road, now ran down the bank, gun in hand, covering Krause, who lay on the far side of the Mercedes, weeping and bleeding. Trane had shot him in the hip.

  The highway patrolman said, in a calm, conversational voice as he holstered his pistol, “Ambulances on the way. Have been for a while. I figured it’d end in a ditch.”

  Trane, out of breath, told herself to be cool. She began to slow down, watching over Krause, noticed only one queer thing about the scene that would stick in her mind forever: the highway patrolman was smiling, and, after a few seconds, began quietly laughing, then he turned away, seemingly unable to stop. She thought later it might have been stress, and even later, that he might have simply been happy.

  Crazy motherfucker.

  The first ambulance arrived three minutes later with the paramedics.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  The ambulances took both of the wounded to Regions Hospital in St. Paul, not the closest facility but the closest Level 1 trauma center. Virgil and Trane followed, after Virgil called the BCA Crime Scene people and talked them through the three crime scenes that they knew about: the Maplewood Mall, the park, and the final crash. The Maplewood cops had frozen all three and would hold them tight for the Crime Scene crews.

  By the time they got to the hospital, both Krause and Quill were in surgery. Krause was in the hospital’s main trauma OR, suffering from the wound to his right eye—that would be p
ermanently blinded, the eyeball having been destroyed by the X-Acto knife—and from the hip wound. Trane’s bullet had destroyed the ball joint, and he would need hip replacement. He had taken two units of blood by the time Virgil and Trane arrived.

  “I’m glad I didn’t kill him,” Trane said, as they drove into St. Paul. The paramedics had told her when they picked up Krause that’d he’d mostly likely survive. “I didn’t even want to shoot, but he looked like a zombie and he had that knife, I simply reacted . . . I dunno . . .”

  “No cop in the state of Minnesota would say you overreacted,” Virgil said. “A guy that close to you, with a razor knife, who’d already slashed open another victim? No problem. I’m amazed that you didn’t give him three Speer Gold Dots in the breadbasket, as another young woman suggested she’d do if attacked.”

  “I don’t use Speer Gold Dots,” Trane mumbled, looking out the window. “I hope I didn’t hit him in the Oompa Loompas.”

  She hadn’t, but she was still shocked by the shooting. When she was talking to one of the docs at Regions, Virgil called Minneapolis Homicide, got Trane’s husband’s cell phone number, then called him and explained the situation. “She’s okay, but she might need a little tender loving care over the next few days,” Virgil said.

  “Thanks for calling . . . fuckin’ Flowers.”

  * * *

  —

  Quill had been taken to another surgical suite, where a plastic surgeon spent three hours closing her wound, as her mother waited, often crying, outside. When the surgeon came out, she told Quill’s mother that “this won’t look good when you see it, it’s still too raw. But the cut was very clean, even though it was fairly deep. In a couple of years, you won’t be able to see the scar unless you stand right next to her and look for it. If she uses any makeup at all, it’ll be invisible. It’ll be no worse than the scars left by face-lifts.”

  * * *

  —

  Virgil called Frankie, and told her that he wouldn’t be home that night and would probably have to work through Sunday. “We’ve got him, but we’ve got a lot of details to lock down. A lot of details.”

  He told her about the chase and shooting.

  “We’re fine here,” Frankie said. “I don’t want you taking any more assignments up there, though. Those Cities are a dangerous place.”

  “Probably less dangerous than driving our tractor around,” Virgil said. “I’ll call you late tonight, and we’ll talk.”

  * * *

  —

  Later that evening, Trane got a search warrant, and, with a Crime Scene crew, they broke into Krause’s off-campus apartment, which was in an aging brick apartment building a mile or so from St. Thomas. They found Barth Quill’s laptop computer hidden under a board in a closet with old shoes piled on top. One of the Crime Scene people looked at a sharp corner of the laptop with a Sherlock Holmes–style magnifying glass, and said, “I don’t think he got all the blood out of the seam.”

  They also found a box of blank CDs and a CD recorder that could be attached to Krause’s Mac laptop. The blanks were identical to the one found in Barth Quill’s CD player.

  “We should have suspected that all those clues we were getting were phony,” Virgil said. “Everybody said that Quill never used cocaine. He led us around by our noses. That China White bullshit, I’m sure he planted the CD. He took Quill’s keys when he killed him. Probably threw the car’s keys in the river but kept the house’s. After that, he had access to this house.”

  In addition to the laptop, they found a coin collector’s book filled with gold American coins going back to the nineteenth century. “Darian Seebold Quill” was written on the cover flap.

  Trane called Nancy Quill, who said that Darian S. Quill was Barth’s father. Krause had apparently stolen them from the house. Trane would have them evaluated the following week, and a Minneapolis coin dealer suggested they’d be worth around a hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

  * * *

  —

  On Sunday, the day after the chase and arrest, Virgil stopped at Regions and visited both with Quill and Terry Foster. Quill was still in shock, her face heavily bandaged. The first thing she said when Virgil walked in was, “They say I’ll be okay.”

  “That’s what everybody tells me, too,” Virgil said. “In a couple of years, there’ll be no sign of a scar. You might have some scary psychological after-effects for a while, but, in my experience, those will fade away.”

  “That Jerry . . . I guess he’s here in the hospital.”

  “Yes. He’s hurt a lot worse than you are. And he’ll be going away to prison for years. Jerry’s psychotic.”

  “He’s crazy.”

  “Yeah. I would have seen it sooner, if I’d been around him more,” Virgil said. “I feel really stupid for not seeing the computer for what it was: a heavy-duty game machine. I kept thinking about what it might contain, the files, and about what your father might be doing on it.”

  “I already miss Dad,” Quill said. She sniffed. “He was such a hard-ass. And our history . . . wasn’t good . . .”

  “A hard-ass, but not a bad guy,” Virgil said. “A good guy, in fact.”

  “All he thought about was medicine,” Quill said. “He was so into it. Now, I’ve been talking with the surgeon who put my face back together. It’s interesting. She’s interesting. She has some amazing stories.”

  Virgil nodded. “Think about all of that. You’ve lost a couple of friends, but maybe when you spend some time thinking about it, you’ll find that they were less interesting than they seemed. You won’t believe me, but you’ve still got a lot of kid stuff to get out of your head. Sex is everywhere—that’s why there are seven billion people in the world. Sex isn’t hard, fooling around isn’t hard, experimenting with dope isn’t hard. Medicine is hard.”

  “I will think about it,” she said. “I don’t have the grades for it right now, but I could get there. School isn’t hard, but I have to get to it if I’m going to do it.”

  Virgil patted her foot. “Then get to it.”

  * * *

  —

  When he visited Foster, the ex-soldier said, “Professor Green dropped in. You missed her by ten minutes. She told me. You got the guy.”

  “He’s the guy who jumped you,” Virgil said. “A nutjob. He could come after you again, but you’ll be at least sixty by then.”

  “Glad you got him,” Foster said. “For the explanation, as much as anything.”

  Virgil asked, “What about you? You’re lying here thinking all day. Are you going to try the Army again?”

  “We’ll see what happens. I’ll be in school for another year at least, that’ll get me to the all-but-the-thesis point with my Ph.D. I could finish it on active duty. But, uh, Katherine—Professor Green—gave me a little peck on the forehead when she left. She said she was looking forward to getting me back in class, volunteered to bring course work around to me as long as I’m in here.”

  “Hmm.”

  “You took the hmm right out of my mouth,” Foster said.

  * * *

  —

  Between chores, Virgil spoke with Genevieve O’Hara and told her about the Surface Research arrests and that the company’s CEO might want to talk with her about seeing Boyd Nash in the library. “He’s trying to nail down every aspect of the case. The idea that Nash may have been involved in other activities would help make that point. I’m sure he’s going to be calling you.”

  “I’ll still be there, in the library. And Virgil? Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “I think you know for what.”

  * * *

  —

  Virgil encountered Harry, the beer drinker, when he stayed over Saturday night. Virgil walked into the bar, and Harry asked, “You get him?”

  “Yup.”

  “Hey, congratulations.”
He flagged down Alice, said, “Give him another bottle of cow piss. He got the killer.” To Virgil: “He was a kid, right? I want to hear the whole story.”

  “No, he was a grown adult,” Virgil said.

  “The way you said that makes me suspicious,” Harry said. “How old was he in years?”

  “Not certain yet.”

  “Was he going to high school or college?”

  “Maybe,” Virgil said.

  “Ha! He’s a kid,” Harry said to Alice. “I was right. Had you met him before?”

  “Only briefly,” Virgil said. “Not really long enough to make much of an impression.”

  “Ha! You did meet him. He was part of the cast, like I said,” Harry crowed. “With that kind of insight, I should have been a cop. Or a psychiatrist. Anything but a McDonald’s owner.”

  “Maybe a bartender,” Virgil said. “You want another one? To celebrate your insight?”

  “Sure.”

  “That’d be five,” Alice said. “I dunno.”

  Harry shook a finger at her. “‘There are strange things done in the midnight sun / By the men who moil for gold.’”

  “Oh, no,” she said.

  Virgil: “Go for it, man.”

  * * *

  —

  The governor called Virgil early on Sunday morning. “I just heard from Bunny Quill, and she told me you got the killer. I wanted to thank you personally. I would even suggest you might apply for a spot on my personal protection detail.”

  “Ah, thank you, but no, I have a farm to tend, Governor, and I . . .” He was tap-dancing at a ferocious rate and managed to stave the man off.

  Dipshit.

  When he got off the phone with the governor, he called Davenport, who was still in bed, and asked him to tip off his media connections about the chase and the arrest. “Emphasize that Margaret Trane shot Krause when he got out of the car with a knife and was about to attack her. Get some cameras over to her house.”