lower right-hand drawer of his desk, took out a matte black Glock nine-millimeter semiautomatic, and slipped it gently into the black duffel bag at his feet. He left the room, the duffel bag hanging heavy in his hand. Then he left the house and drove out into the night.
31
CHAPTER
“WHAT'S YOUR DREAM job?” Elwood asked.
“Technical consultant to a cop movie, set in Hawaii and starring Mel Gibson,” Liska said without hesitation. “Turn the motor on. I'm cold.” She shivered and burrowed her hands down into her coat pockets.
They sat in an employee lot near the Target Center, watching Gil Vanlees's truck by the white glow of the security light. Like the vultures they were often compared to, reporters circled the block around the building and sat in the many small parking lots scattered around it, waiting. They had been on Vanlees like ticks as soon as his name had been leaked in connection with Jillian Bondurant's murder.
Vanlees had yet to leave the building. Groupies lingering after the Dave Matthews Band concert required his full attention. Word from detectives inside the Target Center was that management had kept him behind the scenes—afraid of a lawsuit from Vanlees if they dismissed him based on suspicion alone, afraid of lawsuits from the public if they let him work as usual and something went awry. Press passes had been handed from music critics to crime reporters, who had roamed the halls, looking for him.
The radio crackled. “Coming your way, Elwood.”
“Roger.” Elwood hung up the handset and chewed thoughtfully on his snack. The whole car smelled of peanut butter. “Mel Gibson is married and has six children.”
“Not in my fantasy he doesn't. Here he comes.”
Vanlees came lumbering through the gate. Half a dozen reporters swarmed after him like a cloud of gnats. Elwood ran the window down to catch their voices.
“Mr. Vanlees, John Quinn has pegged you as a suspect in the Cremator murders. What do you have to say about that?”
“Did you murder Jillian Bondurant?”
“What did you do with her head? Did you have sex with it?”
Elwood sighed heavily. “It's enough to put you off the First Amendment.”
“Assholes,” Liska complained. “They're worse than assholes. They're the bacteria that gather in assholes.”
Vanlees had no comment for the reporters. He kept moving, having quickly learned that rule of survival. When he was directly in front of their car, Elwood cranked the key and started the engine. Vanlees bolted sideways and hurried on toward his truck.
“A nervous, antisocial individual,” Elwood said, putting the last of his sandwich in a plastic evidence bag as Vanlees fumbled with his keys at the door of his truck.
“The guy's a twitch,” Nikki said. “
“No.”
“Be brutally honest, why don't you? I don't want to hold any false expectations.”
Vanlees gunned his engine and pulled out of his slot, scattering the reporters. Elwood eased in behind him, then turned the headlights on bright for an instant.
“A commendation would look good on my resume when I send it off to Mel Gibson's people.”
“The credit will go to Quinn,” Elwood said. “The media is enamored of mind hunters.”
“And he looks great on television.”
“He could be the next Mel Gibson.”
“Better—he's not losing his hair.”
They sat behind Vanlees as he waited to pull onto First Avenue, and rolled out right behind him, causing an oncoming car to hit the brakes and the horn.
“Think Quinn would hire me as a technical adviser when he goes Hollywood?” Liska asked.
“It seems to me advising isn't your true goal,” Elwood observed.
“True. I'd rather have a participatory role, but I don't think that'll happen. I think he's haunted. Doesn't he seem haunted to you?”
“Driven.”
“Driven
“Very romantic.”
“If you're Jane Eyre.” Liska shook her head. “I don't have time for driven
“He's dead.”
“My luck.”
They stayed on the truck's tail, negotiating the maze of streets going toward Lyndale. Elwood checked the rearview, grumbling.
“We look like a funeral procession. There must be nine loads of newsies behind us.”
“They'll get everything on videotape. Put away the nightsticks and saps.”
“Police work just isn't the fun it used to be.”
“Watch him in here,” Liska said as they came to the worst of the confusing tangle of streets. “We might get him on a traffic violation. I break nine laws every time I drive through here.”
Gil Vanlees didn't break any. He kept his speed a fraction under the limit, driving as if he were carrying a payload of eggs in crystal cups. Elwood stayed on the truck's tail, riding Vanlees's bumper a little too close, violating his space, goading him.
“What do you think, Tinks? Is he the guy, or is this the Olympic Park bombing all over again?”
“He fits the profile. He's hiding
“Doesn't make him a killer. Everybody's hiding something.”
“I would have liked a chance to find out what, without a pack of reporters at our heels. He'd be an idiot to try anything now.”
“They might not be at our heels long,” Elwood said, checking the rearview again. “Look at this son of a bitch.”
An older Mustang hatchback came up alongside them on the left, two men in the front seat, their focus on Vanlees's pickup.
“That's balls,” Liska said.
“They probably think we're the competition.”
The Mustang sped up, passing them, coming even with Vanlees, the passenger's window rolling down.
“Son of a bitch!” Elwood yelled.
Vanlees sped up. The car stayed with him.
Liska grabbed the handset and radioed their position, calling for backup and reporting the tag number on the Mustang. Elwood grabbed the dash light off the seat, slapped it onto the bracket, and turned it on. Ahead of them, the passenger in the car was leaning out the window with a telephoto lens.
Vanlees gunned ahead. The car raced even with him.
The flash was brilliant, blinding.
Vanlees's truck swerved into the Mustang, knocking it ass end into the next lane, directly into the path of an oncoming cab. There was no time for even the screech of tires, no time for brakes, just the horrific sound of tons of metal colliding. The photographer was thrown as the cars hit. He tumbled across the street like a rag doll that had been flung out a window. A ball of flame rolled through the Mustang.
Liska saw it all in slow motion—the crash, the fire, Vanlees's truck ahead of them swerving to the curb, one wheel jumping up, the front bumper taking out a parking meter. And then time snapped back to real speed, and Elwood swung the Lumina past the truck and dove into the curb at an angle, cutting off the escape route. He slammed the car into park and was out the door. Liska clutched the handset in a trembling fist and called for
