They squatted behind separate tree trunks, and Virgil shouted, “Vike! There’s no point! The Wisconsin cops are on the way! There’s no way out, we know all about the house in Tucson, you can’t go there. Give it up before you get killed—”
Boom!
Laughton, who’d been waiting by the corner of the clubhouse, fired in their direction, and Virgil thought he might have heard buckshot tearing through the trees twenty or thirty yards to his left.
He heard Shrake move, and move fast, jogging hard to come in at the clubhouse from the back. Virgil went left thirty yards, found another tree, and shouted again. No response this time.
He moved forward: there was an overhead pole light at the clubhouse, in addition to the beer sign, enough light to see by. He moved forward another thirty yards: at this range, if Laughton showed himself, Virgil could reach him with the shotgun. His phone dinged, and he slid down on his side and pulled it out of his pocket: a note from Shrake: “Now what?”
Virgil texted back: “Wait just a bit, and I’ll start yelling again.”
He never had the chance.
Ten seconds later, there was another Boom! but from some distance away. Virgil shouted, “Shrake, don’t shoot me, I’m coming in.”
He started running toward the clubhouse, and saw Shrake come in out of the dark and peek around the corner. Down toward what appeared to be the entrance road, under another pole light, they could see a yellow corrugated metal shed.
“Must be a maintenance—” Shrake began.
A moment later, Laughton rolled under the light, and then out the exit driveway, away from them, driving a golf cart.
“You gotta be shittin’ me,” Shrake said.
They both began running after the golf cart, which had two tiny taillights. They saw the lights make a turn to the left, apparently out at the road, and Virgil shouted, “You follow, I’m going to try to cut across and see if I can catch him that way.”
Shrake grunted and Virgil broke away, running left as hard as he could, up a fairway distinguishable by starlight. The fairway was lined by trees and, Virgil suspected, a fence to separate it from the road. Before he got to the fence, he saw Laughton coming down the road — Virgil wasn’t close enough to stop him, but he hit Laughton in the face with the jacklight and saw him swerve to the far side of the road, blinded, putting a hand up against the light. Laughton passed in front of him, and on down the road, and Virgil kept him pinned in the light, watching for Laughton’s shotgun, and chased after him with no hope of catching up.
He went through the tree line, found the fence, clambered over, went down into a ditch and up the other side in time to see Shrake coming, in another golf cart.
Virgil shouted at him, and Shrake slowed just enough to get Virgil onboard, and Shrake said, “Get your gun out, we’re faster than he is. We’re catching him.”
They were running alongside the golf course, which stretched between the river and the road. Virgil could see the taillights on Laughton’s vehicle no more than a hundred and fifty yards ahead.
“Shoot one up beside him,” Shrake suggested.
The golf cart had a Plexiglas windshield, but Shrake poked it a couple times with the heel of his hand and it folded down, and Virgil aimed unsteadily off to one side of the other golf cart and fired.
They saw the tiny taillights swerve, maybe off the road, because it bumped hard a couple times, and they gained another thirty yards, and Shrake said, “Try that again. See if you can bounce it off the road behind him.”
Virgil fired again, and this time the other golf cart swerved hard left and went down into the ditch.
“Got him,” Shrake said.
“He’s got that shotgun,” Virgil said, and they pulled off sideways and got out, and Virgil shouted, “Vike, give it up.”
They heard him moving like a bear through the ditch. Virgil pinned him with the light again, as they ran forward, ready to shoot, but Laughton did a somersault over the fairway fence and they ran after him. Shrake said, “I think he lost the gun.”
Then came a strangled shriek from the golf course, and silence.
They crossed the fence and spread apart, moving slowly now, up a mound…
The mound was the top of a sand trap. In the brilliant illumination of Virgil’s jacklight, they found Laughton spread-eagled in the white sand below. He’d run right off the top of the sand trap, and had fallen in, maybe ten feet straight down, into fine white river sand.
Virgil ran around the trap, keeping the muzzle of the gun out in front of him, and asked, “You alive in there?”
“Heart attack. I’m having a heart attack,” Laughton groaned.
“Really?” Virgil asked.
“Oh, God, don’t let me suffer. Shoot me.”
“Could happen,” Virgil said. “You’ve got two shotguns pointed at your head.” He moved quickly around to Shrake and whispered, “Cuff his hands in front of him. We’re going to run him back to the boats, evacuate him to the clinic.”
Shrake whispered, “Why not just call an ambulance? He’s faking, anyway.”
Virgil whispered, “Because then he’ll be in Minnesota. And what if he’s not faking?”
So they climbed down into the trap, and Virgil said, “Think about the shotguns,” and he put his aside and helped Laughton roll over. Shrake stepped in with the cuffs, and Laughton groaned again, “It hurts so bad. This is the end.”
Shrake ran the cuffs under Laughton’s belt, and Virgil got out of the trap and waved the light in a circle. “Johnson! Johnson! Over here!”
Johnson shouted back, and, following the light, arrived a minute later, breathing hard, and asked, “What?”
“We have to evacuate Vike to the clinic. He’s having a heart attack. You guys get his body, I’ll get his legs.”
“Call an ambulance,” Laughton said.
“Not enough time. Time is critical,” Virgil said.
They picked Laughton up, and Johnson said, “Jesus, wide load, huh?” and they carried him three hundred yards, across two fairways and down the embankment where Johnson had tied up the boats. Laughton bitched every inch of the way: “It’s killing me. You’re killing me. Oh, God, I’m hurt…”
Virgil was almost, but not quite, convinced when they lowered him into the boat. Johnson and Shrake got in the boat with him, and Virgil followed in the second boat, and Virgil called the sheriff’s department and asked that an ambulance meet them at the marina.
Again, Virgil thought what a nice night it was, out on the river. The towboat passed in front of them, throwing out a healthy wake, which they rode up and over, and then they rolled on into the marina, where two paramedics were waiting. Shrake rode in the ambulance with them, so he could manage the handcuffs, and also shake Laughton down to make sure he had no more weapons.
Virgil and Johnson tied off the two boats, and Johnson said he’d call their owners with an explanation. “What I want to know is, who’s going to pay for my boat?”
“Your boat was a piece of shit,” Virgil said. “I do mean was. Right now it wouldn’t even make a good petunia planter. Had more holes in it than a fuckin’ colander. Looked like some kinda industrial sprinkler head. Looked—”
“Okay, okay,” Johnson said. “But somebody’s gonna pay.”
They walked back down the dark lane to the cabin, and Virgil went inside and washed his face and hands, while Johnson counted holes in his boat. “They picked it up and dragged it over here and used it as a fuckin’ armored duck blind,” Johnson said. “You were the duck.”