The Governor sat in his car listening to the classical music station, not wanting the words of others to interrupt his thoughts. He needed the classical music to soothe him.
Anything harder and he was afraid he’d punch the window or tear the steering wheel from the column.
He was torn. Walking Vince this morning, he’d discovered that it looked like Mike McDonald hadn’t made it. The police had cordoned off an area down by the river and there was a body in the water. From what he could see, the clothes matched what Mike had been wearing and the Chute would’ve dumped him in the Mississippi. That had turned out OK.
But, Sandy had shocked him at lunch yesterday. First, she asked the question about the murder of the woman at the bank. Then, she told him about Agent Fruen’s visit. He couldn’t believe she had been talking with the FBI agent again. It worried him. She was attracted to the man in the suit and she wasn’t as smart as she thought she was. She might say the wrong thing. Playing detective against a trained agent, she would probably give up more than she learned about the bank investigation without even knowing it.
Now here she was at the club working out with the agent. She had served her purpose. With her temp jobs in banks, she had been able to get information, learn who’s who, office configurations, and routines. Her beauty and brains went well together to gain the trust of others as she worked the inside helping him. She was a good worker. And, as a temp, she would be hard to track. She needed to quit working, to disappear.
The blue car he had been waiting for pulled out of the club parking lot ahead of him. The Governor followed in the stolen Tahoe. Its tinted windows served two purposes today. It helped keep the interior cooler as he sat in the sun, and those on the outside couldn’t see who was inside. From the vantage point of the large SUV, he could keep an eye on the car ahead of him, looking over the smaller cars on the road.
He stayed back, but close enough to keep track of where the car was going. He switched the radio station from classical to something harder to match the quickening of his pulse and the anger surging from deep inside his body. His head nodded with the beat and his hands kept time on the steering wheel as he followed the car off Highway 100 towards the Uptown area by Lake Calhoun. He got closer now that they were off the highway. He didn’t want to lose the car at a traffic light.
The Governor worked to control his fury; he couldn’t make a mistake now. He took a deep breath and dialed his mobile phone as he tailed the blue car through the intersection and they pulled onto Lake Street by the parkway on the north side of Lake Calhoun. There were bikers and joggers out on the trails and at the intersections, but the Governor was barely aware of them as he focused on the car ahead of him.
He listened intently in his earpiece, waiting for the ring as the cellular system linked his phone to the one he dialed. As the cars hit the section of road that divided into six lanes of traffic, three in each direction, around the north side of the lake, the Governor heard a ring, maneuvered into the lane to the right of the blue car, and pulled up alongside. He glanced over and kept pace with it. He could see a hand digging in a bag on the seat looking for the ringing phone. He turned down the radio and waited for an answer.
“Yeah?” the Governor heard in his earpiece and glanced to his left.
“Haven’t you heard it isn’t safe to talk on a cell phone when you’re driving?”
“Who is this?”
Without answering, the Governor accelerated and swerved left driving the large Tahoe into the side of the blue car. Both vehicles continued left until the wheels of the car bounced off the curb dividing the east and west bound traffic. It all seemed slow motion, surreal, as the Governor felt the jolts, and heard the sounds in his vehicle and the sounds in the car next to him through the earpiece of the phone. There was cursing, but he couldn’t be sure of the source of the words. Was it the agent or himself?
He pushed left and accelerated again, first driving the left wheels of the blue car onto the curb and with a final twist of the wheel, up and over it. Horns honked and tires squealed and finally, there was a tremendous crash as the blue car collided head on with a large delivery truck from Room and Board. The Governor continued eastward on Lake Street with only a glance into his rearview mirror to assess the chaos behind him. He moved quickly to the right lane and turned right onto a neighborhood street, accelerated, and turned right again at the end of the block where he quickly pulled into an alley and parked next to a dumpster behind an apartment building.
He glanced down the street as he pulled the latex gloves from his hands and put them in the fanny pack/water bottle carrier. The Governor broke into a jog towards the lake. It was a hot day for a run, but he was just another jogger as he headed for the trail system along the chain of lakes he was going to follow on his long run home. He heard the sirens and headed towards the lake and the scene of the accident to see what had happened.