Bad Blood

Virgil said.
    Coakley, still in her car, jotted the information in a notebook and said, “I’ve got the warrant in my hand. We’re heading out to Rouse’s in ten minutes. Listen, if this happens the way we think, we’re going to need more people here to talk to kids than we’ve got. What do you think?”
    Virgil said, “Goddamnit, that’s what happens when you slap something together. I’ll call Davenport, tell him we need to borrow people from the state, and maybe Hennepin and Ramsey counties. Get them started.”
    “Do that. I reserved some extra jail space. . . . Man, I hope we’re not fucking up, here. But you say we got ’em.”
    “Yeah, we got ’em. Some of them, anyway. So good luck. And hey, Coakley, watch your ass, huh? When you hit Rouse, these guys’ll know that the shit is about to start raining down on them.”
    “I’ll do that—with my ass.”
    She was getting cranked: she called her oldest son, told him that she wouldn’t be home that night. “You guys take care of yourselves. I love you all. Okay?”
    “Are you on a . . . date?” her son asked.
    She half-laughed and said, “No. I’m on a bust. The biggest one ever. I’ll tell you all about it in the morning, and it’ll be in the papers. All the papers.”
     
     
    BACK AT the sheriff’s office, the two on-duty patrol officers, one male and one female, were waiting in the hall outside her office. She said, “We got an emergency,” and unlocked her door, and another patrol officer, the second woman, who’d been off-duty, came through the outer door and called, “What’s up?”
    The next half hour was like walking through waist-deep glue. She and Virgil had agreed to keep the details of the case secret, but now people had to know: she briefed the deputies, figured out who’d be on the highway and who’d be going on the raid at the Rouse place. The other two off-duty deputies drifted in, and one of the two city cops, the other having gone to Des Moines for reasons unknown, and she had to bring them up to date. She needed three cops, at least, in two cars, to cover the truck coming back from Hayfield; she wanted no less than a one-to-one ratio on those.
    She needed to leave one at the office, to handle incoming arrests, which left her with two, in addition to herself, to cover the Rouse warrant. Virgil would be coming with at least five more people—he’d picked up a second highway patrolman along the way.
    When she’d worked through it, one eye on the clock, nearly a half hour had passed.
    “We’ve got to move—Einstadt and the others will be coming through anytime. Rob, Don, Sherry, you get out to the overpass. Do not let them get by you. Go. And talk to me. Talk to me all the time.”
    To the others, Greg Dunn and Bob Hart, she said, “Let’s go. Separate cars. It’s possible that they’ll have gone to this meeting. If not, we arrest them, and isolate their daughter, instantly. Okay? And we never leave them alone.”
     
     
    SHE FELT LONESOME on the way out. She was one of the few female sheriffs in the country, and that was a burden; people watched her. Now she was way out on a limb, and Virgil, God bless him, would do what he could to help her, but if this whole thing turned out to be a mistake, she was done.
    Done after a month in office . . .
    On the other hand, if it was what it looked like . . . she was going to be a movie star. And she would like that, she admitted to herself. She would take her movie stardom, take a picture of it, and stick it straight up her ex-husband’s ass. . . .
    She was thinking about being a movie star and almost missed the off-ramp; as it was, she went up it at eighty miles an hour and had to stand on the brakes not to miss the turn at the top.
    She called Virgil. “Where are you?”
    “Twenty minutes out of Homestead. Coming fast.”
    “I just came off I-90 turning toward the Rouses’. I’ll be there in five minutes. . . .” She summarized the rest of the disposition of forces, and Virgil said, “If they’re meeting at the Rouses’, don’t go busting in with just the three of you. I’m thirty minutes away from you.”
    Her radio burped and she said, “Hold on,” and picked up the radio: “Yes?”
    Sherry, the deputy with the group waiting for the Einstadt truck, said, “They just blew past us. Rob and Don are trailing me, I’m about to pass them, just to check the tag. I’ll get off at Einstadt’s exit but turn the other way. Rob and Don are staying back.