Broken Prey

meeting.”
    They explained the procedure to Mrs. Bird, who nodded and said, “I’ll wait for you. I was just going to watch TV anyway.” Then she did a little dramatic, girlish shiver: “You don’t think I’ll be in any danger, do you?”
    Lucas thought, Not unless you shake hands with Sloan. But at the same time he smiled and shook his head, No.

12
    ROCHESTER WAS A GOOD-SIZED CITY , built around a colony of doctors and wealthy patients, and probably had the highest per-capita income of any big city in the state. The money showed up in the government center, a modern red-brick, concrete, and glass building that sat on the Zumbro River a couple of blocks from the Mayo Clinic.
    Twenty-nine sheriffs and police chiefs, or their alternates, along with a half dozen highway patrolmen, game wardens, and parole officers, got together in the boardroom, where the city council and county board met. Of the thirty-five, thirty were middle-aged men, most a little too heavy and going gray. The other five were women, all five tightly coifed and suited.
    Lucas had talked to the Rochester chief about Bird; he would make arrangements for a formal statement. Then Lucas started the pitch to the gathered cops: “We know he’s down here someplace. You’ve all seen this morning’s Star-Tribune —he’s going to do it again. He’s probably already picked out somebody, and he’s stalking her. Or him. We’re looking for another guy from St. John’s named Mike West. We’re trying to keep this under our hats . . .”
    They had questions, but Lucas had few answers: “Honest to God, we really don’t know what he’s doing, or how he’s hiding. There’s been a parole-violation bulletin out on him for a month, and we’ve got nothing. He’s buried himself someplace. We need to pry him out of his hole.”
    He told them about the white Olds. They all made a note. One guy held up a hand: “A new white Olds . . . they stopped building Oldsmobiles . . .”
    “I know.”
    “We should be able to track every one of them,” the guy suggested.
    “We’re doing that,” Lucas said. “The woman who gave us that information is elderly, really elderly, and we’re not absolutely sure of its quality.”
    “You’re not sure how he’s armed?”
    “No, but he says he is, he says he got some guns, and we believe him,” Lucas said. “Rice was in pretty good shape. We don’t think Pope would have taken him bare-handed. The medical examiner says all of the damage to Rice’s body was inflicted either with the whip or a blade. He didn’t show any signs of being beaten, or having been in a struggle before he was tied up. So there was probably a gun. If one of your guys even gets a whiff of Pope, he better be wearing a vest.”
    “Pretty goodamn hot out in the countryside right now,” one of the cops said.
    “Better hot than dead,” somebody else said.
    Another hand: “Where’d he get the guns?”
    “Same place he got the Olds,” Lucas said. “We don’t know.”
    “We know he was in Rochester last night?”
    “Three blocks from here,” Lucas said. He gestured out the window at his back. “Right across the river.”
    And it went on for a while.
     
    WHEN THEY BROKE UP , Sloan came over and said, “I’m feeling like shit, man. Bobby Anderson from Scott County’s here. He said he’d give me a ride back home, if you’re gonna go see Marcia Pope.”
    Lucas nodded: “You look bad. I can’t believe the Marcia Pope thing is going anywhere, anyway. The Austin cops already talked to her twice.”
    Sloan took off, and Lucas, back in the truck, headed south toward the Iowa border, and the city of Austin.
     
    MARCIA POPE LIVED IN a shingle-sided cottage on a tree-shaded street on the edge of Austin, in a subdivision built by meatpackers. The house was technically white, but probably hadn’t been painted in forty years; the siding was grooved with dirt and mold, the ragged grass had only been fitfully mown, the narrow sidewalk leading to the front door was cracked and twisted.
    Lucas pulled into the gravel patch that served as a driveway, and as he got out of the car, saw the curtains twitch. Until that moment, it hadn’t really occurred to him that Charlie Pope might be inside. Could Charlie be stupid enough to hide out at his mother’s? And here was Lucas going to the front door, no protective vest, his pistol tucked in a spot that might be a half second too slow, his mind working on other errands.
    He slowed,