Hidden Prey

police flasher in the back of the truck, spent the ten seconds necessary to stick it to the roof of the car and plug it into the cigarette lighter, and took off, running at speed up the hill, through a couple of red lights, and out the back side of Duluth toward Virginia. As soon as he got free of traffic, he called Reasons, but got his wife.
    “He is not here just now,” she said, in an accent much like Nadya’s. “He has a cell phone . . .”
    Lucas took the number and redialed. Reasons came up after three rings, and Lucas said, “We got a problem, man.”
    He explained, and when he was done, Reasons said, “You want me to come?”
    “I don’t know what you’d do. The place is overrun by cops already, but I thought you oughta know.”
    “Jesus, I oughta come.” Reasons sounded anxious. “But my wife . . . she’s been giving me some shit about being gone all the time, and I was just on my way home.”
    “Go home then. I’ll fill you in tomorrow.”
    “Thanks. If anything more comes up, let me know.”
     
    L UCAS FUMBLED AROUND in his pocket, found the numbers he’d scribbled down for the Virginia cops, and dialed in again. As he did, he looked down at the speedometer: he was pushing the car along at ninety-five, and the car didn’t like it. The Virginia cops came up and Lucas identified himself: “What happened at Spivak’s? Is my guy okay?”
    “I’m sorry, sir, but I can’t release any information on that,” the woman said. Her voice was cool, almost bored. “It’s an ongoing incident. If you could call back in an hour . . .”
    “Jesus Christ, was anybody hurt? I’m with the fuckin’ BCA.” He was talking too loud again.
    “Sir, this is being recorded . . .”
    “Go ahead and record it, you moron!” he shouted. “I’m trying to find out if my guy is okay. What’d you do, shoot him?”
    “Sir . . .”
    He hung up, tried his man’s phone, and got an answering-machine recording. He dialed Rose Marie Roux at her home in Minneapolis, was told by her husband that she was at a concert with a girlfriend. “Aaron Copland, the cowboy shit. I took a pass.”
    Frustrated, Lucas dropped the phone on the passenger seat and concentrated on driving. But he couldn’t stand it, and ten minutes later, he picked up the phone and called Virginia again. Same woman: “Sir, I’ve reported this incident to my supervisor. I cannot give you any information . . .”
     
    L UCAS CLICKED OFF and pushed the car until it wouldn’t push anymore, and instead, whimpered with the wind and tire noise. The side of the highway, for all practical purposes, was empty, the houses a half mile apart, and he was flying through a tunnel carved out by his not-especially-bright headlights. He got off at the first Virginia exit, throttled back to sixty as he went through town and still squealed his tires on the turn onto the main drag.
    Two cop cars were parked outside Spivak’s, light bars turning, a cop standing next to one of them. A silver civilian car was double-parked beside the cop cars. Probably another city car, Lucas thought. He dumped the Acura across the street from the bar, killed the engine, and headed for the bar entrance at a trot.
    A cop was writing on a clipboard, using his car hood as a desktop. When Lucas started across the street, he looked up and called, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, where you goin’ there?” and Lucas held up his ID and said, “BCA—you got one of my guys.” He was at the door and the cop yelled, “Hey, wait a minute, buddy,” and then Lucas was inside, moving through the bar into the back. The cop was behind him, and yelled, “Hey! Hey!”
    Then Lucas was through the bar and past Setters and Pointers and into the back, into the party room where they’d interviewed Spivak. Three uniformed cops and two guys in civilian clothes were talking. Lucas’s man, Micky Andreno, was perched on a chair to the side, legs crossed, hands cuffed. “You all right?” Lucas asked.
    “I’m annoyed, not hurt,” Andreno said. “But I’m very annoyed.”
    The cop who’d followed Lucas in said, “Hey, when I’m talking to you . . .”
    Lucas pointed his finger at him and snarled, “Shut the fuck up. Who’s running this clown factory?”
    One of the men in plainclothes snapped, “I am. Who the fuck are you?”
    “Who the fuck are you?”
    “John Terry, I’m the chief.”
    “I’m a BCA agent, I work for the governor, and I’m running a double-murder investigation