Invisible Prey

nothing…
     
    L UCAS WAS in his car three blocks away, Flowers bringing up the rear, Jenkins and Shrake on the flanks. Overhead—way overhead—Jerrod was in a Highway Patrol helicopter, tracking Widdler with glasses. Del was with Coombs.
    They tracked her for a half mile, out to the interstate, away from the Wal-Mart, into a Best Buy. She disappeared into the store.
    “What do we do?” Flowers called.
    “Shrake? Jenkins?” Lucas called. “Can one of you go in?”
    “Got it,” Shrake said.
     
    B UT S HRAKE had been a block away and almost got clipped by a cell-phone user when he tried to make an illegal turn. The parking lot was jammed and he didn’t want to dump the car at the door; she might spot it. By the time he got parked, and got out and crossed the lot without running, and got through the front door, he was too late. She was walking directly toward him, toward the exit. He continued toward the new-release movie rack, and when she’d gone out, he called, “She’s out, she’s out…”
    “Got her,” Lucas said, watching from across the street. “What’d she do in there?”
    “Don’t know. Want me to ask around?”
    Lucas thought, then said, “Ah…fuck it. Catch up with us. She’s back in her car.”
    “She’s heading for the Wal-Mart,” Jerrold called five minutes later. “Tell Del to put Coombs in the store.”
     
    L UCAS AND HIS GROUP tracked her right into the Wal-Mart parking lot, past the main entrance, to the Garden Shop. “She’s going in the back side, through the Garden Shop,” Lucas called to Del.
    “I’m heading that way…I’m heading that way,” Del called back. Then “I got her,” and “Lucy is headed for the phones.”
     
    W IDDLER WATCHED C OOMBS from halfway across the store. Watched her for three or four minutes, looking for anybody who might be a cop. Coombs was wearing another muumuu, a blue one this time. She was a heavy woman, big gut, chunky around the hips, a potato-eating prole, a leftover hippie. She stood just inside the entrance, looking at the bank of three yellow pay phones.
    Widdler, in Women’s Clothing, watched for another minute. Nothing moving. She saw Coombs looking at her watch. If Davenport was behind this, Widdler thought, he could have tapped the phone, but they wouldn’t have let Coombs come in her by herself, would they?
    Widdler took the cell phone out of her pocket and dialed. She watched Coombs pick up the pay phone. Coombs said, “Hello,” and Widdler said, “Hang up, and go two phones down. I’ll call you on that one in two seconds.”
    Coombs hung up the phone, moved down two. Stared at the phone—didn’t call anyone, didn’t look at anyone. Widdler punched in the number. Coombs answered and Widdler said, “I don’t have two hundred thousand dollars. I could get eighty thousand now and pay you the rest later, but I want the original of the letter.”
    “Why would you pay me the rest later?” Coombs asked. “If I didn’t have the letter?”
    “Because you could cause me a lot of trouble by talking to the police, even without the original,” Widdler said. “You’d be in trouble yourself, for destroying evidence, but I don’t know how crazy you are. I’d pay you, all right, but I don’t have the cash now.”
    “I don’t know,” Coombs said.
    Widdler: “You don’t have any time to think about it. Say yes or say no, or I’ll hang up.”
    “Ah, God. You’d pay me?”
    Coombs sounded exactly like a stoned-out hippie, hoping against all expectation that something good might happen to her. “Yes. Of course. I’ve already started getting the money together.”
    “All right,” Coombs said. “But I’ll go to the cops if you don’t pay me the rest…”
    “Just tell me what you want to do.”
    “Here’s what I’ve worked out,” Coombs said. “I don’t trust you and I want to look at the money. So I want to do it in a semipublic place where I can scream for help if you try to hurt me, but where we’ll have a little privacy. I’ll scream, I really will.”
    “Where?”
    “There’s a farmers’ market today in St. Paul, downtown, across from Macy’s…”
    “No. That’s too open,” Widdler said. “The ladies’ room at Macy’s, there’d still be people around…”
    “But we couldn’t say a word, I couldn’t look at the money…” Coombs whined.
    “The Macy’s parking ramp in St. Paul?” Widdler suggested.
    “That’s too scary…Do you know where Mears Park is? Where the art