Stolen Prey

trying to drum up a little business, and Richie’s got to run for reelection this fall.”
    “Just get on with it, okay?”
    “Maybe,” Flowers said. “I’ll call you. Sometime.”
    L UCAS HEARD about Turicek five minutes later, when, still brooding over Flowers’s insubordination, he got a call from the duty officer at the BCA. “We got a woman who’s trying to reachyou. She says her name is Kristina Sanderson and it’s an emergency. Sounds like she’s freaking out.”
    Lucas thought,
Ah
, with some satisfaction. She was cracking. He had the call switched through and then Sanderson was screaming at him, “They took Ivan, they, I think he’s going to die, I think, he’s oh, God, he looks like, oh God, he looks like a … like a … a stewed tomato.”

15
    T uricek had been taken to Regions Hospital, the major St. Paul public hospital. The cops who’d followed the ambulance didn’t find a wallet, but did find his cell phone. His last call had been to a blocked number out of state, and when they called it, they got a ring but no answer.
    The next number had been Sanderson’s.
    She’d driven herself across town to Regions, found that Turicek was in surgery, but had been walked into the OR, and identified him behind the tangle of breathing equipment. When she asked the surgeon how bad he was, the surgeon had said, “You’ll have to leave now.”
    She followed the circulating nurse out of the room, and the St. Paul cops asked her if she knew what had happened, and she’d started blubbering. All she’d seen of Turicek was his head, which looked like an oversized raw turnip and was shaped all wrong, and a large patch on the abdominal covering, which showed a lot of blood and what she assumed was guts.
    She told the cops, “The Mexicans, the Mexicans,” and they said,
“The Mexicans?”
and she’d nodded and said, “There was a police officer, and agent, from the state…”
    One of the cops said, “Davenport?” and she nodded again, and the cop said, “Let’s give them a ring.”
    About that time, the surgeon walked out of the emergency OR, pulling off his bloody gloves, and one of the cops, looking past her, said, “Uh-oh.”
    B EFORE HEADING down to Regions, Lucas called Shaffer to fill him in. He’d parked and was walking toward the emergency room entrance when he saw Shaffer pulling into the parking area, and he slowed and waited until the other agent caught up.
    “What the fuck happened?” Shaffer demanded. “Shrake and Jenkins take the day off? They were supposed to be all over him.”
    “Take it easy,” Lucas snapped. “The guy knew we were there, and he bolted. He knew where he was going. We could have had a whole team on him and he would have lost them.”
    “Wouldn’t have lost my team,” Shaffer said. “For God’s sakes, this was our big chance. We knew the Mexicans were looking for him.”
    “Having a little trouble finding the Mexicans, Bob? Don’t lay it on us, that was
your
job.”
    They snarled at each other some more on the way to the ER; too much media, too much attention, too many people watching. Tempers were going to flare….
    “What about Turicek?” Shaffer asked.
    “Last I heard, he was still breathing,” Lucas said.
    They pushed through the door and saw a woman in a surgeon’s gown with blood at her waist, talking to Sanderson, one hand on Sanderson’s shoulder, and Sanderson was sobbing, and Lucas said, “Maybe that changed.”
    T WO S T . P AUL homicide cops told them the story, and they went outside, where the driver of the Ford pickup had been stashed, waiting, in his truck. His name was Robert Johnson, and he was with his girlfriend, whose name was Betty Johnson, no relation, yet, and Robert Johnson said, “I couldn’t help it.”
    One of the St. Paul detectives said, “We understand that, Mr. Johnson. We believe it was a kidnapping. If you could just tell the agents what you saw.”
    The two Johnsons took turns: they’d just taken a left onto the freeway ramp at Snelling Avenue, not going fast at all—they agreed on that—and pulled up behind a white car that was accelerating even more slowly than they were. They were a truck length or two behind the white car when the trunk popped open and a man came flying out. He landed on the pavement directly in front of them, and Robert, who was at the wheel, swerved, but said that he didn’t know if he hit the brakes before or after they hit the man.
    “It sounded like we’d hit a