Sudden Prey

Doughboy’s butt. Then a uniformed cop who’d lost his hat and gloves, his blond hair soaked with snow, his hands white as ice, ran up and said, “We’ve f-f-f-found a line of t-t-t-tracks. Small tracks, a woman or a kid, and whoever it was kept stopping behind b-bushes and around c-corners . . .”
    “That’s her,” Lucas said. “Show me the way.”
    They ran off together, Stadic a few steps behind. Four uniformed guys with flashlights and shotguns were leapfrogging up the track, which wandered through the maze of old houses, apartments, small brick businesses and parking lots. They were moving quickly, but nervously: everybody’d heard about the arrows. They were staying out of the trail, and Lucas stopped, just a moment, to look at it. “Looks the same,” he said to Stadic.
    “Yeah, gotta be her,” Stadic said.
    They ran harder, caught up with the uniforms. Lucas said, “Listen up, guys, this woman has been talking to us. She actually called in and left the phone off the hook so we could follow it in to the apartment. We gotta be a little careful, but I don’t think she’s dangerous.”
    “G-g-g-good,” chattered the bareheaded cop. “I’m f-f-fuckin’ freezing.”
    “Well, Jesus, go get some clothes on,” Lucas said. And to the others, “Come on . . .”
    They ran along the track, and as they approached a cross street, saw cops ahead. A spotlight beam broke down toward them, and the uniforms waved their flashlights.
    “She broke the perimeter before we set up,” Lucas said. “That means LaChaise probably did, too.”
    He fumbled in his pocket, pulled out first the cell phone, then his handset, and said into the handset, “The woman’s outside the perimeter . . . we’ve got to spread it. The woman’s outside for sure, LaChaise probably.”
    He thrust the phone and handset back in his pocket and they ran along again, the cop cars behind them squealing in circles and then heading out to new positions. The larger the square got, the thinner the cops would be: but cops were pouring in from everywhere, from Hennepin County, from St. Paul. No ordinary dog hunt.
    As they followed on the trail, Lucas said, “You know what? She’s going to the dome.”
    “You think?” Stadic asked.
    “She’s trying to find a phone,” Lucas said. He took the handset out again, and relayed the idea to Dispatch. “Get her through to me if she calls.”
    The streets were getting wider as they got closer to downtown, and then they lost the track: she’d turned into a cleared-off street.
    “Still bet it’s the dome,” Lucas said. “Tell you what,” he said to Stadic and two of the uniforms, “you guys go that way, we’ll go this way, push both sides of that apartment. But I bet she headed for the dome. I’ll see you on the other side and we’ll go on over.”
    “All right.”
    They split up, and Lucas and the other uniform headed off to the left. As they approached the apartment, Lucas thought of the cellular phone, took it out, then the handset and called Dispatch. “Get somebody at the phone company. I need a number I can call where they can trace a cell phone. I’ll call them on the cell phone, and I want them to figure out the number, and then give me a list of calls billed from the phone . . . who’s at the numbers. Got that?”
    “Got it.”
    They pushed around the apartment, found nothing but pristine snow. Stadic was waiting on the other side, and they all looked over at the dome.
    “Let’s go,” Lucas said, but as he was about to step off the curb, Dispatch called. “That was fast,” he said.
    “Lucas, Lucas . . .”
    “Yeah?”
    “LaChaise . . .” The dispatcher was sputtering. “LaChaise is at the University Hospitals.”
    “Oh, shit.”
    Lucas look around wildly, spotted a cop car, waved at it, started running toward it, barely heard the dispatcher, “Got your wife . . .”
    “What?” he yelled into the handset. And to Stadic: “Stay with her, stay with Darling.”
    He ran toward the squad car, and as the car stopped and the window came down, Lucas shouted, “Pop the back door, pop the back.”
    The driver popped the back door and Lucas dove inside and shouted, “University Hospitals, go, go . . .” And to the handset, “What about Weather? What about Weather?”
    “They think he might . . . have her.”

28
    THE KID BEGAN to cry as they passed the Metrodome, and when LaChaise yelled at him, told him to shut up, he simply cried harder, holding on to the top of