Sudden Prey

“We lost him, he closed down.”
    “I’m going to the U Hospitals. I want Sherrill, Franklin, Sloan and Kupicek on the line now ,” Lucas said. He fumbled a cellular phone out of an armrest box and punched the speed-dial button for Weather. A secretary answered, then transferred him to the clinic, where another secretary, bored, said Weather was busy with a patient.
    “This is Deputy Chief Lucas Davenport of the Minneapolis Police Department and this is an emergency and I want her on the line immediately ,” Lucas shouted. “GET HER.”
    Then Franklin came back through Dispatch: he was in the office.
    “Get your wife and kid and go someplace until we know what’s happening,” Lucas said.
    “The kid’s in school . . .”
    “Just get them,” Lucas said. “Have you seen Sloan?”
    “I think I just saw him goin’ in the can . . .”
    “Tell him. Get his wife, get out someplace. Anywhere. Get lost, but stay in touch . . .”
    “You think . . .”
    “ Move it , goddamnit.” Lucas was stomping the gas pedal, trying to get more speed out of the Explorer.
    Weather came up: “I’m on my way there,” Lucas said. He took fifteen seconds to tell her what had happened: “Get out of the clinic and stay away from your office,” he said. “Tell the secretary where you’ll be. I’ll stop and see her when I get there.”
    “Lucas, I’ve got things to do, I’ve got a guy with a skin cancer . . .”
    “Fuck the clinic,” he snapped, his voice a rasp. “Go someplace where you’re not supposed to be, and wait there. If the guy comes after you, he might start killing your patients, too. Everybody can wait an hour or two.”
    “Lucas . . .”
    “I don’t have time to chat, goddamnit, just do it.” He cut off a white-haired guy in a red Chevy Tahoe and could see the guy pounding the steering wheel as he went by.
    Sherrill was working an ag assault in a bar off Hennepin, drunk college kids beating a black guy with bar stools until he stopped moving. He still wasn’t moving, but he wasn’t quite dead, either. Sherrill called, and Lucas gave her the word on Del.
    “Oh, my God, I’m going over there,” she said.
    “No. Call Mike, tell him to take a walk. Tell him to go sit in a restaurant until you get to him. We want everybody where they shouldn’t be until we figure out what’s going on.”
    Dispatch came back: “Del hit LaChaise—there’s blood on the sidewalk, going out to where a truck was parked. All the hospitals know, we’re covering the emergency rooms . . .”
    Kupicek came up. He and his kid were at a peewee hockey match. “Call your wife, you all go out to eat somewhere on the department, catch a movie,” Lucas said. “Check with me before you go home. Look in your rearview mirror, stay on the radio.”
    “How’s Del’s wife?” Kupicek asked.
    “I don’t know: we’ve got people on the way to Hennepin.”
    “Keep me tuned, dude,” Kupicek said.
    Thirty seconds later, the dispatcher came back, and asked Lucas to switch over to a scrambled command frequency. “What?” he asked.
    “Oh, God.” The dispatcher sounded as though she were weeping, a sound Lucas hadn’t heard from Dispatch. “Roseville called: Danny’s wife’s been shot. She’s dead. In the store at Rosedale.”
    Lucas felt the anger rising, building toward a black frenzy: “Don’t put this on the air, don’t tell anyone outside the center . . . when did this happen?”
    “The call came in at five-seventeen, but they think she might have been shot about five-twelve.”
    “When was Del?”
    “About five-fifteen.”
    So there had to be more than one shooter. How many?
    “Who’ll tell Danny?” the dispatcher asked.
    “I will,” Lucas said. “Does Rose Marie know?”
    “Lucy’s on the way to her office.”
    Lucas called Kupicek back. “Danny, where are you?”
    “Hennepin and Lake. Looking for a phone.”
    “Change of plans: We got Roseville with your wife, we need you at the emergency entrance to Hennepin General. Right now. You gotta light with you?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Light it up and get it in there . . .”
    “I got the kid.”
    “Bring him: he’ll be okay.”
    When Kupicek was gone, Lucas got back to Dispatch: “Check Danny’s file: he’s got a sister named Louise Amdahl and they’re tight. Get her down to Hennepin General. Send a car and tell them to move it, lights and sirens all the way.”
    And he thought about Sherrill and Weather. He punched up the phone again, caught