Wicked Prey

a bunch of pictures, a photo panel, and asked Weimer to pick one, but that, he thought, would be a pain in the ass. “I don’t want you to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ unless you’re sure. Take a look.”
    He passed the photo over and Weimer looked at it for a second, or two, then nodded and said, “Hell yes. That’s her. Who is she?”
    Lucas took the photo back and said, “I don’t know. But I will find out.”
    “Beat the shit out of her, for me,” Weimer said. “Do that, and I’ll get you a personalized autographed picture from the next president.”
    Lucas said, “You know who it’s going to be?”
    “Doesn’t matter,” Weimer said. “Either one. We’re covered both ways.”
    * * *
    AS SOON AS he could use his cell phone, on the way out of the hospital, he called Carol and said, “Jenkins is on the way back. Grab him, get Shrake, see if you can shake Del loose, he’s wandering around town somewhere, doing his homeless act . . . Meet in the office in twenty minutes.”
    In the car, he called Mitford, the governor’s man, and said, “We’re meeting in my office in twenty minutes to talk about the people pulling these robberies. You might want to come by.”
    “The cop thing yesterday . . . is that going to break it open?” Mitford asked.
    “Maybe, but maybe not,” Lucas said. “The money is getting to be less important, in a way.”
    “All right. I’m over at the X. I can be there in twenty, if I can get through town at all.”
    “You’re the guy who wanted to have the convention here,” Lucas said.
    “Hey, I think it’s a great success and another sign that Minnesota is marching into a future that gets brighter and brighter minute by minute. See ya.”
    * * *
     
    THEY GATHERED in Lucas’s office, and Lucas kicked Carol out, despite her curiosity, and said to the cops, “You all know Neil . . .”
    Then he told them about it, about the money in briefcases and satchels, about the robberies, about the killing of the cop in Hudson, about Lily Rothenburg’s story of the cop murders in New York, and about the Latina-looking woman and the dead kid in D.C.
    “We’re dealing with murder as a policy. They’ve killed at least four people and that’s only the ones we know about,” Lucas said. “They’re a murder gang, and they’re here, and we need to run them down.”
    “I didn’t know,” Mitford said.
    “Nobody did—not really. We’re coming in the back door on this,” Lucas said. “Now, we’ve got to start pushing some buttons. I want to put this woman’s face out there. One of those ‘Do you know this woman?’ deals on national TV. I can go back to Lily on that, and she can help: she’s already plastering the place with Cohn’s photo.”
    “What about me?” Del asked. “I’ve spent a lot of time getting tight with these protesters. I’m doing the sheriff’s office some good, and the St. Paul cops.”
    “Stay with it until we get something we can use—and then I may have to pull you off,” Lucas said. “My feeling is, the big convention trouble is about over, after the arrests yesterday. Maybe more on Thursday, the big McCain day, but . . . if we need you, we need you.”
    Del nodded: “Okay.”
    Shrake: “The question is, where are they? After the trouble in Hudson, they know we’re papering the motels. So where are they staying? Out-state? Or have they taken off?”
    “Condos,” Jenkins said. “There are probably six hundred condos around town with nobody in them and the developers have been renting them out to the Republicans, to the media, to anyone who wants one. If they knew about that . . .”
    “They would,” Lucas said. “They’ve got good intelligence.”
    “Then that may be the answer,” Jenkins said to Lucas. “Your pal Ralph Warren, you know, with all his connections everywhere . . . maybe they went through him. He had a couple hundred empty condos.”
    “Yeah, well. He’s dead,” Lucas said. Warren hadn’t been a pal, and though Lucas had tried to keep him alive, he’d failed.
    “Even if he’s dead, there’s still gotta be a business manager somewhere,” Jenkins said. “Somebody’s got to be running the company.”
    Lucas jabbed a finger at him: “I’ll buy your idea. You and Shrake start running down condo managers, the ones with vacancies.”
    “Maybe we should hold off on the woman’s picture for a couple of days,” Del said. “Maybe we can spot her without the TV. If we spook her, and she takes off . . .