Wicked Prey

Weather, Sam, and Letty on the wall, along with framed shots of the University of Minnesota hockey team, where he’d been a defenseman who wasn’t quite good enough to turn pro. A hockey stick was mounted above the hockey photos. Also, stuck casually to the exposed side of one of the metal file cabinets, a shooting range target with five .45-caliber bullet holes in the ten-ring. Like he did it every day . . .
    Carol was sitting at her desk outside the office.
    “Del’s wife has gone into labor and you’re supposed to organize baby gifts,” Lucas said. “I don’t know if you take up a collection or what.”
    “Don’t worry about it. Give me fifty dollars.”
    He gave her fifty dollars, said, “That seems like a lot,” and she said, “You’re rich, you can afford it,” and then Shrake showed up and she said, “Give me twenty dollars.”
    Jenkins was a minute behind Shrake, and they scattered themselves around the chairs in Lucas’s office.
    “I just talked to Shafer again,” Lucas said. “Diaz called him on his cell phone, which we didn’t pay too much attention to because we already had the number. But. That means that Shafer can call her back. If we can get some FBI backup here, they’ve got choppers with location-finding equipment that can get pretty close to where she is, if Shafer calls her, and she answers.”
    “What if she tossed the phone?” Jenkins asked.
    “Then we’re out of luck. But, if she still has it, and answers, we can get it narrowed down to a couple of blocks. Then we can saturate the area, dig them out,” Lucas said. “I talked to Shafer and he’ll call them. Actually, he’ll ask her for a meeting. Maybe we can suck them in.”
    “When?”
    “The choppers are out at the airport, backup for the convention, so the feds have to ‘retask,’ whatever that means,” Lucas said. “That’s gonna take a couple hours, but the AIC says he’ll push it and says he can get it. We’ll know by noon and we can be up in the air by one.”
    Jenkins looked at his watch: just ten-thirty. “We might want to jack up the SWAT guys,” he said.
    “Most of them are out in the city, working with the street teams,” Lucas said. “I talked to Sandy, he’s going to pull back whoever he can. We’ll at least have a few.”
    “Like we were saying, Shafer ain’t no wizard. You think he can do this?” Shrake asked.
    “We’re gonna drill him,” Lucas said. “I could only talk to him a minute, because the public defender wasn’t in the house. I talked to the PD this morning and he says a deal can be done. The prosecutor is willing to go along because, basically, you know, we don’t have a case. And they got all those demonstration arrests in their hair and they just as soon get rid of Shafer if they can.”
    They all sat for a minute, then Jenkins said, “What do you think we ought to get for Del’s kid? It’s gonna be a boy, right? Something blue?”
    “It’s Del’s kid; you gonna get him a blue gun?” Shrake asked.
    “Let Carol do it,” Lucas said. “But I like the blue gun idea.”
    “Now what?” Jenkins asked.
    “Let’s go over to the jail. Get Shafer going.”
    * * *
    JENNIFER CAREY picked Letty up and asked, “How’d it go with Juliet?”
    Letty shook her head. “She’s not going to leave him. Says he’s hurt, so she can’t go. At least not until he gets better, which means never, because he’ll get on top of her and make her do what he wants.”
    “Ah, boy. I don’t know, Letty,” Jennifer said. “Maybe we should talk to Lucas, explain the situation, tell him that our biggest worry is that he’ll do something irrational.”
    “Let me ask you something,” Letty said. “What would you do if suddenly, someday, in a couple of weeks, Randy just disappeared and was never heard from again? Or maybe, he’s found in an alley with four bullet holes in his heart. Would you do anything about it? Ask any questions? Talk to Dad?”
    Jennifer shook her head: “Couldn’t tell you that until I got there. You know about Lucas and me; we almost got married, except that I knew I couldn’t deal with him. He’s too . . . harshly . . . smart. He’s too intense. He’s like Weather—he’s like you. Not like me; I’m all over the place. But I don’t think cops should kill people. I mean, murder people. People get trials, they get lawyers.”
    Letty sighed. “Let me think about it for a couple of days. I’m so confused.” A little song and dance, she was