Wicked Prey

thinking as she spoke: a little song and dance, because Jennifer Carey was no longer to be trusted. I don’t think cops should kill people.
    Bullshit, Letty thought .
    * * *
    A PUBLIC DEFENDER met Lucas, Jenkins, and Shrake at the jail, with an assistant from the county attorney’s office, and they cut the deal: no harm, no foul. Nobody gets charged, nobody gets sued for false arrest. Shafer expresses his good citizenship by cooperating with the police.
    Outside the jail, on the sidewalk, Shafer said, “She’s a pretty good lawyer. Got me outa there, slicker’n snot on a doorknob.”
    “Yeah, right,” Jenkins said. “You ride shotgun; that little lump in the back of your head is Shrake’s pistol.”
    “Hey, I’m out,” Shafer said.
    “Yeah. One inch. You’ll be back in just as fast, if we need you back in.”
    * * *
     
    THEY GOT TOGETHER with the FBI team in a temporary office on Wabasha Street, six blocks from the convention center. The FBI’s local agent-in-charge, Wilbur Rivers, told Lucas that the choppers were gassed and ready to go, and could be in the air over Minneapolis or St. Paul in twenty minutes. “The problem might be that she’s out in Burnsville, or Stillwater, or somewhere. We won’t be able to get close enough during a short phone call. We’d be able to identify the cell, but not where the signal’s coming from—so we need some talk time.”
    “The call to LA came from a St. Paul cell, so there’s a good chance she’s here,” Lucas said. “If we were willing to risk it, we might even want to bring both choppers here.”
    “Your call,” Rivers said.
    Lucas looked at Jenkins and Shrake, who shrugged, and so he said, “Screw it. We’re already set, let’s go with it. One each in Minneapolis and St. Paul.”
    They’d made Shafer sit in a corner while they talked, and Rivers looked at him and asked, “You think he can pull it off?”
    “We talked to him on the way over. He keeps it simple. He says he got a call from his daddy, and his daddy says the sheriff has been asking about him, because the Secret Service says he’s up here with a big gun. That the Secret Service thinks he’s going to do something bad. So he’s heading back down I-35, going home.”
    Shrake said, “I actually called him on his phone, in the car, and we pretended I was his daddy, and we . . . got him talking. I think it’ll work, somewhat. Maybe not perfect.”
    “Well, even if it doesn’t work, we’ll get a shot at the phone, if she stays on long enough,” Rivers said. “You want me to put the choppers up?”
    “Let’s do it,” Lucas said.

    COHN WAS hungover, lying on a couch with his forearm over his eyes. Cruz had found a police report about the fight in the bar, about a crippled man being thrown in front of a car. Randy Whitcomb had been hit by one car, and run over by another. He was listed in good condition at Regions Hospital.
    “Dumbest thing I ever heard of,” Lane had said. “Wish I’d been there to see it, though.”
    “Felt good, after McCall. Didn’t do any harm, doesn’t look like,” Cohn said. “They don’t know who did it.”
    But Lindy was scared, Cruz was worried, and Lane was talking about bailing out. “I’m not hurting that bad, financially,” he explained to Cohn. “I got the farm, I got the business, they do okay. Nothing great, but I like it.”
    Cohn said, “Goddamnit, Jesse, the only reason you keep them running is because you got money packed away from the jobs. You put more goddamn money into those businesses than you ever get out—you keep saying you need this tool or that tool and that’ll get you over the top, but it ain’t the tools you need. You need customers, and you ain’t got them. If you don’t do these jobs, you ain’t gonna have a business, either.”
    Lane sulked: “I always got the farm. That does make some money.”
    “Okay, it makes some money. But you’re not a farmer, Jesse. You don’t mind going out there and shoveling a little horse poop and tellin’ Roy to plow the south forty, or whatever he does, but you don’t want to do that every day. Sittin’ up there on the John Deere in that hot sun, rolling up and down those rows every fuckin’ day . . .”
    “Air-conditioned,” Lane said. “Got Sirius radio. Outlaw Country.”
    “Fuck Sirius radio,” Cohn said.
    * * *
     
    CRUZ ASKED, “What about Lindy?”
    Lindy said, “I’m not doing it. I don’t stick up places. I don’t even know how to hold a gun.