Easy Prey

by John Sandford

  Lucas thought for a moment. "Must be political," he said. "He's a Republican."

  "I thought it might be something like that," she said.

  "Is Olson coming in this afternoon?" Lucas asked.

  "No. I told him we'd call if there were any serious developments."

  "All right. I'm outa here."

  "See you Monday… And Lucas, knock it the fuck off, whatever it is."

  He called Catrin at her home, ready to hang up at a man's voice. "What are you doing?"

  She didn't need to ask who it was—a good sign, "Well. I'm moving out."

  "When?"

  "I'm staying with a friend tonight. Jack seems to be mostly amused," she said. "Maybe he thinks I'm going through some kind of phase. It's making me really angry."

  "If you'd like to get a bite and talk, I'll meet you halfway."

  "God, Lucas, could we tomorrow?" she asked. "I'm just really jammed today. I mean, I packed away my daughters First Communion pictures."

  "Okay, okay Don't tell me. You've got my cell phone?"

  "You never answer."

  "It's now permanently on—at least for the duration of the Alie'e thing."

  "I'll call you."

  He had wicked designs on three women, was worried sick about how he could possibly juggle them… and he couldn't get a date. "They'll always take you at Saks," he said to his office walls.

  They took him at Saks. For a lot. "Lucas, how are you…" the custom-shop salesman said. "We have got something for you. I've been saving it. Two new fabrics from Italy you won't believe that they're wool."

  He killed two hours at Saks and wrote a check for three thousand dollars. He took a call halfway through the fitting from the cops who were tailing Olson.

  "We got a concept," the cop said.

  "I'm interested."

  "We just took Olson back to his motel. He's preaching tonight down in West St. Paul… you know where the Southview Country Club is?"

  "Yeah."

  "He'll be at a church right around there. He actually got off this tour he was doing, and drove into the church parking lot, like he was just figuring out where it was. Then he went back to driving, and finally wound up here at the motel. And what we got to thinking was, what if he's timing something?"

  "Huh."

  "Yeah. When you think about it, West St. Paul and Spooner's place in Highland Park, you don't connect them, but if you look at a map, it ain't far—about six miles, and most of that is Interstate. He could do a round-trip in less than fifteen minutes. What if he does his weird preaching thing, then tells the pastor or whoever that he needs to be alone for a bit, to recover—or thinks of some shit like that—goes out to his car, runs over to Highland Park, wastes Spooner, runs back, and there he is: all those witnesses who say he was at the church."

  "Sounds Hollywood."

  "Yeah, well… that's our concept."

  "Could be his concept, too. How many guys we got on Spooner tonight?"

  "Two or four."

  "I'll make sure it's four. You need any more help on Olson?" Lucas asked.

  "If he goes to the church, we could use one more car, for awhile, anyway."

  "All right, get me a radio, and I'll come out and sit with you. I'm not doing anything."

  He spent the rest of the afternoon walking around town—got his hair cut, visited a game store, three bars, and a gun shop, where a dealer tried to sell him a $2,600 Scout rifle by Steyr.

  "I'd have to shoot a deer that dressed out at thirteen hundred pounds to get my money back," Lucas said, looking at the rifle. "On the hoof, that's a two-thousand-pound whitetail. That's a whitetail the size of a Chevy pickup."

  "It's not the deer, it's the aesthetics of the machinery," the dealer said. The dealer had quit his job as an English teacher to take up gun sales. "Look at this piece…"

  "The bolt handle's weird," Lucas said.

  "Its German."

  "It's weird."

  "Forget the bolt for a minute, look—"

  "Why's the scope way out there on the end?"

  "I'll tell you why." The dealer pointed out the window. "Swing it at something across the street. Keep both eyes open and then let your right eye just look through the scope."

  Lucas swung. "Whoa… that's nice. You shoot where you're looking."

  "They didn't mean it to be, but this is the perfect North Woods deer rifle. There's never been anything better."

  "Caliber's too small."

  "A .308's too small? Have you been smokin' something strange? A .308 is absolutely—"

  "Not for a two-thousand-pound deer. And the bolt handle's weird."

  "You aren't the artist I thought you were, Davenport," the dealer said. "I can barely contain my disappointment."

  At six o'clock, he drifted down toward West St. Paul, located the church, then got dinner at a steak house and made it back to the church a little before seven-thirty. He hooked up with one of the surveillance cops, a guy from Intelligence, and got a radio and a pair of binoculars. "I'm getting pretty tired of this," the cop said.

  "Maybe something will pop," Lucas said. "Where do you want me?"

  "See that hill? If you go up there, there are a row of houses where the backyards look right down on the parking lot. If you could go up there, find somebody at home and hustle them a little—"

  "How will I know which car is Olson's?"

  "Call us when you're set, and when Olson rolls in, and he's inside, I'll walk over to his car and point a flashlight up at you. We'll have somebody inside the church watching Olson. We're most concerned that he might find a way to sneak out and get rolling before we know it. Or maybe have another car ditched here by one of his Burnt River pals."

  "All right. I'll set up."

  Lucas found a house with lights, showed his ID, and got permission to sit out on the patio. The owner dug a webbed folding chair out of a lawn shed and gave it to him.

  Olson was already moving, a little early. He arrived twenty minutes before he was to preach; the Intelligence cop spotted the car for him, and Lucas settled down to wait. The radio burped every few minutes: when Olson started preaching; when other cars came or went; and an occasional observation on life.

  Four people in two cars were at Spooner's, watching front and back, and they weighed in from time to time. Spooner was at home, but the front drapes were drawn. Then Spooner's garage lights came on, and a minute later Spooner backed out in his car. The people watching him scrambled. Spooner drove five blocks to a SuperAmerica, bought something, walked half a block to a Blockbuster Video, rented a movie, and drove back home. The garage door went down. The watchers settled in.

  The guy on the radio said, "Olsons getting cranked. The crowd's rolling with him."

  A minute later: "There's a guy coming from the north side, he's walking a pooch…"

  "Got him."

  Then one of the cops watching Spooner said, "Spooner just came out in his shirt. He's looking up at his roof. What the fuck is he… SPOONER'S DOWN, SPOONER'S DOWN. HOLY SHIT, DAVE, DAVE. Do you see…"

  And they lost them; and then they were back. "WEST WEST WEST. JESUS GO BACK. NO, GO BACK. JESUS GET EMS DOWN HERE. GET EMS…"

  Lucas was running—around the house, into his car.

  Every step of the way, he could hear people screaming on the radio. In one minute he was on Mendota Road, in two minutes on Robert Street, then on 110, and lie was moving as fast as he could without killing anyone, flashing past cars, weaving through traffic, praying that he wouldn't run into a highway patrolman, running, and all the time the traffic on the radio became more shrill: "GODDAMNIT, WE'RE LOSING HIM. WE'RE LOSING HIM. WE NEED SOME GODDAMN HELP, SOMEBODY…"

  Lucas made I-35 and headed north, and called, "I'm coming up. If you've got a runner, tell me which way."

  Then a cop, coming back: "We don't know. We don't know." ,.;.

  "I thought you said you were losing him."

  "Spooner, Spooner, we're losing Spooner."

  "Where's the s
hooter, where's the shooter?"

  "I don't know, man, I don't know, we never saw him. Dave, where are you? Dave, did you get west?" Then Dave: "I got west, man, but I don't see anything, nothing moving. Lucas, if you're coming in, get up on the Seventh Street ramp and put on your flashers and see if anybody shies away."

  Lucas thought: He's gone. If they were down to blocking ramps, the shooter was gone.

  And he was.

  Spooner died on his front lawn with his wife screaming over him, and two cops trying to stop the blood with their hands. He took a .44 Magnum slug four inches to the left of his sternum; he took a couple of minutes to die, but he didn't know it. Except for technical purposes, he was dead when the slug hit.

  Chapter 27

  « ^ »

  Lester drove over from Minneapolis in time to see the body hauled away. He and Lucas stood on the Spooners' lawn and watched the Ramsey County ME working, and Lester said, "We may be fucked. Personally, I mean. We gotta go talk to Rose Marie so she won't be blindsided by the press."

  "I know," Lucas said. "Before we do that, we ought to wring out Olson. And we have to fill in St. Paul on what we were doing, and get them to grab Spooners paper and his computers and close off his safe-deposit boxes—get some people in early tomorrow and notify every bank inside a couple hours' driving time about the boxes, and maybe get a warrant for the house and grab any keys he's got."

  "Jesus, Lucas, it's gonna look like we got him killed, and then we're persecuting his wife," Lester said.

  "Persecuting his wife won't make a hell of a lot of difference if they hang us for killing her husband," Lucas said. "But if Spooners dirty, then we might kick loose of the whole thing. We've got to go after him hard."

  "Aw, man…" Lester was shaken up. He kept coming back to the body, still on the ground, now under a tarp.

  "Listen, this ain't you," Lucas said. "This is me. I'm the one who tipped Olson. There are only two possibilities: Olson tipped the killer—he's managing the killer—or somebody else put the killer on Spooner. I don't think anybody else leaked Spooner's name—its gotta be Olson."

  "So what do we do?"

  "I'll go talk to Rose Marie. You stay out of it. I won't mention your name. I'll just tell her that I asked you to put a couple people on Spooner. And that's really what happened."

  "Except that I went along with it," Lester said.

  "Bullshit. I didn't ask you before I did it. Afterwards, what were you gonna do? Tell Olson to forget the name? And you were just helping protect Rose Marie."

  "Aw, man…"

  "Just sit tight," Lucas said. He got on the phone and called Del, filled him in. "I'm gonna go shake Olson, if you want to come along."

  "I'll meet you," Del said. "Do you know where he is?"

  "I'll have the guys at the church call us when he heads back to his motel. We want to get him alone."

  A St. Paul cop across the street, in the backyard of the house opposite Spooner's, was yelling something, and two St. Paul plainclothesmen trotted toward him. "Something going on," Lester said.

  Lucas hung up his phone and got on the radio, called the cops watching Olson. "Tell me when he's heading back to the motel. The minute he heads that way."

  "You got it, Chief."

  Back on the phone, calling the cops who were watching Jael: "Somebody may be coming. Keep her away from the windows, keep her away from the doors. If anything moves, shoot it."

  He and Lester walked across the street. One of the St. Paul plain-clothesmen said, "We got a shell."

  "What kind?"

  One of the patrol cops who'd found it said, "Forty-four Mag."

  "He's shooting a rifle," Lucas said. "One of those Ruger carbines, I bet. The shell ejected, and this one he couldn't find."

  "What does that tell us?" Lester asked.

  "Damned if I know," Lucas said.

  Lucas called Rose Marie. "I've got a problem. I've got to come see you."

  "What happened?"

  "I'll come see you," Lucas said.

  Rose Marie lived in a comfortable neighborhood on the south side of Minneapolis, a fifteen-minute drive from Spooner's. Lucas didn't think about what he was going to say, except that whatever it was, he had to cover Lester and the other cops. Rose Maries husband was just walking out the door with the family cocker spaniel when Lucas arrived. "As long as it's not another killing," he said genially.

  "I hate to wreck your mood," Lucas told him grimly.

  "Oh, boy. Here in town?"

  "Over in St. Paul."

  "That's a little break."

  Rose Marie was reading. She dropped the book on the floor when Lucas pushed through the front door and called, "Hello?"

  "Lucas… what's going on?"

  "William Spooner was shot to death. A half hour ago, over in St. Paul."

  "My God." She was appalled.

  "It's worse than that," he said. He told her the story, made it as flat as he could. She listened without much change of expression, and when he finished, said, "Let me think for a minute." She took the full minute, then said, "We're gonna have to talk to the mayor, I can put it off until early afternoon."

  "Then what?"

  "I don't know. You've saved several peoples butts over the years, but this could be tough. Especially if we can't make Spooner as the guy who killed Rodriguez and the others."

  "You don't sound nearly as pissed off as I thought you'd be," Lucas said.

  "Well…" She shrugged. "I'm not. I know what you were doing. The fact is, Spooners name would have leaked sooner or later, just like Rodriguez's, and just like the muff-diving thing. This way, we controlled it."

  "I controlled it," Lucas said. "I think, for damage-control purposes, we ought to keep the emphasis on me. I'd especially hate to see anyone else get hurt."

  She shook her head. "I think it's just you and me—if they hang you, they'll get me for not controlling the department."

  "Which is bullshit."

  "Its politics," she said. "Anyway, I can put it off until after lunch. You say you want to shake Olson. Go do it. I'll get the St. Paul chief moving, and serve some warrants on Mrs. Spooner, God help her. If we can get something going by noon, or one o'clock, the mayor'll think twice before he throws us to the dogs."

  "If we actually get somebody, if we start a hunt, with an actual name…"

  "Then we've solved the crimes. Especially if we can make the case against Spooner. Then we've solved the crimes, and the whole thing becomes moot."

  Lucas looked at his watch. "Fifteen hours."

  He left Rose Marie's house in a better mood than when he arrived, hut the leaking of Spooler's name seemed, in retrospect, unforgivably stupid. On the other hand, if it had worked, it would have seemed brilliant: like Napoleon at Waterloo—beaten by a hairsbreadth, but beaten.

  The cops at the church called. Olson was moving west on 494, headed back toward his motel. Lucas scrambled to get to Dels, picked him up, and filled him in on the Spooner ploy. "So you're now one of four people who know what happened," he said.

  "Should have worked," Del said.

  "We had a wrong concept in our heads," Lucas said. "We figured the killer walked up, close range, like he had to with Plain, and bang! A pistol. But he was only close with Plain because he had to be. He was inside a building. A fuckin' rifle, man—if we'd found a shell from a .30-06, I would have had a two-block-wide net around Spooner. But a .44? I assumed it was a pistol."

  "So'd we all," Del said. "I wonder why that chick in the Matrix building—"

  "Yeah, the Oriental chick."

  "—why she didn't see the rifle. If that was him?"

  "It's a small gun, man. You could put it down your pants leg, if you wanted to walk with a limp."

  Del thought it over, looking out the window at the dark. Then: "How'd he get Spooner to come outside?"

  "Huh. I didn't ask that," Lucas said. "The surveillance guys said he came out and looked at his chimney. You got your phone?"

  "Yeah."
>
  "Call St. Paul. See if Spooner took a call."

  St. Paul was already working it. Spooner took a call, the St. Paul cops said, supposedly from a neighbor down the block, who said Spooner might have a chimney fire. Spooner had run outside to look, his wife said. St. Paul was in the process of tracking the calling number.

  "That could be interesting," Lucas said.

  "Got a buck that says it's from a pay phone," Del said.

  Olson beat them to the motel by ten minutes. Lucas and Del checked in with the surveillance cops, then headed up to Olsons room. "I want you down the hallway, out of sight," Lucas said. "I'm going in hard. If I need you to interrupt, I'll call you on the cell phone and I'll ask for an update, as though I were calling downtown. Give me a minute, then come knock on the door."

  "How do I come in?"

  "Soft. He might need somebody to give him a little sympathy."

  Del stayed out of sight. Lucas knocked on the door, heard a man's voice call, "Just a minute," and a minute later, Olson came to the door, buckling his belt. He looked out past the privacy chain, frowned, and said, "Chief Davenport?"

  "We got to talk," Lucas said.

  "Sure." Olson slipped the chain out, and Lucas banged in hard, put a hand on Olsons chest before he had a chance to react, and shoved him back against the bed. Olson fell back on it, and Lucas kicked the door shut and screamed, "How the fuck did you do it? Who are you working with?"

  Olson, eyes wide, tried to sit up, but Lucas crowded against his legs, slipped his .45 out of its holster, and held it by his side. "What… what're…"

  "Don't give me that shit," Lucas said. "You set him up, you know you set him up. You got your own parents killed, and I don't want to hear any bullshit."

  "What… what…"

  Lucas took a breath. "I told one guy about Bill Spooner. One guy. You. So tonight Bill Spooner is shot to death on his own lawn, in front of his wife's eyes. Cold-blooded murder. Shot with a rifle."

  "I don't, I… Oh, no. No, no," Olson stuttered. "I told, I told, I told, oh no. I told four people. I told four people, my God, I told four people."