Wicked Prey

by John Sandford

  He laughed and said, "Bullshit-you're toast."

  She said, "Check your phone. See if Ellen called."

  Ellen was the housekeeper. He fished out the phone, opened it, turned it on: three messages, all from the same guy. "Dan Jacobs," he said. "Nothing from Ellen."

  "Too late to call him tonight," Weather said.

  "He called three times ' last time was twenty minutes ago ' he'll be working twenty-four hours a day now."

  He punched redial and waited. Jacobs ran the convention-security coordination committee for Minneapolis and St. Paul. A woman's voice, tired: "Jacobs committee, Sondra speaking."

  "This is Lucas Davenport, returning a call from Dan."

  "Just a minute, Lucas, I'll switch you in."

  After a snatch of country and western music, Jacobs came up: "Lucas-we've got a problem. I'm going to send you a file on a man named Justice Shafer. We need to get our hands on him. I'd appreciate it if you could coordinate with your opposite number in Wisconsin."

  "Who is he?"

  "A nutcake. Sells copies of Rogue Warrior at gun shows ' you know Rogue Warrior?"

  "Yeah, sort of." Guerrilla war fantasies set in a future America somehow taken over by Islamic revolutionaries, except for those parts run by the Jewish bankers. "Something more specific?"

  "Well, we never heard of him, tell you the truth," Jacobs said. "Then some guy who goes to gun shows ran into him at a quarry over in Wisconsin, in Barron County, where he was sighting in a.50 cal. The guy talked to him and said Shafer got going on Jews and jihad and how the politicians were selling out America, you know ' and he had this.50 cal, and the guy who saw him said he was knocking over metal plates at seven hundred and forty-five yards."

  "Unusual distance," Lucas said.

  "Which has us worried. For one thing, Shafer lives in Oklahoma, and we've got no idea what he's doing up here. He's poor as a church mouse and he runs around in a rattrap Ford pickup-but he's got this shiny new rifle with a thousand-dollar scope and a Nikon range-finder, and he's shooting at this specific distance ' seven hundred and forty-five yards. Like he had the distance in mind. He's got an FBI file: he tried to join the marines and then the army, years ago, but they didn't want him, said he was a little shaky on his feet. He may have hooked up with some of the extremist white gangs-he's got a skinhead brother who did some time. The feds think he might have painted some swastikas on a synagogue in Norman, tipped over some Jewish tombstones ' Got "eighty-eight" tattooed on his chest. Like that."

  "We'll get on it," Lucas said. "The file's on the way?"

  "I'm pushing the button on it. ATF is working it, too, and the FBI'S interested, so you may be bumping into some of them."

  "I'll warn everybody," Lucas said.

  ***

  Lucas Davenport was a tall, tough, dark-haired man, heavily tanned at the end of the Minnesota summer. The tan emphasized his blue eyes, his hawkish nose, and his facial scars: a long thin one down through his eyebrow, like a piece of white fishing line, another circular one on his throat, with a vertical line through it, like the Greek letter phi-the remnants of a.22 wound, followed by the tracheotomy that kept him alive. The tracheotomy had been done by Weather, with a jackknife. "So?" Weather asked.

  "Some redneck with a.50-caliber sniper rifle, up here from Oklahoma," Lucas said. "One of the eighty-eights. They're worried, but not too worried."

  "What's an eighty-eight?"

  "You know-H is the eighth letter in the alphabet, so eighty-eight is HH. Heil Hitler," Lucas said. "You got guys who get it tattooed on their scalps."

  "Then I'd be worried, if I were Dan Jacobs," she said.

  "Yeah ' The ATF guys are out looking for him, and probably the Secret Service," Lucas said. "They want me to call our Wisconsin contacts, and people around the metro, see if we can spot him. I'll make some calls tonight, get some deputies looking around."

  "Good luck with that," she said. The longer they'd lived together, the more skeptical she'd become of the concept of sharp-eyed cops picking the bad guys out of a crowd. She'd moved toward Lucas's view, as regarded cops and robbers: it was all chaos, accident, stupidity, insanity, and coincidence.

  He'd cited as evidence the case of the doper who'd gotten out of Stillwater prison on Wednesday, who'd promptly gotten drunk with his release money, had fallen asleep at midnight in a filling station parking lot, had woken at three o'clock in the morning, out of money, only to spot the Coke machine right there, with a brick sitting next to it, had smashed open the machine with the brick, and was still scooping up the coins when the cops arrived. On Friday, he was back in Stillwater for the remaining three years of his original term.

  Yowza.

  They crossed the St. Croix River into Minnesota, and twenty-five minutes later, were home. There were lights all over the house, and from the garage, they could hear Letty, their ward, shrieking with laughter. Inside, they found Letty and Sam playing a kind of volleyball using a sponge batted over a string.

  Sam quit the moment he saw Weather and Lucas, and Letty called, "Quitter," which he understood, and he said, "No-no-no-no," one of his few dozen words, and ran to Weather.

  Perfect, Lucas thought. Just perfect. The kid was obviously brilliant, as well as athletically gifted, and probably the best-looking toddler in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area. And Letty was growing up into something interesting. Her mother had been murdered in a case broken by Lucas; and he'd been so taken with the child that he'd brought her home to Weather.

  Now she was growing up, and Lucas and Weather were back in court, with her consent, to formally adopt her, to make her Letty Davenport. She feigned nonchalance, but once or twice a week, she'd ask, "So, how's things with the court?"

  ***

  Lucas brought in a fabric cooler full of beer with a slab of walleye fillets-the only cooler he'd found that would fit in the Porsche- and Weather's overnight case. He gave Letty a hug, Sam a head-rub, got a piece of blueberry pie from Ellen, and went off to the den and brought up the computer.

  The file on Justice Shafer was sitting in the e-mail at his office, at the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. He pulled it out, opened it, and read it as he ate the pie.

  Shafer was one of the border-states bad boys who looked like an antique photo of Cole Younger or Jesse James: hair like straw, freckles, pale eyes, bones in his face; like he hadn't had enough to eat as a kid, like he'd never had baby fat. In the photograph, he was standing next to the back of a pickup truck, a pump.22 in his hands, a pile of dead squirrels on the tailgate. His tongue was tucked in one corner of his mouth, the tip protruding, and it made him look both stupid and crazy, the kind of guy who couldn't keep his tongue out of the cold.

  His file was full of the small detail that spelled trouble: never made it out of high school; juvenile record for theft; failed the psychological tests for both the marines and the army. Might have robbed a couple of gas stations, but hadn't gotten caught at it. Hung out with the Clan, a mid-continent neo-Nazi motorcycle club that mostly got in fights with other neo-Nazi groups and Chicano gangs.

  All right. Lucas did some editing on the file, then called the duty man at the BCA and told him to circulate the file to sheriffs' departments in Minnesota and western Wisconsin.

  Kicked back, and thought about the Republican convention.

  In the months leading up to the main event, the nomination of John McCain for the presidency, he'd argued that the Twin Cities weren't prepared to deal with it. He'd made the argument hard enough, and loud enough-he had excellent contacts with the local TV stations and the two major newspapers-that the local agencies finally got some intelligence work under way, and contracted with police agencies around the country to bring in more cops. In doing that, he'd made himself unpopular enough that he'd been disinvited from the party.

  Well, what the hell. He didn't want to go anyway.

  Glanced at his watch, called a pal in the Ramsey County sheriff's office. "Surprised you're home," he said, when the guy came up.
"I thought you'd be out violating the rights of the protesters."

  "I would be, but my kid's leaving for Madison this weekend. I'm packing a trailer," the guy said.

  "Not bad," Lucas said. "I always liked that place. When I was at the U, we'd go down there and try to get laid."

  "Glad to hear that, since it's my daughter I'm taking down," the guy said.

  Oops. "Mmm. Anyway, you got things under control?"

  "I think so. We're going out tomorrow night, hit some of the assholes," the guy said. "Preempt them. They think they're hiding in Minneapolis, but we've got a couple of guys with them."

  "Ah, jeez…"

  "You're welcome to come along and watch."

  Lucas was tempted, but it would be a bit humiliating, standing there, rubbernecking, while the other guys got the action. "Ah, you know. I pissed off too many people. But' glad to know you got it covered."

  They talked a few more minutes, then he went out and hung with Letty and Sam, and started an Alan Furst novel, and eventually went to bed and slept the sleep of the righteous.

  ***

  Friday morning, another gorgeous day, driving north up Cretin Avenue.

  Anti-Semites were milling around the corner at Summit Avenue, with signs about Palestine; on up to I-94, then blowing the doors off the chain of Camrys and Priuses as he merged into traffic. Made him smile, made him feel happy, as though there were possibilities in the world. He hustled across town, up I-35Every, off on Maryland, down the road to the headquarters of the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension ' past the filling station where a madwoman once tried to shoot him to death.

  He parked in the BCA lot and walked up to his office, peeling off his jacket to show the.45 he carried under his armpit. Pulled off the shoulder rig, stuck the whole apparatus in a file cabinet. His secretary, Carol, trailed him into his office.

  "You've got a call, sounds like it might be important," she said.

  "The security committee? I got that'"

  Carol looked at a piece of paper. "From New York. You know a woman named Lily Rothenburg? Says she's a captain with the NYPD?"

  "Absolutely" Lucas said.

  "She wants you to give her a call," Carol said. "She says it's semi-urgent."

  "Ring her up and transfer it in," Lucas said. "Dig up a phone number for Dan Coates over in Wisconsin-it's the Special Assignments Bureau in their Justice Department. I need to talk to him right after Lily."

  "Gotcha." She hesitated in the doorway. "One more thing. You got a nut call: the guy says, "Is this Davenport 's office?"' I say, "Yes." He says, "Tell that motherfucker that I'm coming for him."

  Lucas laughed: "Did he say who it was?"

  "There was a caller ID. Do you know an Achmed Mansoor?"

  Lucas shook his head. "Nope. Did he say anything about Allah?"

  "No ' and this guy sounded like an American. Ghetto accent. I did a reverse directory and came up with a Middle Eastern sandwich shop in Dinkytown."

  "Gimme the address: I'll look into it."

  ***

  Del Capslock had come through the door while they were talking, and said to Carol, "You sweet thing."

  Carol, feigning propriety: "How's the pregnant wife?"

  "She's fine. She's great," Del said. "She looks like a goddamn rosebud. Doc says she's starting to dilate, but she's still a while out. She's got me running around like a Shriner parade."

  Lucas asked, "Do they still have those?"

  "They must, somewhere," Del said. "They still got Shriners." He eased into one of the visitors' chairs and put his boots on Lucas's desktop. "So what's this about a sandwich shop in Dinkytown?"

  Carol explained and Del said, "I'll go over and have a chat with the guy."

  "I'm not doing much," Lucas said.

  "Yeah, but you go walking in the door, maybe he pulls out a shotgun and kills you," Del said. "Me, he doesn't know from Adam."

  "As far as you know."

  "Whatever." Del yawned then added, "I never heard of a cop getting killed by somebody who called ahead."

  "Probably happened somewhere," Lucas said. "Everything's happened somewhere."

  ***

  Del was a battered man in his late forties, in jeans and a Pennzoil T-shirt with grease spots on it, rough-side-out Red Wing work boots, and an old, unfashionable nylon fanny pack, worn in front. He had a cell-phone-sized digital camera hung on a string around his neck and a.38 revolver in the fanny pack. He'd been working the streets around the convention center.

  "So what's happening?" Lucas asked.

  "Ah, you know: kids and old people. There are some assholes out there, but most of them are hobbyists. They seem like my mom ' you know, old. They've got these recycled chants from the sixties. "Hey, hey, John McCain, how many children have you slain?"' Like that."

  "With a few assholes."

  "A few," Del said. "Vandals. Red-and-black flags. Slingshots. Guys who want to wreck the place for the pure pleasure of it. I could point out twenty people, if we picked them up and put them in the basement for a few days, the convention would be a sea of peace."

  " Ramsey County sheriff is setting up a raid tonight, tomorrow night, pick some of those guys up," Lucas said. "Or so I'm told."

  "Here?"

  "No, over in Minneapolis," Lucas said. "They're pulling in some Minneapolis cops."

  They talked about that for a while, and Lucas told Del about the guy with the sniper rifle, and Del shook his head and said, "That's all we need."

  "You having a good time?" Lucas asked.

  "Yeah, I am," Del said. "I like talking to them; pretty good folks, for the most part. Even the assholes are interesting."

  "I'd like to get out there; just to see it, you know?" Lucas said.

  Del was doubtful. "You look too much like a cop-or even a Republican."

  "Not that."

  "Well-you got that vibe. You'd have to tone it down," Del said. "Like, borrow clothes from me." Lucas shuddered: "Maybe not."

  He was, in fact, a clotheshorse, this morning wearing a light checked sport coat over an icy-blue long-sleeved dress shirt, black summer-weight woolen slacks hand-knit by an Italian virgin, and square-toed English-made loafers.

  ***

  Carol shouted: "Lily Rothenburg on two."

  Lucas said to Del, "I got a call coming here."

  Del said, "Pick it up. I ain't going anywhere, if it's Lily calling."

  "Fuck you," Lucas said. He and Lily had once been a passing fashion, including a geometrical insanity in an earlier Porsche. Del knew all about it: Lucas shook his head and picked up the phone. "Lily?"

  "Lucas Davenport," she said, "How's every little thing?"

  "Well, we got a lot going on, so ' pretty good," Lucas said. "How about you? How's the kid? If you're divorced, I can offer you space in my garage."

  She laughed and said, "From what I hear about Weather, it'd be more like the backyard. But, the kid's fine and I'm not divorced."

  " Del 's here, he says hi'"

  They caught up for a few minutes, then she said, "Look. We've got a problem-or, maybe, you've got a problem. We had an armored car robbery here two and a half years ago, and two guards were killed. They were off-duty cops. The robbery crew got away with a half-million dollars."

  "Not that big, for an armored car," Lucas said.

  "Well, there was more inside, but the thing went bad. Most of the money was behind a locked barrier inside the truck," Lily said. "The idea was, if trouble started, the guards would put the keys in a solid-steel lockbox inside the back, which they didn't have keys to, and then nobody could get at the money ' that's what they did. But somebody got pissed, we think, and started shooting, and all the shooters got were the receipts from a couple of big-box stores that hadn't been put behind the barrier yet."

  "How does that get to us?"

  "We think the leader of the crew was a guy named Brutus Cohn," Lily said. "We got an anonymous tip. A male caller, deep southern accent, calling from Kennedy. He said that he'd seen Coh
n getting on a plane at Heathrow, in England, yesterday, going to Los Angeles. He said he knew him from Alabama, and Cohn is from Alabama. He said Cohn had grown a red beard, and Cohn is a redhead."

  "So he sounds good," Lucas said.

  "Yes. Anyway, this guy said he was waiting to get on his plane, when he saw Cohn. He didn't want to call from London, because he was afraid we'd identify him, and he's afraid of Cohn. So he got way back and watched Cohn going into a gate for a flight to Los Angeles. By the time we got to the LA cops, Cohn's flight was an hour out. They met the plane, and there was no Brutus Cohn. There was no way to get back to the original source, so we checked with Heathrow. Everything was right: there was the Kennedy gate, and down the way, the LA gate. But the gate was a joint gate-and the next gate down, where Cohn could also have been headed…"

  "… came here."

  "Right. The Minneapolis plane was on the ground for three hours before we got it straight. Our people talked to the flight crew, and there was a man in first class who probably was Cohn. He almost certainly was the guy that the source saw, and the source said he knew Cohn pretty well. The crew said he was very tall, fairly thin, muscular, red hair, and charming with the flight crew. The girls liked him, and that's Cohn, from what we hear."

  "What's he doing?" Lucas asked.

  "Don't know. It's possible he moved right on through the Cities, changed planes, and is gone. But it's also possible that he's up to something," Lily said. "He's a serious, ultra-violent holdup man who needs a big score so he can bury himself somewhere. He mostly worked in the south, down to Florida, north to Atlanta, west to New Mexico. Maybe California. Maybe one job in Mexico. The FBI isn't sure about all of that, but if they've got him right, there have been at least five dead in thirty to forty robberies, and one survivor shot through the chest who should've died. He's the guy who eventually identified Cohn for the FBI, from prison photographs. S. We've been looking, and waiting, and here he is. You've got that convention going on ' lots of cash there. A boatload of cash."