“How far from here?” Lucas asked.
“Not a mile. East down Windmill, then over a block. The neighbor said the house was an Airbnb, renters coming and going every week before these two guys showed up. It’s them.”
“When’s the SWAT going in?”
“They were ready, they’re closing in right now. We’re welcome to go down that way, but they want us a few hundred yards out... They’ll be doing it in fifteen minutes or so. Not a lot to think about.”
“I thought we’d be doing this,” Lucas said.
Tremanty nodded. “So did I. But I don’t care as long as I get Deese.”
—
CASE, the assistant sheriff, had set up two rings of pursuit cars around the target house. One ring one block out, the other ring three. If by some weird chance Deese and the others broke past the SWAT squad, the net would collapse on them.
Lucas, Bob, Rae, and Tremanty, all in the Tahoe, moved up to the first ring and parked. Bob asked Tremanty, “How’s the head?”
“Okay. I stood in a shower for ten minutes with cold water in my face. I won’t forget it, but I’m not stumbling around like a clown anymore,” Tremanty said. To Lucas: “What’d you mean when you told me you’d been there?”
Lucas told him about the murder of the mafioso, about clawing at his face and coming away with a handful of brains.
“Aw, Jesus,” Tremanty said. “That’s, uh...”
“Yeah.”
—
BOB’S HANDSET BURPED. “They’re going in,” a voice said. “Everybody locked and loaded?”
“Like John Wayne said,” Bob said.
Lucas rolled a window down. If there was shooting, they’d be close enough to hear it. There was nothing, and a minute later the radio burped again. “The house is empty. Stand down.”
“Goddamnit,” Tremanty said.
Rae said, “We need to look.”
—
THEY HAD TOWALKthe last block to the house, where they found Case and the SWAT commander running the scene. The house was typical of the neighborhood, with both garage doors up. A white Ford F-150, with mud-smeared license plates, was parked on the single-bay side.
Case, the assistant sheriff, was standing at the front door. Lucas, Tremanty, Bob, and Rae walked across the concrete lawn and looked past her into the house. Lucas could see clothing on the couch and sacks of junk food on a kitchen counter. “They may be coming back. For the truck,” Lucas said to Case. “You should shut down the scene.”
She said, “We’re already there. We’ll leave the outer ring in place—the Cadillac won’t get in here—but it’s probably too late.”
She pointed, and Lucas turned to look. Three blocks away, a group of vans were parked at the side of the street, with a dozen people standing in the street itself, looking down at them. “TV,” Case said. “If they’re paying any attention to the media, they’ll see us.”
“How many guys are you leaving here?” Tremanty asked.
“Eight unmarked cars, parked on side streets, a block out from the house. If they come in, we’ll see them. And we’ll have the manpower to take them down. You can go on in, if you want.”
She went to do something else, and Lucas, Bob, Rae, and Tremanty stepped inside the house, cruised the living room and the two bedrooms. There was high-end clothing in the closets and on the floor, in boxes and bags. “After the mall, they must’ve known there’d be a massive manhunt,” Tremanty said. “They’re on their way out of town.”
“That Lenny guy said the Highway Patrol is all over the roads going out of town,” Bob said.
“I... don’t know,” Lucas said. “If they were planning to run straight from the mall, they would have packed a lot of this stuff up. What would it take, five minutes? And why leave the truck? It’s a hell of a lot more anonymous than the Cadillac.”
“Even in the LA shoot-out, they took stuff,” Bob said.
