“Then, somebody will sue us. Either the relatives of the dead and injured, or relatives of the accused, because we didn’t do all the procedure. That’s where we’re at, now, in terms of finding justice.”
“That’s not good.”
“Nope.”
• • •
Louis Mallard andJane Chase had been wandering around the crime scene, getting close, staring down at the bodies, while trying to stay out of the way. After a while, they started toward Sherwood’s car, and Lucas said, “Here they come,” and he and Sherwood got out to meet them on the street.
Mallard had tears in his eyes, and evidence that more had already trickled down his aging cheeks. “This is dreadful,” he said. “This is the worst thing since Miami. If that poor Haskins dies, it’ll be worse than Miami.”
“Have you heard anything about him? About the guys in the hospital?” Lucas asked.
“Haskins is a mess,” Chase said. “He’ll be in the OR all night. The other agent has a bullet wound in his leg, torn up muscle and cracked a bone, but he should be okay, aside from any psychological trauma. Which could be extensive. Haskins, we don’t know.”
Sherwood asked, “But he won’t die?”
“We don’t know. He could,” Chase said.
Mallard: “Ah. I heard just before you guys called. Leonid Sokolovdied about eleven o’clock. They say that the wounds from the bullet, plus the deterioration of the poison, whatever it was, couldn’t be recovered from.”
“So Bernie got it done,” Lucas said.
Sherwood, turning away from them: “Unbelievable.”
• • •
The agent who’dbeen shot in the leg confirmed what Lucas and Sherwood had seen, that the hit team had fled in a black pickup. The Minneapolis cops began scouring back streets, and a possible pickup was found in half an hour, along with a witness.
The witness, who’d left her own apartment to smoke a cigarette, said it was so cold that she stayed inside her building’s outer door to smoke it, and if that was illegal, sue her. She’d seen a man and a woman get out of the pickup and get into a white van, which immediately pulled away from the curb and disappeared around a corner. The man didn’t seem to be wearing a coat.
She thought that was curious, but not notably illegal, so she finished the cigarette and went back upstairs to stream a video before she went to bed. When she’d seen the flashers on the cop cars surrounding the pickup, she went back downstairs and out into the street, to ask what was going on.
The pickup wasn’t quite empty: the cops found a half-empty gun magazine lying on the floor, that would match the two Berettas found at the scene of the shooting. The two guns were like nothing anyone had seen before.
That information was passed to the feds; St. Vincent had shown up, and had spoken to the agent who killed Nikitin, then put him inan FBI vehicle by himself, to be further interviewed by the FBI’s own Inspection Division.
After isolating the agent, St. Vincent walked over to Mallard and Chase, and took them aside for a moment, then Mallard called to Lucas and Sherwood: “Hey, guys, Lucas, John…”
They went over and St. Vincent said, “Our man Tom Lawrence said you witnessed the shooting, the one where Lawrence shot the man on the ground. The Minneapolis crime scene people says it appears that the shot was fired into his forehead from a very close range, and apparently straight through his head and into the blacktop. Tom says the guy made a move for one of the Berettas and if he’d gotten it up, Tom himself might have been killed, and other people on the street. You guys were supposedly witnesses.”
“That’s the way I saw it,” Lucas said. “We dumped our car and ran over to the two guys who were down, Haskins and the other guy…”
“Droll…” They all glanced over at the body, now covered with a black plastic sheet.
Lucas continued: “Yeah, while we were doing that, I saw the hit team guy moving. Not dead. The guy who was shot in the leg said he had an automatic weapon. After the ambulances had gone, John and I walked over to look at that Cadillac, and he was right. You can see it in the car.”
“There were no guns within reach,” St. Vincent said. “Those Berettas.”
“That’s because he made a play for one of them. Your man shot him, and then he kicked the guns away just, you know…like you’re trained to.”
“Thank you,” St. Vincent said. “I appreciate it.”
Mallard nodded, and then Chase asked Sherwood: “Did you see the same thing?”
“I was putting pressure on the guy’s leg, the guy who got shot, and my back was half turned away. I looked when Lucas said the man on the ground was still alive, and I saw him trying to get up. I didn’t actually see the shooting, but I know the man on the ground was still alive.”
“Good. Somebody from our Inspection Division may want written statements from the two of you, but I’m satisfied,” Mallard said.
