“We might be looking for a Jeep Wrangler that’s dripping oil,” Lucas said. “That’s all I got, and I’m not sure of that.”
“Could confirm another sighting,” Sherwood said. “A guy walking a dog saw a black Jeep Wrangler turning out onto the street, in a big hurry, about the time of the attack.”
“So where are you looking?” Lucas asked.
“Everywhere, but there just aren’t a lot of patrol cars out in the countryside, and there seem to be a lot of Jeeps. Every one of them we stop takes ten minutes, because we have to be so careful on the stop,” one of the feds said. He had a half-empty paper cup of coffee in his hand that he was pecking at.
“The hit on the Sokolovs was what, fifteen, twenty miles south of here?” Lucas said. “When they ran, initially, when Shelly and I shot them up, they were headed further south. The Subaru was ditched even further south, on an unused trail down to a frozen-over pond,where they transferred to the Jeep. I’ll bet that wherever they went, it wasn’t too far from the Subaru. They’d want to get off the street as fast as they could.”
The second fed said, “Good points. We alerted all the major jurisdictions around the big lake, Orono, Minnetonka, Wayzata, the county sheriffs…but it’s a lot of territory.”
“Tell him the bad news,” Sherwood said.
The feds both shrugged. One of them asked, “What?”
Sherwood: “I did the numbers. The hunt got started a half hour after they left here. The people they had on the floor, the nurses, didn’t get moving for maybe fifteen minutes, then it took five minutes for the first cops to arrive, and then they had to talk it over and decide what to do. They didn’t even know about the shooting at the house this afternoon, so the hunt was local, right around here. By the time it got expanded toward Minneapolis, might have been an hour.”
“Well, poop,” Lucas said. “Let me…” He took out his phone, punched in a number, and ten seconds later said, “Hey, Frankie, is Virgil there? Well, go get him. He can type later. I only need him for a minute.”
He waited, then said, “Virgie. Got some people running, had a thirty-minute lead. What’s the circle? Yeah? Yeah. Yeah. Thanks.”
Off the phone, Lucas said, “That was a friend who works down in southern Minnesota. He has lots of incidents in the countryside where people are running, but nobody knows which direction. He says with a thirty-minute head start, a runner could be anywhere in about a seven-hundred-square-mile area. Doesn’t sound reasonable, but it is.”
“So we’re screwed,” Sherwood said.
“Well, we gotta think that the hit crew is not totally familiar withthe country around here, because they didn’t plan on visiting this hospital. I have to believe that they’d be using a navigation app. If I were you, I’d put in a route search between here and the Orono city hall. I’d bet they’d be along there somewhere. After Orono, I dunno. They could be anywhere after that.”
One of the feds said, “Hell, they could be in Des Moines.”
“I don’t think so. They got to the Sokolov house in fifteen minutes. They’ve got a safe house around there somewhere and they’ve got three wounded to take care of.”
The feds looked at each other, and one of them said to the other, “Let’s get on that,” and to Lucas, “That’s a good thought, sir.”
“Are you going to steal credit for thinking of that?” Lucas asked.
The fed nodded: “That was my plan.”
Lucas looked at Sherwood and said, “That’s not something you see every day. A fed with a sense of humor.”
• • •
“That’s about allwe got,” Sherwood said. “The people here, they got nothing. They saw eyebrows on the woman and say she’s white-blond and had an accent. The guy was burly and had a bigger accent. That’s it.”
Lucas took a phone call on the burner. All he had was an incoming number from the 703 area code, which he knew was Arlington, Virginia, because that’s where the Marshals Service was headquartered.
“Davenport,” he said.
“Lucas, this is Russ.” Russell Forte, his nominal boss.
“Yeah, Russ.”
“Man, I don’t know how you do it, but I just took a call from the Director and he told me to call you and tell you that you’re full-timeon this, whatever it is, shooting. I don’t even know what the hell I’m talking about.”
Lucas filled him in and Forte said, “Okay, that clears up some of it. The Director got called by a deputy attorney general andhewas called by somebody so important he shares a bathroom with Jesus Christ himself. So, be good, don’t piss anyone off.”
“You know I try. Not to piss anyone off.”
“But youfailso often,” Forte said. “Okay, not a discouraging word. Cold out there? Of course it is. Not too bad here. I’m going to bed. Good night.”
