“We need a uniform,” she said.
One of the cops said, “I’ll come. I’ve been here before. More guys are on the way.” He stepped back from White and added, “Uh, you’ve got blood all over your face. You okay?”
“I’m good. Just haven’t had time to visit the spa.”
• • •
The three ofthem went inside, guns high, where two short women clerks in beige U.S. Inn blouses were standing behind a counter, sticking up side-by-side, looking at the handguns likeWhoa, like a couple of meerkats.
Lucas, checking the floor, said, “No blood.”
“They’re gone,” White said. To the clerks: “Did some people…”
“Nobody came in here.”
The cop was at the desk: “You’ve got recorders on your cameras. We need to see the video.”
The slightly taller of the two short clerks said, “Uh. Yeah. Back here,” thumb over her shoulder toward a back room. There was not a security station, as such, but a video panel divided into four sections, one for each of the three cameras focused on the parking lot and one on the front desk. The clerk dialed up the section that showedthe Wagoneer bouncing into the parking lot and jamming itself halfway into a parking spot.
Seconds later, another SUV, this one cream-colored, and smaller, pulled into the lot and two people, a man and a woman, got out of the Wagoneer, one from the driver’s seat and the other from the front passenger seat.
Both of them were average height or a bit taller for their sex, strong-looking. They wore dark blue wool-and-nylon ski masks, covering their hair, obscuring their faces. The man from the passenger seat was hunched, staggering, hopping on one leg, apparently wounded. The woman, the little they could see of her, showed a streak of what appeared to be blood around the rim of her eye socket.
“Window blood was from her, we scalped her,” White said; the comment was technical, rather than satisfied.
The staggering man got in the back of the new SUV while the driver of that vehicle and the female driver of the Wagoneer opened the back door of the Jeep and carried the man from the back seat to the cream-colored vehicle and pushed him in beside the staggering man. As they did that, a pistol fell out of the wounded man’s belt; the woman stooped and picked it up, and seconds later, thrust the sniper rifle and the spotting scope onto the floor of the back seat along with the pistol.
White said, “Subaru, I think.”
The two drivers got into the small SUV, which pulled straight through the parking lot and out of sight of the video camera.
“O-M-G, that was…” the clerk began, and then, “There’s another camera further back that’ll catch them going out. Let me freeze this one and see if I can get some plates…”
She rolled the video back and got the plates from the second vehicle, which was a Subaru, as White had said.
Lucas went back to 9-1-1 and read the license plate numbers and a description of the two vehicles to the operator and waited. She was back in a minute: “They’re from Hertz and National. We’re putting out a BOLO on the Subaru and we’ll get photos of the renters from car rental companies…Got that started.”
“Call me back when you get anything. We’ve got a murdered woman and these guys are professional shooters, so warn everyone.”
“That’s already done, we’ve got Orono and Wayzata and everybody else swarming the highways, looking for the Subaru,” the operator said. “I’ll call you…”
• • •
They turned towardthe sound of people banging through the front door, loud questions, and then Beard came in, trailed by Sherwood. Beard asked, “What?”
White and Lucas filled them in and Beard said, “Got that much, anyway, at least a couple guys down.” He was red-faced, frantic, trembling with energy that had nowhere to go. Sherwood stood behind him, hands in his coat pockets, icy calm. He smiled at Lucas and White and said, “Not bad, the shooting. We’ve got a big problem, though. I’ve got to make a call. Don’t go anywhere.”
“We’ve got everything available looking for the Subaru,” White said. “Tell that to whoever you’re calling.”
“That’s not my problem, that’s yours,” Sherwood said. “My problem is, somebody gave up the Sokolovs: identity, location, and time. We’ve got a leak and a bad one. That’s a much more serious problem than three wounded Russian scuzzballs on the loose.”
Beard looked at him for a moment, ran a hand through his hair, then asked, “A leak? My side or your side?”
“A good question,” Sherwood said. He stepped away toward the hall: “Good luck with the chase. If you catch up with them, try to keep somebody alive long enough that we can have a chat. I’ll go make my call.”
“Hey,” White called after him. “Summers or Sokolovs?”
“Used to be Summers, until fifteen minutes ago. We’ll have to find a new name for them now. Sokolov is the original—Masha, Leonid, and Bernard.”
