John Sandford - Wicked Prey

"Yeah. Huh."

Lucas looked around at the range of buildings, at the motels farther down the strip. "They were warned. They've got a lookout. Might be looking at us right now."

The arson guy looked around, turned some more, and said, "Lotta windows."

Lucas got the Hudson cops crawling through the surrounding motels, looking for anyone who'd checked out of a room overlooking the corner room where Charles Dee had died. Somebody, he believed, had warned Cohn that the cop was coming; why Dee had gone inside the room, he didn't know, unless he'd been met at the door by Cohn, with a gun.

Nobody had heard a gunshot' There'd been a guest on the other side of Cohn's double room, and he'd been in the room at the time of the fire, asleep, but he should have heard a shot. He'd heard the gasoline explode, had gotten up to see what it was, but hadn't heard a shot.

Goddamned Hudson cops, he thought: they'd sent out one guy to look for a cop killer. And they knew it. They were tap dancing like crazy, but everybody else would know it, too, by the six o'clock news.

Which reminded him. He got on the phone to Carol and said,

"Get those pictures of Cohn out to everybody. Everybody. Beg and plead if you have to, but get his face on the air. Get it to the newspapers, ask them if we can get it on the front."

"What're we doing?" she asked.

"Changing direction. He knows we're all over him, so if he's going to run, he's already on the way. See if we can get it on CNN and the networks, all the local TV, go out two tiers of states-down to Missouri, over to Indiana, out to Montana. Get it out to every airport police department in, say, six hundred miles. Border Patrol, Grand Portage, International Falls. Maybe we'll freeze him here in the Cities, so we'll get another shot at him. If he gets out to LA or down to Miami, he's going to be harder to spot. Beg for help."

"I'll get it started," she said. "But there was trouble downtown with one of the marches, a bunch of people are being arrested. Lot of them. That'll be the big story tomorrow…"

"Tell them about this cop getting killed," Lucas said. "Tell them ' tell them he was left behind when they torched the motel. Tell them we don't know if the guy was dead. That'll catch them."

"Was he dead?"

"Yeah, probably. We really don't know," Lucas said. "We need to stress that, Carol-we don't know. Maybe he burned alive. We need the attention."

Lucas stayed until the reports came back from the adjoining hotels: nobody in any of the rooms in question had checked out.

"Nothing there," the chief said, as though Lucas had screwed up somehow.

"There's something there," Lucas said. "We just haven't found it yet."

"Yeah, well' any more ideas?" the chief asked. "One," Lucas said.

Cohn and Lindy headed west on I-94 toward the Cities, and as soon as they were clear of Hudson, across the bridge in Minnesota, Cohn got on his cell phone and called Cruz.

"I talked to the boys and told them to stay put at least until tonight," Cruz said. "They're cleaning out their rooms, wiping everything down. Do you know where you're going?"

"I get off at the Sixth Street exit? Is that right? Then straight ahead to the parking structure."

"Do not take the elevator," Cruz said. "There's only one, and if there's anybody waiting for a ride, they'll see you, and we can't afford that anymore. You've got to keep out of sight until we can change your appearance. I'll get some hair dye, we'll give you black hair and a mustache, no beard. We can wipe down the condo tonight and get out of here."

"Okay. Maybe. When are you coming over?"

"I'll be a half hour behind you," she said. "I've got to get that dye."

"See you then."

While he was talking, Lindy had organized all the loose stuff into the two sheets, then flattened them and pushed them onto the floor of the backseat, and pulled their two suitcases over them. When she'd tidied up, she waited until Cohn had passed a semi-trailer, then squeezed over the seat back, into the front again. "I hope he was dead," she said. "I hope he didn't burn alive."

"Shut up. I'm sorry, but I've got to think." He thought for two minutes, then said, "Cruz said they had my picture. Where'd that come from? How'd they get it? How'd they know? Jesus Christ, how did that happen?"

"Somebody ratted you out," Lindy said.

Cohn turned his cool gaze on her, saw her sudden nervousness, then smiled: "Thank you, dear. That makes me think you weren't the one."

"If that jerk Spitzer was here, I'd say he's the one," Lindy said. Cohn was silent for a moment, calculating, then said, "He was here."

"He was?" She was surprised. "Where is he?"

"He went away," Cohn said.

"But then, maybe he's pissed…"

"He went away," he said again. His voice had an icicle in it.

Ah. Now she had it. She looked straight ahead and said, "Good." Then, "Maybe before he went away."

"If he was going to do it, he could have told them exactly where we were at, and when we'd be there."

More silence, then Lindy said, "I can't believe it was the boys."

Cohn shook his head: "I can't either. For one thing, they helped us take down a couple of people already, and I can't believe they'd do that, if they were talking to the cops. Or if they did, we'd already have been busted. I mean, they were all there when Spitzer went away."

"Even Rosie, or whatever her name is," Lindy said.

"Yeah, even her." But he remembered Cruz's objection to the murder, and then her explanation, which now seemed less convincing.

Lindy said, "The thing about Rosie is, she might not just be ratting you out. You know what I mean?"

"I think so," Cohn said. "But say it."

"Maybe she's playing some other game that we can't see. She's really' complicated. Where does she get all this information? What is she really doing?"

"She's done a lot of jobs with us," Cohn said. "And three with Jerry, before Jerry's accident."

"Wonder whatever happened to the guy who got Jerry's heart?" Lindy asked.

"I don't know…" Cohn shook his head. "I have to think about Rosie. You're right, she wouldn't just give us up, because we could give her up. She sure as hell didn't tell them that she planned a robbery that ended in a couple of cop killings. Three cop killings, now. If she's the one, why'd she warn us? No-something else is happening."

Lindy pointed: "Exit's coming up."

"That's what I'm afraid of," Cohn said.

The new spot was their disaster hole, a last-ditch hideout that Cruz had arranged, in a condominium building that was half-empty. When she rented the furnished model unit for a month, from the developer, she'd warned him that he couldn't show it: "I haven't shown a unit in three months," he said, ruefully. "I got another model to show if I need to."

The developer was under the impression that Cruz worked with the Republicans, that the model would be used for secret meetings, and she didn't disabuse him. Cruz had had to buy sheets and a couple of blankets, towels and soap and toilet paper, but most everything else had been there, as part of the model.

Cohn pulled into the parking ramp and punched in the key-code, and went down through the ramp and around to their private parking spaces. Then they were out and climbing the interior stairs, five floors. They opened the lobby door and peeked, saw nobody moving-of the six condos on the floor, only two others were occupied-then hurried down to 402, unlocked it and went inside.

As soon as they were in, Cohn called Cruz, who was in her car, heading toward St. Paul.

"The motel looks like a cop convention back there," she said. "You did that guy?"

"I had to," Cohn said. He was looking out the window, over a small park, where a cluster of twenty or thirty peace demonstrators were wandering around, as if they'd lost something: peace, maybe, he thought. A young girl pushed a bike along the sidewalk, on the opposite side of the street, leaned it against a parking meter, walked over to a white van with Channel 3 on the door, and knocked on the window. Cohn had gotten nothing but silence from Cruz, but he waited her out, and finally she said, "I'll see you in ten or fifteen minutes."