John Sandford - Wicked Prey

"People have rented out their condos, though, right?"

"Yup. A few. People have cabins up north. They stay up there and make money down here on the convention."

Eller gave them a list of names-"most of them are older, they'll be home"-and also the name and phone number of his opposite number in the other apartment building. "That building's all rentals, but they set up an apartment association, and Ken runs it. More like a tenants' union than a condo association."

They decided to start at the top, and rode the elevator up, and when they got off, Jenkins stopped, and when Lucas and Shrake looked back, he said, "You know what? We look exactly like a bunch of flatfeet."

Lucas looked at them, and himself, and sighed and nodded. "All right. You two guys do this building. I'm gonna go talk to this Ken guy in the other building."

"This is feeling kind of weak," Shrake said, turning around to look at the empty hallways. "I got that empty-tank feeling."

"Maybe it'll go away when you do some actual work," Lucas said.

But it was the worst kind of police work, Lucas thought, as he took the elevator back down. The kind of stuff done as a last resort, talking to people who you had no reason to suspect knew anything at all. Or maybe, he thought, like church bingo; sort of dull and hopeless, but somebody was going to win. Just not you.

On the street level again, another two glittery couples brushed past, aiming up the hill. Four cops went down the street on horses; horses seemed to be everywhere. The cops looked him over, but the last cop lifted a hand and said, "Davenport," and Lucas waved back, and pushed into the lobby of the apartment building.

Ken Jacobsen, who lived on the eighteenth floor of the second tower, looked at the photographs and shook his head. He'd been cooking liver and onions, and the apartment was fragrant with the gravy. "Let me give you some names, people to talk to."

"Are you around the building much?"

"Off and on," Jacobsen said. "But we're not directly responsible for the buildings. We're not owners, so it's not quite like it is in Dan's condo."

As Lucas was going out the door, Jacobsen said, "Hey: let me make a call, here. I'll see if the Hassans are still in the building."

The Hassans were two cell-phone-equipped Ethiopian janitors: their English wasn't good, but was good enough that Lucas was sure that they hadn't seen Cohn or Diaz.

"Terrorists?" one of the Hassans asked.

Lucas nodded. "If you see them, call nine-one-one."

"Nine-one-one," said the second Hassan. "We will do."

Lucas talked to two widows and a widower, and was growing depressed, looking into their tiny apartments, when a call came in from one of the Minneapolis detectives: "We got a hit. A good one."

"Good one?" Lucas asked, the evening suddenly brighter.

"Old lady says she saw a guy going through with two women.

Tall, thin, dark hair, mustache. She said the woman looked like a Filipino, but that seemed close enough-the picture you gave us does look sort of like something else. So I showed her the mug shots, and she's not sure on the woman, but she's fairly sure about Cohn. She said it's him."

"Terrific. This is terrific," Lucas said. "You said Park Vista? Where's that at?"

The cop told him, and Lucas said, "Hell, you're right down the street."

"It's Park Vista Two, exactly. It's the door on the left. This old lady was no dummy-I got a good feeling about it, man."

"Okay. I'm coming over, I'm bringing my guys, I'm cranking up the SWAT."

"Listen, I can watch the lobby and the door, but my partner thinks you should bring the SWAT in through the basement," the cop said. "They can bring their van right down the front ramp-it'll take a Sprinter van, the manager says, so the SWAT stuff should fit. From there, it's either up the elevators or up the stairs."

"I'll hook you up with the SWAT guy. His name is Able Peterson, you can talk him in. This is good work, man."

He called the SWAT commander: "Able, we need you."

"Goddamnit, Lucas, you got them? Where?"

Lucas gave them the address off Mears Park. "It's the new ones, the ones with the colored panels. It's the one on the left as you look at them from the front. I've got the name of a guy who can let you into the basement level, the parking level."

"It'll take me twenty minutes to break off here, get my guys ready to go."

He gave Peterson the cop's phone number, and then called Shrake and Jenkins: "We've got a line on them."

"Where at?" Jenkins asked.

"Park Vista-those big twin buildings on Mears Park."

"That'd be about right. Half-full, big buildings…"

"Two minutes," Lucas said.

Letty decided that she had no choice: or rather, she had a choice, but both options were bad. One was bad for Briar, one was bad for Lucas, and that tipped the balance. You took care of your own.

She'd gotten Whitcomb's phone number the first day; now she rode her bike across town to the Capitol lawn as the evening came on. There were a couple thousand people floating around, after some kind of event, maybe a music thing. A Channel Three van was parked at the bottom of the hill, on the street. Among the crowd she spotted a group of frat boys from the University of Minnesota, who were towing some sorority girls around in little red wagons, tiny floats for Obama. She chained her bike to a tree and jogged over.

One of them, a tall young man with green soap-spiked hair that made him look a little like the Statue of Liberty, was wearing a homemade button that said "Greeks for Obama," and Letty grabbed him.

"You wanna be a TV star?" she asked him.

"Shit, yes."

"Try not to say "shit" when you're on camera," she said. "I'll be right back."

She jogged down the hill to the van and knocked on the door.

Lois looked out at her: "Letty," she said. She seemed abashed, having ratted Letty out a couple days before. "Are you supposed to be here?"

Letty said, "Could we do a minute on some kids from the U? They're pretty funny ' Frats for Obama…" Lois said, "If they're coherent'"

Letty said, "Get a camera…" and she headed back up the hill to the frat boys. They did a minute, and then Letty told Lois that she better head home, but she wanted one last look around. Lois said, "Okay. And that frat boy stuff-not too bad."

"At least he didn't say "shit" on TV," Letty said.

Alibi.

Two minutes later, she was on her bike, the streets not so well-lit now, but she had her switchblade and the confidence that she could move quickly enough, and in the dark, that nobody could move on her. She was right.

From an outdoor phone at Metro U, six blocks from Whitcomb's house, she made the call: tried to put on an accent that she'd picked up from HBO specials on hookers. A male voice, and she said, "Randy, you know that bitch of yours is hanging out with the Davenport kid? Thought you'd like to know."

"What? What?"

"That bitch of yours is hanging out with the Davenport kid, told her what you were up to. You take care." "This ain't Randy. Wait a minute."

Letty groaned. Wrong guy. Then Randy came up: "What?"

She did it all over again, then clicked off, got back on her bike, headed up the hill toward Whitcomb's house, pumping as hard as she could.

On the way over to Park Vista, Lucas called Operations at the BCA and got an urgent warrant started: "I don't care who you call, but I need it in five minutes. If we don't get it, we might have to go anyway, because these guys are killers and they're going to kill again, and maybe tonight."

All recorded: building a case for a warrantless entry.