John Sandford - Bad blood

"Are you on a… date?" her son asked.

She half-laughed and said, "No. I'm on a bust. The biggest one ever. I'll tell you all about it in the morning, and it'll be in the papers. All the papers." BACK AT the sheriff's office, the two on-duty patrol officers, one male and one female, were waiting in the hall outside her office. She said, "We got an emergency," and unlocked her door, and another patrol officer, the second woman, who'd been off-duty, came through the outer door and called, "What's up?"

The next half hour was like walking through waist-deep glue. She and Virgil had agreed to keep the details of the case secret, but now people had to know: she briefed the deputies, figured out who'd be on the highway and who'd be going on the raid at the Rouse place. The other two off-duty deputies drifted in, and one of the two city cops, the other having gone to Des Moines for reasons unknown, and she had to bring them up to date. She needed three cops, at least, in two cars, to cover the truck coming back from Hayfield; she wanted no less than a one-to-one ratio on those.

She needed to leave one at the office, to handle incoming arrests, which left her with two, in addition to herself, to cover the Rouse warrant. Virgil would be coming with at least five more people-he'd picked up a second highway patrolman along the way.

When she'd worked through it, one eye on the clock, nearly a half hour had passed.

"We've got to move-Einstadt and the others will be coming through anytime. Rob, Don, Sherry, you get out to the overpass. Do not let them get by you. Go. And talk to me. Talk to me all the time."

To the others, Greg Dunn and Bob Hart, she said, "Let's go. Separate cars. It's possible that they'll have gone to this meeting. If not, we arrest them, and isolate their daughter, instantly. Okay? And we never leave them alone."

She felt lonesome on the way out. She was one of the few female sheriffs in the country, and that was a burden; people watched her. Now she was way out on a limb, and Virgil, God bless him, would do what he could to help her, but if this whole thing turned out to be a mistake, she was done.

Done after a month in office…

On the other hand, if it was what it looked like… she was going to be a movie star. And she would like that, she admitted to herself. She would take her movie stardom, take a picture of it, and stick it straight up her ex-husband's ass…

She was thinking about being a movie star and almost missed the off-ramp; as it was, she went up it at eighty miles an hour and had to stand on the brakes not to miss the turn at the top.

She called Virgil. "Where are you?"

"Twenty minutes out of Homestead. Coming fast."

"I just came off I-90 turning toward the Rouses'. I'll be there in five minutes…" She summarized the rest of the disposition of forces, and Virgil said, "If they're meeting at the Rouses', don't go busting in with just the three of you. I'm thirty minutes away from you."

Her radio burped and she said, "Hold on," and picked up the radio: "Yes?"

Sherry, the deputy with the group waiting for the Einstadt truck, said, "They just blew past us. Rob and Don are trailing me, I'm about to pass them, just to check the tag. I'll get off at Einstadt's exit but turn the other way. Rob and Don are staying back. Okay, I'm coming up. Yup, the tag is right. It's them. I'm going by, and can't see in the window…"

"That's great, guys. Stick with them. And talk to me. Talk to me." To Virgil, she said, "We've got Einstadt tagged. We're watching him."

"We're coming-we're coming."

She led her short caravan down the country roads to the Rouse place and looked up the hill, and saw a light in the house. Only one, and from a distance, it looked like one of the houses in the romance novels she used to read when she was in high school, one of the novels with a young woman fleeing down a hill looking back at a house with a single lit window.

She shivered, and turned up the drive.

Inside the house, Kristy Rouse was on the Internet, looking at her forbidden Facebook page, which she held under a fake name. She talked about sex a little, on the page, pretending that she was older than she was, and had gotten quite a few friends, a couple of whom had offered to drive out to Minnesota to meet her.

She wasn't that dumb.

When the headlights swept through the room, she quickly killed the browser history, then started running through a list of bookmarked religious pages, Bible pages, and homework pages, opening and closing them, so that there'd be a history on the machine, though she was not sure her parents even knew about the feature.

She'd done four pages when she realized that there were several cars coming up the hill, and she ran to the window and looked out: in the headlights of the second one, she could see the leader, and the leader had a roof rack with police lights on top.

She looked at the computer, then the phone, and went for the phone as she continued to run through pages. Her mother came up on her cell, asking impatiently, "Kristy, what is it? We're really busy-"

"I think a whole bunch of police are here," Kristy said. "Three cars. They're coming up the hill right now."

"Oh, God, oh no… Kristy, listen to me. Listen to me. They may ask you questions… Ask for a lawyer. Right away, ask for a lawyer… Don't tell them anything about anything. Just don't talk. Some of the men are coming to get you. They're coming."

There was a loud knock at the door and Kristy said, "They're here."

"Listen to me, Kristy-"

Another knock, and her mother said, "Do you understand what I'm saying, Kristy? You're a big girl-"

"I think they're knocking the door down," Kristy said, her voice cool. She felt cool.

"Don't say anything to them. The men are coming," her mother said.

She put the phone down. She knew what they were afraid of. A lot of photographs, taken by her father. Of people doing things to each other. Of people doing things to her. She smiled, and went to answer the door.

Dunn reached past Coakley and gave the door a solid thwack-thwack-thwack with his fist, hitting it hard enough to shake it, and then said, "Want us to kick it?"

Coakley saw a shadow moving toward them and said, "I think somebody's coming. Off to the side, guys," and she took her pistol out of her holster and held it by her side, the only time in her life she'd ever drawn it in the line of duty. Dunn and Hart were doing the same, and then the shadow hardened, and the door's lock rattled, and the door opened and a girl looked out. "Yes?"

"Are you Kristy?" Coakley asked.

"Yup. My parents aren't here," Kristy said.

"We have a search warrant for your house. We're going to have to come in."

"Well, then I guess you better," Kristy said.

"Are you alone?"

"Yup. They all went to a meeting at Emmett Einstadt's."

Coakley looked at Dunn and tipped her head, and he nodded and went back outside. He'd call the cars trailing the Einstadt truck. Coakley said to Kristy, "Well, let's go in, and I'll explain this all to you."

They went up the short flight of stairs, Kristy leading them to the kitchen, where she pulled out a chair and pointed Coakley and Hart at the others, and Coakley took one and asked, "How old are you?"

"Fifteen. Last month."

"Okay, we're here because we've heard-we've had people tell us-that the World of Spirit church has involved adults having sex with younger people, like yourself, and like Kelly Baker. We're here to search your house to see if we can find evidence of that."

"I thought somebody might come someday, especially after Kelly died," Kristy said. She turned and looked at Dunn, who'd come back in, and who nodded at Coakley. She continued: "I don't know exactly what happened to her, but I heard people talking for a while, then they hushed it all up. She was providing service to three or four of the men, and she suffocated, is what the rumor is. Jacob Flood had a great big cock and he left it in her throat too long and something happened and she couldn't start breathing again when he took it out. He was like that. He was a jerk like that. He liked to see girls choke on it."