Letty answered on the second ring. “Hello?”
“Letty. Pilate’s got me. They’re going to kill me. I think they killed Henry. They killed a man up by Hayward, they murdered him in the RV and set it on fire. They’ve got me in the back of Bony’s car, they’re getting gas, I stole this phone—”
“Skye! Hide the phone, but leave it on. I think they can track cell phones. You have to turn off the ringer. Do you know how to turn off the ringer?”
“No.”
“Do you know what kind of phone it is?”
“I think it’s an iPhone.”
“There should be a button on the side of it . . .” Letty talked her through it, and Skye found the button and pushed it until the ringer-tone indicator was down as far as it would go.
“Okay, I think it’s off,” Skye said.
“Look in the upper left corner of the screen. Does it say AT&T, or Verizon, or—”
“It says Verizon.”
“What kind of car are you in?”
“A station wagon, an old one, it’s black and it’s funny-looking and it stinks. But I don’t know where I am, I think we drove out of the city we were in.”
“Okay. When they come back, hide the phone in the car, in case they search you. Leave it turned on. Now, tell me what happened.”
“They picked me up at a mall in Duluth,” Skye said. “I was walking in and this car pulls over to the side, and this guy gets out and picks me up, just picks me up and throws me in the back of the car, and Pilate was there and they beat me up and then they taped me up . . .”
They took her to Hayward, she said, where they told her that they were going to take her out in the woods for a party. She didn’t believe she’d survive it.
“Then something happened and they killed the man in the RV, where they had me. There was a fight, and Kristen got hurt. Got cut. We drove for a couple of hours, for a long time, anyway, and then they stopped at a hospital. I think we were in Minneapolis or St. Paul, we were at some ATMs and I could tell it was a big city.”
“Okay. Hide the phone. I’m going to call my dad.”
? ? ?
LUCAS WAS ON I-94, heading back to the Twin Cities, when Letty called. “Skye called me. Pilate’s got her, she thinks they’re going to kill her . . .”
She gave him the details of Skye’s call, and Lucas said, “She’s right. They’re going to kill her. I gotta call in. Good-bye.”
He got the BCA duty officer on the phone and told him the problem. “Get to Verizon, find out where they’re at.”
He gave the duty officer the number that Skye had called from, then called Stern, the Wisconsin DCI agent, and told him what had happened. “It’s possible they came back this way. We’ll know in a few minutes.”
“Keep me up.”
Lucas turned on his flashers and went past the town of Menomonie at a hundred and ten. The duty officer called back and said, “The phone’s on Highway 63 in Wisconsin, headed north, they’re south of Clear Lake.”
“I went through Menomonie a few minutes ago. I’m gonna take County Q, I think it goes north—”
“No, no. I’m looking at a map. Keep going past Q, just a couple more miles up to 128, you’ll be faster and closer.”
“Okay, you get onto the county sheriffs up there, I don’t know what counties they are, tell them to look for an old black station wagon, maybe California plates. You should be able to vector them in pretty close, tell them it might be part of a convoy, everybody in it is wanted for multiple murder . . . You gotta get me there as quick as you can. I’m going to call my guy at the DCI.”
Lucas got Stern on the phone again. Stern said, “I’ll get my duty guy on our net up there, we need to talk to your guy about what Verizon is telling them. You say this girl is a witness to the Malin killing?”
“Apparently. And I gotta go, my turn’s coming up.”
Lucas took the off-ramp, took a fast right past the convenience store, drove past a half dozen cars on the wrong side of the road, punched up the duty officer again, and said, “I’m on 128.”
“Take it right straight north to 64. They’re in Clear Lake right now. Okay, we got nothing going yet in Clear Lake, but we got a highway patrolman coming south on 63, he’s in Turtle Lake. Hang on, hang on . . . Okay, I’m talking to a guy in Madison, he’s saying that the patrolman is talking to the sheriff’s department up there, there’s a lake, right on the highway, Magnor, everything squeezes down.”
“I know it.”
“They’re going to take him there,” the duty officer said.
Lucas went past Glenwood City about as fast, he suspected, as anyone had ever done that, watching his nav system for a jog in the road, got through it just fine, then almost drove right through a T intersection, got straight, and went on.
“Lucas, the phone’s north of Clear Lake, they’re heading for a collision up at Magnor. We got two deputies coming up behind him, too.”
“Okay. You told them about the girl? The hostage?”
“Yeah, they’re all clear on that,” the duty officer said. “They’re only three or four miles out.”
Lucas came up on Highway 64, took a left, and ran hard the three or four miles to the intersection of 63. Now he was behind them, but still well back, out of the action.
“What’s happening?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know . . . Verizon . . . ah, heck, Verizon said the phone’s turned left on a back road. Turned left. They were only two miles out of Magnor, the deputies coming up behind saw him make the turn. They say he’s moving fast now, they’re strung out behind him, they’re all running behind him, chasing him.”
“Shit, one of the other cars in the convoy saw the cops and they called him.”
The duty officer went away for a minute, then came back and said, “They didn’t see anything that looked like a convoy. They’re all over this guy, they’re right behind him.”
“I’m coming, I’m coming.”
“Where are you?”
“Coming up on Clear Lake, a couple miles out,” Lucas said.