“Okay, if you see a JJ road just on the north side of Clear Lake—”
“I see it on the nav.”
“That’ll take you . . . Okay, the guy’s off the road, he ran through an intersection, he’s off the road in the ditch.”
“What about the girl?” Long silence, and Lucas repeated it, “They got the girl?”
“No. I’m hearing that the guy’s still in the car, he’s got a gun and he’s going to kill this girl if they don’t get him another car.”
Lucas took the corner at JJ and headed north. “I’m north on JJ, get me in there.”
He saw them from a mile away, what looked like ten cop cars with their flashers going. He came up fast, saw cops behind cars, saw an ancient Chevy Cavalier station wagon in a bean field at the intersection of a narrow side road. It looked as though the driver of the station wagon had tried to make the turn, but missed it, ran through a fence out into the bean field, where he bogged down.
Lucas pulled up behind the last sheriff’s patrol car, climbed out, and jogged down to the lead car, where the Wisconsin patrolman and a couple of deputies were crouched. The patrolman said, “You’re Davenport?”
“Yeah.”
“Stern is on the way. He’ll be a while, though.”
“You talking to the guy?”
“Off and on. He’ll roll down that side window and scream at us, then roll it back up. He seems . . . I mean, nuts. I mean like, you know, he needs a doctor and medication. Or maybe he’s just high. He was yelling some stuff at us, like the Fall is coming, and we’re all scared shitless, and it won’t do us any good because we’re all going down . . . Sounds crazy to me.”
“Did he say what he wants?”
“He said he wants a patrol car or he’s going to kill her. We told him a guy was coming to talk to him, and we could work something out.”
“He shoot at anybody?”
“Not yet, but he’s got a gun. Randy’s got some glasses, he’s looking at him.”
He pointed over at another car, where a deputy was sitting behind a rear wheel, looking at the car in the field with a pair of heavy binoculars. “Looks like a big old revolver.”
“I’ll go look. But what do you think?”
“Well, honest to God, you know, Phil over there is on the regional SWAT team, he’s got his rifle, he could take him out.” Lucas looked back to where a guy had a rifle propped on a sandbag over a patrol car’s bumper. “But we’re shooting through that window glass. My inclination is, if it looks like he’s going to do something . . . I’d try to take him out. I mean, if he freaks out and shoots the girl, then it’ll be too late, and he seems to be freakin’ out.”
“Let me go look,” Lucas said.
“Sheriff’s coming down, he’ll be here in five, ten minutes.”
Lucas duckwalked over to the car where the deputy was keeping watch with the binoculars. “Can I look?”
“He’s waving the gun around. Looks like he’s arguing with whoever’s in the back.”
Lucas took the glasses, focused. The car was only a hundred feet away, and with the big image-stabilized Canons, he could see individual hairs in the man’s beard. He looked like he was in his late twenties, had what appeared to be a propeller-shaped tattoo, or maybe an elongated infinity sign, on his forehead. He was shouting into the back, kept poking the gun toward the back, then swiveling to look out at the cops.
“Doesn’t look good,” he said.
“No, it doesn’t.”
Lucas handed the binoculars back to the cop, sat with his back to the car, and called Letty. “If I message Skye, will the phone make a sound?”
“I don’t know. I think so. But you could call her—the phone won’t ring, and she should see the screen light up.”
“Give me that number again,” Lucas said.
Lucas took the number, then crawled over to the car’s bumper, whistled at the highway patrolman, and waved him over. When he got there, Lucas said, “You’re running this scene—I’ve got no jurisdiction. I think I can call her without tipping the guy off. What do you think?”
“I don’t know. What do you think?”
“The guy’s not just acting crazy—we’ve got good reason to think he is crazy. I think if we put the rifle on him, and if I call and he reacts, then if it looks like he’s going to use the gun, we take him.”
The cop bit his lip, thinking, then said, “We’ve got to do something. I’m not sure we can wait until the sheriff gets here.”
“The question is, can our shooter hit him through the window glass?”
“I asked him that, and he said he’s shooting solid core. He says he’s pretty square to the window glass, and if he shoots at the guy’s head, the bullet might deflect a bit, but he’ll still hit his head somewhere. A smaller target would be more of a question.”
Lucas nodded. “Okay. I’m gonna call her. You tell the rifle guy to be ready, but don’t shoot unless it looks like he’s about to pull the trigger on her.” To the cop with the glasses, he said, “Watch him. Tell me what he does.”
He called. When the phone stopped ringing, there was silence. He said quietly, “This is Lucas, Letty’s dad. If you push the round button at the bottom of the phone, the main screen will come up. Then push the green button on the screen, too. It’ll switch you to phone mode. Could you do that?”
The cop with the binoculars said, “He’s just sitting there. Looks like he’s talking to himself.”
Lucas said into the phone, “On the bottom line, there’s a square with a lot of dots in it—the keypad. Push that button. When the keypad comes up, push the bottom of the phone against your body—that’s where the keypad sound comes from. You need to muffle that. If you’ve done that, tap any button. Don’t hold it down, just tap it quick.”
A second later, he got a beep.
“Good. We’re talking. Are you hurt? If you’re hurt bad and need an ambulance right now, tap a button.”
Silence.
“Good. You’re not hurt. If you think this guy is going to shoot you, that he’s seriously going to do it, tap a button.”