“They definitely know each other, and pretty well. They walked up and the guys on the ground started talking with them, passed up a joint without being asked.”
Lucas watched for a moment: the new ones included a heavy woman in a black catsuit, with a painted cat face, and a husky man in a black T-shirt and jeans, with a painted skull mask.
“Melody Walker said the guys did most of the killing. If these two people peel off from the first two, we should grab them. Separate them, brace the woman. If she’s as willing to talk as Melody, we’ll be a hell of a lot solider.”
“All right. I’ll call everybody and tell them what’s up.”
Lucas’s phone rang again. He looked at it, and recognized the Hayward area code. “Your lawyer friend is calling back.”
“Tell him to go fuck himself again,” Laurent said.
? ? ?
LUCAS ANSWERED, identifying himself, and a voice on the other end said, “Mark Hasselhoff, I’m the county attorney. I just talked to Rick—”
“I don’t know Rick,” Lucas said.
“He’s the guy your sheriff talked to, and I told the young man that we might be better off to defer to the law enforcement agencies on the ground. We will recognize any reasonable bargains you make lesser offenders, although we’ll have to leave it to a judge if there’s a problem in deciding who qualifies.”
“That’s fine with me,” Lucas said. “We’ve got one in custody, we’re watching four more, and we believe all of them were involved either actively or passively in the murder of the dope dealer and of Skye—Shirley Bellows—there in Hayward.”
“Good work, then. You’ll have to tell me sometime why a Minnesota guy was running things here, and now over in Michigan,” Hasselhoff said. “Anyway, I will call you back in one minute and will leave a more official-sounding approval of your actions on your voice mail, and will do the same with Sheriff Laurent, if you would tell him that.”
“I will. And hey: thanks, Mark.”
“I’ll leave a message,” Hasselhoff said.
? ? ?
LAURENT FINISHED HIS CALLS, and said, “We’re set,” and Lucas told him about Hasselhoff. Laurent said, “Hmm. Too cooperative. Makes me suspicious.”
“Let’s not look a gift—”
“They’re moving,” Laurent said.
Lucas had been looking at Laurent, and now he turned back to the group on the blanket. The two people dressed as Juggalos were moving away, straight through the crowd toward the parking lot.
“Call your guys. If they’re going to their car, we’ll take them there,” Lucas said. “Tell Bennett and Barnes to stay with the two guys on the blanket, everybody close on their car, if that’s where they’re going, but stay back. I’ll make the first move.”
Most of the cars were parked nose-in to a line of chalk, like the stripe on a football field, or on a second line of chalk fifteen yards behind the first one; a few were backed into the line. Lucas took the odds and cut behind the black-clad couple so that he’d be coming in from the driver’s side of the car.
Laurent stayed out to his left, covering the passenger side. As they walked along, the couple were picking up speed, not quite to a jog, and were looking around, as if expecting to see someone they didn’t want to see. It never occurred to Lucas that it might be him.
He could see the back of Frisell’s head, well ahead of them, already at the line of cars. The teacher didn’t stop, but kept going, never looked around. Good move. Peters was well out to one side, vectoring toward the car lot, where the couple would hit it. Sellers, the hardware store guy, was on the other side, closing in. They had the two targets surrounded.
Lucas began moving faster: he wanted to be close when they got to the car, wherever it was. As they came up to the parking area, they looked around, then zigged to the right. That left Laurent and Peters out of it, for the moment, and Sellers a bit too close. On the far side of the lot, Lucas saw Frisell on the other side of the second line of cars, looking back. He saw the couple make the turn, and matched it.
The two cut through the first line of cars to the second, and Lucas saw that they were heading toward a beat-up Subaru. He was going through the first line of cars, just as they got to it. They didn’t unlock it, they simply split up, left and right, for the passenger side and driver’s side doors, and popped the unlocked doors.
As the man turned to get in his seat, Lucas was clearing the first line of cars and the man saw him coming. Their eyes locked for a second and Lucas thought later that he may have thought, Oh, shit. He was both too close and not close enough: the red zone.
The man ducked down and a second later stood up again, Lucas now only three or four yards away, one hand on his gun, drawing it, and he heard Frisell shout, “Gun!” and the man’s arm came up over the car door with a gun; he flinched at Frisell’s shouted warning, but the hand kept coming up with the muzzle closing on Lucas when Lucas saw Frisell in the background with a pistol in his hand already leveled in line with both the gunman and Lucas, and Lucas thought later that he may have thought, again, Oh, shit, and dropped to the ground. The first of Frisell’s bullets sliced overhead even as he hung in the air on the way down.