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LUCAS WENT BACK to the Holiday Inn, took a shower, laid out some clothes so he could get dressed in a hurry, called Weather, told her what was happening, talked to Letty for a while—she was hurting worse than she had the first day, but Weather said that was normal.
When he got off the phone, he turned off the light and tried to sleep. But it was too early, and he didn’t. Instead, he lay in bed in the dark and thought about the possibilities, and when that got boring, called Del: “Is everything okay?”
“Well, yeah. I mean there aren’t any emergencies going on. What are you up to?”
“Trying to sleep, but can’t. Almost got shot today, don’t tell Weather . . .”
He told Del about it, and Del said, “Jesus, you got lucky.”
“Yeah, somewhat.”
When he got off the call to Del, he turned the lights off again, couldn’t sleep, got his iPad out, browsed the Internet for a while, eventually worked his way around to eleven-thirty, and two minutes later, got a call from the duty officer. “We got five hits on those phone numbers, right away. Two of them were in California, but three of them are up there in the UP. We got a hit on the Pilate phone number and two others. I got the GPS coordinates figured out. You got a map?”
“Let me call one up,” Lucas said.
If the GPS locations were correct, the Pilate calls were coming out of a state park campground in the deep woods of Cray County, forty miles west and north of where Lucas was.
“Keep pinging them. We’re on the way,” Lucas said. He was on his feet, pulling on his jeans. He called Laurent and said, “We’re going to Cray County, talk to the locals there, wherever that is.”
“Already did. I called all the sheriffs in the UP and we’re good everywhere. We can pick up a couple of their deputies and maybe a couple more reserve deputies when we get there. The question is, do we want to go in there at one o’clock in the morning? We’d wind up chasing people through the woods in the dark.”
Lucas thought about it, then said, “I guess not. I’m going, but let your guys sleep. It gets light what, at six o’clock? Forty miles? Get them up at four-thirty, get out of town before five-thirty.”
“It’s a straight shot over there. We go in a convoy, with lights, we can be there in less than an hour,” Laurent said. “Peters is coming—he canceled his court date. Let me get you the names of the sheriff’s deputies over there. You probably ought to check in with them. I’ll call them and tell them you’re coming.”
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LUCAS WAS ON THE ROAD a little after midnight, the names of the Cray County cops in his notebook and a hand-drawn map of the campground where Pilate was. There was nothing open in Jeanne d’Arc, not even the gas station, so he headed west. Twenty miles out, he spotted a combination sporting goods store–roadhouse–gas station that was still open, got a Diet Coke and a cheeseburger and fries to go, and got back on the road with a full tank of gas.
Lewis State Park was totally off the grid, on the far side of the county seat at Winter. Winter did have an open gas station/convenience store, and the clerk pointed him down the main street to the county courthouse. The annex in back, where the sheriff’s office was, showed a light, but the door was locked and nobody answered when he knocked.
He had a phone number for the deputy on duty, called it, and the deputy picked up, said, “This is Carl.”
“Carl, this is Lucas Davenport. I’m down at the sheriff’s office.”
“Hey. I’m out on road patrol, right at the far end of my run. You seen the store?”
“Yeah.”
“They got good coffee, you could wait for me there,” Carl said.
“I’m going to run out to Lewis Park, take a look at the situation.”
“Okay. You’re only about ten miles from there, so . . . if you just look around, and then head back, we’ll probably just about meet up.”
“Thanks. See you then.”
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TEN MILES OUT OF WINTER, he passed a highway sign marking the turnoff, but kept going, without slowing. At the first side road, which was a driveway, he pulled over, got out his phone: no service. He turned around and drove slowly past the entry road to the park. He could see nothing, not even a glimmer of light.
He drove back to Winter, working out exactly what he wanted to do. At Winter, Lucas tried his phone again, got one bar, called the BCA duty officer. “No more pings. Everything slowed down after midnight, and all of a sudden, they were gone. There’s two phones up by Lake Superior and another one in the woods halfway between Winter and Lake Superior. I looked at a satellite view of the GPS location, but there’s not a darn thing there.”
When he got off the phone, Lucas tried his iPad, got one bar on that, too, but managed to slowly download a terrain map of Lewis State Park. The main feature, as with Overtown Park in Barron County, was a lake and a campground. Otherwise, the land around the lake was flat and probably swampy, since there wasn’t much relief above the lake’s water level. A Google satellite view showed a chunk of forest around the lake, and several expansive clear-cuts back from the entry road.
He was looking at the Google view when a Ford pickup bounced into the parking lot and an older man wearing a T-shirt, sweatpants, and gym shoes got out. Lucas stepped out to meet him, asking, “Carl?”
“Nope. I’m the sheriff, Phil Turner.” He was a short man, thin, with a bristling white mustache and a thick chest and arms. They shook hands and Turner said, “Carl called me. I told him I’d probably be up until two. You’d be Davenport?”
“Yup.”
“This guy still out at Lewis?”
“Don’t know. Don’t know full names, don’t know most descriptions, don’t know license plates, except they’re most likely from California, but not for sure. They will be armed and they’re willing to kill. Eager to kill.”
“Well, shit.”