"That's thin," Del said.
"But it's there," Lucas said.
"My ass is kicked," Del said, just before they landed. "You gonna drop me?"
"Yeah. But I'm gonna cruise up and take a look at Jael's place, make sure they've spread out that perimeter."
"I'll ride along for that," Del said.
They'd left Lucas's car at the motel, because it could only handle two, and had ridden over in Olson's rattletrap Volvo. "I'm going back to the valley," Olson said as he drove them back to the motel. "Back to Fargo. Tomorrow. Have somebody call me when you're gonna release the bodies. I'll come and bury them, but I won't wait here anymore. This place is a suburb of hell."
"Oh, bullshit. It's a pretty nice place," Del said irritably.
"Think about the last week," Olson said. His voice was mild, quiet. "Ten days ago, I had a familynow I don't. But it's not so much individual people who did this: They're just souls trying to get through life. It's the culture that does it. It's a death culture, and it's here, right now. It comes out of TV, it comes out of magazines, it comes out of the Internet, it comes out of video games. Look at that television set that poor Martin Scott had. The biggest, most expensive thing he owned, except for his truck. And all those video games. And he was a hard-working man; worked hard. But the culture burned him out, reached out through that satellite dish and grabbed him. We see it in Fargo, but you can still fight it there. Here this place is gone. Too late for this place. Too late. You'll see."
"Shut the fuck up," Del said.
Chapter 29
Sunday. Day nine.
Six o' clock in the morning.
Olson parked at the hotel and said, "Call me when the bodies are ready."
Lucas said he would.
As they got in Lucas's car, Del said, "He could still have a finger in it."
"Nah. There's no conspiracy here, Del. A bullshit drug murder and then anutcase on the loose."
"Where do you think Scott is?"
"Here," Lucas said.
"In the suburb of hell?"
"Yup. Somewhere."
There were two guys in Jael's yard. "We get a car about once every five minutes," one of them said. "They're getting a little more traffic up at the Kinsley place, but man, there's just nothing going on."
"All right." They went inside, quietly as they could. A cop was sitting on an easy chair in a hallway, watching a TV on the floor. "We didn't want to get any TV flicker on the windows," he explained.
"Is Jael asleep?"
"Yeah."
"Where's the perimeter?"
"Two blocks out on every side; we got every street covered. He's gonna have to parachute in, if he's coming."
"What I'm worried about, if he comes, is a suicide run," Lucas said. "He's got that shotgun."
"I just wish he'd come," the cop said. "This is boring my goddamned brains out."
Back in the car, Lucas said, "I'd like to go up to Kinsley's, if you don't mind. Take ten minutes, look around."
"It's all right with me."
Two blocks from Jael's at a four-way stop, a crossing car paused as Lucas approached, then pulled slowly across the intersection. "Old goat," Del said.
"Yeah" Lucas crossed the street, going straight ahead, then said, "Wait a minute." He swerved, did a quick U-turn, and said, urgently, "We're going after the goat. Get your goddamn pen out, write down the tag, number, call it in." They were back at the intersection, the old slow-moving GTO already at the end of the block. Lucas went after him.
The GTO paused at a stop sign; the driver seemed unsure of his destination, looked both ways. Lucas closed up behind, putting his headlights on the license plate of the other car. Del said, "Got it."
"Call it in, tell them we want an answer right fuckin' now."
"What?"
"Remember back in the motel, when we called in Lynn Olson's driver's license and asked them to run down his vehicle registrations? He had a Volvo, an Explorer, and an old collector GTO. I bet that fuckin' Scott parked his truck with the Coke truck and walked over to the Olsons' place and took the GTO. How many GTOs do you see around anymoreat six o'clock in the morning?"
Del was already talking on his cell phone, getting switched. Reading the number he'd written on his arm. The GTO went straight ahead. Lucas turned left, did another U-turn and switched off his lights, crept to the end of the block. The GTO took a left at the next corner. Lucas accelerated around the corner, lights off, ran as hard as he could almost to the end of the block, jammed on the brakes, and crept forward again.
The GTO was halfway down the block. At the end of the block, it stopped, then turned right. "He's just weaving around," Lucas said as he accelerated at the corner. "That's gotta be him."
Del was listening. "All right." He looked at Lucas. "Its him."
"Get everybody here Get everybody on the street."
They began vectoring squad cars toward the GTO, trying to stay out of sight. But four or five minutes after the cat-and-mouse game began, the driver of the GTO realized he was being tracked. Lucas again crept to the end of the block, and saw the GTO already turning the next corner. And when he got to that corner, and crept forward, the GTO was two blocks away and accelerating.
"Goddamnit, he must've seen us," Lucas said.
He jumped on the accelerator, and the Porsche whipped around the corner and they were flying along the narrow street; too fast to do it without lights, if anybody was out walking, and Lucas switched the lights on and up ahead, the GTO busted a stop sign and was out of sight and Del was screaming street names into the telephone; they made the corner and the GTO was already turning at a streetlight.
"West on Lake," Del shouted. "He's headed west on Lake Street." He stopped talking to brace himself as Lucas downshifted and the engine screamed, they drifted through the intersection, and Lucas began running up through the gears and Del started with the phone again. "He's at fifteenth fourteenth thirteenth twelfth Where is everybody?"
"Behind us," Lucas said. He could see flashing lights in the rearview mirror. No time for his flashers; he didn't even think about them. Then Del shouted, "He's making a turn under the interstate!"
"He goes on the interstate, we got him," Lucas said. "Its a concrete trough."
Del braced himself again as Lucas drifted the turn; they'd closed some distance on the GTO, which was now only a few hundred yards ahead. The GTO driver busted another traffic light, but Lucas was forced to slow and lost ground; and then the GTO was on the on-ramp and out of sight. Lucas accelerated after him, spotted him as they came off the ramp and started eating up the ground between them. Del stopped shouting into his phone long enough to ask, "What're we gonna do when we catch up with him?"
"I haven't figured that out yet," Lucas said. "Maybe not pull up beside him."
"That would be a bad idea," Del said. "Unless you got your own shotgun hidden in this car somewhere."
"We'll just get on his ass and push him," Lucas said. "He'll either lose it, or we'll pen him."
There were four or five other cars on the roadway; there was still an hour before the morning traffic would start. After fifteen seconds, with the Porsche trailing by two hundred yards, the GTO crossed in front of a slower-moving Ford and swerved onto the shoulder lane.
Immediately, the air was full of gravel; a small rock bounced off the Porsche's pristine hood, and Lucas groaned and said, "I'm gonna shoot your ass for that." He moved far left, and the GTO plowed along the shoulder lane for another ten seconds and then suddenly hooked into an upcoming exit.
Del had time to say "Jesus" before Lucas cut across the highway and barely made the ramp approach. At the top, the GTO was moving way too fast to make the corner; the driver tried, but the big car slid out of control, hit a curb while skidding backwards, bounced across a bus bench, and spun sideways into the pump pad of an Amoco station. Lucas had both the brakes and the clutch pinned to the floor, bounced across the intersection, narrowly missed a flying piece of bus bench, and finally stopped in time to see a man humping out of the GTO. He was carrying a long gun, and was headed for the gas station.