"I'll take us right down to the I-35 intersection with Highway 55. We'll orbit there until we get better directions," the pilot said. "I got maps."
She handed Lucas a spiral-bound book of Metro area maps, and Lucas held it between his legs. Del, in back, said, "What if this is some kind of dead-drop, like the computer shop?"
Lucas shook his head. "Then they're gone, Manette and the kids." He looked at his watch. "We may be too late now. We're an hour and fifteen minutes from when he called me. He could make it down there in forty-five minutes, except for the traffic tangles. We gotta hope that he takes her on one last time."
The pilot looked at him. "You gotta hope he takes her on… you mean, rapes her?"
"Yeah, that's what he's been doing," Lucas said. "It's better than death."
"Ah, my God," the pilot said. She turned away from him, and sent the chopper in a sickening swoop toward a twisted intersection below. "That's it, there. Look at that mess. Jeez, what happened?"
Below them, traffic was tied up in all directions, and blue lights winked through the worst jam Lucas had ever seen. "They're doing it, they're tying it up," he said, and he had to laugh, once, a short bark. "They'll be two hours getting that loose again. Maybe we got a chance. Maybe we got a chance."
Lucas found the map for the intersection as they orbited, once, twice, then again, like a bee in a bottle; and Del explained the interrogation scene to Sherrill.
"So where in the heck is Franklin?" Sherrill asked.
"Five minutes to the Manettes' house," Lucas said. "He oughta be calling."
"What's gonna happen to this guy?" the pilot asked.
"Gonna chain him in the basement of the state hospital," Lucas said. "Throw him a cheeseburger once a week."
"Better to shoot him," she said.
Lucas said, "Shhh," and they went around again.
Sherrill, huddled in the back, was greener than Lucas. "If Franklin doesn't call quick, I'm gonna blow a corn dog all over our pilot."
"Don't do that," the pilot said. Then: "I'll try to smooth things out."
Sherrill said, "C'mon, Franklin, you asshole, call."
And Franklin came then, patched through from Dispatch: "Lucas, we got it. His name is LaDoux. He's just north of Farmington, about a mile off Pilot Knob Road on Native American Trail. I got the address here."
Lucas found the map as Franklin read out the address, and the pilot poured it on, heading south.
And Franklin asked, "What about Miz Manette? I mean, this one?"
"Take her back downtown, get her a lawyer," Lucas said.
Del, from the backseat, shouted, "And read her rights to her."
Sherrill, marginally more cheerful, also shouting: "Yeah, we want it to be on the up-and-up."
Lucas, ignoring them, was talking to Dispatch. "Can you get us closer? These street numbers don't mean anything up here."
"Yeah, we're looking for the mailman on that route, and we've alerted Dakota County, but they don't have a lot of assets down there."
"I know, I can see them all from here," Lucas said. Down below, roof racks were lighting up the major intersections for miles, and he could see cops on the streets, peering into southbound cars. "But get some going south, if you can."
"Strangest thing I ever saw," Del said from the back as Lucas signed off the radio. Del, who liked high places, had his face pressed against his window. "A man-made traffic jam. God, look at those guys. I'd hate to be down there, though."
"Is that Pilot Knob there?" the pilot asked, pointing at a street with a gloved hand. "Or is that Cedar?"
"I don't know," Lucas said, turning the map. He hated flying, didn't like the exposed front on the helicopter: he would have preferred something solid, like sheet steel. "Where's due south?" The pilot pointed and he turned the map. "Okay, there should be a golf course."
"There's a golf course," the pilot said, pointing to her right. "But… there's another one."
"There should be a lake, a crescent-shaped lake," Lucas said.
"Okay, there's a lake."
"Okay, yeah, that's it-there's the little lake by the big one. So that's gotta be Pilot Knob right there."
They churned south, following the road, past another golf course, out into the countryside, corn going brown, a green-and-yellow John Deere rolling through a half-cut field of alfalfa.
Dispatch called back. "Lucas, we got the mailman, here he is…" There was a pause, and then a man's distant voice. "Hello?"
Lucas identified himself. "Did the dispatcher tell you what we need?"
The mailman said, "Yes. You want the fifth house from the corner, on the south side of the road. It's about three-quarters of a mile from the corner, sits up on a slope with a gravel driveway. White house-needs paint, though-and it's got a porch and a screen door and a couple old tumble-down buildings out back. There's a shutter off on the front; one window's only got one shutter. The mailbox is silver and there's an orange Pioneer Press delivery box on the same post under the mailbox."
"Got that," Lucas said. A swamp flicked past, a thousand feet down. "Thanks."
"Listen, you still there?"
"Yeah."
"One of the guys here has a TV going, and I just saw the picture. You got the right guy. That's him, all right. He's not around there much, but I saw him a couple times."
"Got that," Lucas said.
In the backseat, Del said, "Hot dog," and slipped his pistol out from under his jacket and punched out the clip.
Sherrill said, "Don't say that."
"What?"
"The dog thing," Sherrill said, and she swallowed, and started fumbling for her gun.
"Hold on, I'll have you on the ground in two minutes," the pilot said. She'd been looking at the map, where Lucas's fingers pinched the road. "So we're looking for a loop, like a suburb or something, and then it's three miles on."
"There's the loop coming up," Lucas said, pointing at a cluster of houses, with tiny trees sprouting in the expansive front yards. They all looked the same, variations of beige with simple, peaked roofs, like properties on a Monopoly board.
"Okay. Then that must be the road, right there," the pilot said. Up ahead, Native American Trail was a beige thread in a blanket of green. "There's somebody heading down there…"
A red car was throwing up a cloud of gravel dust as they closed on the road. "One-two-three-four-five, Jesus, I think he's heading in there, he's slowing down, he's turning," Lucas said.
"Wrong drive, wrong drive. The fifth house is over there, down further," the pilot said, pointing.
"I don't know," Lucas said. "Look, he's in a hurry, he's moving."
The pilot groped at her feet and handed Lucas a pair of battered 8 x 50 marine binoculars. "You call it: whatever you want to do."
They were coming in fast, but they were still a half-mile out; Lucas put the heavy binoculars on the house, picked out the mailbox and the brilliant orange paperbox on the post below it. To the right, the red car had topped a hill, and as Lucas watched, a man got out of the car, turned his pale face toward them; black hair, tall; the white face, at the distance, a featureless wedge. But a wedge that felt right.
The man darted into the ramshackle house in the cornfield; he carried something-a shotgun? He was too far away to be certain. "That's him," Lucas said, half-shouting. "Put us on him, put us on him."
"What are we doing?" Sherrill shouted from the back. She had a revolver out, and a speed loader in her other hand. Below them to the front and right, three Dakota County sheriffs cars were pounding up Pilot Knob Road from the south. Lucas waved Sherrill off and got on the radio: "Tell the sheriff's guys it's the first road west of the house. Not the house, it's a track, goes across a ditch just west of the house… tell them to look for the chopper, where we're going in. We've got him in the house, we see him in the house."