They'd just turned back toward Lucas's place when he took a call from Bakersfield. "Al James. I work Intel with J.J. He said you're asking about a Caprice Garner."
"That's right. We think he may be involved in a number of homicides."
"That's why we want to keep an eye on him. We've had guys from the biker gangs here tell us that Garner might have killed some people," James said. "They've had some guys disappear after they had dealings with him. We don't have anything solid, except some people have definitely dropped off the radar."
Lucas filled him in on the trouble in the Twin Cities, and James said, "That'd fit with the rumors out here. I can make a couple calls, see if I can find somebody still in touch with him. Probably won't be able to get back to you until tomorrow."
"Okay. If he's running, he may be coming back your way," Lucas said. "Keep it in mind."
"I'd prefer to have you hang on to him," James said.
Lucas clicked off, told Jenkins and Shrake what James had said, and Jenkins said, "Building a file." THEY WERE HEADING south on Cretin Avenue when the duty officer called. "I've got a mailing address for a Caprice Garner in St. Paul Park."
"That's good, that's what we've got," Lucas said.
The duty officer said, "I'm looking at the address on the Google Maps Satellite, and it's a house."
"We heard that he had a room in a house," Lucas said. "And how many Caprice Garners can there be? We gotta get some people together and take a look at it. Get the SWAT guys out of bed."
Shrake asked, "You gonna call Marcy?"
"Yeah," Lucas said. "Later." THEY WERE six BLOCKS from Lucas's house, so they went on, found Virgil's truck in the driveway, and Virgil in the kitchen. "Weather's upstairs," he said. "She's tired, drunk, going to bed."
"We got a name and address," Lucas said.
"Terrific. I'm coming," Virgil said.
"Nope, bullshit. We need somebody here."
"I'm going," Shrake said. "I'm SWAT."
"So am I," said Jenkins. "No way I'm sitting on my ass for this one."
Virgil wanted to get some St. Paul cops to come sit, but Lucas shook his head: "I trust you. Also, what would happen if Weather or the kids woke up and there were a bunch of strangers in the place?"
"Goddamnit…"
They argued off and on for another ten minutes, with Lucas, Shrake, and Jenkins eating microwave pizza. Lucas snuck into the bedroom and got a set of long underwear; Weather was sound asleep and didn't stir.
He snuck back out, down to the basement, got hunting boots, slacks, a wool sweater, parka, and ski gloves. From his gun safe, a twelve-gauge semiauto Beretta shotgun, with two four-shot magazines loaded with four-O buckshot.
He changed, clumped up the stairs with the gun case in one hand and his work clothes in the other, and Shrake said, "Goin' huntin'."
Virgil said, "Goddamnit, Lucas…"
Lucas said, "Stay, boy."
22
THEY ALL RENDEZ VOUS ED at the BCA building; Shrake and Jenkins went to get armored up, and Lucas got his vest. The snow lightened up for a while, then got strong again: the radar showed crescent-shaped waves coming in from the southwest, and it didn't look like it would quit until morning.
A cop came in, crusted with snow: "Got the warrant," he said.
The duty officer, he said, had yanked a Ramsey County judge out of bed, found out that St. Paul Park was actually in Washington County, and so yanked a Washington County judge out of bed.
"That's what judges are for," Lucas said.
Lucas looked at his watch. One A.M. Marcy should be sound asleep. If he went without calling her, he would profoundly piss her off. He listened to the SWAT commander talking to the team, laying out maps of the house, pulled off the Internet, decided he'd waited long enough, and went to call her.
Her phone rang five times, then clicked to a message service. He hung up, let it ring another five times, and this time, he left a message. "We got a fix on the grenade guy. We can't wait, I'm putting the BCA SWAT guys on line. If you get this, call me-we're heading for the guy's house down in St. Paul Park. If you come, you need a four-wheeler and it would be better if you had two or three trucks: it's a blizzard out here."
He figured she'd call back in two minutes. It took a minute and a half: "What's his name and how did you find him?"
Lucas gave her the details and said, "We're ready to launch here. Are you coming?"
"Lucas, this is my case-"
"Marcy, bullshit. This guy could pull out of town, it could take us weeks to find him. He might already be gone. We're going. I'll be on my phone."
"Give me the address… Goddamnit, Lucas, you did this on purpose."
"You can talk to the TV people," Lucas said. VIRGIL CALLED: "Listen, Weather woke up to go to the bathroom and saw what time it was, and came down, and I told her what happened. She said if I called a couple pals of mine from the St. Paul cops, they could come over…"
"No. Virgil. Stay there." THEY LEFT in a convoy of sixfour-wheelers, vans, and SUVs and one truck, eight SWAT guys and four unarmored investigators. St. Paul Park was southeast of the Cities, along the Mississippi, right down Highway 61, the same highway famously revisited by Bob Dylan. They were good as long as the light poles lasted, but after that, it was a matter of staying inside each other's headlights.
Lucas rode down alone, Shrake and Jenkins riding with the rest of the SWAT team; the snow felt soft and slick under his tires: he turned on the radio, picked up Tanita Tikaram singing "Twist in My Sobriety," a good old golden oldie; he'd last heard it trickling out of an overhead speaker at a gas station, years earlier.
Twenty minutes after they left, moving slowly, they crawled past the Ashland refinery, the gas flares burning weirdly through the pounding waves of snow. Close now, he thought, watching the nav screen. They planned to hook up with St. Paul Park cops in the City Hall parking lot, and walk from there, four short blocks.
The first of the trucks took the off ramp, the rest followed, down through the quiet town. The local cops were waiting, and they all went inside, where the SWAT team commander, John Nelson, took the locals through the program.
"As we understand it, the house is owned by an old lady named Ann Wilson, and she probably sleeps in a bedroom in the back, and rents the bedroom upstairs. We're not going to rush the place because the noise will wake the guy up, and at this point, he's got no reason to give it up.
"So, we've got the snow and the dark going for us. We'll set up outside, around the house, and wait for him to come out. If Miz Wilson comes out first, we'll move her out. Then we'll just see-but we're putting the guy's name and ID photo on TV, so we figure he'll be moving early. He needs to get away from here.
"We're all going to go out and get set up, and then half of us will peel off and come back here and get warm and comfortable. We'll change over every hour so nobody gets too cold. The whole idea, now, is to stay out of sight…"
Then there were questions, and when the questions stopped, Nelson said, "Everybody be cool. You all know about the grenades, and the crime-scene guys dug some buckshot out of the hospital walls this evening, so the guy's got a shotgun going for himself. We think he's hurt, but we don't know how bad. The idea is to corner him, squeeze him. Nobody gets hurt. Nobody gets hurt." THEY WENT OUT in four squads, like an army patrol, circling the blocks to come in from all sides of the house, Lucas tramping along with Nelson. The St. Paul Park cops took them in, and they set up at the corners of the house, a lot away, behind whatever barriers or cover was available. A light burned in the second-floor window, behind translucent bathroom glass, but there was no sign of movement.
Nelson and Lucas set up behind a couple of large cottonwood trees across the street from the front door; they could see both the door and the front of the detached garage. Nothing happened for a half hour, when Nelson took a radio call, leaned over and said, "The Minneapolis guy is here. Sherrill."