Lucas rolled out of bed, headed for the bathroom, turned around when the phone rang. The caller ID said it was Jenkins again. "Yeah?"
"You know, we gotta think about a baby present. Or a whole bunch of them, or whatever you do."
"I'll get Carol to organize it," Lucas said. "See you in fifty-nine minutes."
Lucas made calls from his car, the first to the Minneapolis FBI office, the next to the Ramsey County attorney, and then to the Ramsey County public defender. He made a stop at the Ramsey County jail and spoke to Justice Shafer for one minute; got up and said, "You might be able to help us, Justice, and get your ass out of this crack. I'll get back to you. Talk to your lawyer. Do what she says."
"I didn't do nothing," Shafer said.
Lucas's office was on the second floor of the BCA building, which had cost a bit more than eighty million bucks and was only six years old, so even the government-gray carpet was still in good shape. He had one of the larger offices, overlooking a parking lot and the evidence collection garage on the ground floor. It had come with the standard new-building desk, but it was a desk that positioned him with his back to the door, which he disliked, with a conference table so stark in its design that it would have shocked a Scandinavian architect.
On the grounds that he had a bad back, he'd brought in a personal business chair, and then, the soil having been prepared, a simple dark-maple desk and conference table, with comfortable chairs, that allowed him to face the door; and an old, but not antique, coat-rack, and a few metal file cabinets so he'd have a place to put his feet. He had pictures of Weather, Sam, and Letty on the wall, along with framed shots of the University of Minnesota hockey team, where he'd been a defenseman who wasn't quite good enough to turn pro. A hockey stick was mounted above the hockey photos. Also, stuck casually to the exposed side of one of the metal file cabinets, a shooting range target with five.45-caliber bullet holes in the ten-ring. Like he did it every day '
Carol was sitting at her desk outside the office.
"Del's wife has gone into labor and you're supposed to organize baby gifts," Lucas said. "I don't know if you take up a collection or what."
"Don't worry about it. Give me fifty dollars."
He gave her fifty dollars, said, "That seems like a lot," and she said, "You're rich, you can afford it," and then Shrake showed up and she said, "Give me twenty dollars."
Jenkins was a minute behind Shrake, and they scattered themselves around the chairs in Lucas's office.
"I just talked to Shafer again," Lucas said. "Diaz called him on his cell phone, which we didn't pay too much attention to because we already had the number. B. That means that Shafer can call her back. If we can get some FBI backup here, they've got choppers with location-finding equipment that can get pretty close to where she is, if Shafer calls her, and she answers."
"What if she tossed the phone?" Jenkins asked.
"Then we're out of luck. But, if she still has it, and answers, we can get it narrowed down to a couple of blocks. Then we can saturate the area, dig them out," Lucas said. "I talked to Shafer and he'll call them. Actually, he'll ask her for a meeting. Maybe we can suck them in."
"When?"
"The choppers are out at the airport, backup for the convention, so the feds have to retask," whatever that means," Lucas said. "That's gonna take a couple hours, but the AIC says he'll push it and says he can get it. We'll know by noon and we can be up in the air by one."
Jenkins looked at his watch: just ten-thirty. "We might want to jack up the SWAT guys," he said.
"Most of them are out in the city, working with the street teams," Lucas said. "I talked to Sandy, he's going to pull back whoever he can. We'll at least have a few."
"Like we were saying, Shafer ain't no wizard. You think he can do this?" Shrake asked.
"We're gonna drill him," Lucas said. "I could only talk to him a minute, because the public defender wasn't in the house. I talked to the PD this morning and he says a deal can be done. The prosecutor is willing to go along because, basically, you know, we don't have a case. And they got all those demonstration arrests in their hair and they just as soon get rid of Shafer if they can."
They all sat for a minute, then Jenkins said, "What do you think we ought to get for Del's kid? It's gonna be a boy, right? Something blue?"
"It's Del's kid; you gonna get him a blue gun?" Shrake asked.
"Let Carol do it," Lucas said. "But I like the blue gun idea."
"Now what?" Jenkins asked.
"Let's go over to the jail. Get Shafer going."
Jennifer Carey picked Letty up and asked, "How'd it go with Juliet?"
Letty shook her head. "She's not going to leave him. Says he's hurt, so she can't go. At least not until he gets better, which means never, because he'll get on top of her and make her do what he wants."
"Ah, boy. I don't know, Letty," Jennifer said. "Maybe we should talk to Lucas, explain the situation, tell him that our biggest worry is that he'll do something irrational."
"Let me ask you something," Letty said. "What would you do if suddenly, someday, in a couple of weeks, Randy just disappeared and was never heard from again? Or maybe, he's found in an alley with four bullet holes in his heart. Would you do anything about it? Ask any questions? Talk to Dad?"
Jennifer shook her head: "Couldn't tell you that until I got there. You know about Lucas and me; we almost got married, except that
I knew I couldn't deal with him. He's too ' harshly ' smart. He's too intense. He's like Weather-he's like you. Not like me; I'm all over the place. But I don't think cops should kill people. I mean, murder people. People get trials, they get lawyers."
Letty sighed. "Let me think about it for a couple of days. I'm so confused." A little song and dance, she was thinking as she spoke: a little song and dance, because Jennifer Carey was no longer to be trusted. I don't think cops should kill people.
Bullshit, Letty thought.
A public defender met Lucas, Jenkins, and Shrake at the jail, with an assistant from the county attorney's office, and they cut the deaclass="underline" no harm, no foul. Nobody gets charged, nobody gets sued for false arrest. Shafer expresses his good citizenship by cooperating with the police.
Outside the jail, on the sidewalk, Shafer said, "She's a pretty good lawyer. Got me outa there, slicker'n snot on a doorknob."
"Yeah, right," Jenkins said. "You ride shotgun; that little lump in the back of your head is Shrake's pistol."
"Hey, I'm out," Shafer said.
"Yeah. One inch. You'll be back in just as fast, if we need you back in."
They got together with the FBI team in a temporary office on Wabasha Street, six blocks from the convention center. The FBI'S local agent-in-charge, Wilbur Rivers, told Lucas that the choppers were gassed and ready to go, and could be in the air over Minneapolis or St. Paul in twenty minutes. "The problem might be that she's out in Burnsville, or Stillwater, or somewhere. We won't be able to get close enough during a short phone call. We'd be able to identify the cell, but not where the signal's coming from-so we need some talk time."
"The call to LA came from a St. Paul cell, so there's a good chance she's here," Lucas said. "If we were willing to risk it, we might even want to bring both choppers here."
"Your call," Rivers said.
Lucas looked at Jenkins and Shrake, who shrugged, and so he said, "Screw it. We're already set, let's go with it. One each in Minneapolis and St. Paul."