Climpt came up, weapon still on the timber. "Gone," he said. He meant the deputies.
"Yeah." Lucas lumbered into the woods, saw the ragged trail of a third machine, fading into the falling snow. He couldn't hear anything but the people behind him. No snowmobile sound. Nothing.
He turned back, and Weather was there. She dropped her bag. "Dead," she said. She spread her arms, looking at him. "They were children."
The ambulance driver and the attendant struggled through the snow with an aluminum basket-stretcher, saw the bodies, dropped the basket in the snow, stood with their hands in their pockets. Henry Lacey ran up, still holding the gun in front of his face.
"No, no, no," he said. And he kept saying it, holding his head with one hand, as though he'd been wounded himself: "No, no…"
Carr pulled up in his Suburban, jumped out. Carr looked at them, his chief deputy wandering in circles chanting, "No, no," both hands to his head now, as though to keep it from exploding.
"Where is he?" Carr shouted.
"He's gone. The feds better have him, because it'd be hell trying to follow him," Lucas shouted back.
The feds called: We still got him, he's way off-road and moving fast, what's going on?
"We got two down and dead," Lucas called back. "We're heading back to the hospital, gearing up. You track him, we'll be with you in ten minutes."
Lucas and Climpt took Carr's Suburban, churned back to the hospital. Lucas stripped off the body armor, got into his parka and insulated pants.
"Rusty's truck is around back, right? With the trailer?"
"Yeah."
"We'll take the sleds," Lucas said. "Right now we need a decent map."
They found one in the ambulance dispatch room, a large-scale township map of Ojibway County. The feds were using tract maps from the assessor's office, even better. Lucas got on the radio:
"Still got him?" he asked.
Yeah. We got him. You better get out here, though, we can't see him and we got nothing but sidearms.
Helper was already eight miles away, heading south.
"He could pick a farmhouse, go in shooting, take a truck," Climpt said. "Nobody would know until somebody checked the house."
Lucas shook his head. "He's gone too far. He knows where he's going. I think he'll stay with the sled until he gets there."
"The firehouse is off in that direction."
"Better get somebody down there," Lucas said. "But I can't believe he'd go there." He touched the map with his finger, reading the web of roads. "In fact, if he was going there, he should have turned already. On the sled, if he knows the trails, he probably figures he's safe, at least for the time being."
"So let's go."
They stripped the map from the wall, hurried around back to Rusty's truck. The keys were gone, probably with the body. Lucas ran back through the hospital, past the gathering groups of nurses, ran outside and got the Suburban. Climpt pulled the trailer off Rusty's truck, and when Lucas got back, hitched the trailer to the Suburban.
Ten deputies were at the shooting site now. The bodies still exposed, only one person looking at them; cars stopped on the highway, drivers' white faces peering through the side windows. Carr was angry, shouting into the radio, and Weather stood like a scarecrow looking down at the bodies.
Lucas and Climpt crossed the well-trampled ditch, climbed on the sleds, started them.
"Kill him," Carr said.
Weather caught Lucas by the arm as they loaded the snowmobiles onto the trailer. "Can I go?"
"No."
"I want to ride."
"No. You go back to the hospital."
"I want to go," she insisted.
"No, and that's it," Lucas said, pushing her away.
Climpt had traded his shotgun for an M-16, said, "I'll drive," and hustled around to the cab. Lucas climbed in the passenger side; when they pulled away, he saw Weather recrossing the ditch to the sheriff.
"Buckle up and hold on," Climpt said. "I'm gonna hurry."
They took County Road AA south from the highway, a road of tight right-angle turns and a slippery, three-segment, two-lane bridge over the Menomin Flowage. Lucas would have taken the truck into a ditch a half-dozen times, but Climpt apparently knew the road foot-by-foot, knew when to slow down, when the turns were coming. But the snow was beating into the windshield, and the deputy had to wrestle the tailwagging truck through the tighter spots, one foot on the brake, the other on the gas, all four wheels grinding into the shoulders.
Lucas stayed on the handset with the feds.
He's either on the Menomin Branch East or the Morristown trail, still going south.
"We're coming up on you, we're on AA about to cross H," Lucas said.
Okay, we're about four miles further on. Jesus, we can't see shit.
Carr: We're loading up, heading your way. If you get him, pin him down and we'll come in and finish it.
Then the feds: Hey, he's stopped. He's definitely stopped, he's up ahead, must be along County Y, two miles east of AA. We're about four or five minutes out.
Lucas: Find a good place to stop and wait. We're all coming in. We don't know what kind of weapons he's carrying.
"There's not much down that road," Climpt said, thinking about it. His hands were tight, white on the steering wheel, holding on, his head pressed forward, searing the snowscape. "Not around there. I'm trying to think. Mostly timber."
Carr came up: Weather thinks he's at the Harris place. Duane was supposedly seeing Rosie Harris. That's a mile or so off AA on Y. Should be on the tract maps.
"Goddammit," said Lucas. "Weather's riding with Carr."
Climpt grunted. "Could of told you she wouldn't stay put."
"Gonna get her ass shot," Lucas said.
"Eight dead that we know of," Climpt said, his voice oddly soft. A red stop sign and a building loomed out of the snow, and Climpt jumped on the brake, slowing, then went on through. "Can't find Russ Harper or the Schoeneckers, and I wouldn't make any bets on them being alive, either. Goddamn, I thought it only happened in New York and Los Angeles and places like that."
"Happens all over," Lucas said as they went through the stop sign.
"But you don't believe that, living up here," Climpt said. He glanced out the window. A roadhouse showed a Coors sign in the window. Three people, unisex in their parkas, laughing, cross-country skis on their shoulders, walked toward the door. "You just don't believe it can happen."
The feds had stopped at a farmhouse a half-mile from where their ranging equipment said the radio beacon was. Visibility was twenty feet and was falling. In little more than an hour it would be dark. Lucas and Climpt pulled in behind the federal truck, climbed down, and went to the house. Tolsen met them at the door. "I'm gonna go down and watch the end of the drive, make sure he doesn't tear out of there in a car."
"Okay. Don't go in."
Tolsen nodded. "I'll wait for the troops," he said grimly. "Those two boys are gone?"
Lucas nodded, grimacing. "Yes."
"Shit."
A farm couple sat in the kitchen with a grown son, three pale people in flannel while Lansley talked on the telephone. He hung up as Lucas and Climpt came in, said, "We've got a hostage negotiator standing by on the phone from Washington. He can call in if we need him. If there's a hostage deal going down." He looked worn.