"I'd have to shoot a deer that dressed out at thirteen hundred pounds to get my money back," Lucas said, looking at the rifle. "On the hoof, that's a two-thousand-pound whitetail. That's a whitetail the size of a Chevy pickup."
"It's not the deer, it's the aesthetics of the machinery," the dealer said. The dealer had quit his job as an English teacher to take up gun sales. "Look at this piece"
"The bolt handle's weird," Lucas said.
"Its German."
"It's weird."
"Forget the bolt for a minute, look"
"Why's the scope way out there on the end?"
"I'll tell you why." The dealer pointed out the window. "Swing it at something across the street. Keep both eyes open and then let your right eye just look through the scope."
Lucas swung. "Whoa that's nice. You shoot where you're looking."
"They didn't mean it to be, but this is the perfect North Woods deer rifle. There's never been anything better."
"Caliber's too small."
"A. 308's too small? Have you been smokin' something strange? A. 308 is absolutely"
"Not for a two-thousand-pound deer. And the bolt handle's weird."
"You aren't the artist I thought you were, Davenport," the dealer said. "I can barely contain my disappointment."
At six o'clock, he drifted down toward West St. Paul, located the church, then got dinner at a steak house and made it back to the church a little before seven-thirty. He hooked up with one of the surveillance cops, a guy from Intelligence, and got a radio and a pair of binoculars. "I'm getting pretty tired of this," the cop said.
"Maybe something will pop," Lucas said. "Where do you want me?"
"See that hill? If you go up there, there are a row of houses where the backyards look right down on the parking lot. If you could go up there, find somebody at home and hustle them a little"
"How will I know which car is Olson's?"
"Call us when you're set, and when Olson rolls in, and he's inside, I'll walk over to his car and point a flashlight up at you. We'll have somebody inside the church watching Olson. We're most concerned that he might find a way to sneak out and get rolling before we know it. Or maybe have another car ditched here by one of his Burnt River pals."
"All right. I'll set up."
Lucas found a house with lights, showed his ID, and got permission to sit out on the patio. The owner dug a webbed folding chair out of a lawn shed and gave it to him.
Olson was already moving, a little early. He arrived twenty minutes before he was to preach; the Intelligence cop spotted the car for him, and Lucas settled down to wait. The radio burped every few minutes: when Olson started preaching; when other cars came or went; and an occasional observation on life.
Four people in two cars were at Spooner's, watching front and back, and they weighed in from time to time. Spooner was at home, but the front drapes were drawn. Then Spooner's garage lights came on, and a minute later Spooner backed out in his car. The people watching him scrambled. Spooner drove five blocks to a SuperAmerica, bought something, walked half a block to a Blockbuster Video, rented a movie, and drove back home. The garage door went down. The watchers settled in.
The guy on the radio said, "Olsons getting cranked. The crowd's rolling with him."
A minute later: "There's a guy coming from the north side, he's walking a pooch"
"Got him."
Then one of the cops watching Spooner said, "Spooner just came out in his shirt. He's looking up at his roof. What the fuck is he SPOONER'S DOWN, SPOONER'S DOWN. HOLY SHIT, DAVE, DAVE. Do you see"
And they lost them; and then they were back. "WEST WEST WEST.
JESUS GO BACK. NO, GO BACK. JESUS GET EMS DOWN HERE. GET EMS"
Lucas was runningaround the house, into his car.
Every step of the way, he could hear people screaming on the radio. In one minute he was on Mendota Road, in two minutes on Robert Street, then on 110, and lie was moving as fast as he could without killing anyone, flashing past cars, weaving through traffic, praying that he wouldn't run into a highway patrolman, running, and all the time the traffic on the radio became more shrilclass="underline" "goddamnit, we're
Lucas made I-35 and headed north, and called, "I'm coming up. If you've got a runner, tell me which way."
Then a cop, coming back: "We don't know. We don't know.",.;.
"I thought you said you were losing him."
"Spooner, Spooner, we're losing Spooner."
"Where's the shooter, where's the shooter?"
"I don't know, man, I don't know, we never saw him. Dave, where are you? Dave, did you get west?" Then Dave: "I got west, man, but I don't see anything, nothing moving. Lucas, if you're coming in, get up on the Seventh Street ramp and put on your flashers and see if anybody shies away."
Lucas thought: He's gone. If they were down to blocking ramps, the shooter was gone.
And he was.
Spooner died on his front lawn with his wife screaming over him, and two cops trying to stop the blood with their hands. He took a. 44 Magnum slug four inches to the left of his sternum; he took a couple of minutes to die, but he didn't know it. Except for technical purposes, he was dead when the slug hit.
Chapter 27
Lester drove over from Minneapolis in time to see the body hauled away. He and Lucas stood on the Spooners' lawn and watched the Ramsey County ME working, and Lester said, "We may be fucked. Personally, I mean. We gotta go talk to Rose Marie so she won't be blindsided by the press."
"I know," Lucas said. "Before we do that, we ought to wring out Olson. And we have to fill in St. Paul on what we were doing, and get them to grab Spooners paper and his computers and close off his safe-deposit boxesget some people in early tomorrow and notify every bank inside a couple hours' driving time about the boxes, and maybe get a warrant for the house and grab any keys he's got."
"Jesus, Lucas, it's gonna look like we got him killed, and then we're persecuting his wife," Lester said.
"Persecuting his wife won't make a hell of a lot of difference if they hang us for killing her husband," Lucas said. "But if Spooners dirty, then we might kick loose of the whole thing. We've got to go after him hard."
"Aw, man" Lester was shaken up. He kept coming back to the body, still on the ground, now under a tarp.
"Listen, this ain't you," Lucas said. "This is me. I'm the one who tipped Olson. There are only two possibilities: Olson tipped the killerhe's managing the killeror somebody else put the killer on Spooner. I don't think anybody else leaked Spooner's nameits gotta be Olson."
"So what do we do?"
"I'll go talk to Rose Marie. You stay out of it. I won't mention your name. I'll just tell her that I asked you to put a couple people on Spooner. And that's really what happened."
"Except that I went along with it," Lester said.
"Bullshit. I didn't ask you before I did it. Afterwards, what were you gonna do? Tell Olson to forget the name? And you were just helping protect Rose Marie."
"Aw, man"
"Just sit tight," Lucas said. He got on the phone and called Del, filled him in. "I'm gonna go shake Olson, if you want to come along."
"I'll meet you," Del said. "Do you know where he is?"
"I'll have the guys at the church call us when he heads back to his motel. We want to get him alone."
A St. Paul cop across the street, in the backyard of the house opposite Spooner's, was yelling something, and two St. Paul plainclothesmen trotted toward him. "Something going on," Lester said.
Lucas hung up his phone and got on the radio, called the cops watching Olson. "Tell me when he's heading back to the motel. The minute he heads that way."