“Where?”
“There's a farmers' market today in St. Paul, downtown, across from Macy's…”
“No. That's too open,” Widdler said. “The ladies' room at Macy's, there'd still be people around…”
“But we couldn't say a word, I couldn't look at the money…” Coombs whined.
“The Macy's parking ramp in St. Paul?” Widdler suggested.
“That's too scary… Do you know where Mears Park is? Where the art studios are?”
“That'll be good, that'd be perfect,” Widdler said. “One o'clock?”
“I'll scream if you do anything,” Coombs said.
“Then I go to trial and you won't get a penny,” Widdler said.
Another long pause. Then, “Okay.”
“Bring the originals. I'm not bargaining anymore. Bring the originals or I'm gone,” Jane Widdler said.
With Jerrold in the air, and Flowers, Shrake, and Jenkins on the ground escorting Widdler back to her shop, Lucas and Del helped Coombs out of the muumuu and then out of the ballistic vest and the wire. “Jeez, that thing is hot,” she said. She'd told them about the phone conversation on the way out of the store. “She was behind me?”
“Yeah. And I was behind her,” Del grunted. “We were cool.”
“Think she'll come?” Coombs asked.
“I hope,” Lucas said.
“What happened with the phone?” Del asked.
“We don't know, but she didn't use her own and she switched phones inside,” Lucas said. “I think she bought a phone at Best Buy.”
“She's no dummy,” Del said.
“But we sold her,” Lucas said, grinning at the other two. “Lucy, you were great.
You could be a cop.”
She shook her head. “No, I couldn't. Cops pretend to be friends with people, and then they turn them in. I couldn't do that.”
The key, Lucas told Coombs, was to get Widdler on tape acknowledging the quilt fraud, that she knew of the Donaldson killing… anything that would get her into the slipstream of the killings. Once they had her there, circumstantial evidence would do the rest.
“Get her talking,” Del said. “Get her rolling…”
Mears Park was a leafy square, one block on each edge. The buildings on three sides were rehabbed warehouses, combinations of apartments, studios, offices, and retail, including the studio of Ron Stack, the artist that Gabriella had dated. The fourth side was newer, offices, a food court, and apartments in brick-and-glass towers.
“As soon as she's in the park, we'll have you come around the block in the car, since she's seen the car,” Lucas told Coombs. “Shrake will pull away from the curb, and that'll leave a parking space open for you.”
Del pointed at an unmarked cop car, already in the parking slot. Lucas pointed out the route: “Pull in, then walk down the sidewalk over here. Del's gonna be on the other side of the park, back through the trees, closing in, as soon as we know where she's at. Flowers and I will be behind the doors in Parkside Lofts. We'll be invisible, but as long as you're on the sidewalk, we'll be right across the street from you. Sit on this bench…” He pointed. “There's gonna be a guy on the bench eating his lunch.”
“Pretty obvious,” Coombs said.
Lucas shook his head: “Not really. When people are suspicious, they look for a bum pushing a shopping cart or a woman with a baby carriage, but a guy in a suit eating a peanut-butter sandwich and talking on a cell phone… Won't look at him twice.
Besides, as soon as you show up, he's gonna walk away. That gives you the bench.
Talk to her on the bench.”
“What if she doesn't want to talk there?” Coombs asked.
“Go with the flow-but as soon as you feel the slightest bit uncomfortable about anything, break it off,” Lucas said. “Anything, I'm serious. If you feel uncomfortable, you're probably right, something's screwed up. Get out. Scream, run, whatever. Get away from her.”
Coombs nodded, and started to tear up. “It'd be a shame if she got all three of us.”
“Don't even think that,” Lucas said.
Del said to Lucas, “Man, I'm getting the shakes. Bringing a civilian in…”
Lucas looked at Coombs. “What do you think, Lucy? We can call it off, try to get her to talk by phone.”
Coombs shook her head, wiped her eyes with her knuckles. “I'm a big chicken-if she looks at me cross-eyed, I'm runnin'.”
Jane Widdler got to the park at noon, an hour early. She'd parked in the Galtier Plaza parking ramp, had taken the elevator to the Skyway level, had scouted the Skyways and then the approaches to the park, tagged by three female cops borrowed from St. Paul. Finally, she walked all four sides of the park, and walked in and out of the buildings on all four sides.
“She's figuring out where she can run,” Flowers said. They were on the second floor of the Parkside Lofts, looking out a window.
Lucas nodded. “Yup. We haven't seen her in anything but high heels. Now she's wearing sneaks.”
When she'd finished scouting, Widdler walked across the street to Galtier Plaza, went to the Subway in the food court, got a roasted chicken sandwich, and sat in a window looking out at the park.
Jenkins was at the opposite end of the food court with three slices of pizza and a Diet Coke. “She's cool,” he told Lucas, talking on his cell phone, sitting sideways to Widdler, watching her with peripheral vision.
At two minutes to one, Lucas called Del and said, “Put her in.”
Shrake had been hiding in a condo lobby. Now he ambled up to the corner, waited for a car to pass, jaywalked to his car, got in, watched in his rearview mirror until he saw Coombs turn the corner. He pulled out, turned the corner, and was out of sight…
Coombs saw him leave, pulled up to the parallel-parking spot, and spent three minutes getting straight, carefully plugged the meter, and then started walking around the perimeter of the park, looking down into it.
Jenkins, on the cell phone, said, “She's moving.”
Lucas and Flowers had moved to the glass doors of the building across the street from the bench. Coombs was walking slowly on the sidewalk, peering into the park.
She was still wearing the blue muumuu and was carrying a Macy's bag, looking fat and slow.
Widdler stepped out of Galtier into the sunshine, slipping on sunglasses. She was carrying an oversized Coach bag, black leather, big enough to hold eighty thousand. She crossed the street, walking casually. She was forty yards behind Coombs, and closing.
“Lucy doesn't see her,” Flowers said.
“We're okay, we're okay,” Lucas said.
A guy eating his lunch got off the park bench, tossed the brown bag in a trash container, and started across the street, talking on a cell phone, not looking back. A St. Paul vice cop. Del called: “I'm coming in.”
“We're in,” Shrake said. He and Jenkins were moving down the east side of the park, where they could cut Widdler off, if she made a run for it.
From Lucas's point of view, everything seemed to slow down.
Coombs plodding toward the bench, sitting down in slow motion, looking tired, the Macy's bag flapping on the bench…
Widdler closing in on her, from behind, twenty yards, ten, five, her hand going in her purse, back out.
Lucas: “Shit. She's got a gun.”
He and Flowers hit the door simultaneously, Flowers screaming, “Lucy, Lucy, watch out, gun…”
Widdler never heard them or saw them. Her world had narrowed to the target on the bench, the big fat hippie with the bushy hair and the Macy's bag, and there was nobody around and she was moving in fast, the woman might never see her…
Widdler had the gun in her hand, a four-inch double-trigger, double-barreled derringer that Leslie had given her to keep in her car. He'd said, “It's not accurate at more than two feet, so you pretty much got to push it right against the guy…” He'd been talking about a rapist, but there was no reason that Coombs should be any different.
The gun was coming up and somewhere, in the corner of her mind, she realized that there was a commotion but she was committed and then Coombs was half standing and turning to meet her and the gun was going and she heard somebody shout and then she shot Coombs in the heart. The blast was terrific, and her hand kicked back, and there was a man in the street and car brakes screeching and she never thought, just reacted, and she turned and the gun was still up…