The killer’s fifth wild shot, sprayed across the room, caught Marcy Sherrill under the chin, blew through her throat and spinal cord, and she died without even knowing it, without being able to say goodbye or feel any regret, with the taste of a sweet roll on her tongue. . . .
Nothing, again, forever.
16
Lucas dropped the hammer on the Lexus, burning down Rice Street, blowing through a red light at Arlington, with barely a hesitation. Berg, cuffed in the backseat, called, “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” and Del, holding on to an overhead hand grip, said, “I wonder what those crazy fucks have done this time?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know why they wouldn’t tell me,” Lucas said. “Why wouldn’t they tell me?”
Maryland wasn’t far. “Maryland? What’s at Maryland?” Del asked. “Was there something going on there?”
“Not as far as I know,” Lucas said. “They were working those home invasions down in South St. Paul. . . .”
Shrake and Jenkins had many sterling qualities, but discretion wasn’t one of them: to hear them freaked and screaming for lights and sirens meant something bad was happening or about to happen. “Something bad, man, something really bad,” Lucas said.
Del put his feet on the dash and dug his pistol out and checked it. From the back, Berg cried, “What’s happening? What’s happening?” and Del said, “Shut up, asshole.”
Three blocks ahead, they saw Jenkins’s personal Crown Vic slew across the intersection and then disappear into what must be the parking lot.
They were there in ten seconds, saw Jenkins and Shrake standing outside the Crown Vic looking up the street at them, and Del said, “They’re just standing there,” and he reholstered his pistol, and then Lucas put the truck into the parking lot, bouncing to a stop next to the two big agents.
He and Del were out, and Jenkins pointed at Berg through the back window of the Lexus and asked, “Who’s he?”
Lucas asked, “Jesus, what’s going on? What’s going on?”
“Who’s the guy?” Jenkins asked again.
His voice carried a peculiar intensity that made Lucas stop, and answer: “We’re transporting him down to Ramsey on assault.”
Jenkins said to Shrake, “Get him out of there,” and to Lucas: “We’ll take him.”
Shrake went around and jerked open the back door. Lucas said, “Jenkins, goddamnit—”
“Marcy Sherrill’s been shot,” Jenkins said. “She was over at that Barker chick’s house, and somebody came crashing in and shot the place up. Three people hit, the shooter’s maybe hit, it’s all confused, it’s all fucked up.”
Lucas grabbed Jenkins’s arm: “How bad? Where’re they taking her? Where’re they taking her?”
Jenkins shook his head: “They’re not transporting her.”
Lucas’s mind froze for a minute, then: “What?”
“They’re not transporting, man.” Jenkins moved up and threw an arm around Lucas’s shoulder. “She’s gone, man. That’s what they’re telling us.”
LUCAS STARED AT HIM for a moment, and then Del said, his voice shaking, “We’re going. Get that fucker out of there . . .” gesturing at Berg. Shrake yanked the thin man out of the back of the truck and slammed the door.
Del ran around to the driver’s side, and Lucas said, “No, I got it,” and Del said, “Bullshit, I’m driving. Get in. Get the fuck in the car.”
Del drove fast, but not crazy, as Lucas would have, all the way across town, with Lucas yelling suggestions at him, onto I-94, off I-94 at Cretin Avenue, south down Cretin at sixty miles an hour, then across the bridge and past the airport and the Mall of America and down into Bloomington’s suburban maze.
And all the way, with the sick feeling of doom in his gut, Lucas was yelling out reasons why it couldn’t be right: one of the best hospitals in the metro area was five minutes from the Barkers’ house; they would have transported her no matter what, there was a lot of confusion, that fuckin’ Jenkins had it wrong.
Del just drove and once in a while, shook his head. Jenkins, he believed, wouldn’t make that kind of mistake. He was a thug, but a smart one, and not insensitive. He didn’t say it, kept his foot down and shook his head as Lucas shouted out possibilities.
THERE WERE BLOOMINGTON COPS all over the place, and the street down to Barker’s house was blocked off. Del rolled the Lexus past the blocking black-and-white, hanging his BCA credentials out the window, and put the truck in a vacant spot a halfblock from the Barker house.
They climbed down and jogged past a half-dozen uniformed Bloomington cops coming and going, cutting across a couple of yards, swerving around a loop of crime-scene tape to a detective standing out in the yard. He looked up as Lucas and Del came up and said, “I know you—”
“Davenport and Capslock, with the BCA,” Lucas said. “We heard that Marcy Sherrill was down. Is she . . . ?”
The cop shook his head: “You were with Minneapolis, right?”
“Yeah, we both were. We’re close friends of hers.”
“I’m John Rimes, I’m running the scene right now. I’ll let you go in,” he said. “But you might not want to . . . have to go around to the side door.”
“Man, she’s . . .” Lucas held his hands out, palms up, pleading.
