Chapter 28
Lucas and Sherwood sat morosely in the rental car, looking at the cops and crime scene people pacing off distances between bodies and marking brass ejected from guns and photographing and bagging the guns themselves and Sherwood said, “So different.”
“Than?”
“Anything I’ve ever seen,” Sherwood said, “Iraq, Syria, people get killed and you pick up yours, if any of yours got dinged up, and then you’d get the fuck out.
Medivac them to a hospital with trauma surgeons on call.
Everybody else, fuck ’em. Let them take care of their own.
None of this…bureaucracy. I mean, really, why are they measuring all of this?
It’s like surveying school. Could you really use it in court? ”
“Can’t tell,” Lucas said. “Get in court, and if the defense attorneys can’t make a deal for their clients, and don’t have a decent defense, they’ll attack procedure.
Try to show that things were done wrong, and that their clients have somehow been cheated.
Doesn’t usually work, but if we don’t do the procedure, they’ll attack it, and sometimes, not often, they’ll get away with it. ”
“Really.”
“Then, somebody will sue us. Either the relatives of the dead and injured, or relatives of the accused, because we didn’t do all the procedure. That’s where we’re at, now, in terms of finding justice.”
“That’s not good.”
“Nope.”
· · ·
Louis Mallard and Jane Chase had been wandering around the crime scene, getting close, staring down at the bodies, while trying to stay out of the way. After a while, they started toward Sherwood’s car, and Lucas said, “Here they come,” and he and Sherwood got out to meet them on the street.
Mallard had tears in his eyes, and evidence that more had already trickled down his aging cheeks. “This is dreadful,” he said. “This is the worst thing since Miami. If that poor Haskins dies, it’ll be worse than Miami.”
“Have you heard anything about him? About the guys in the hospital?” Lucas asked.
“Haskins is a mess,” Chase said. “He’ll be in the OR all night. The other agent has a bullet wound in his leg, torn up muscle and cracked a bone, but he should be okay, aside from any psychological trauma. Which could be extensive. Haskins, we don’t know.”
Sherwood asked, “But he won’t die?”
“We don’t know. He could,” Chase said.
Mallard: “Ah. I heard just before you guys called. Leonid Sokolov died about eleven o’clock. They say that the wounds from the bullet, plus the deterioration of the poison, whatever it was, couldn’t be recovered from.”
“So Bernie got it done,” Lucas said.
Sherwood, turning away from them: “Unbelievable.”
· · ·
The agent who’d been shot in the leg confirmed what Lucas and Sherwood had seen, that the hit team had fled in a black pickup. The Minneapolis cops began scouring back streets, and a possible pickup was found in half an hour, along with a witness.
The witness, who’d left her own apartment to smoke a cigarette, said it was so cold that she stayed inside her building’s outer door to smoke it, and if that was illegal, sue her.
She’d seen a man and a woman get out of the pickup and get into a white van, which immediately pulled away from the curb and disappeared around a corner.
The man didn’t seem to be wearing a coat.
She thought that was curious, but not notably illegal, so she finished the cigarette and went back upstairs to stream a video before she went to bed. When she’d seen the flashers on the cop cars surrounding the pickup, she went back downstairs and out into the street, to ask what was going on.
The pickup wasn’t quite empty: the cops found a half-empty gun magazine lying on the floor, that would match the two Berettas found at the scene of the shooting. The two guns were like nothing anyone had seen before.
That information was passed to the feds; St. Vincent had shown up, and had spoken to the agent who killed Nikitin, then put him in an FBI vehicle by himself, to be further interviewed by the FBI’s own Inspection Division.
After isolating the agent, St. Vincent walked over to Mallard and Chase, and took them aside for a moment, then Mallard called to Lucas and Sherwood: “Hey, guys, Lucas, John…”
They went over and St. Vincent said, “Our man Tom Lawrence said you witnessed the shooting, the one where Lawrence shot the man on the ground. The Minneapolis crime scene people says it appears that the shot was fired into his forehead from a very close range, and apparently straight through his head and into the blacktop. Tom says the guy made a move for one of the Berettas and if he’d gotten it up, Tom himself might have been killed, and other people on the street. You guys were supposedly witnesses.”
“That’s the way I saw it,” Lucas said. “We dumped our car and ran over to the two guys who were down, Haskins and the other guy…”
“Droll…” They all glanced over at the body, now covered with a black plastic sheet.
Lucas continued: “Yeah, while we were doing that, I saw the hit team guy moving. Not dead. The guy who was shot in the leg said he had an automatic weapon. After the ambulances had gone, John and I walked over to look at that Cadillac, and he was right. You can see it in the car.”
“There were no guns within reach,” St. Vincent said. “Those Berettas.”
“That’s because he made a play for one of them. Your man shot him, and then he kicked the guns away just, you know…like you’re trained to.”
“Thank you,” St. Vincent said. “I appreciate it.”
Mallard nodded, and then Chase asked Sherwood: “Did you see the same thing?”
“I was putting pressure on the guy’s leg, the guy who got shot, and my back was half turned away. I looked when Lucas said the man on the ground was still alive, and I saw him trying to get up. I didn’t actually see the shooting, but I know the man on the ground was still alive.”
“Good. Somebody from our Inspection Division may want written statements from the two of you, but I’m satisfied,” Mallard said.
“I think we may have to look a little more closely at this,” Chase said.
Mallard turned and snapped, “I don’t think so, Jane.”
Mallard, Chase, and St. Vincent moved away, still talking, and Sherwood muttered to Lucas, “Jane thinks you’re a lying sack of shit, you lying sack of shit.”
“Fuck Jane.”
“I’m trying, I’m trying,” Sherwood said.
“If you get there, no pillow talk about this,” Lucas said. “Besides, I did sort of see something like that.”
“I didn’t, and I was looking right at them.”
“Stick with the half-turned-away story. They not only bought it, they desperately want to buy it.”
· · ·
Lucas and Sherwood stayed until all the bodies were gone, and all the FBI agents except Mallard and Chase.
A crime scene crew was still looking for cartridge cases and marking frozen blood puddles.
A few of the neighbors were still standing on the sidelines, but when a wrecker arrived to tow the shot-up Cadillac, they started drifting back to their homes.
Then Mallard waved goodbye, and he and Chase headed for their rental car.
· · ·
“The hit team is gonna be long gone,” Lucas told Sherwood.
They were sitting in their own car, trying to get warm.
“If they’re headed for Mexico, they could already be through Des Moines.
Gotta get Bernie’s photo out to every border crossing, but…
I kinda think they’re gone for good. They had to have a solid plan to get out of the country. ”
“I’m afraid you’re right. Well: I’ll probably get out of here myself, tomorrow or the next day,” Sherwood said. “I can’t say I found Minneapolis to be overwhelmingly charming. Me being wounded and all.”
“Not healed up yet?”
“I only got shot two days ago,” Sherwood said.
“Yeah, but it was like being scratched by a pine needle.”
“Maybe Jane could kiss it and make it better,” Sherwood said.
“If that happens, I’ll personally award you a hundred dollars,” Lucas said. “Ask to see her bullet scar. It’s on her rather attractive ass. I happened to be around when she got shot.”
“Do tell.”
“I do tell,” Lucas said. “Listen, you won’t get out of here tomorrow—too much bureaucracy to deal with. Why don’t you come over tomorrow night for dinner again? We’ll get Weather and go out to somewhere good. I mean, there’s no chance you’ll be taking Jane out, we both know that.”
“I’d like to do that,” Sherwood said. “What are you doing?”
“I plan to start by sleeping late.” He shrugged. “After that, I suspect both of us will be up to our necks in cheese-eating bureaucrats.”
· · ·
Lucas was right. The next day they were interviewed, jointly and separately, by FBI interrogators and Minneapolis cops, about the shooting of Nikitin, and exactly how they’d gotten involved in the chase. At night, they went out to somewhere good, for a dinner that, if not morose, was subdued.
Lucas had never been impressed by the general run of FBI agents, but had known some exceptionally good ones, including Mallard and Chase, and the killing of the two agents was a weight on them all.
At their latest report, Haskins was hanging on, but his career as a street agent was over: some of his injuries would probably never fully heal.
Sherwood said he had a flight out to Washington the next day at one o’clock. Leaving the restaurant, he shook hands with Lucas and said, “Next time you’re in D.C.”