Broker’s fist slammed down on the dashboard. “Aw, shit!”
Mouse loosened the safety strap on his holster and stepped on the gas. Lights and sirens. Broker put out his hand to steady himself on the dashboard as Mouse plunged into the summer traffic.
Broker’s heart kept pace with the runaway cop radio rap.
Mouse pushed the Crown Vic through a grid of residential blocks, toward the sound of sirens. He held his radio handset in his left hand. His right hand tapped on the computer keyboard.
Now they could hear the wolf pack sirens starting to gather in on the neighborhood. Mouse shook his head, tapped on his computer keys. “The only thing missing is a full moon,” he said.
Broker noticed the display on Mouse’s MDT screen flicker, bringing up a screen full of different color type. White lines of type blipped to blue lines. “What’s going on?”
“This is the duty roster. White is off duty; blue is on duty. Guys are piling on.” Mouse tapped one of the blue lines. “See, seven niner just logged in blue. That’s Lymon. He’s in ahead of us.”
Cross streets named after trees: Linden, Laurel, Maple. Broker turned onto Beech. An ambulance from Lakeview. Six squads: two from Stillwater, two county, Oak Park Heights, and Bayport. Cops with flashlights working the lawn, the fence line. Light and movement and sound coming in from the adjoining streets, where more cops were cordoning the neighborhood. Stopping cars. Asking questions.
A Stillwater cop was standing on the front lawn of the address. He waved at Broker and Mouse. “In the back. In the back.” They parked and ran to the back of the house.
Badge number two twelve, the Stillwater sergeant who was commanding the scene, leaned over a street map unfolded on the hood of a squad. A county deputy held a flashlight on the map.
The sergeant nodded to Mouse and Broker as they walked up. “You hear? We got another one,” he said. “And this time it’s out in plain view. Still in her mouth.” Then he opened the gate and pointed toward a well-lit solarium porch.
Carol Lennon lay sprawled on her back in front of a futon couch, starkly naked in the askew orange kimono.
The sergeant went on, “The neighbor found her facedown, he was talking to nine-one-one, he turned her over to try CPR.”
Her eyes were stuck open, exaggerated by blood from the wound in her face that had pooled in the eye sockets. The elbow and the wrist of one arm were twisted at an unnatural angle of stress. Shards of shattered wineglass sparkled on the floor.
Broker could see a long swirl of dark hair soaking in a wide pool of blood on the terra-cotta tiles. A tall snake plant was tipped over, the hairy roots exposed, the long green blades bordered with blood.
The sergeant pointed to the stocky man in shorts and a lime tank top who was holding a gauze pad to his forehead. “He’s the next-door neighbor. Charlie Ash. He was out watering his lawn and heard shots and breaking glass. So he came to investigate and the shooter whacked him in the head when he came through the gate.”
The guy nodded. “I went to check Carol, like the nine-one-one operator told me, and I turned her over to, you know, clear the airway, and she had this thing in her mouth.”
“We heard,” Mouse said.
“Where do you want us?” Broker asked.
The sergeant drew a semicircle on the map with his finger encompassing the area west of their present location. “We’re clamping off everything to the west and stopping anyone moving on the streets or driving out of the cordon.” He turned to the neighbor. “You’re sure this was a female?”
The guy nodded wearily. “Even with blood in my eye, I noticed she was pretty built from behind. Definitely a female.”
“So we’re looking for a female, dark shorts, dark sports top,” the sergeant said.
A county deputy approached with a big black-and-tan shepherd on a leash.
“Good, we can get a track started,” the sergeant said. The he stuck his head in the squad and keyed his radio.
A squall of voices competed in the static.
Then out of a jitter of static:
The radio channel went dead silent.
Mouse said, “Lymon.”
Broker nodded, recognizing the shaken voice.
“Take the mobile, take the mobile,” Mouse said, gritting his teeth.
“What?” Broker asked.
Mouse hunched over the map, tapped his finger, and said, “I know exactly where he’s at. The lake ends here, and then there’s this swamp. He’s chasing her down this wooded finger that runs in between.” Mouse bit his lip. “It gets real fucked in there, broken ground, this woods on the other side of the lake before you get to this single windy street.”
Broker saw the problem. Lymon was chasing someone into a marshy woods in the dark. And it sounded like he didn’t take his mobile radio. Broker also sensed that most of the squads converging on the area, which had started to set up a perimeter, now were bolting toward the lake.
The radio squawked a confirmation:
The cops were talking at once, stepping on their transmissions. A cluster was taking shape in the night.
The sergeant reached in his car and grabbed his handset.
“I gotta stay here, wait for John,” Mouse said.
The sergeant nodded, barked to the Stillwater cop blocking the gate. “Terry, go in around the other side of the lake and see if you can get ahead of this goddamn footrace.”
The cop nodded and started toward his car.
“You going or staying?” Mouse said to Broker.
Broker pointed to the Stillwater cop, followed him, and piled in his car. Lights, no siren, they raced around the lake. Broker saw in detail the difficult terrain Mouse had warned about. The solitary curving road they drove down had few streetlights. And the houses dissolved into darkness. The street ended in a cul-de-sac.
“I don’t like this,” said Terry, the Stillwater cop. “Only a couple of streets on this side, and they wind all over.”
“Lymon’s in there, no radio,” Broker said, squinting into the darkness. “Person he’s chasing could be armed
