Lucas shouted back, "Sherrill's been shot. You stay here, take this."

"Fuck that, Larry can take it." He was right behind Lucas, and together they ran through the front room, and Lucas shouted at Cohen, who was talking to the blonde, "Larry, you gotta take it, Sherrill's been shot, we're going, you know what to do"

On the sidewalk, the sheriff's deputy, wet up to his hips, was pulling a handcuffed man up the lawn, a short, slender man with a dude's haircut and a small tight mouth; the dude was soaked from head to foot. The deputy said, "Fell in the fuckin' lake."

But Lucas and Del ran past him and piled into Lucas's Porsche and they were gone, streaking through the slow streets of North Oaks past a soccer field and south toward Minneapolis.

Chapter 15

Lucas focused on driving, blowing past cars as Del gave a running commentary on gaps in the traffic: "Go left behind this red one, move over left, go, go" Down the ramp and around the corner onto I-35W, squeezing between an old Bronco and a generic Chevy pickup.

Halfway back, Lucas said, "We've done this before."

"That fuckin' Sherrill, she's always got her face in it," Del said. "Last time she goddamned near bled to death."

"Rose Marie said it's bad," Lucas groaned. "She said it's bad"

A pale-faced, blood-spattered Jael Corbeau was standing in the hallway just inside the emergency room door, with two uniformed cops, when Lucas and Del burst in. "Where is she?" Lucas asked.

"They're operating," Jael said, stepping toward him. "They rushed her right in."

Lucas headed for the hall to the operating rooms. Rose Marie was standing there with Lester. Lester grabbed Lucas's arm and said, "Slow down," and Rose Marie said, "You can't see anything down there, Lucas." Lester added, "She's already under, man, they've already got her asleep."

Lucas slowed down, realized Del was right behind him. "How bad?" Del asked, and Lucas asked, "Is she gonna make it?"

"She was hit twice," Lester said. "Once in the left arm, once in the left side of her chest. Busted a lung. She might've died except that she rolled up on her left side they said she might've drowned if she hadn't been on her side."

"Is she gonna make it?" Lucas asked.

"She's bad," Lester said, "but she's still alive. If they get you here alive"

"Aw, Jesus," Lucas said. He slumped against the wall, closed his eyes. Jael. He pushed away from the wall and headed back toward the entrance. Jael was still there.

"What happened?"

The words came out in a spate. "We were coming out of my house, going downtown, and this car came down the street and the window was open and Marcy yelled at me and got her gun out and this man started shooting at us. Marcy shoved me down and then she fell down, and the car kept going, and when I looked at Marcy she had blood all over her and I ran and called 911 and then I came out and tried to stop the blood and when the ambulance got there I rode down here with her"

"She got off a couple of rounds," one of the uniformed cops said.

Jael nodded, stepped toward Lucas, took his shirt in both hands. "She said to tell you, this is all she said, she said to tell you that she shot the car, She said, Tell Lucas I hit the car.' "

"What kind of car? You didn't get a license number"

"No, no, I barely saw it 'cause she pushed me. I went down."

"You didn't see anything."

She closed her eyes, still holding on to his shirt, and then said, "It was dark. Long and dark."

Lucas pressed. "Long and dark. What do you mean, long and dark? Like a Mercedes-Benz or a Cadillac?"

"No, I don't think so," she said. "It just looked long and dark."

"American?"

"I don't know. Like those big cars from twenty years ago. But I don't know what kind, I don't know, God"

Lucas put an arm around her and gave her a squeeze. "You did good," he said. "I'm amazed that you saw anything."

More cops came rolling in. Everybody was doing right: They were looking at all long dark cars, checking for bullet holes, looping the neighborhood down there. But Jael lived within whistling distance of a half-dozen interstate on-ramps. Everybody was looking, but without much hope.

Another doctor arrived, headed straight back. "Vascular surgeon," a nurse told them.

"What does that mean?" Lucas asked. "Heart?"

"No telling," she said.

One of the on-sterile circulating nurses came out of the operating room on an errand, and they trapped her. "I don't know," she said. "She's alivethey're breathing her."

After an hour, Del said, "We can't do anything here. All we can do is find out that she died, if she dies."

"So what do you suggest?" Lucas was angry and scared, his voice a croak.

"I suggest we go find that fuckin' Olson and look at his car," Del said. Sherrill had been shot once before, and nearly bled to death. Del had ridden with her from the shooting scene to the hospital, in a helicopter, squeezing the artery so hard that for weeks afterward Sherrill had complained about the bruise. "The bullet hole is nothin'," she'd said. "But that goddamn bruise where Del squeezed me that's killing my ass."

"We know what kind of car?" Lucas asked.

"Dark blue 1986 Volvo sedan. And the Olsons said they're staying at the Four Winds. That'd be a place to start."

"I'll drive," Lucas said.

The Four Winds was three blocks from the Mall of America, just south of the I-494 link of the beltway. They spotted the Volvo in the parking lot, stopped behind it, and got out to look. The car was old and dark, with patches of gray primer paint on the left front fender. No bullet holes.

"Goddamnit. That would have been easy," Del said.

Then Tom Olson turned the corner of the motel, carrying a sack of vending machine potato chips and a can of Coke. He saw them, stopped, and then stalked over. "What are you doing?"

"Looking at your car," Lucas said.

"Why?" He set himself squarely, and a half-step too close.

Lucas moved an inch closer yet, and Del moved a foot to the right.

"Because somebody in a long dark car just shot the police officer who was guarding Jael Corbeau."

Olson was amazed, and some of the grimness went out of his face. He shuffled a step back. "You thought it was me? I'd never Is she dead?"

"No. She's in the operating room," Lucas said. "Since whoever is doing the shooting may be taking revenge for the death of your sister, and since you drive an older, dark car we thought we should take a look."

"I didn't do it," Olson said. "If I were you, I'd take a close look at those hellhounds that Alie'e hung out with. They're the crazy ones. Not me. They're the crazies."

"You seem a little loosely wrapped yourself," Del said. He'd edged a few inches closer to Olson, to a spot that would allow him to hook the other man in the solar plexus.

"Only to a sinner," Olson said.

Del tightened up. "Easy, dude," Lucas said.

"Where were you at four-twenty this afternoon?" Del asked.

Olson looked at his watch. "Well, let me see. I must've still been at the mall."

"Mall of America?"

"Yes." They all turned and looked at it. The mall looked like Uncle Scrooge's money bin, without the charm. "I spent a couple of hours walking around the place."

"What'd you buy? Do you have any receipts?" Del was pressing.

"No, I didn't buy anything," Olson said. "Well, a cinnamon roll. I just walked around."

"Talk to anybody?"

"No, not really."

"In other words, you couldn't find anybody to back up your story, if you had to."

Olson shrugged. "I don't think so. I was just walking. I'd never been in the place before. It's astonishing. You know, don't you our whole culture is dying. Something new is being born in places like that. Snake things."