abuse, take it somewhere else . . . I don’t believe I know Mr. Rouse, though.”
He scrawled his name on the warrant and handed it back to her, and Coakley said, “I know what you mean. I just, uh . . . I know what you mean.”
The judge patted her on the back and sent her on the way.
VIRGIL CALLED as she was on her way back to the office. “We’re coming fast, but I doubt we’ll catch up with Einstadt and Rooney and Olms. They had more than a half hour start on us, and we got slowed down by a highway patrol guy, so . . . they’re coming in. We’ve been talking about it and can’t decide whether we should try to intercept them, or let them go and see what they stir up. They’re going to have some kind of a meeting out there. What do you think?”
“We’ve got them, right?” Coakley asked.
“Yeah, we’ve got them.”
“So if they go and talk to a bunch of people, and decide to do something, then we’ll maybe have all of them for conspiracy,” Coakley said.” If we pick them up, that might even warn the others.” She whipped her car into the courthouse parking lot.
“Your call,” Virgil said. “But you should put somebody out on the highway, there, watching for them. They’ll be coming right down I-90, probably in the next forty-five minutes or so. Have somebody spot them, trail them to where they’re going.”
“All right. I’ve got a couple guys coming in right now, in their private cars. I’ll get them out on the highway. . . . We’ll need a description of the truck and a tag number.”
“We got those,” Virgil said.
Coakley, still in her car, jotted the information in a notebook and said, “I’ve got the warrant in my hand. We’re heading out to Rouse’s in ten minutes. Listen, if this happens the way we think, we’re going to need more people here to talk to kids than we’ve got. What do you think?”
Virgil said, “Goddamnit, that’s what happens when you slap something together. I’ll call Davenport, tell him we need to borrow people from the state, and maybe Hennepin and Ramsey counties. Get them started.”
“Do that. I reserved some extra jail space. . . . Man, I hope we’re not fucking up, here. But you say we got ’em.”
“Yeah, we got ’em. Some of them, anyway. So good luck. And hey, Coakley, watch your ass, huh? When you hit Rouse, these guys’ll know that the shit is about to start raining down on them.”
“I’ll do that—with my ass.”
She was getting cranked: she called her oldest son, told him that she wouldn’t be home that night. “You guys take care of yourselves. I love you all. Okay?”
“Are you on a . . . date?” her son asked.
She half-laughed and said, “No. I’m on a bust. The biggest one ever. I’ll tell you all about it in the morning, and it’ll be in the papers. All the papers.”
BACK AT the sheriff’s office, the two on-duty patrol officers, one male and one female, were waiting in the hall outside her office. She said, “We got an emergency,” and unlocked her door, and another patrol officer, the second woman, who’d been off-duty, came through the outer door and called, “What’s up?”
The next half hour was like walking through waist-deep glue. She and Virgil had agreed to keep the details of the case secret, but now people had to know: she briefed the deputies, figured out who’d be on the highway and who’d be going on the raid at the Rouse place. The other two off-duty deputies drifted in, and one of the two city cops, the other having gone to Des Moines for reasons unknown, and she had to bring them up to date. She needed three cops, at least, in two cars, to cover the truck coming back from Hayfield; she wanted no less than a one-to-one ratio on those.
She needed to leave one at the office, to handle incoming arrests, which left her with two, in addition to herself, to cover the Rouse warrant. Virgil would be coming with at least five more people—he’d picked up a second highway patrolman along the way.
When she’d worked through it, one eye on the clock, nearly a half hour had passed.
“We’ve got to move—Einstadt and the others will be coming through anytime. Rob, Don, Sherry, you get out to the overpass. Do not let them get by you. Go. And