Mac nodded to Rockford, who was holding a camera. “Bobby, let’s get photos of this guy’s face, check his arm for tats or anything else that could be identifying and let’s get this guy’s picture over to Duffy and put it in his queue to see if he can tell us who he is.”
“On it, Mac.”
As Rockford walked to the back, Younkers joined them in the reception area. “What do you guys think?”
“I think two things. First, our guy is in critical condition and if I’m reading Lupo right, it’s maybe 50/50 at best, could go either way. We need to get a surgeon over here stat to confirm that and take over care. Call over to Fairview Southdale or North Memorial and see if we can get a surgeon out here on the QT. I don’t want this guy moved until he’s stable enough to be moved. Second, we leave eight guys inside here,” Mac answered. “We have double that hang around nearby and see if they call. If they do, Lupo tells them their guy is ready to be picked up. If they show, we pounce. If not, at worst, we have our killer. We can keep working on finding out who let him off the leash.”
Wire walked back into the front of the room, “Mac, we have a plane waiting.”
* * *
Moriarity and Holmes sat in the front seats of their latest vehicle, now a black Dodge minivan. Their position up on a small hill two blocks west of Lupo’s office allowed them to look down on the office and take in the front and the back of the business. They saw the three unmarked cars roll around the back and Moriarity said: “That doesn’t look promising.
“No, it doesn’t, they came in fast,” Holmes answered. “And that looks even worse,” he added after seeing the three unmarked cars roll up to the front of the office thirty seconds later. He put the night vision binoculars to his eyes and focused on the front door. “The one doing the knocking has a document in his right hand.”
“Search warrant?”
“I don’t know American law very well,” Holmes answered. “However, it does seem fast to have gotten one if that’s what it is.”
The two men saw the knocking on the front and then looked to the back and saw Lupo try to sneak out the back, only to be immediately taken and cuffed by two large police officers with the other four rushing inside. Holmes reached for his cell phone. “Kristoff, we have a problem on Foche. I’m sorry, but we’re going to have to walk away.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“I want justice.”
As Mac looked out the plane’s window, he thought about the fact he’d never worked a case like this with the ramifications that it potentially had. The investigation had a tremendous momentum all its own and it wasn’t ready to stop any time soon. It was like pulling at a loose thread. If you pulled one out, three more appeared ready to be pulled until the whole shirt fell apart. The case had so many potential permutations; it was hard to know which one to follow.
The McCormick and Montgomery murders were largely closed. A double murder solved in less than twelve hours plus possibly another one from two days ago. He had the killer at Lupo’s office. There were two impeccable witnesses to identify him. If the man survived his wounds, he was going away for life. That they didn’t know who the man was wasn’t an issue, they’d get his identity eventually. If someone showed to pick him up, so much the better and easier.
The question nagging him, and Wire, not to mention the chief and the Judge, who had now made common cause, was who hired the killer? Someone let the dog out to hunt. Who?
Judge Dixon was emphatic it wasn’t the vice president. Mac thought back to something he learned long ago from his father and that was that politicians always leave themselves a way out. If the night’s events were being orchestrated by Vice President Wellesley, he wasn’t leaving himself a way out. Mac wasn’t going to vote for Wellesley, but from what he’d seen and read on the vice president through the years, he thought him to be a pretty decent and smart man.
In Mac’s mind, Dixon was right. This wasn’t the vice president’s play. It may have been the play of a smart man, but not a decent one.