Wolf Hour

26 Skyways I, October 2016

Olav Hanson was panting. he’d run all the way from where he’d parked his car at Track Plaza. He tried to ignore the pain in his knee as the escalator slowly moved him up to the second floor. He got to the top and there, a hundred yards away, he saw the pizza place. It was open toward the communal area, like a restaurant at an airport. He had his phone plugged into one ear and as he had driven from Southdale he’d been getting updates all the way from the MPD’s video centre telling him Gomez was still at the restaurant. The video centre received images from over three hundred cameras located indoors and outdoors in the downtown area and was a cooperative enterprise involving law enforcement and local businesses. It had either drastically reduced crime or — as some critics claimed — transferred it to other parts of the city. Concerns about secret surveillance had been dealt with by making the project open to all, using a glass wall behind which anyone could come and sit and see the same pictures as the police. In a word, Olav had an audience. It also meant that what had to happen had to happen somewhere it wouldn’t be caught on camera. His shirt was wet with sweat, and he could feel the edge of his holster rubbing against his armpit. The plan was simple but sound. An arrest on camera in front of witnesses and everything done by the book, body search, reading his rights, the whole bit. Apart from the fact that he wasn’t going to handcuff Gomez. He’d deliberately left his cuffs in the car and would tell Internal Affairs afterward that he’d forgotten them. He’d take Gomez over to the elevators and order everyone out of the first one that arrived. Because there were no cameras in the elevators. He’d checked. He’d shoot Gomez before they reached the lobby, make sure his fingerprints were on the barrel and say Gomez had tried to grab the gun off him.

Olav put his hand on the butt of his pistol inside his jacket as his gaze wandered over the backs of those sitting at the counter in front of the pizza ovens. None were wearing the hoodie he’d seen on the video at the parking garage. Nobody had the raven-black hair he remembered on Lobo. But if Lobo had moved on, why hadn’t the video centre passed on the message? He got his answer when he felt his phone vibrate, opened it up, heard Kay Myers’s voice and understood his twenty minutes were already up.

Kay’s Ford was held up in traffic. Bob — sitting in the passenger seat — had told her that if she’d had a Kojak light they would have been at Track Plaza inside fifteen minutes. It didn’t improve her humour.

‘Hanson?’

‘Yes?’ Olav Hanson’s voice came over the speaker.

‘I’ve talked to the video centre and told them to send all further information via me from here. Where are you?’

‘I’ve got this, Myers. I expect to be arresting Gomez at any moment. I’ll let you know if I need backup.’

‘I repeat, where are you?’ said Kay.

‘Myers, like I told you—’

‘This is my case, Hanson, and I’m asking you to provide me with adequate information.’

‘I was first on the crime scene, Myers, it’s—’

‘Bullshit! The instructions are for the duty detective to take the case until notified otherwise. You want to complain about it, call Walker. So for the last time, and before this thing goes any further: where the hell are you and what is happening?’

There was a long silence.

‘I’m at the pizza restaurant,’ Hanson said eventually. ‘Gomez isn’t here any more. What does the video centre say about where he is?’

‘Just that he’s moved away from the pizza restaurant, and they haven’t seen him on any of the skyways so he’s probably still inside the Track Plaza building. I’ve called in SWAT, so if you find Gomez, keep him under observation but do not attempt an arrest on your own. Got that?’

‘But—’

‘No buts. Let me know if you see Gomez and I’ll send in SWAT.’

Another silence.

‘OK,’ said Hanson.

They broke the connection.

‘I still don’t get what he thinks he’s doing,’ said Kay.

‘Maybe he sees his chance to get a St Cloud,’ said Bob.

Kay shrugged. Bob was referring to a part-time officer who had shot and killed a man who went berserk with two knives inside a shopping mall in St Cloud. The officer, who ran a shooting range and was armed wherever he went, even on an off-duty visit to a shopping mall, became a local hero and a poster boy for the NRA, who had bestowed on him the dubious title ‘NRA Officer of the Year’.

‘Hanson may be stupid, but he isn’t crazy,’ said Kay. ‘How this ends is up to Gomez.’

The traffic wasn’t moving and further ahead in the jam she saw a police car, a rescue vehicle and two damaged private cars.

‘OK,’ said Bob, ‘maybe Hanson won’t shoot anyone, but I guarantee you that if he sees Gomez, he won’t wait for us or SWAT. If we stay in this queue much longer he’ll have the cuffs on Gomez and be posing for the press photographers long before we get there. So I suggest you swing up onto the sidewalk and drive round.’

‘You men and your pissing contests,’ Kay snorted. ‘What matters is that someone arrests him, not who does it.’

For eight seconds they remained there in silence.

Then Myers put her foot down hard, swung the car up onto the sidewalk and sped past the jammed cars with the horn going full blast.