Wolf Hour

27 Skyways II, October 2016

It was a Harry Winston diamond ring. It lay cushioned on black velvet in the jewellery-store window and twinkled more brightly than any of the others. Tomorrow would have been our wedding anniversary. It was expensive. But I had the money. Monica hadn’t wanted a ring like that, though, and she didn’t get one either, but I knew she would have loved it. And I would have loved it. Loved to have been standing in the kitchen making our breakfast, knowing that right then she was waking up and discovering the box on the pillow. No, it wasn’t correct to say our anniversary would have been tomorrow, it was tomorrow. You can’t stop the days from coming. Time just keeps rolling along, no matter how meaninglessly.

The security guard inside the jeweller’s stood with his arms folded, swaying back and forth on his toes. There was no music to sway to, the stores at Tracks quit playing canned music after research showed that it distracted people from their shopping. The guard could see me out here. From the scarred Latino face and the moth-eaten hoodie he guessed I couldn’t afford their jewels. Maybe he was wondering what was inside the bubble wrap. When you work security I guess you see potential threats everywhere. You don’t ask yourself, ‘Is that thing there a rifle?’ You ask, ‘Can I exclude completely the possibility that that thing there is a rifle?’ Well, anyway, I guess that’s a question people in this country must have been asking themselves ever since the birth of the nation: does that person intend to shoot me?

I raised my gaze. I wasn’t looking at the ring now but at the reflection in the glass. Behind me, on the other side of the shopping mall where people were hurrying along, a man was standing talking into his phone as he studied the interior of the pizza restaurant I had been sitting in just a few minutes ago. There was something familiar about him. Could that really be Olav Hanson, the Milkman? If he was looking for me then he’d been quick. I took one last look at the ring. Then moved on. Took a right along a short corridor between a store selling bags and one selling toys, to where the bathrooms were on this floor. I entered the men’s room. The stall I had intended to use was occupied, but I taped a note to the door before exiting and rejoining the stream. The people coming my way looked past me, like I was invisible. I liked being invisible, being able to move about freely, being a fly on the wall, listening and picking up snippets of information here and there about the progress of the investigation, being close to them in a place where it would never have occurred to them to look. But I didn’t want to be invisible all the time. I needed to show the world who I was. And then: what I was.

I looked up into the camera above the skyway I stepped onto. Looked down again. A cop car glided out into the street below me. Then another. Both had blue lights but no sirens. Like something was urgent, but they mustn’t be heard just yet, like beasts of prey sneaking up on their victims. And behind them a large green vehicle with SWAT written in white on the side. The cars stopped, men in black carrying automatics and wearing visors jumped out and ran toward the entrance. I turned and hurried back the way I had come.

Kay pulled up outside a sidewalk restaurant in Nicollet Mall where smokers sat shivering under heat lamps with their glasses of beer. As Bob stepped out of the car Kay was already heading up the street and fishing out the ringing phone from her jacket pocket.

‘Hey,’ shouted a waiter. ‘You can’t park—’

‘MPD,’ said Kay, holding up her ID without slackening her pace and putting the phone to her ear. Bob had to jog to keep up. The heels of her shoes beat out an angry rhythm against the sidewalk as she spoke into the phone in short, quick bursts:

‘He turned in a skyway? OK. We’re a minute away.’ She dropped the phone back into her pocket. ‘The video centre thinks Gomez is still on the second floor of Track Plaza.’

Kay Myers stepped up her pace.

Olav Hanson made his way further into the centre. There were a lot of people now it was evening and he wasn’t able to take in all the faces heading his way. The plan could still work if he could only locate that damn Gomez. But it had to be now. Soon the place would be swarming with police, and once Gomez was under arrest and being held in custody it would be more complicated to get rid of him. Olav’s gaze swept forward and back like a lighthouse. Where are you, Gomez? His fingertips were still damp from touching the sweat rings beneath his shoulder holster. He put a finger to his upper lip and breathed in the smell. Adrenaline. Fear.

A little boy in a Timberwolves T-shirt approached, dancing in front of his parents, blissfully ignorant of the future. Ignorant of the fact that one day he would be what? A corrupt police officer with a failed football career behind him, two failed marriages and a failure of a son? A killer? Olav hadn’t killed anyone yet, not directly. What would it feel like to shoot someone, to kill them? He didn’t know, but the thought of it didn’t bother him as much as it probably should have. Maybe because he wasn’t doing it for pleasure but to survive. Anyway, the man he intended to kill should have been in a courtroom long ago, and in a state that still had the death penalty. No, shooting this killer wasn’t something he would lose any sleep over. Quite the opposite, he would sleep better. He would even feel better, once he got it done. Straightened out a couple of things. Got back to being the man he once was. If he could get it done.

There!

He had caught a glimpse of a face in the crowd a little further ahead. It was him. He recognised the hoodie and the bubble-wrap package beneath the arm. Olav Hanson veered over to the left of the walkway to intercept, with the result that two tall, laughing teenage boys bumped into him and he lost sight of Lobo.

‘Sorry,’ the two sang out in chorus.

‘Fuck you,’ Hanson muttered as he looked round for Lobo. Gone! Shit, how was that possible? Lobo must have seen him, ducked down and run. Had he recognised him as the Milkman and understood he must be looking for him? Olav noticed the sign for the restrooms up on the wall. He saw now that a corridor ran between the stores where he had just now caught sight of him.

Restrooms. No cameras there. No witnesses if the arrest took place in one of the stalls.

Olav Hanson put his hand inside his jacket again. Fought his way down the corridor. The door to the bathroom swung open, a man walked out and Olav caught a glimpse of the backs lined up along the washbasins. He picked up the sound of men in a hurry and thought of running water, slamming doors, movements that attracted attention, that here was the perfect camouflage. He no longer felt the pain in his knee, just a rush, a delicious free fall, a certainty that the moment had come, the seconds were ticking down to the final whistle at what might possibly be a defeat, but that it was his turn to tackle someone out of the life they were dreaming about.

‘Hanson!’

The voice came from behind and cut through the steady buzz of noise from Track Plaza. Hanson cursed inwardly. It was Kay Myers’s voice.

Bob walked two paces behind Kay and one step ahead of O’Rourke. Two uniforms behind them.

They stopped in front of Olav Hanson, who gave them a look like a man who had just lost a poker pot.

‘Have you seen Gomez?’ asked Kay.

Olav Hanson gave a regretful shake of the head.

‘That’s funny,’ said Kay. ‘Because it looked like you were on your way to the restroom where the video centre says Gomez just went in.’

‘Really?’ said Hanson, and Bob registered that the older detective was an even worse actor than he was himself. At the same time something seemed to be going on behind that stupid, staring gaze.

Hanson pulled a face. ‘Well, I saw Gomez,’ he said. ‘But I lost him. Did he go into the bathroom?’

‘You have trouble with your hearing?’ asked Kay and turned to one of the uniforms. ‘Keep people away. No one is allowed to enter this bathroom.’

Hanson looked at O’Rourke. ‘If you go in there, remember the guy is armed and dangerous. A lot of people might get hurt, so I wouldn’t exactly hesitate to... you know—’ Hanson raised his right hand and crooked his index finger.

O’Rourke nodded and looked questioningly at Kay Myers.

She bit her lower lip.

‘Let’s wait and we’ll get him when he comes out,’ she said.

The restroom was big, big as an airport restroom, with eight urinals, most of them occupied. Further in at least a dozen stalls. There were no windows in here. I walked past the men standing and washing or drying their hands at the basins in front of the mirror. Stopped at a stall with a handwritten note taped to the door, OUT OF ORDER. The O in the middle had an eye, a nose and a smiley mouth drawn on it. A large fan whirred in the ceiling above the stall. I tore off the note, pushed open the door, stepped inside, locked it and unwrapped the gun and the leather case from the bubble wrap. Then I started to strip the weapon, breaking it down to its component parts.