Wolf Hour

48 A Beer Outdoors, October 2016

O’Rourke’s men were in position outside the door of the box. On the frosted glass he noted the logo of one of the Vikings’ sponsors. Two men stood ready with the little battering ram, three others behind them with weapons trained on the door, the lights on the gun barrels lit.

‘Kilo and Lima are ready,’ he whispered into a walkie-talkie.

O’Rourke breathed slowly as he waited for a response. Could feel in his pulse that this was the good kind of tension, on the right side of being nervous. It brought a strange feeling of safety to know that he was so alert. They were totally prepared for just about any eventuality. On the other hand they could never know exactly what lay in store for them. But that was what he loved about the job. The combination of the intoxication of control and the thrill of the risk. It was like fucking and being fucked at the same time.

Then Springer’s voice was coming through the walkie-talkie.

‘Alpha. Do you have to use stun grenades?’

‘Have to,’ said O’Rourke.

‘We’re worried that might create panic in the stadium.’

‘Tell the band to play louder.’

‘Nothing plays louder than a stun grenade, and the flashes of light will be visible all over the stadium. Sixty thousand frightened people. You see what I’m getting at...’

O’Rourke saw all right. Not using stun grenades would deprive them of a tactical advantage and increase the risk of loss. On the other hand, nothing SWAT did was free of risk, and if only one man had been observed in there then the risk was acceptable. His decision was easy.

‘OK then, we go in without the stun grenades,’ said O’Rourke.

Brenton Walker stood in a corner watching Springer talking into his walkie-talkie while the female member of the mayor’s own security team explained the situation to Patterson. Walker’s phone rang and he saw it was Myers calling. He pressed Reject. Seconds later the phone gave a slight tremor, like a shudder. He read the text message:

Gomez is a white man, 58, real name Mike Lunde.

Walker tapped the Call symbol and Myers answered before he had raised the phone to his ear.

‘I found Gomez’s body,’ she said. ‘He’s been flayed. Mike Lunde has been using his face as a mask.’

Walker — who liked to think he was capable of calm in moments of crisis — heard his own response, explosive and involuntary: ‘What?’

‘Lunde is a taxidermist. He’s left his house and he’s carrying a rifle, that’s about what we know. I’m on my way to the stadium now. JTTF have people working round the clock on this who can locate a photo of Lunde and send it to you.’

‘Good, JTTF are here.’

‘OK. So the name is Mike Lunde, address 1722 Erie Avenue, Chanhassen.’

He hung up at the same time as he heard Springer speak into his walkie-talkie:

‘OK, let’s go, Kilo.’

O’Rourke followed directly behind the five who went in front. By the time he was round the corner they had already surrounded the man sitting alone at the table and were pointing their automatics at him. The man’s eyes were wide and black with fear, his mouth was open and his hands raised, though no one had given him the order. In front of him on the table was an open beer bottle with a handle that O’Rourke identified as a local brew, an Utepils. In a cupboard with a glass door behind the man he saw several more bottles of the same beer. O’Rourke wasn’t sure if it was the bottle or the look on the man’s face that told him straight away this was neither a sniper nor a terrorist. But rules are rules, so he nodded to his men and they took up position behind the chair in which the man sat. They lifted him up, laid him on the floor on his stomach and handcuffed him. O’Rourke squatted in front of him.

‘Where are the others? Tell me right now or we’ll blow your head off and say you attacked us.’ The routine empty threat was delivered without its usual conviction.

‘What?’ the man stammered. ‘I’m on my own. I’m the janitor here. I’ll pay for the beer, I promise!’

Walker stood beside Springer and listened to O’Rourke’s voice over the walkie-talkie. The band had stopped playing out there, and now there were a few whistles from the crowd as a clearly impatient Patterson kicked his heels at the exit.

‘Owen Ruud,’ said O’Rourke. ‘He’s got an ID says he’s the stadium janitor. Looks genuine. And he’s not Latino, looks more like a squarehead. It’s his day off today, he says. Came along just for the mayor’s speech and to have a beer.’

‘Owen Ruud is on the list!’ called one of the JTTF men sitting at the rear of the room with an open laptop in front of him on the table. ‘Can someone ask them to take his picture and send it to me so we can be one hundred per cent certain?’

‘OK! Ready to go again,’ Springer called out to the room. ‘Mayor Patterson, when you’re ready, sir.’

‘Wait!’ called Walker. ‘I’ve just received a message from one of my colleagues. It seems that Gomez is a white man and—’

‘Mr Mayor!’ Springer interrupted. ‘If the janitor is the man we’ve been looking for we have him now and we won’t be letting him go. You’re quite safe, so go ahead!’

‘We can’t know if it’s the same man!’ Walker shouted, aware now that all eyes were on him, including Patterson’s.

‘We’re grateful to the Homicide Unit,’ said Springer. ‘But we’re in charge here and this situation is under control. Mayor, all 60,000 people out there have been thoroughly searched, regardless of ethnicity, religion, sex or sexual orientation. But the final decision must, of course, remain yours.’

The whistling had increased in volume.

‘Announce through the loudspeakers that the mayor has been held up in traffic,’ said Walker. ‘That’ll give us time to get a picture of the suspect and check if his face shows up on any of the security cameras.’

‘People saw me arriving,’ said Patterson and peered out from behind the drape. ‘Listen to them. I have to get out there. This is live TV, remember.’

‘Mr Mayor, sir—’ Walker began.

‘Now listen!’ Patterson turned and stared directly at Walker. ‘Suppose it gets out that I stood here and refused to go on even though the terrorist specialist unit said it was safe to do so, and it gets out that the man I was so afraid of was the stadium janitor. Or let me put it this way, would you want a man like that as your mayor?’ He turned to the man wearing the headset. ‘Tell them to introduce me.’

The man in the headset said something into the microphone as Patterson turned his back on Walker and started rolling his neck again. Walker told himself he hadn’t tripped up, he’d done his bit, said what he had to say, and the mayor had made his decision. Soon he would be going home to eat with his family.

A deep bass voice crackled across the stadium loudspeakers, accompanied by a drum roll that would probably soon give way to the national anthem: ‘And now, ladies and gentlemen, direct from city hall...’

Or rather, if Walker were to really cover himself completely, there was one small correction that needed to be made.

‘The suspect is not the janitor,’ Walker said quietly, addressing the mayor’s back. ‘His name is Mike Lunde. He’s a taxidermist.’

‘Here is our city’s mayor, here is everyone’s mayor and good friend to the Second Amendment,’ intoned the voice over the loudspeakers.

Walker saw how the layer of skin pressed up against the collar around Patterson’s neck tensed. Maybe it was the word ‘friend’. Maybe something else. The man with the headset drew the drape aside and they all looked out onto the stadium. As expected the drum roll had segued into the national anthem, which drowned out any whistling there might have been or the absence of applause. Still Patterson stood motionless in front of the opening.

‘Something wrong, sir?’ asked the headset.

Patterson turned. Not toward the headset, but toward Walker.

‘What did you say his name was?’