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“Slowed him down,” Virgil called to Lucas. They ran on through the thickening snow flurry and Lucas shouted, “Take it easy. This is like last year, the dark and the cold. Like last year.”
Virgil didn’t reply, but ran on, the shotgun at port arms, ready to go. They could hear sirens on the other side of the parkway; the ambulance and the cops were on the way, if not already at Cooper’s.
Lucas still had the flashlight on and at the end of the sidewalk, shouted, “Blood.”
Virgil could see it; not red, but black on the snow in the phone’s LED light, like somebody had been dripping oil from a leaky can. They moved slower, Virgil now with the shotgun at his shoulder, Lucas a step behind, scanning the brush on both sides of the sidewalk.
They moved past a jog in the concrete, and saw Hess up ahead, fifty yards, and they closed on him. Hess had the gun by his side andwas hobbling, hurt. He looked back over his shoulder and quit. Virgil shouted, “Gun on the ground, gun on the ground...”
Hess turned and shouted, “Fuck you,” and in one quick motion, threw the pistol at Virgil’s head. Both Virgil and Lucas nearly pulled their triggers, but as the gun flew past them, Hess sank to the ground and began to cry.
Lucas got on his phone again, called 9-1-1 and said, “Marshal Davenport. We have a wounded man on the ground near the end of the St. Clair Avenue bridge where the sidewalk runs along I-35. We’re about fifty yards up the sidewalk. We need more cops and an ambulance.”
—
Neither Virgil norLucas had handcuffs, and they had to wait for a St. Paul squad car. Hess was cuffed and loaded into the ambulance. Another squad car came, and Virgil pointed out to the sergeant where he’d fired his shotgun and shucked out the shell, and the blood trail along the sidewalk.
A third car gave them a lift back to Cooper’s. Cooper was on the way to the hospital, Melton following with the baby. Virgil called the emergency room and emphasized that their two wounded patients needed to be kept securely separate.
While he was doing that, Lucas was showing the responding cops the area where Hess had been when he fired the shot that hit Cooper. With the light of two powerful Maglites probing the hillside, they marked two shells, then a third.
Lucas thought there had been four or five shots, but getting down on his hands and knees, looking at the shells, he came to hisfeet with a grin and said to Virgil, “Same shells. Same gun, I bet. We got the motherfucker.”
“You gonna have dreams about this?” Virgil asked. “The cold, the snow, chasing the guy through the trees?”
“I don’t think so. This was good. This was fine, didn’t even notice my leg,” Lucas said. He was ebullient. “What a fuckin’ trip, huh? Cooper will be okay... probably... and we got the Sand killer. Now the question is, do we call Russo and Durey, or Daisy Jones?”
Virgil: “When did Russo and Durey ever put us on TV?”
“My man,” Lucas said.
29
The crime scene crew needed specifics about the shootings and the locations. Lucas and Virgil traced Hess’s approach, Hess’s shots, Lucas’s shots, and Hess’s flight down the hillside. Three of Lucas’s shells and four of Hess’s were located and bagged. Virgil’s shotgun shell was photographed, measured from marked locations, and bagged. Hess’s Glock and Cooper’s revolver were photographed and bagged, with the notation that Cooper’s gun hadn’t been fired.
That took two hours in what had stopped being a flurry and had become a snowstorm.
Russo arrived, shoulders hunched against the snow, and said, “It would have been nice to know what you assholes were doing, but... good job. Wish I’d been here. It feels like somebody took a boulder off my chest.”
Durey wasn’t quite as effusive, but was pleased.
Not as pleased as Daisy Jones, who broke the story over the heads of the other stations like a big gooey egg. She had numerous details, but never said exactly where she got them. Extensive contacts within the St. Paul Police Department was what she implied. The anchor on the rival WCCO quoted her on the air, while managing to suggest that Jones might not be entirely reliable.
When Virgil and Lucas were released from the scene, they drove to Regions Hospital, where Cooper had been treated for the leg wound and taken to a private room. The docs said she’d hurt for a while, but a moderate amount of physical therapy would see her fully repaired.
They were allowed to see her, in her room. Melton sat in a corner, with the baby, and smiled quickly, but Cooper didn’t: “You didn’t kill him!” she screeched. “You let him go!”
“We don’t execute people,” Virgil said. “I shot him, they’re still taking pellets out of his legs, and he quit. He threw his gun at us.”
“I don’t give a shit about that,” Cooper snarled. “You had a chance to kill him and you didn’t. He’s going to get away with it! He murdered my family and you let him get away with it!”
“That’s not how...” Lucas began.
One of her arms was wired into a bag of saline, but with the other, she pointed at the door: “Get out of here. I don’t want to see you. I thought you were my friends. Get out.”
Walking down the hall, Virgil said, “She’s a mess.”
—
