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“If this works out, you won’t have a problem. If it doesn’t work out, youreallywon’t have a problem, because there’s about an eighty percent chance that you’ll be dead,” Lucas said.
“I don’t even believe that,” Tom said.
“You know who does believe it?” Rae asked. “The President. If you want us to do it, we might be able to set up you guys to talk with him. But that would be like, tomorrow. Right now, we need you to help organize the rest of the police force and find these people.”
“You don’t even know that they’re here,” Tom said.
“If they’re not, then we’re really and truly screwed,” Lucas said. “But we think they are.”
The two eventually agreed to go along, which was a relief, because the rest of the police force was already waiting in the city hall.
Mellon said to the two cops, “All right: how do we do this?” and Lucas and Rae stepped back.
—
If they’d triedto stop the gang in almost any other city, they would have failed—but Taos could be jammed up. Only a single highway went north, and that was already blocked. To the west was the gorge of the Rio Grande, an unpassable canyon except at the Gorge Bridge and another obscure bridge several miles downriver, both of which could be easily blocked. To the east were the Sangre de Christos, with only a single highway going across the mountains, also easily blocked.
Things got more complicated going south, but the number of realistic exits from Taos could be jammed with fewer than a dozen state police and Taos cop cars, and the state police already had all of them covered, and were enhancing the checkpoints with traps—a hidden state police car would let traffic go through, but if any approached a checkpoint and then tried to turn back before they got to the checkpoint, they’d be run down and pulled over.
To avoid the possibility of panic—that most of the Taos cops would try to evacuate their families if they were told about the virus—Mellon and the other two cops agreed to go with the serial killer story, enhanced to create a Charles Manson–type gang of four people, two men and two women. The cops would be told that the gang would try to flee Taos and had to be stopped before they got to larger cities where they could vanish in the crowds. All the cops would have photos of the three known faces.
Once all the exits from Taos were solidly jammed up, the remaining cops would be placed at key intersections, checking vehicles, while others called around town, setting up a network of trusted people who would be asked to contact more well-known and trusted townspeople to ask about strangers hiding out in a car, or holed up in a house, or visiting friends.
“They’re going to have to eat, no matter where they are. From what you guys say, two of them must know that we have their faces, so they’ll have to have food brought in by the other two,” Mellon said. “We know one of those faces, but they won’t know that we know. I’m thinking we have to cover stores, supermarkets, gas stations, take-out places…”
“And we have to get them to move…make them think that they can, and make them think that they have to,” Lucas said.
“How are we going to do that?” Mellon asked.
“Tomorrow morning, we go public with the serial killing gang,” Lucas said. “Get Scott’s and Catton’s faces out there, on TV, on the internet. We won’t tell the media that we have that third face, hoping that they’ll send him out to scout around…”
“We don’t deal much with TV reporters up here,” Mellon said.
“The woman who’s coordinating this whole thing is a big shot in the Department of Homeland Security—she can handle the media,” Lucas said.
Tom, the uniformed skeptic, said, “I’m starting to believe you guys. You got three alive but maybe dying?”
“We do,” Rae said. “If you’d seen their faces—they look like they’re…rotting. Rotting alive. If you’d seen that, you’d believe for sure.”
—
When they’d hammeredoutwhat they thought was the best available plan, they moved over to the city hall wing to brief the rest of the police force. Mellon introduced Lucas and Rae, and Rae made the basic pitch, while Mellon gave out assignments, with alerts and ideas to come back to Mellon, Tom, and Louis, who would pass the word back to Lucas and Rae.
If any of the four fugitives were spotted, they were not to be approached: that would be left to the marshals. When asked why, Rae explained that they needed to take all four of them, and if they’d separated, and one was spotted, that one might lead the marshals to the others.
“These are the worst people you can imagine,” Rae told the gathered cops. “No matter how long you’re cops, you’ll never meet anyone worse. If they try to resist, we’ll kill them.”
The chill in her voice got the cops glancing at each other; some of them, Lucas thought, were figuring out that something was going on, and that they didn’t know what it was, but it wasn’t serial killers.
An hour after they’d arrived in Taos, Lucas and Rae watched the Taos cops streaming out of the place, heading for their assignments.
Lucas, watching them, muttered, “This is fucked up.”
“It’s what we got,” Rae said. “We ain’t got no more.”
—
They updated Greet,who told them that the first batch of samples from the ski valley were at Detrick, and the lab was taking them apart. Letty called, told them about the possible grave in Lamy, and that they were heading to the Holiday Inn.
