Page 15 of Dodge

He got into his cruiser and started the engine. He lifted the mic and called in to Sandra, one of the office’s administrators, asking her to pull together a list of foreclosed farms.

Lombardi then sat back, thinking about what he’d learned today.

Kneeling in front of the door when serving warrants, not closing car doors when you didn’t want to announce your presence, using credit cards to track suspects, setting up a fund to pay for information, remembering that a suspect might park their car in a place that police couldn’t easily get to in their vehicles ...

At this last thought, something began to nag.

What was it?

Think ...

Oh, okay. What to make of this? The marshal had said Marlowe would hike through the forest preserve to get to her car.

Well, itwasa county preserve but how did he know that? And that it wasn’t just a forest?

He’d said he didn’t know the area.

And something else: Greene hadn’t asked directions back here to the mall or used GPS. It was a complicated route from the Western Valley Lodge. Lombardi himself would have used the nav system.

Then, something even stranger arose, more troubling.

The two of them had found Marlowe. Why not call in a tactical team to stake out the room or, if she was in it, do a dynamic entry to take her? Which Greene had said they’d do.

For some reason the marshal had wanted to be at the motel alone with Lombardi and Marlowe.

He debated only seconds. Gut churning, Lombardi logged onto the computer mounted in front of the cruiser’s dashboard. He googled “US Marshals Office, Chicago.” The site came up quickly and he clicked on “Personnel.” When the page came up, he began scrolling through names.

Lombardi was then aware of a shadow outside. He turned to his left and saw, no more than three feet away, Ed Greene, or whoever he was, looking at the deputy’s computer screen.

The man’s lips were pressed together in disappointment ...

Their eyes met. Neither man moved for a moment.

As Tony Lombardi’s hand lurched forward, the man lifted his Glock and shot him in the face.

Constant Marlowe pulled her old orange car to the curb in a part of the village of Upper Falls that was much better than the neighborhood surrounding the Western Valley Lodge, where her trap had failed so spectacularly.

A touch to her back waistband to orient herself to the location of the Smith & Wesson—it sometimes shifted as she drove—and then she stepped through a thicket of untrimmed brush. She stopped at the edge of the parking lot. Quite the scene unfolded before her, a full-on carnival, illuminated in the approaching dusk by the whipsaw lights of the emergency vehicles.

Dozens of people stood in clusters on the exterior side of the yellow police tape. They were staring toward the Dollar General store, from which the hind end of a Sheriff’s Office cruiser protruded, surrounded by an ice field of glass shards. A multitude of cell phones were at work, taking pictures and videos. Dozens of law enforcers were present. She focused on two: bothgray-uniformed men, one older, one younger. They stood beside an HCSO cruiser. On the side were the stenciled messages: CALL911INEMERGENCYand WESERVE AND PROTECT.

The elder of the pair was decked out with significant gingerbread on shoulder and chest—bars and pins and insignia.

He was the one Marlowe walked up to. “Sheriff?”

The man looked down at her from his six-four stature. His face was outdoorsman wrinkled and he was of a physique that featured thin legs and a belly that swelled a few inches over his belt. His hair and drooping mustache were gray, a shade between that of his outfit and the paint job of the cruiser.

His expression was both weary and cautious. “Press?”

“What?”

“Are you a reporter?”

“No.”

“You know something about the incident here?”

She held up a wallet containing on one side her employer picture ID and on the other a gold badge. “Special Agent Constant Marlowe, Illinois Department of Criminal Investigations. And in answer to your question, yes, I do.”

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