Read Wicked Prey for Free Online Page A
Authors: John Sandford
A male caller, deep southern accent, calling from Kennedy. He said that he’d seen Cohn getting on a plane at Heathrow, in England, yesterday, going to Los Angeles. He said he knew him from Alabama, and Cohn is from Alabama. He said Cohn had grown a red beard, and Cohn is a redhead.”
“So he sounds good,” Lucas said.
“Yes. Anyway, this guy said he was waiting to get on his plane, when he saw Cohn. He didn’t want to call from London, because he was afraid we’d identify him, and he’s afraid of Cohn. So he got way back and watched Cohn going into a gate for a flight to Los Angeles. By the time we got to the LA cops, Cohn’s flight was an hour out. They met the plane, and there was no Brutus Cohn. There was no way to get back to the original source, so we checked with Heathrow. Everything was right: there was the Kennedy gate, and down the way, the LA gate. But the gate was a joint gate—and the next gate down, where Cohn could also have been headed . . .”
“. . . came here.”
“Right. The Minneapolis plane was on the ground for three hours before we got it straight. Our people talked to the flight crew, and there was a man in first class who probably was Cohn. He almost certainly was the guy that the source saw, and the source said he knew Cohn pretty well. The crew said he was very tall, fairly thin, muscular, red hair, and charming with the flight crew. The girls liked him, and that’s Cohn, from what we hear.”
“What’s he doing?” Lucas asked.
“Don’t know. It’s possible he moved right on through the Cities, changed planes, and is gone. But it’s also possible that he’s up to something,” Lily said. “He’s a serious, ultra-violent holdup man who needs a big score so he can bury himself somewhere. He mostly worked in the south, down to Florida, north to Atlanta, west to New Mexico. Maybe California. Maybe one job in Mexico. The FBI isn’t sure about all of that, but if they’ve got him right, there have been at least five dead in thirty to forty robberies, and one survivor shot through the chest who should’ve died. He’s the guy who eventually identified Cohn for the FBI, from prison photographs. So. We’ve been looking, and waiting, and here he is. You’ve got that convention going on . . . lots of cash there. A boat-load of cash.”
Lucas said, “Let me ask you this—how’d the caller know you were looking for Cohn?”
“We didn’t make any secret about it,” she said. “We put out posters, we sent some guys to Birmingham to look up his old acquaintances, his relatives, dear old Mom. They got some TV time, it was sort of a thing, you know, a modern Jesse James. Got some attention down there.”
“You want him pretty bad,” Lucas said.
“Yes, we do.”
“Send me what you got,” Lucas said. “I’ll spread it around to the TV stations.”
“Ah—don’t do that,” Lily said. “He’s very careful. You could almost call that his MO. If he suspected we were onto him, he’d be gone in a minute.”
The problem, she said, was that New York really had no solid proof that he’d been involved in the armored car robbery. They had DNA that they believed had come out of the struggle between the cops and the shooter, but they didn’t know whether it was Cohn’s DNA, or DNA from somebody else in the gang.
“Cohn would have done the killing, if he thought he needed to, but we don’t know that he was the shooter. He was there, but maybe didn’t pull the trigger. Then, we think we found the place where they got together before the robbery, a motel out in Queens, but they burned it down, so we got nothing. No DNA, nothing.”
“Burned it down?”
“Yeah. Fire guys say somebody doused the place with a mix of gasoline and motor oil, and torched it,” Lily said. “Fire kills DNA . . .”
“I know. But it seems kind of extreme,” Lucas said.
“That’s Cohn. He’s Mr. Extreme. He did three years in prison in Alabama, a newbie, but he was running the
“So he sounds good,” Lucas said.
“Yes. Anyway, this guy said he was waiting to get on his plane, when he saw Cohn. He didn’t want to call from London, because he was afraid we’d identify him, and he’s afraid of Cohn. So he got way back and watched Cohn going into a gate for a flight to Los Angeles. By the time we got to the LA cops, Cohn’s flight was an hour out. They met the plane, and there was no Brutus Cohn. There was no way to get back to the original source, so we checked with Heathrow. Everything was right: there was the Kennedy gate, and down the way, the LA gate. But the gate was a joint gate—and the next gate down, where Cohn could also have been headed . . .”
“. . . came here.”
“Right. The Minneapolis plane was on the ground for three hours before we got it straight. Our people talked to the flight crew, and there was a man in first class who probably was Cohn. He almost certainly was the guy that the source saw, and the source said he knew Cohn pretty well. The crew said he was very tall, fairly thin, muscular, red hair, and charming with the flight crew. The girls liked him, and that’s Cohn, from what we hear.”
“What’s he doing?” Lucas asked.
“Don’t know. It’s possible he moved right on through the Cities, changed planes, and is gone. But it’s also possible that he’s up to something,” Lily said. “He’s a serious, ultra-violent holdup man who needs a big score so he can bury himself somewhere. He mostly worked in the south, down to Florida, north to Atlanta, west to New Mexico. Maybe California. Maybe one job in Mexico. The FBI isn’t sure about all of that, but if they’ve got him right, there have been at least five dead in thirty to forty robberies, and one survivor shot through the chest who should’ve died. He’s the guy who eventually identified Cohn for the FBI, from prison photographs. So. We’ve been looking, and waiting, and here he is. You’ve got that convention going on . . . lots of cash there. A boat-load of cash.”
Lucas said, “Let me ask you this—how’d the caller know you were looking for Cohn?”
“We didn’t make any secret about it,” she said. “We put out posters, we sent some guys to Birmingham to look up his old acquaintances, his relatives, dear old Mom. They got some TV time, it was sort of a thing, you know, a modern Jesse James. Got some attention down there.”
“You want him pretty bad,” Lucas said.
“Yes, we do.”
“Send me what you got,” Lucas said. “I’ll spread it around to the TV stations.”
“Ah—don’t do that,” Lily said. “He’s very careful. You could almost call that his MO. If he suspected we were onto him, he’d be gone in a minute.”
The problem, she said, was that New York really had no solid proof that he’d been involved in the armored car robbery. They had DNA that they believed had come out of the struggle between the cops and the shooter, but they didn’t know whether it was Cohn’s DNA, or DNA from somebody else in the gang.
“Cohn would have done the killing, if he thought he needed to, but we don’t know that he was the shooter. He was there, but maybe didn’t pull the trigger. Then, we think we found the place where they got together before the robbery, a motel out in Queens, but they burned it down, so we got nothing. No DNA, nothing.”
“Burned it down?”
“Yeah. Fire guys say somebody doused the place with a mix of gasoline and motor oil, and torched it,” Lily said. “Fire kills DNA . . .”
“I know. But it seems kind of extreme,” Lucas said.
“That’s Cohn. He’s Mr. Extreme. He did three years in prison in Alabama, a newbie, but he was running the