At All Costs by John Gilstrap

a lifetime assignment crashing doors in the world’s worst ghettos or watching grass grow at some distant Indian reservation.
    She could always quit, she supposed—but in the longer view, that wasn’t really an option. She had her daughters to think about. Until Pam and Paula were out of college and married, hers was the only paycheck to pay the bills.
    When Sherwood failed to return with news of an arrest, she’d figured Donovan was gone. So now the chase was on. As she reached for the door handle leading from Sherwood’s office to the squad room, she paused for a moment, straightening her shoulders and pulling herself together. At least for the time being, she was still in charge of this case, and she was intent on looking the part.
    The squad room was deserted. Half-full cups of coffee sat in the middle of incomplete paperwork. Chairs were skewed, and somehow the place looked even rattier than it had before. Obviously, Sherwood had scrambled the whole department to chase Donovan down, and God bless him for the effort.
    For the time being, the Phoenix P.D. would be the only eyes and ears she had. The DEA boys from this morning were already on their way back home, and they had no jurisdiction, anyway. That pretty much left her with her thumb up her ass waiting for reinforcements from the Charleston field office, at which point the chase would take on a whole new dimension. Meanwhile, she needed to find Sherwood and his senior staff. She was, after all, their leader.
    She found the chief and his three lieutenants holed up in the command center—really little more than a conference room with a dozen phone lines and maps covering three walls. A giant green chalkboard dominated the fourth wall, extending from corner to corner, floor to ceiling. Currently, the board was empty.
    That will change soon enough, she thought.
    “Good afternoon, gentlemen,” she said, striding up to the front of the room. Southern born and bred, the four men stood without thinking, but she waved them back into their seats. “You’ve all heard about my little adventure this morning,” she opened, “and I’m sure you’ll have ample opportunity to bust my chops over the next few hours or—God forbid—days.” She figured the best way to regain some semblance of authority was to admit responsibility up front and to move on. “For the time being, though, somebody catch me up with what we know.”
    Sherwood took the lead, but not before draining his coffee and adding the cup to the boneyard of dead Styrofoam scattered across the Formica-topped conference table. “I’m afraid you already know what we know, Irene,” he said with a shrug. “He bamboozled us. The officer who was supposed to be ferrying him back to his house got sidetracked by a story about his mother having surgery at the hospital. We’ve got officers there, of course, but I don’t expect to find anything. He’s a clever guy.”
    “You’ve got people at his house, I presume,” she offered, drawing a patronizing glare from the chief.
    “Of course,” he said, his tolerance a bit frayed. “And at his office, too, though I can’t imagine he’d be stupid enough to go back there.”
    She nodded. They were long shots, but criminals were known to make incredibly foolish mistakes. “What about roadblocks?” As she spoke, she leafed through the Wanted posters for the Donovans, trying to reconcile the printed details with the ones she’d memorized.
    One of the lieutenants answered for Sherwood. “Unfortunately, we don’t have the manpower to be offensive and defensive at the same time. The state police are willing to help, but they’re just as flat-footed as we are right now. Give me two hours, and I can make this city vaporproof. Until then, we’ve got to hope for mistakes.”
    She dropped the posters on the table and looked up. “Well, the Donovans aren’t known for making too many of those,” she said. “Do you people realize who we’re dealing with? These two