HE PICKED UP Del and they got a city car and went looking for Barstad. Marcy had straightened out the confusion on the two Ellen Barstads—one of them was an elderly resident of a nursing home—and so they had an address and phone number, but nothing else.
The address turned out to be in another one of the faceless business parks, not far from the nearly identical one where Ware had his porn studio.
“I thought it was her home address,” Del said, as they pulled into the parking area. Thirty or forty cars were scattered down the length of the narrow, block-long lot.
“Maybe she lives here,” Lucas said.
“There’s a sign on the door.”
The door was heavy silvered glass, and the sign was in gold stick-on letters: “Barstad Crafts.” The door was locked, but they could see a light in the back. Lucas knocked, then cupped his hands on the glass to peer past the reflections. He knocked again, and a woman stepped into the light in the back, then started toward them. When she got close, Lucas took out his ID case and held it up so she could see it.
She turned the lock and said, “Yes?”
Lucas recognized her from the ME’s office. “Ellen Barstad?”
“Yes?” A worried, tentative smile.
Lucas introduced himself, and then Del, and said, “We have a serious problem, and we need to talk to you about it. Would you have a few minutes?”
“Well . . .” She looked carefully at Del and then said to Lucas, “You’re the man who was at the medical examiner’s office.”
“Yeah.”
“Okay.” She opened the door all the way and stepped back. “Come in. Let me lock the door behind you.”
The front of the store was an open bay, with quilt frames made out of brightly painted one-by-two lumber leaning against the walls, and another lying flat on a series of sawhorses. All held quilts in various stages of completion.
“I give classes,” she said.
“This is a really nice quilt,” Del said, and he meant it. The quilt was a traditional log-cabin style, but the colors had been carefully chosen and placed, so that light seemed to be falling across the quilt from one side to the other; it was almost as if the quilt were spread across a bed by a sunlit window.
Barstad picked up on his sincerity and asked, “Do you have quilts?”
“Two of them,” Del said. “My sister-in-law makes them. Nothing like this, though.”
They spent a moment looking at the quilt, bonding. And then Barstad, flattered, said, “What can I do for you? Is there a problem?”
Del said, “Let’s get some chairs.” There were several chairs scattered around the room, and he reached for one.
“Why don’t you come in back,” she said. “I can make some coffee, if you don’t mind microwave.”
She did live in the place. The back part of the commercial space had been carefully divided into small rooms with drywall partitions. She might have done it herself, Lucas thought: A green Army-type tool bag and a drywall square sat in one corner of the main room, on a white-plastic bucket of drywall compound.
He could see one end of a bed in a side room, and a toilet and sink in a corner between the bedroom and the living room space. A kitchen had been carved out of another corner and equipped with a half-sized office refrigerator, an old electric stove, and what once had been a standard industrial sink. Shelves and cupboards were fashioned from chromed industrial kitchen racks. Altogether, he thought, it looked snug, artsy-craftsy, and even a little snazzy.
As she got cups, Lucas said, “You were at the ME’s office with James Qatar.”
“Yes. James and I have been dating.”
“We are doing . . . research . . . on Mr. Qatar,” Lucas said. “He’s basically the guy we want to talk about.”
“Do you think he killed his mother?”
Lucas looked at Del, who shrugged, and Lucas asked, “Where did that question come from?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “His mother’s dead in a weird way, and the cops show up and ask questions. Was she murdered?”
“We think she may have been,” Lucas said. “Was there anything in particular that caused you to ask the question?”
“Yes,” she said. “James is a would-be clothes horse. He loves to get dressed up. When I was studying fabric I did quite a bit with fashion, you know, and I never met anybody with as much need to project himself through clothing as James does. . . . It’s like when he tries to picture himself, the main thing he sees are clothes, but he never has enough money to get the really good ones.” She reached out and touched Lucas’s jacket. “He would love something like this.”
“Uh . . .”
“Just a minute, I’m getting there,” she said. The microwave beeped, and she took the three cups out and passed them around. Watching her talk and move around, Lucas had concluded that she was an attractive woman hiding behind a plain facade—part of the curious Minnesota female ethic of dressing down. She went on: “Anyway, he called me after his mother was found, said he needed moral support to look at her body. So I went with him, and we identified her, and he was all weepy when you showed up. I felt like I was a prop. But I’ll tell you, the weeping stopped one minute after we left, and we went on a shopping spree. For him. He paid two thousand dollars for a pinkie ring, for God’s sake. Probably three thousand dollars more in Saks and Neiman’s, and he just doesn’t have that kind of money. I think it came from his mother’s house.”
“Huh. Not a lot of grief,” Lucas suggested.
“Not when he wasn’t around the medical examiner’s or you police,” she said.
Del said, “Look, we don’t want you to betray a friendship—”
“Of course you do,” she said. “What do you want me to do?”
Lucas cocked his head. “I get the impression that you’re not all that friendly.”
“We’ve been sleeping together for three weeks—but it’s just about to end, to tell you the truth. He’s not exactly the package I was looking for. I think . . .” She paused, and actually seemed to think about it. “I knew he might have been a little freaky in some ways, right from the start. He had that shine in his eyes. But I had some things I wanted from him, too, so that was okay . . . and he’s clean and everything. But after that deal with his mom, he sorta scared me.”
Lucas looked at Del and said, “I guess we tell her about it.”
23
BARSTAD HAD NOTHING to contribute but impressions. Qatar was capable of violence, she said, “Sometimes we have pretty rough sex,” she said, but she added that there had been no hint of anything else.
“When you say rough sex, you mean he forces you?” Lucas asked.
“No, usually I have to suggest it,” she said. “He’s not very creative.”
“Oh.” Lucas carefully didn’t look at Del.
She said, “How about if I asked him about it? Killing people. Don’t you guys bug apartments and stuff? I could get him here and ask him and you could record it.”
“That might be a little crude—just coming out and asking,” Del said. “Especially if it pissed him off and he picked up a steam iron and popped you on the head with it. We could get in quick, but not that quick.”
“But I’m not stupid,” Barstad said. “If he looked like he was getting ready to do something, I’d scream my head off. He doesn’t carry a gun. Believe me, I know that for sure. He doesn’t even carry a pocketknife.”
“You seem pretty willing to get into this,” Lucas observed.
“Hey. It’s interesting,” she said. “You think he might have killed his mom, I’m willing to help out.”
“There’s more to it than that, about Qatar,” Lucas said.
Del said, “If you’ve seen the TV stories on this guy they call the gravedigger . . .”
She straightened. “You’re kidding me,” she breathed. “Oh, man.”
“A violent guy—if he’s the right guy,” Lucas said.
“Well, let’s get him,” Barstad said enthusiastically. �
��I can bring him over here. We can work out something for me to say, either leading him on or just putting it right to him.”
Lucas nodded. “We can work on it,” he said. “We appreciate this.”
She said, “Those women the gravedigger killed. They said he likes a type. I thought about it, because . . .” She looked down at herself.
Del said, “Yeah. You’re the type. Exactly.”
They talked a while longer, about the possibilities of bugging the apartment. “If it worked . . . we’re really looking for every scrap we can find, so it would be very helpful,” Lucas told her. “We don’t want you to get in over your head.”
“But this guy is some kind of maniac,” Barstad said. “You’ve got to catch him. If this is the way to do it . . . I can help. It sounds . . . neat.”
Del shrugged, looked at Lucas, and said, “I think it’s worth a try.”
They agreed to try, as quickly as it could be done. Lucas suggested that until they could work the trap, Barstad stay out of her apartment and out of touch with Qatar. “Maybe call him right now and tell him you have to go somewhere—Chicago—to see about a quilt show. Tell him you’ll be back tomorrow.”
She agreed, and while Lucas and Del looked, she called Qatar’s house, got an answering machine, and left the message. “Listen, I really, really need to get together tomorrow, though. Could you come over tomorrow after your one o’clock class? Then maybe we can go wine shopping. I got out some more money—might as well do it right. . . .” She hung up.
“That was fine. And now, get out,” Lucas said. “Get some clothes together—we’ll take you with us and find you a place to stay.”
“What about this place?” she asked. “When are you going to bug it?”
“If we decide to go ahead, probably this afternoon or tomorrow morning. Otherwise, we’ll just keep you out of sight until we pick him up. Don’t want to take any chances with you,” Lucas said.
“I work at a bookstore in the evenings. Could you call them and fix things?”
“Yeah. We can take care of it.”
She got a bag, took ten minutes to pack it, and they left together in the city car. On the way back, Lucas called Marcy, who set up a room in the Radisson Hotel. They checked her in, warned her about going out, and left her.
“That’s the goddamn ditziest woman I’ve met since forever,” Del said on the way out of the hotel. “What are the chances that she’s gonna stay in that room?”
“She says Qatar doesn’t like to go out, so . . . I don’t know. She oughta be okay,” Lucas said. They rode in silence for a minute or two, and then Lucas added, “I hope.”
“Maybe we ought to put somebody with her.”
“I’ll talk to Marcy. Maybe tonight . . . She is a little loose in the hinges, isn’t she?”
WHEN THEY GOT back to the office, Lucas asked Marcy, “Hear anything from Lane?”
“He said Qatar’s got a class. He’ll try to spot him, then figure out a photograph. If he can’t get him at the school, he’ll try to get him at his house.”
“He can’t be seen,” Lucas said.
“I told him that. He knows,” she said. “Towson called. He wants to talk to you. And Weather called.”
“Towson’s got a problem?” Randall Towson was the county attorney.
“I told him everything,” she said. “He’s a little worried about going with an identification by Randy. Randy’s pretty impeachable, he says.”
“Sure, but we’ve got the hard evidence: We found the earrings in his apartment,” Lucas said.
“Call him,” Marcy said.
“I will—but I need you to check out a surveillance deal. . . .” He told her about Barstad and her apartment, and the possibility of using Barstad as bait in a trap.
“All right, I’ll get on it. I better talk to her first, find some place we can do the monitoring from.”
Lucas looked around. “Where’s Marshall?”
“He went home. He’ll be back, but he had some stuff to do.”
“Okay. And I’ll call Towson.” As he was dialing, he could see Marcy moving around the office. She was moving well, the pain receding from her face, although on occasion she would ease herself past a piece of furniture or up a step, still feeling the damage to her side and rib cage. But maybe the artist was good for her, Lucas thought. She’d been cheerful for the past couple of days, the first time he’d seen that in a while.
RANDALL TOWSON WASN’T a bad county attorney, as county attorneys went; still, he had his own priorities, like reelection. He did not enjoy losing court cases that were heavily covered by the movie people, who might imply that he’d let a multiple murderer slip through his incompetent fingers. With evidence, he always wanted more.
“Look,” he said, “Marcy laid it out pretty well, and I appreciate the circumstantial stuff and the supportive evidence like his college record. But at this point, if you don’t get Whitcomb you don’t get Qatar. And Whitcomb is not reliable. When he figures out that he could be in a wheelchair for the rest of his life, he might be pretty unhappy with our side. And what’s Qatar ever done to him?”
“I know. We’re working on one more thing,” Lucas said. He described the relationship between Barstad and Qatar. “She’s cooperating. We’re gonna wire her apartment, and if we get him talking, maybe we won’t need Randy as much.”
“Good. The more the better,” Towson said. “You still want to get Whitcomb, but this Barstad—if we can get him on tape, and Whitcomb comes through, he’s toast.”
“If he doesn’t say anything?”
“Well, shit . . . Wait for Whitcomb, and if Whitcomb comes through, take Qatar. Once we get him and we get into his house, get at his computer and all his other stuff, there’s a chance we’ll find more.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” Lucas said.
“ ’Cause there’d be one thing worse than losing the trial—and that’s having him kill somebody else while we’re jacking around.”
“Especially if the TV people found out about it.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” said Towson.
WEATHER HAD CALLED to see if they were going out for dinner. Lucas said, “Things are happening. I’ll get back if I can, but you better not count on it.”
“There. You sound as cheerful as you have all winter,” she said.
“Yeah, well . . . it’s getting intricate.” He liked intricate. They talked for a few more minutes, and then he saw Marcy hold up a finger, and he said, “I gotta go. Titsy calls.”
“Then you gotta go.”
Marcy moved quickly on the surveillance. “We’ve got Jim Gibson free. He’s going up to the Radisson to get Barstad’s keys, and then he’s gonna go over and look at her apartment right now. Barstad says there’s a place next door called Culver Processing Sales that’s a good possibility as a place that we can hide out. I just talked to the owner, it’s a Dave Culver, and he says he wants to talk to the guy in charge—you—before he says yes.”
“I’ll get a bite and then I’ll run back up there,” Lucas said. “Is Gibson on the way?”
“Pretty soon.”
Lucas walked across to the cafeteria, got a tapioca pudding and a cup of coffee, glanced at the morning papers, and then headed out again. At Barstad’s, he saw Gibson standing in the parking lot behind his van; when he swung past to park, he saw Barstad using her keys to open the door. “Goddamnit.” What was she doing here?
“She told me she was supposed to come along,” Gibson said when Lucas got out and asked him. “Is that wrong?”
“It would be if Qatar swung by for an afternooner,” Lucas said.
Inside, Barstad said, “I needed to come back anyway. I forgot some stuff—I refuse to wash my hair with hotel shampoo. You never know what’s in it.”
“We need to keep you out of sight.”
“James is teaching,” she said. “He’d never come all the way here without calling, so . . .” She shrugged, then smiled and said, “C’mon. I�
��ll introduce you to Dave Culver. He’s a nice guy.”
“What does he do?”
“Sells big meat cutters and grinders and so on to restaurants.”
Culver was a heavyset man in his late fifties with a square dark face with a Stalinesque mustache. He was in the back of his business, ripping cardboard boxes, when they pushed through the front door. A buzzer went off in the back, and Barstad shouted, “Hey, Dave, it’s me. And the cops.”
They were standing in a small reception room, with three easy chairs and a coffee table. The coffee table had three deer-hunting magazines, a four-wheeler magazine, a battered copy of The New Yorker, and sales literature for automated meat cutters.
Chosen Prey Page 29