“If I don’t get something to eat in the next twelve minutes, my ass is gonna fall off.”
“Got a place?”
“There’s a cafe called the Red Red Robin. It comes reluctantly recommended.”
“See you there in fifteen,” Lucas said.
He went back to Dickerson and they stepped away from the crowd to talk. Lucas told him about the dope baggies at the Cash farmhouse. “I was just heading back down there,” Dickerson said. “Anything else?”
“We interviewed the kid and she thinks the killer’s car was a Jeep Cherokee,” Lucas explained and outlined the conversation with Del. “So the guy at the motel saw the Jeep not long before Letty saw the lights out here on the road. It makes me nervous to say it, but it fits.”
“Gotta process the room,” Dickerson said. He was interested now. “Priority one.”
“It’s sealed with official duct tape,” Lucas said. “Feel free.”
“Do any good for us to talk with the kid?”
“I don’t think so. She mostly just found them,” Lucas said. “You can take a crack at her if you want.”
“We got other stuff to do, if you think you got it all.”
“I’m taking her back downtown, to see if I can keep her away from the reporters for a while,” Lucas said. “We’ll talk to her some more.”
LETTY WAS SITTING on the hood of the Oldsmobile, apparently impervious to the cold, when Lucas got back to the road. “Couldn’t breathe inside the car,” she said. “But I stayed right here.” She hopped off the passenger side, popped the door, and climbed in. “The bodies in the bags looked stiff, like bags full of boards,” she said, as Lucas got in and fumbled out the key.
“Uh. You know a place called the Red Red Robin?”
“The Bird. Downtown. Nice place. My mom and I went there once for Thanksgiving.”
“I’m going in to get a bite to eat with Del. I hate to leave you without your mother.” He didn’t mention that he hated even more to leave her with a pack of reporters outside her door. “Want to come?”
“Sounds good to me,” Letty said. “If you’re buying.”
“I’m buying.”
On the way, Letty asked, “They were stiff in the bags. Is that like, rigor mortis?”
Lucas shook his head. “No. They were frozen. Like Popsicles.”
THE RED RED Robin was a storefront cafe with a robin painted on a swinging wooden sign outside the door, like the sign on an English pub. Inside, a dozen red-topped stools ran straight down a coffee bar, and behind those, and behind a sign that read, PLEASE SEAT YOURSELF, were sixteen booths covered with the same red leatherette as the stools. The place smelled of fried eggs, fried onions, fried potatoes, and fried beef. Eight other customers sat in three groups down the booths. They seemed to be arranged to keep an eye on Del, who sat halfway down the right-hand wall.
“Anything?” Lucas asked Del, as he and Letty slid into the booth.
“Ran the numbers. No such tag,” Del said.
“Shit.” He glanced at Letty. “Shoot.”
“But it occurs to me that a guy who’s gonna come up here and do something like hang two people would have to be pretty weird to do it in a small town, in his own car. He’s gotta know he’s gonna be somewhat noticed.”
“You’d think.”
“So maybe he wouldn’t lie about the Minnesota part of the plates, in case the clerk might notice. Maybe he just jumbled the numbers. I got the guys in St. Paul to look for recent title transfers on older Jeep Cherokees. Turns out the new ones don’t have those taillights. The motel clerk thought that it might be an older model, too.”
“Maybe get lucky,” Lucas said.
Letty asked, “Can you guys talk while you eat? Or is that too complicated?”
Del lifted an eyebrow at her. “My daughter is only three years younger than this kid,” Lucas told him. “Do you think I could lock her in a freezer? I mean, what if she grew a mouth like this one?”
“Ha ha,” Letty said. She handed a slightly greasy menu to Lucas. “You’re buying.”
LETTY STUFFED HERSELF. Del and Lucas went out of their way to prove that they could talk while they ate. The food struggled toward mediocrity, but, Lucas realized as he sampled the potatoes, wasn’t going to make it. Half of the meatloaf was refrigerator cold; the other half, microwave hot. As they were finishing, a tall man in tan Carhartt coveralls came in, stamping his feet and snuffing with the cold. Letty called, “Hey, Bud.”
The man looked around until he spotted Letty, then stepped over. He was about fifty, Lucas thought, and as thin and hard-looking as an oak rail, with a bulbous red nose and flinty white eyes.
“Hey, Letty,” he said, his eyes bouncing off Lucas and Del. “Been working hard, or hardly working?”
“Doin’ okay,” she said. “I heard you been shootin’ beaver again.”
“Yeah, over to Spike. What’s this about you finding those people? I heard about it at Jerry’s.”
“Yep.” Letty puffed up a little. “They were nude.”
“All right,” Lucas said dryly. “Let’s finish the meatloaf.”
“Bud’s a trapper, like me,” Letty told them. To Bud: “These guys are state agents. They’re taking me around.”
Bud nodded. “I thought Jane might come to a bad end,” he said.
“Why was that?” Lucas asked.
“Not good people,” he said. “She thought we were a bunch of hicks. She was always laughing at people behind their backs, and she used to talk about Las Vegas all the time, like that was the navel of the universe. Every time she opened her mouth she’d start off by saying, ‘In Las Vegas we used to . . . whatever.’ ”
“Sounds like you knew her pretty well,” Del said.
“Just to play blackjack,” the trapper dude said. “She was the main dealer up at Moose Bay.” He hesitated, then said, dropping his voice, “You know what you ought to do when you get up to the casino, is talk to a guy named Terry Anderson. He knew Warr real well.” He leaned on real just enough.
Lucas nodded and said, “I’ll do that. Thanks. Terry Anderson.”
“Any relation to the sheriff?” Del asked.
The trapper was puzzled, looked at Letty and then back to Del. “Terry? Why would he be?”
“Both Andersons?” Del suggested.
The trapper cackled: “Shit, buddy, half the people up here are Andersons.”
They talked for another fifteen seconds, then Bud retreated to the counter and got a menu.
“Heck of a trapper, and he’s supposed to be an unbelievable hunter, too. He knows more about animals than they know themselves,” Letty said. “He’s been number one around here for years.”
“Taught you everything you know?”
She shook her head: “He doesn’t teach anything to anybody. He’s got his secrets and he keeps them.”
Lucas dropped his voice to match hers: “Think he might have had anything going with Jane?”
“No.” Now she was almost whispering. “Don’t look at him, he’ll know we’re talking about him. But, uh, everybody says Bud’s a little . . . gay.”
WHEN THEY’D FINISHED the meal, Lucas sent Del to Broderick, to look for dope hideouts. “We’re gonna pick up Letty’s mother,” Lucas said. “Then, I’ll see you up there.”
As he and Letty were about to get in the car, he remembered Mitford. “Damnit . . . why don’t you go look in a store window for a minute?” he suggested to Letty, and pulled out his phone.
Mitford picked up on the first ring, and Lucas gave him the bad news: “They’ve got pictures. I don’t know how good, because they were a couple hundred yards away, but they’ve got something.”
“Aw, man. That’s terrible. Anything on the dope?”
“Not yet. My partner’s on the way up to the house. If there’s anything, he’ll find it. What about Cash, and the jail business?”
“We’re getting that now, through Rose Marie,” Mitford said. “We got a summary: he’s had a whole list of minor stuff
, some drug-related, disorderly conduct, like that. Then this last one, he was originally charged with ag assault. He beat on some other guy with a steel coat tree in a hotel. They pled it down and he took a year in the county lockup on some lower-level assault. Served nine months.”
“Doesn’t sound like something you get hanged for.”
“I got Missouri trying to figure that out. They said they’d get back to us this afternoon, with whatever they can find,” Mitford said. “Oh, and I got two more words for you.”
“What words?”
“Washington Fowler.”
“You’re joking.” Washington Fowler was a civil rights attorney from Chicago, who’d mostly given up the law in favor of incitation to riot.
“I’m not,” Mitford said. “He’s having a press conference here, at the airport, in an hour, and he’s flying out to Fargo in a private plane in an hour and a half. The governor invited him over to the mansion for a conference, but he told us to go fuck ourselves. You should see him up there tonight.”
“Aw, jeez.”
“Yeah. Lucas—we need to hit Cash hard. The woman, too. Before the news. Before that film gets down here. Before Fowler gets up there.”
“We’re looking.”
WHEN LUCAS GOT off the phone, Letty suggested that they might find her mother at the Duck Inn, two blocks over. They ambled over, Lucas looking in the storefronts. Small towns, he’d realized a long time ago, were a little like spaceships, or ordinary ships, for that matter—they generally had to have one of everything: one McDonald’s or Burger King (couldn’t support one of each), a department store, a quick oil change, a hardware store, a feed store, a satellite-TV outlet, a bar or two. Everything needed for survival. Armstrong was like that, a lifeboat, one of everything necessary for life, all packaged in yellow-brick and red-brick two-story buildings. About one in four of the storefronts was empty, and the owners hadn’t bothered to put “For Rent” signs in the windows.
The Duck Inn was a cliché, a plastic faux-hunter’s haven smelling of beer, with a fake old-fashioned jukebox that played CDs next to the twin coin-op pool tables. A cliché, and Letty’s mother wasn’t there. “Cop came and got her. I think they went over to the courthouse,” the bartender said.
The courthouse was just down the block, and they found Martha West leaving the Law Enforcement Center. She was a natural blond, like Letty, but her hair had been tinted an improbable rust color. She wasn’t weathered like Letty, but there were explosions of tiny red veins on her cheeks, so that she would always look rosy-cheeked. She wore a parka and khaki slacks, with pointed boots, and was carrying a beaten-up guitar case. She saw Letty and Lucas, and called to Letty, “Where you been? I been looking all over for you.”
“Cops have been taking me around,” Letty said, jerking a thumb at Lucas. “This is Agent Davenport.”
“Lucas Davenport,” Lucas said.
“Martha West.” West’s eyes were moving slowly, and then jerking back, like a drunk drifting out of his lane, then jerking the car back straight. She was loaded, but controlling it.
“I was about to drop Letty at your place, but I didn’t want to leave her alone,” Lucas said.
“We ate at the Bird,” Letty said, with a slight sophisticated deprecation in her voice.
“Really?” The mother looked at Lucas like he might have done something incorrect.
“She had an open-faced meatloaf sandwich, mashed potatoes, green beans, and apple pie,” Lucas said. “And about six Cokes.”
“Two,” Letty said. “They were free refills.”
They loaded Martha and her guitar into the back seat of Lucas’s car, and on the way north, he caught her eyes in his rearview mirror and said, “There’ll be some reporters who want to talk with you. If I were you, I’d get in the house, get your heads straight, clean up a little bit. I can get a guy from the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension to talk with you about your statement. About what you should or shouldn’t say or about whether you should talk at all. You could always tell them to go away.”
“TV?” asked Martha. She straightened, touched her hair.
“For sure,” Lucas said. “But they can be aaa . . . ” He changed directions. “ . . . jerks. Be a good idea if you talked with a BCA guy who knows how to deal with the media.”
“All right. I’ll talk to him,” Martha said. “But I’ve been on TV many times.”
“Okay. Then you know how to handle it.”
“I used to work with the Chamber of Commerce, and the TV would come to me for comment.” Her eyes rolled toward the westside ditch. “And I’ve always been a singer. So I’ve been around.”
“Okay.”
“But I’ll talk to your person. That wouldn’t hurt.”
As they went through Broderick, they saw a collection of media trucks at the cafe, and, just down the highway, Lucas saw Del’s Mustang at the victims’ house, next to Dickerson’s car. He slowed, did a U-turn, and said, “The guy I’m going to introduce you to is Hank Dickerson, who is the head of the whole Bureau for the northern part of the state. He’ll help you out.”
HE LEFT THEM in the car, and as he crossed the yard, the cop outside said, “You won’t believe what they found.”
“Yeah?”
Joe Barin, the BCA agent, was standing at the bottom of the stairs, and when he saw Lucas, pointed up. “Take a look,” he said.
Lucas went up the creaky stairs, and found Del with Dickerson and one of Dickerson’s crime scene crew in the main bedroom. The bedroom smelled of makeup and aftershave; a framed Michael Jordan poster hung on one wall, opposite a fake antique beer sign. The cops turned to Lucas when he walked in, and Dickerson said, “Del found their hidey-hole.”
The hidey-hole was in the bedroom closet, and was custom-made. What appeared to be a cross-brace for the closet pole was, in fact, a cover for a four-foot-long, six-inch-high wall cache. Inside the cache, Lucas could see what appeared to be a one-kilo bag of cocaine, separated into dozens of smaller baggies; a Colt Magnum Carry Revolver, like one he had in his gun safe at home; and cash. The cash was wrapped in paper bands and took up three running feet of the cache between the bag of cocaine and the back wall.
“Holy cats. How much?”
“We don’t want to take it out until we get pictures, but I figure something upward of three hundred thousand, if it’s all hundreds,” Del said. “All the top bundles are hundreds—and all used. Not a single new bill, as far as you can tell from looking at the sides.”
Lucas said to Dickerson, “You need to have three guys here with the money all the time, until it’s counted. Make sure one or two of them are sheriff’s deputies. You want both agencies involved. People are gonna ask how much of the money went into cops’ pockets.”
Dickerson nodded. “Right, we’ll do that. Another thing. I walked across the highway and talked to Gene Calb, at the truck place. He was Cash’s boss. He said he had no idea what was going on, but he said there was another guy living here, part time, named Joe Kelly. He said Kelly disappeared a month ago and nobody’s heard from him since. The clothes in the other bedroom are Kelly’s. We got a couple charge-card receipts with his name on them.”
“Check the companies for new activity.”
“Under way,” Dickerson said.
“We got another thing,” Del said. “Maybe.”
“What?”
“I want you to look at it,” Del said. “Then you tell me.”
Lucas followed him, Dickerson trailing, down through the house to the basement. On the way down, he told Dickerson about Washington Fowler. Dickerson was unmoved.
“You’re pretty calm about it,” Lucas said. “The guy goes around starting fires.”
Dickerson smiled. “That’s your problem, general, not mine. You’re the guy who’s supposed to fix shit.”
THE BASEMENT WAS unfinished concrete block and exposed joists, but with a new-looking furnace, a new hot-water heater, and new wiring and fluorescent lights. In one corner, a new bathroom ha
d been built in a beige-painted cubicle, with a standard toilet and a sink, and a fiberglass shower booth with sliding glass doors.
Del said, “Well?”
“Well, they just remodeled it,” Lucas said. He looked around, saw nothing of obvious interest. Del had to be thinking about the bathroom, and Lucas went that way. The bathroom was bare, and smelled of disinfectant. Large, lots of room to move around. Lucas swung the entrance door, then knocked on it. Looked like wood, sounded like a metal fire door. Knocked on the walls: not drywall, as he’d expected, but painted plywood. And heavy, probably three-quarter inch. Yale keyhole lock with a bolt, lockable from the outside. No keyhole on the inside . . .
He stepped back and said to Del and Dickerson, “It’s a goddamn cell.”
Del turned to Dickerson. “You heard it here first.”
TWENTY MINUTES LATER, Lucas, Del, and Dickerson walked through the gathering collection of cop cars in the yard. Letty was sitting on the hood of the car again, while her mother waited inside. When she saw them coming, she climbed out, and Lucas introduced Dickerson. “Hank will help you with the TV commentary. And he’ll get you home.”
“Cops say you found a bundle of money in there,” Letty said to Del. “That right?”
“Just a rumor,” Del said.
Dickerson, looking from Lucas to Del, asked, “What’re you guys doing next?”
“Gonna talk to St. Paul, and maybe wander around some more,” Lucas said. He looked back at the house. “This thing is getting interesting.”
7
FREE OF LETTY and her mother, Lucas and Del caucused at the cars. “Moose Bay?” Del asked.
“That’s a big topic,” Lucas said. “Why don’t we talk to this Calb guy?”
They both looked across the highway at the yellow metal buildings with the trucks parked out front, and Del nodded.
Calb had two buildings, an auto-body and tow building, and a truck-rehab building, connected by an unheated shed-like walkway. They went into the auto-body building, which consisted of a small office and a series of repair bays at the back; a woman in the office directed them through the walkway to the truck-rehab wing. The truck area was bigger and more open, forty feet long and thirty wide, with a thirty-foot ceiling; it smelled of diesel and welding fumes. A row of red toolboxes sat at the back, and an electric heater was mounted high on one wall and glowed down over a burgundy Peterbilt. Three men were clustered around the open door of the truck, peering inside, and one of them asked, “What the fuck were they carrying in there? You think there was some acid dripping in there?”
Lucas Davenport Collection: Books 11-15 Page 112