Secret Prey

by John Sandford

  Wiener nodded. ‘‘Yeah, I’ve seen him a time or two.’’

  ‘‘What’d he shoot when he came up here?’’

  Wiener shook his head: ‘‘Couldn’t tell you. Don’t even know if he was a shooter, tell you the truth. Mr. Robles, he was a shooter: he’d help instruct the kids and shoot off his mouth about everything about guns. But I think Mr. McDonald was mostly a drinker. That’s what I remember about him.’’

  THEY FOLLOWED THE SHORELINE AROUND THE LAKE to the first stand, where Robles had been stationed. Lucas went down to the stand, climbed the tree, and eased himself out onto the platform of two-by-fours.

  ‘‘Did you build the stands?’’ Lucas called down to Wiener.

  ‘‘Naw, a couple of boys up from Wyoming built ’em,’’ he said. ‘‘They were joking about putting in electricity.’’

  The tree stand was one of the more comfortable that Lucas had been in. He could stretch his legs, lean back against the tree trunk, and still look out over the hillside edging the alder swamp. The swamp itself was dotted with stands of aspen, signs of higher ground, with a big, thick island in the middle. Here and there he could see shiny lenses of ice, where a stretch of open water lay at the surface. All around, he could make out the faint telltale trails threading through the brush, signs that deer were working the place. Robles’s stand was uphill from what looked like a major deer interchange.

  ‘‘There’s a finger of land goes out into the swamp from there,’’ Wiener called. ‘‘Deer can walk right out into that stand of aspens in the middle. Man’d probably drown if he tried to follow; before freeze-up, anyway.’’

  ‘‘Okay . . .’’

  They checked all the other stands in turn, spread out over three quarters of a mile of trail, but all focused on the swamp, and pathways into it and out of it. McDonald’s stand was uphill and not far to the left of one of the big lenses of thin ice.

  Suppose , Lucas thought, McDonald had lifted the Contender from the gun cabinet in the early morning just before the group left the cabin. That would explain why it was missing. And the Contender, long for a pistol, was still short enough that he could have concealed it under a hunting parka. Then, in the dark, he walks back down the track to the hillside above Kresge’s stand, waits for the shooting to begin, fires a shot killing Kresge, walks back to his stand, and pitches the Contender into the swamp. Climbs the tree . . . shazam. He’s up in his tree stand just like the others, and never fired his gun . . .

  ‘‘Let’s go,’’ he said to Wiener, as he climbed down.

  ‘‘You figure anything out?’’ Wiener asked.

  ‘‘Maybe,’’ Lucas said. ‘‘What time did you get here the day Kresge was shot?’’

  ‘‘About ten o’clock, after I heard . . . I was supposed to come in around noon with my trailer and we’d haul any deer carcasses into the registration station and then over to the meat locker. They figured to be out of there about noon, one way or the other,’’ the old man said. ‘‘The sheriff asked me about the guy the telephone man saw—the one walking along the edge of the woods—but I just wasn’t around. Sorry.’’

  The hunter in the woods. Lucas had almost forgotten. Of course, it could have been anybody, another hunter just crossing the property to get back to his car. ‘‘Damn it,’’ he said aloud. Another hunter didn’t feel right; Lucas was a believer in coincidences, except when they explained too much. And if the man in the hunting coat was the killer, and if the telephone man had been right about his size, then McDonald wasn’t the killer.

  ‘‘Beg pardon?’’

  ‘‘If somebody was walking in the woods like the telephone guy said, where’d he be going?’’

  ‘‘Sounds like he was heading back to the cabin.’’

  ‘‘That’d be a problem,’’ Lucas said.

  KRAUSE WASWORKINGONTHE KITCHEN TABLEWHEN he got back, a battered leather briefcase next to his foot. Mrs. Wiener was washing dishes, and the odor that came from the cabin’s oven was so wonderful that Lucas almost fainted with the impact.

  ‘‘What’s cooking?’’

  ‘‘Cinnamon rolls—they should be just about ready,’’ she said, turning from the sink. She was a chubby, pink-faced woman with kinky white hair. She took a dish towel from the stove handle, dried her hands, and opened the oven. ‘‘Perfect,’’ she said.

  Krause had gotten up from the table to look. ‘‘I get the first one,’’ he said.

  ‘‘They’ve got to cool,’’ she said firmly. ‘‘And I’ve got some frosting. You all go sit down.’’

  Krause retreated to the table and his papers. ‘‘Anything good?’’ he asked Lucas.

  Lucas said, ‘‘You know what a Contender is? Long pistol, single-shot, breaks open like a shotgun?’’

  ‘‘I’ve seen ’em,’’ Krause said.

  ‘‘You didn’t show one on the inventory of guns taken out of the house.’’

  ‘‘There wasn’t one,’’ Krause said. ‘‘There were three rifles and two shotguns.’’

  ‘‘You got a diver on your staff?’’ Lucas asked.

  ‘‘Sure. You think you know where the gun is?’’

  ‘‘Maybe. It’d be nice if it were right downhill from McDonald’s stand. There’s a big patch of water there . . . I wouldn’t be surprised if he pitched it in there.’’

  ‘‘I don’t know about diving in swamps,’’ Krause said doubtfully. ‘‘It might mess up the scuba gear. I can check.’’

  ‘‘He’ll need a metal detector,’’ Lucas said. Mrs. Wiener said, ‘‘There’s a gun just like that in the drawer in the gun cabinet.’’

  Lucas looked at Krause and Krause closed his eyes, leaned back in his chair, and said, ‘‘Shit.’’ Then at Mrs. Wiener, ‘‘Excuse the language,’’ and then at Lucas: ‘‘I told Ralph to take the guns out of the cabinet. I didn’t check.’’

  Wiener said, ‘‘Well, let’s go look,’’ and Mrs. Wiener said, ‘‘I saw it while I was cleaning. I dusted the cabinet ’cause they left it open, and that’s one place I usually can’t dust.’’

  The gun cabinet was built into an internal wall, behind a set of shallow shelves. A key fit into a small lock that was out of sight below one of the shelves, and the entire unit swung out. Inside was an empty gun rack with space for eight long guns, and below the rack, two closely fit drawers.

  ‘‘Was this a big secret, or did everybody know about it?’’ Lucas asked Wiener.

  ‘‘Hell, all his friends knew—all the guests. It was just supposed to hide the guns from burglars. But when he had one of those parties, the cabinet’d just be standing open.’’

  ‘‘Okay.’’

  ‘‘Top drawer,’’ Mrs. Wiener said.

  ‘‘Did you move the gun?’’ Lucas asked.

  ‘‘No. I never touched it. As soon as I saw a gun in the drawer, I shut it.’’

  ‘‘She don’t like guns,’’ Wiener said, as Lucas gently pulled the drawer open.

  And there was the Contender, with a Nikon scope, sitting neatly on a black plastic pad with two boxes of .308 ammunition off to the side.

  ‘‘That goddamn Ralph,’’ Krause said. ‘‘He never opened the drawers.’’

  Lucas took a pen from his pocket, slipped it through the gun’s trigger guard, lifted it out of the drawer, and carried it over to the kitchen table and placed it carefully on the table. Then, using a paper napkin to unlock the barrel, and touching only the tip of the stock and the tip of the barrel, he pushed the barrel down and open. A spent shell ejected onto the table.

  ‘‘Don’t touch it,’’ Lucas said. He knelt and looked through the barrel, said, ‘‘Yeah. Fired and never cleaned.’’ He looked at Wiener: ‘‘Do you know anything about Kresge’s gun habits?’’

  Wiener shrugged: ‘‘He always cleaned them. Big thing, you know, sit around and bullshit about the Army and shooting and chain saws and clean the guns.’’

  Krause again said, ‘‘Goddamnit,’’ and then, a moment later, ‘‘That’s the gun, you betcha.
That goddamn Ralph.’’

  ‘‘Mrs. Wiener . . .’’

  ‘‘Sophia,’’ she said.

  ‘‘Sophia, do you have any plastic bags . . . garbage bags or anything?’’

  ‘‘Sure. Right here.’’

  Sophia produced a box of kitchen garbage bags. She stripped one out and held it open, while Lucas stuck a pencil in the barrel of the Contender and gently slipped it inside. The shell went into a sandwich bag.

  ‘‘I’ll have them in the lab tonight,’’ Lucas said. ‘‘I’ll get somebody in to look at them right away.’’

  Krause was still fuming, pushing papers into his briefcase. ‘‘I gotta go. I’m gonna find that sonofabitch and I’m gonna choke him to death. He couldn’t—’’

  Sophia Wiener broke in: ‘‘You don’t have time for a roll?’’

  Krause’s eyes clicked to the tray of cinnamon rolls, cooling on the stovetop with the pan of warm frosting next to them.

  ‘‘Well,’’ he said. ‘‘Maybe one.’’

  SEVENTEEN

  THE DAYS WERE GETTING SHORTER, TWO OR THREE minutes of sunlight clipped off each afternoon; and the sky had gone dark by the time Lucas was within cell phone range of the Cities. He called the dispatcher, told her to locate the fingerprint specialist and get her down to the office. A half hour out, the car phone rang and he picked it up: ‘‘Yeah, Davenport.’’

  ‘‘Lucas, this is Marcy . . . Sherrill.’’ Her voice was tentative, as though he might not know her first name. ‘‘Are you on the way back?’’

  ‘‘Yeah. I’ll be at the office in a half hour. We maybe found the gun.’’

  ‘‘What? Where?’’ Her voice suggested that she was on solider ground now, talking about the investigation.

  ‘‘In a drawer in the gun cabinet. In the cabin.’’

  After a moment of silence, Sherrill said, ‘‘Oh brother. I’m glad I’m not the one who missed it.’’

  ‘‘You oughta see the sheriff: he’s talking manslaughter . . . Anyway what’ve you got going?’’ ‘‘I’d like to stop by your office and talk about it. If you’ve got a minute.’’

  ‘‘Sure. Where are you?’’

  204

  ‘‘Out in Bloomington,’’ she said. ‘‘At the Megamall.’’

  ‘‘See you in a while.’’

  HARRIET ASHLERSHOWEDUPTWOMINUTES AFTER LUCAS, wearing an ankle-length wool coat and a frown, and trailed by her husband: ‘‘Dick and I were going to a movie,’’ she said.

  ‘‘Jeez . . . Is it too late to go?’’

  She looked at her watch. ‘‘If we go, we gotta be in the car in twenty minutes.’’

  Lucas handed her the cardboard box he’d used to transport the guns: ‘‘A pistol and a fired shell. If there’s anything on the shell, I gotta have it ASAP. If it’s a matter of going over the whole pistol, that could wait until morning.’’

  Ashler took the bag and said, ‘‘I’ll call you in ten minutes—you’ll be in your office?’’

  ‘‘Yeah . . .’’

  ‘‘We could come back after the movie and take a look at the pistol, if you’re willing to pay the OT.’’

  ‘‘That’d be good—but tomorrow morning, early, would be okay.’’

  ‘‘I’ll do it tonight. Dick can hang around. Then I can sleep in tomorrow.’’

  ‘‘I like fingerprinting,’’ Dick said cheerfully. He was a letter carrier and had a six handicap in golf. ‘‘I’d just as soon watch her fingerprint as go to a movie.’’

  ‘‘Well, we’re going to the movie,’’ Ashler said.

  ‘‘Art movie,’’ said Dick, as his wife started off down the dimly lit hall. ‘‘Made by some Jap.’’

  ‘‘You have my sympathy,’’ said Lucas.

  ‘‘Coulda been worse: coulda been a Swede,’’ Dick said, looking after his wife. ‘‘Gotta go: I guess I’m just a goddamn culture dog.’’

  LUCAS HEADEDDOWNTOHIS OFFICE, FLIPPEDONTHE lights, pulled off his coat and hung it on the antique government-issue coatrack. Then he walked up and down his ten-foot length of carpet a couple of times, rubbing his hands, looking at the phone, waiting. Wanted to call someone, but there was no one to call.

  Sherrill. Where in the hell was she? If she’d been in Bloomington, she should be here. Or close. He’d left the door open, and he stepped out and looked up and down the hall. Nobody: he could hear a radio playing somewhere, a Leon Redbone piece. He listened for a moment, groping for the name, pulling it from the few muted notes flowing down the hall. Ah: ‘‘She Ain’t Rose.’’

  Despite what Sherrill had argued earlier, knowing that McDonald was the killer was a huge advantage. If they could pull together enough bits and pieces on all the killings, they could indict him on several counts of murder, let the jury throw a couple of them out, and nail him on the easiest one. All they needed was one. One first degree murder was thirty years, no parole. McDonald was unlikely to pull the full load. He’d die inside.

  So one was enough.

  Lucas hummed to himself, caught it: Jesus, he hadn’t been humming to himself in months. And with all the shit happening, he should be . . . He listened to the back of his mind. No static. Not much going on back there. He let himself smile and took another turn around the carpet, looked at his watch.

  And the phone rang.

  He snatched it up, said, ‘‘Davenport,’’ and at the same time, heard footsteps in the hall.

  ‘‘This is Harriet Ashler. There’s nothing on the shell. It looks like it was lifted out of the box, maybe with gloves, loaded up, and fired. It’s absolutely clean. Polished, almost.’’

  Sherrill appeared in the doorway, saw him talking. He gestured for her to come in as he said, ‘‘Damn it: I was hoping . . . Well, check the gun. I thought maybe he didn’t think about the shell, just like he didn’t think about the other one.’’

  ‘‘Not this time,’’ Ashler said. Sherrill stepped into Lucas’s office, pulled the door shut, and took off her leather jacket as Ashler continued: ‘‘I took a look at the pistol, and I think I can see some smudges. As soon as I get back I’ll start processing them. Ogram over in St. Paul sent Mc-Donald’s prints over this afternoon, so I can give you a quick read.’’

  ‘‘Good, I’ll be at home. Call me whenever.’’

  Lucas hung up and said, ‘‘No prints on the shell, but there’s something on the pistol. She’s gonna process it tonight.’’

  ‘‘He’d have to be suicidal to leave prints on the pistol but not on the shell,’’ Sherrill said. She tossed her coat in a corner, and the motion of the coat in the air stirred up a slight scent, something light, like Chanel No. 5. ‘‘And why’d he carry the pistol back to the cabin? He could’ve pitched it into the woods, and who’d ever find it?’’

  ‘‘I don’t know why,’’ Lucas said. He leaned back against his desk. ‘‘But why would anybody carry a pistol back to the cabin? Anybody , no matter who it is?’’

  Sherrill shrugged: ‘‘Maybe they got it there, and thought if they put it back, nobody would know.’’

  ‘‘Leaving a fired shell in the chamber?’’

  ‘‘That’s a question,’’ she admitted.

  Lucas scratched his head and said, ‘‘We’ll ask him, if we can’t figure something out . . . So what’s happening with you?’’

  She peered at him, almost as if she were nearsighted, which she wasn’t. ‘‘I’ve got this thing going around in my head and it won’t go away.’’

  ‘‘Uh-oh,’’ Lucas said. ‘‘I’ve had that problem . . .’’

  ‘‘No-no-no. Nothing like that. I’m not depressed. But, you know that old thing about, ‘Women don’t want sex, women want love’?’’

  ‘‘What?’’ She was talking fast, and he was suddenly aware of how quiet the building was, how dark the hallway had been outside, and how the two of them were alone in a not very big office.

  ‘‘Yeah, well maybe I’ve heard something like that.’’

  ‘‘The fact is, I always liked sex,’�
� she said. ‘‘A lot. And I haven’t had any for a year and a half before Mike was killed, while we were breaking up, and none since he was killed, and right now I just really don’t need love, but I really would sorta . . .’’

  As she spoke, she was moving to his left, and he was on his feet moving to her left, in a narrow circle, Lucas edging toward the door. ‘‘Jesus,’’ he said.

  ‘‘Look, you don’t have to,’’ she said. ‘‘Where’re you going? You’re running for it?’’

  She almost started to smile, a sad, tentative smile, but Lucas only saw part of it. He flipped the latch on the door and hit the light at the same time, and in the next halfsecond his hands were all over her. She gasped and went a few inches up in the air, and then they were dancing around, half struggling, mouths locked together, Sherrill’s blouse coming off, and five seconds after that they were on the floor.

  AND TEN MINUTES LATER SHERRILL WHISPERED, ‘‘WAS that loud?’’

  ‘‘Pretty loud,’’ Lucas whispered back.

  ‘‘Jesus, I want to do it again.’’ He could only see her face dimly in the light coming through the door’s glass panel. And he thought: This rug smells weird . But he said , ‘‘My place,’’ and he reached out and pressed the warm palm of his right hand over one of her breasts.

  ‘‘I’ll follow you,’’ she said.

  ‘‘No: Come with me. We can be there in ten minutes.’’

  ‘‘Can’t find my underpants,’’ she said. ‘‘What’d you do with my underpants?’’

  ‘‘Don’t know . . .’’

  She pulled on her jeans and untangled her bra from around her neck, buttoned her blouse as Lucas pulled himself together, half turned away from each other, a small piece of still-necessary privacy. Neither of them wanted the light—when Lucas was dressed, Sherrill opened the door and Lucas found her cotton underpants hooked over the top of his wastebasket. Lucas stuck them in his pocket: ‘‘Let’s go.’’

  ‘‘What a fuckin’ terrible idea this was,’’ she said, as they jogged down the hall. ‘‘Screwing your boss.’’ She looked at him. ‘‘You can’t screw your boss.’’

  ‘‘I’m not your boss,’’ Lucas said. ‘‘Keep moving.’’