They stared at each other for a moment, then she said, almost whispering, ''But we can't get out. If we talked to the cops, what would we give them? We don't even know where Dick's at. And there're Seed guys all over the place-look what happened when that guy was going to testify against Candy. He got killed.''
''Maybe old John Shanks could tell us something,'' Elmore said. John Shanks was a criminal attorney who'd handled Candy's assault case. ''See if he can cut us a deal.''
''I don't know, El,'' Sandy said, shaking her head. ''This thing is all out of control. If they hadn't stayed in the trailer…''
''We can clean up the trailer.''
''Sure, but if we turn against them, they'll drag us in. How'd you like to be in the same prison with Butters and Martin?''
Elmore swallowed. He was not a brave man. ''We gotta do something.''
''I'm gonna walk down the driveway,'' Sandy said. ''I'll figure something out.''
SANDY PUT ON HER PARKA AND PACS, AND HER GLOVES, and stepped outside. The night was brutally cold and slapped at her skin like nettles; the wind was enough to snatch herbreath away. She crunched down the frozen snow in the thin blue illumination of the yard light, thinking about it, worrying it. If she could only keep things under control. If only Dick would disappear. If only Elmore would hold on…
Elmore.
Sandy had never really loved Elmore, though she'd once been very fond of him; and still felt the fondness at times. But more often, she suffered with the fact that Elmore clearly loved her, and she could hardly bear to be around him.
Sandy had grown up with horses, though she'd never owned one until she was on her own. Her father, a country mailman, had always wanted to ride the range-and so they rode out of the county stables on weekends, almost every weekend from the time she was three until she was eighteen, three seasons of the year. Candy hadn't cared for it, and quit when she was in junior high; Sandy had never quit.
Never would. She loved horses more than her father loved riding them. Walking down the drive, she could smell the sweet odor of the barn, manure and straw, though it was more than a quarter-mile away… She could never leave that; never risk it.
She'd gone to high school with Elmore, but never dated him. After graduation, she'd left for Eau Claire to study nursing, and two years later, came back to
Turtle Lake, took a job with a local nursing home and started saving for the horse farm. When her parents died in a car accident-killed by a drunk-her half of the money had bought four hundred acres east of town.
Elmore had been working as a security guard in the Cities, and started hanging around. Sandy, lonely, had let him hang around. Made the mistake of letting him work around the ranch: he wasn't the brightest man, or the hardest worker, but she needed all the help she could get, working nights at thenursing home, days at the ranch. Made the mistake of sleeping with him, the second man she'd slept with.
Then Elmore had fallen off a stairwell and wrenched his back: the payoff, twenty-two thousand dollars, would buy some stock and a used Ford tractor. And there wasn't anybody else around. And she was fond of the man.
Sandy often walked down the drive when life got a little too unhappy, when
Elmore got to be too much of a burden. The ranch, she'd thought, was the only thing she wanted in life, and she'd do anything to get it. When she'd gotten it- and when the breeding business actually started to pay off- she found that she needed something else. Somebody else. Even if it was just somebody to talk to as an equal, who'd understand the business, feel the way she did about horses.
Elmore was an emotional trap she couldn't find a way out of. There was the man in Montana; he was married now, but she thought about him all the time. With somebody like that…
She brushed the thought away. That's not who she had.
She turned, circling, crunching through the snow: prison for life. And she got around to the north, and saw the first slinky unfolding of the northern lights, watched as they pumped up to a shimmering curtain above the everlasting evergreens, and decided that she might have to talk to someone about Dick
LaChaise.
''But not quite yet,'' she told Elmore when she was back inside. ''Just a couple of more days-we let it ride. Maybe they'll take off. Anyway, we gotta build a story. Then maybe we talk to old John.''
ANDY STADIC WENT INTO THE LAUNDROMAT AND SAT down. The place smelled of spilt
Tide and ERA and dirty wash water, and the hot lint smell of the dryers.
A woman glanced at him once, and again. He was justsitting there, a well-dressed white man, and had nothing to wash. She started to get nervous. He sat in one of the hard folding chairs and read a two-week-old copy of People. The woman finished folding her dry clothes, packed them in a pink plastic basket, and left. He was alone. He walked over to the door, turned the Open/Closed sign to
Closed, and locked the door.
Stadic watched the windows. A blond-haired hippie strolled by, a kid who might have been the southern boy who'd jumped Daymon Harp. A minute later, a hawk-faced white man walked up to the door, stuck his head inside.
''You Stadic?''
''Yeah.''
''Sit tight.''
Damn right. He'd told them he wouldn't go anyplace private. He'd told them Harp would be watching.
Another minute passed, and then a bearded man came around the corner, Pioneer seed-corn hat pulled low over his eyes. He walked like a farmer, heavy and loose, and had a farmer's haircut, ears sticking out, red with the cold, and a razor trim on the back of his neck. The farmer took his time getting inside.
Stadic recognized the eyes beneath the bill.
LaChaise.
''What the fuck do you think you're doing?'' Stadic said. He wanted to get on top of the guy immediately.
''Shut up,'' LaChaise said. His voice was a tough baritone, and his eyes fixed on Stadic's.
''You don't tell me to shut up.'' Stadic was on his feet, squared off.
LaChaise put his hand in his pocket, and the pocket moved. He had a gun.
''Go for your gun,'' LaChaise said.
''What?'' As soon as he said it, a temporizing word, uncertain, Stadic felt that he'd lost the edge.
''Gonna give me trouble, go for your gun, give me some real trouble. I already killed one cop, killing you won't be nothing.''
''Jesus Christ…''
LaChaise was on top, knew it, and his hand came off the gun. ''Where're the records?''
''You gotta be nuts, thinking I'd give you those things.''
''I am nuts,'' LaChaise said. His hand was back on the gun. ''You should know that. Now, where're the records?''
''I want to know what you're gonna do with them.''
''We're gonna scare the shit out of a lot of people,'' LaChaise said. ''We're gonna have them jumpin' through hoops like they was in a Russian circus. Now quit doggin' me around: either give them to me, or tell me you don't have them.
You don't have them, I'm gone.''
When they'd set up the meeting, by phone, LaChaise had said that if he didn't bring the papers, the next call would be to Internal Affairs.
Stadic let out a breath, shook his head. ''Scare the shit out of them? That's all?''
''That's all,'' LaChaise said. He was lying and Stadic knew it. And LaChaise knew that he knew, and didn't care. ''Gimme the goddamned papers.''
''Jesus, LaChaise, anything else…''
''I'm outa here,'' LaChaise said, turning toward the doors.
''Wait a minute, wait a minute…'' Stadic said, ''I'm gonna stick my hand in my coat.''
LaChaise's hand went back to his pistol and he nodded. Stadic took the papers out of his breast pocket and held them out at arm's length. LaChaise took them, didn't look, and backed away. ''Better be the real thing,'' he said, and he turned to go.
''Wait,'' Stadic said. ''I gotta know how to get in touch with you.''
''We'll get in touch with you,'' LaChaise said.
''Think about it,'' Stadic said, his voice tig
ht, urgent. ''I want you outa here-or dead. I don't want you caught. Anything but that. If they figure out where you're at, and they're coming to get you… I oughta be able to call.''
''Got no phone,'' LaChaise said. ''We're trying to get one of them cellulars.''
''Call me, soon as you get one,'' Stadic said. He took an index card from his pocket, groped for a pen, found one, scribbled the number. ''I carry the phone all the time.''
''I'll think about it,'' LaChaise said, taking the card.
''Do it,'' Stadic said. ''Please.''
Then LaChaise was gone, out the door, pulling the hat down over his eyes, around the corner. Harp came through the back door two minutes later.
''I think three is all of them,'' Harp said. ''I saw the cracker on the street, then a pickup pulls up and this peckerwood gets out-he's new-and the pickup goes off; the driver was probably that other dude.''
''Get the plates?''
''Yeah. I did.''
''See anybody else? Anybody who looked like a cop?'' Harp shook his head. ''Just a couple of kids and some old whore.''
LACHAISE FLIPPED THROUGH A COMPUTER PRINTOUT of the police department's insurance program. Some of it was gobbledygook, but buried in the tiny squares and rectangles were the names of all the insured, their addresses and phone numbers.
''Modern science,'' LaChaise said.
''What?'' Martin turned to look at him.
''I'm reading a computer printout; I'm gonna get a cell phone,'' LaChaise said.
''You go along and things get easier.''
He started circling names on the printout.
SIX
WEATHER KARKINNEN WORE A WHITE TERRY-CLOTH robe, with a matching terry-cloth towel wrapping her hair. Through the back window she was a Vermeer figure in a stone house, quiet, pensive, slow-moving, soft with her bath, humming along with a Glenn Gould album.
She got a beer from the refrigerator, popped the top, found a glass and started pouring. The phone rang, and she stepped back and picked it up, propped it between her ear and her shoulder, and continued pouring.
''Yes, he is,'' she said.
Lucas was sitting in his old leather chair, eyes closed. He was working on a puzzle-a tactical exercise involving both a car chase and a robbery.
Lucas had once written strategy board games, had moved them to computers, then, pushed temporarily off the police force, had started a company doing computer simulations of police problems.
He'd made the change at just the right time: His training software did well. Now the company was run by a professionalmanager, and though Lucas still held the biggest chunk of the stock, he now worked mostly on conceptual problems. He was imagining a piece of software that spliced voice and data transmissions, that would layer a serious but confused problem beneath an exciting but superficial one, to teach new dispatchers to triage emergency calls.
Triage. The word had been used by the programmers putting together the simulation, and it had been rattling around his brain for a few days, a loose
BB. The word had a nasty edge to it, like cadaver.
''Lucas?''
He jumped. Weather was in the doorway, a glass of dark beer in her hand. She'd brewed it herself in a carboy in the hall closet, from a kit that Lucas had bought her for her birthday.
''You've got a phone call…''
Lucas shook himself awake, heaved himself out of the chair. ''Who is it?'' he asked, yawning. He saw the beer. ''Is that for me?''
''I don't know who it is. And get your own,'' she said . ''We sound like a TV commercial.''
''You're the one who was snoring in the chair after dinner,'' she said.
''I was thinking,'' he said. He picked up the phone, ignoring her dainty snort.
''Yeah?''
The man's voice was oily, a man who gave and took confidences like one-dollar poker chips. ''This is Earl. Stupella. Down at the Blue Bull?''
''Yeah, Earl. What's happening?''
''You was in that shoot-out a week or so ago, in the papers. The credit union.''
He wasn't asking a question.
''Yeah?''
''So this chick came in here tonight and said she'd seen the husband of one of these girls, who like supposedly bustedout of prison and killed somebody. It was like La Chase?''
Lucas was listening now. ''LaChaise,'' he said. ''That's right. Where'd she see him?''
''A laundromat down on Eleventh. She said she saw him going in and he talked to a guy in the window for a minute and then he left.''
''Huh. Who's the chick?'' Lucas asked.
''Don't tell her I talked to you,'' Stupella said.
''No problem.''
''Sally O'Donald. She lives somewhere up the line, by the cemetery, I think, but
I don't know.''
''I know Sally,'' Lucas said. ''Anything else?''
''Nope. Sally said she didn't want to have nothing to do with LaChaise, so when she saw him, she turned right around and walked away.''
''When was all this?''
''Sally was in about an hour ago,'' Stupella said. ''She saw the guy this morning.''
''Good stuff, Earl. You'll get a note in the mail.''
''Thanks, dude.''
LUCAS DROPPED THE PHONE ON THE HOOK: LACHAISE. So he was here. And out in the open. Lucas stood staring at the phone for a second, then picked it up again.
''Going out?'' Weather asked from the hallway.
''Mmm, yeah. I think.'' He pushed a speed-dial button, listened to the beep-beep-boop of the phone.
Del answered on the second ring. ''What?''
''I hope that's not a bedside phone you're talking on.''
''What happened?'' Del asked.
''Nothing much. I thought we might go for a ride, if you're not doing anything.''
''You mean, go for a ride and get an ice cream? Or go for a ride and bring your gun?''
''The latter,'' Lucas said, glancing at Weather. She had a little rim of beer foam on her upper lip.
''Latter, my ass,'' Del said. ''Give me ten minutes.''
THE BACK STREETS WERE RUTS OF GNARLED ICE. THE EXPLORER'S heater barely kept up, and Del, who didn't like gloves, sat with his hands in his armpits. The good part was, the assholes and freaks got as cold as anyone else. On nights like this, there was no crime, except the odd domestic murder that probably would have happened anyway.
When the radio burped, Del picked it up: ''Yeah.''
''O'Donald is the third house on the left, right after you make the turn off
Lake,'' the dispatcher said.
''All right. We'll get back.''
Lucas cruised the house once, rattling the white Explorer down the ruts. The house showed lights in the back, where the kitchen usually was, and the dim blue glow of a television from a side window. ''The thing is,'' Lucas said, ''she has a terrible temper.''
''And she's about the size of a fuckin' two-car garage,'' said Del. ''Maybe we should shoot her before we talk to her.''
''Just a flesh wound, to slow her down,'' Lucas agreed. ''Or shoot her in the kneecap.''
''We shot the last one in the kneecap.''
''Oh yeah; well, that's out, then.'' Lucas parked and said, ''Don't piss her off, huh? I don't want to be rolling around in the yard with her.''
SALLY O'DONALD WAS IN A MOOD.
She stood on the other side of a locked glass storm door, her hair in pink curlers, her ample lips turned down in a scowl, her fists on her hips. She was wearing a threadbare plaid bathrobe and fuzzy beige slippers that looked like squashed rabbits.
''What do you assholes want, in the middle of the night?''
''Just talk, no problem,'' Lucas said. He was standing on the second step of the stoop, looking up at her.
''Last time I talked to that fuckin' Capslock, I thought I was gonna have to pull his nuts off,'' she said, not moving toward the door lock. She stared over
Lucas's shoulder at Del.
Del shivered and said, ''Sally, open the goddamn door, will you? We're freezing
out here. Honest to God, all we want to do is talk.''
She let them in after a while, and led them back to a television room so choked with smoke that it might have been a bowling alley. She moved a TV dinner tray out of the way, pointed at a corduroy-covered chair for Lucas and sat down in another. Del stood.
''We know you saw Dick LaChaise-you only told about a hundred people,'' Lucas said.
''I didn't tell no hundred people, I told about three,'' she said, squinting at him from her piggy eyes. ''I'll figure out who it was, sooner or later. Pull his nuts off.''
''Jesus, Sally,'' Del said. ''Take it easy on the nuts stuff.''
''We just want to know where you saw him, who he was with and what you know about him,'' Lucas said. ''Our source says you used to hang out with him.''
''Who is it? The source? I talk to you, you oughta give me something.''
''You know I can't tell you that. I could ask sex to give your place a pass for a couple of months,'' Lucas said, adding, ''if the information is decent.''
She nodded, calculating. A two-month pass from sex added up. She said, ''All right. I hung with the Seed, off and on, for maybe ten years? Up until-let's see-four or five years ago. They got me in the business to begin with, turned me out in Milwaukee. Dick was one of the bigger shots in theSeeds when I first met him. He was maybe twenty-five back then, so he'd be what, forty?''
''Thirty-eight,'' Lucas said. ''That's a long time ago.''
''Yeah. I remember him especially because he thought he was Marlon Brando. He liked to wear those squashed fisherman hats, and gold chains and shit. I caught him practicing his smile once, in the can at this bar in Milwaukee.''
''Practicing…?''
''Yeah.''
''I'm not getting a picture of a big leader, here,'' Lucas said.
''Oh, he was. Maybe a little too nuts, though. You know, most of the Seeds were sort of… criminal businessmen. A little dope, a little porn, a few whores.
Bad, but not necessarily crazy. Dick… you heard about the sleeping on the yellow line?''
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