The sunlight made the decision for him. He was out of downtown ahead of the rush, running through the sun-dappled countryside. The countryside still had the cold colors of winter, but when he cracked the windows, he could smell spring on the way. Still a little snow in the north shadows, along the shaded sides of the fence lines and the glacial hills, but the water was moving in the drainage ditches, and farmers had their tractors out of the machine sheds and the sun felt yellower and warmer than in the weeks just past.
On the grave-site hill, everything changed. The hill faced away from the afternoon sun, and under the oak trees, there was a river of mud, and men grubbing for bones. The hill, he thought, looked like an old browned photograph of a World War I trench site during a cease-fire, except for the brilliant blue slashes of a dozen plastic tarps.
McGrady had gotten some rest. He was sitting on a camp chair, reading a copy of Maxim, when Lucas climbed up to the command tent. "I always liked pictures of sexy women," he said, almost absently. "Like the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. But somehow, after all the liberation bullshit, we finally got around to the point where women have stopped being objects and have become products. Have you ever looked at this rag?"
"No." But he was amused.
McGrady flipped it over his shoulder onto the ground. "I'm just getting old, I guess. Couple of the younger guys were looking at it, thought it's great."
"Still eight bodies," Lucas said. He didn't care about Maxim, had never heard of it.
"Yeah, still eight. I think that's all it's going to be unless we find a whole new graveyard somewhere. We think one of them might be a girl from Lino Lakes, but we can't track down any dental records. I don't know what the hang-up is."
"Marcy said something about the parents moving a couple of times, and they're still trying to track them down. From what I saw of the records, I'm not sure how good a fit she is."
"Blond, busty, and missing."
"But some of her friends think she was about to run away to California; and she wasn't interested in art."
"If we find the parents, we could do some DNA and skip the dentals," McGrady said. He yawned, and then said, "Another day out here, I think. If we don't find anything new."
"You still got TV…"
"Yup. But they're getting bored, I think. No new bodies." They both looked down the hill at the television vans. The crews were sitting along the edge of the road on blue tarps; two of the cameramen were playing chess and one of the reporters was sprawled out on his back, talking on a cell phone.
Lucas looked up the hill and saw Marshall sitting at the top, looking down. "But you still got Marshall."
"The guy spooks the hell out of me," McGrady said. "Good guy, but a little intense."
They talked for a few more minutes, then Lucas walked up the hill to where Marshall was sitting on a garbage bag. "How's it going?"
Marshall was smoking a Marlboro. He grinned and blew smoke and nodded. "Getting a handle on it," he said. "I got a little overworked there for a while. How's it going on your end?"
He sounded so mellow that Lucas couldn't help smiling back. "We're making some progress. We reviewed the cases we know about, and decided that our guy is stealing everything he can from the women he kills-everything small and worthwhile, anyway. Jewelry, cash, maybe small cameras. We've got photos of stuff that was taken from Aronson-and maybe another woman-and we're gonna run them around to every fence in town."
Marshall bobbed his head and then said, "I'm starting to worry about what happens when we identify him."
"That could be a while, yet," Lucas said.
"I know the kind of work you guys do-that you do-and I think that sooner or later, you're gonna figure him out. Am I right?"
Lucas shrugged. "I believe we will. We always have a few who slip past us, but once we get any kind of a handle on this guy, I think we'll be able to pin him with those drawings. Once we get a name, we can start connecting some dots, and we've got a lot of dots to start with."
"But what you'll get will be circumstantial: maybe really solid, but maybe not. He could beat it."
"That's always a risk."
Marshall blew more smoke, and his jaw worked. After a minute he said, "That would be… tragic."
"At this point, I don't think it'll happen," Lucas said.
"So tell me what you've got. I've been down here all the time. I keep meaning to come up to see you, but I can't get myself away from…" He looked down the hill, and his jaw worked again. "… all the holes."
Lucas ran the case past him, everything that they had learned. Marshall's eyebrows went up when he heard about the photo of Laura Winton at St. Pat's, and about the death of Neumann.
"You think they're all connected?"
"The Neumann thing… that's just not right. We know he was at St. Pat's, we know the art teacher died after the drawings were put on TV, we know that Aronson was missing jewelry, and so was Neumann. That's what we think. The St. Paul cops haven't gone public with it, but I think Neumann was killed as a kind of… cleanup. She figured something out."
"A cleanup," Marshall said. He pitched his cigarette down the hill. "The fucker ought to be skinned alive."
Lucas's cell phone rang a moment later, and he fumbled it out of his pocket. "Yeah?"
"This is Del. Where are you?"
"Talking with Marshall, down at the graveyard. What's going on?"
"We gotta break," Del said. "Get your ass back up here."
"What happened?"
Del explained quickly, and Lucas said, "I'm on my way," hung up, and to Marshall: "Gotta run."
"Something?"
Lucas was already headed down the hill, and he called back, "Maybe."
Marshall said, "I'm coming," and they both scrambled down the wet hill and hopped the ditch, Lucas hurrying to his car, Marshall jogging heavily to his, swinging then through U-turns and accelerating away to the north.
13
LUCAS WAS PORSCHE-TRAINED, and showed it, even in the hippo-like Tahoe; he could see Marshall laboring to keep up as the Dunn County deputy tracked him across Dakota County toward the Cities. Once he was on the highway, he put the truck on cruise control to remind himself to slow down. Marshall got on his taillights and stayed there. Lucas led him into a parking garage downtown, called Del while the other cop parked, and after Marshall had climbed into the Tahoe, continued out. Del was waiting on the corner at City Hall.
"Tell Terry what you told me," Lucas said, as Del climbed in the back.
"I was running a picture of Neumann's and Aronson's jewelry around town," Del told Marshall. "There's a guy Lucas and I both know, Bob Brown's his name, he deals in estate jewelry. Tries to keep it as legit as he can. I showed him the pictures, and as he soon as he saw the Aronson ring and the pearl necklace, he recognized them. They came in six months ago. He'd sold the necklace, but the ring was still there, and it's got the 'Love Forever.' I gave him a receipt; it's back at the office."
Lucas said to Marshall, "The ring had 'Love Forever' engraved inside."
"So there's no question, then," Marshall said. "Where'd he get them?"
"Off a bartender named Frank Stans at the Bolo Lounge, a nudie bar out on Highway 55-that's just west of here, fifteen minutes," Del said. "Stans told him he bought the stuff across the bar from a guy who said he inherited it."
"What are the chances that Stans…?"
"Stans is a black guy, and he's dealt with Bob on other stuff. So it's unlikely," Del said.
"And we know where he's at? This Stans guy?" Marshall said.
Del looked at his watch. "His shift started about ten minutes ago."
Marshall cracked a grin and said, "The big city."
"What?" Del asked over the seat back.
"Over in Wisconsin, the nudie bars don't get going until after dinner."
"I got a cabin in Wisconsin, up north," Lucas said. "I was going deer hunting a couple of years ago, and when I got up there, Friday night, late, it was snowing. So I'm in my cabin,
checking everything out, and find out I'd picked up a box of varmint rounds for my. 243. So I'm wandering around trying to find some place open that sells. 243s, and I stop at a convenience store and they told me that the only place open that might sell them was this nudie bar. I went over, and sure enough, they had some decent loads, in about anything you wanted. And they had a grocery area and a bait operation in the back room. This chick up on the bar, dancing… I bet she went 180, and she was not a tall girl. Had bruises all over her, like she fell down a lot."
"Different culture," Marshall said. "We like something you can get ahold of."
"You not only could get a hold on this one, you could hardly avoid her," Lucas said.
"Bruises like she was getting beat up?" Del asked.
"Naw. Like she might start drinking martinis at breakfast," Lucas said. "She was definitely a… bruised peach. She could dance, though."
"Why'd you have to go through that whole thing about. 243s to tell us a nudie-bar story?" Del asked.
Lucas shook his head. "The idea of hanging out in a combination bait shop… nudie bar looking at fat women dance at midnight before the deer opener… I don't know. It does feel different than what we got here."
THE BOLO LOUNGE was open but had no customers. A woman in a robe and plastic flip-flops was sitting on the edge of a table-sized circular stage when they came in, reading a throwaway real estate magazine. She looked them over, and Lucas shook his head. "Don't bother," he said. "Where's Frank Stans?"
She didn't answer, but she looked down toward the bar; a black man stood at the far end, looking down at the bartop. Frank Stans was older, in his sixties, Lucas thought, bald with a fringe of white hair. He did not look like anybody's grandpa-he looked like he'd once lifted a lot of weight, and from time to time some of it had fallen on his face. He was reading a Japanese manga comic book and drinking what looked like a Pepto-Bismol cocktail through a straw.
"Mr. Stans?" Lucas asked.
Stans looked up. "Who wants to know?"
"Minneapolis police." Lucas showed him his ID, and as Marshall and Del moved up beside him, pulled the photos of the Aronson jewelry out of his pocket. "We're told that you sold this ring and necklace to Bob Brown six months ago. We're wondering where you got it."
Lucas dropped the pictures on the bar, and Stans looked down at them without touching the photographs. "Don't remember," he grunted. "I sold things to Brown once or twice, but I don't remember this."
"It'd be really good if you tried hard," Del said. "The stuff was taken off a girl who was murdered and buried out in the countryside."
"We're not looking at you as an accomplice," Lucas said, trying to take the edge off.
"Not yet," said Marshall, putting the edge back on.
Lucas glanced at him-Marshall's voice sounded like chipped glass-then looked back at Stans and said, "So look at them again. Because it would be a rainy day in your life if you don't remember, and we find out later that you were bullshitting us."
Stans and Marshall had locked eyes, and neither was backing off. Del said, "This is particularly important to the deputy here, 'cause some of his family was killed by the guy who took this jewelry."
"You say Deputy Dog?" Stans asked, cutting his eyes over to Del.
"I…" Del started.
Marshall jumped in, talking to Del while he still looked at Stans. "He don't bother me. I deal with trash all the time. Sooner or later, something always happens to them."
"That a threat?" Stans asked, not quite looking at Marshall.
"No, I don't threaten anybody. I guess the good Lord just don't like accomplices. He winds up catching them behind the bar and taking them off."
Stans now looked at Lucas. "Listen to this shit. Listen to this…"
Lucas put up a finger, silencing Stans, then said to Marshall, "Shut up."
Marshall nodded. Lucas said to Stans, "So taking a second look, see if you remember better."
Stans had locked eyes with Marshall again, and this time, apparently saw something he didn't like. He looked back down at the pictures and said, "Yeah, I got it off some white boy. Never saw him before. Said somebody downtown put him on me, told him that I bought estate jewelry."
"What'd he look like?" Lucas asked.
Stans shrugged. "I don't know. Like a white boy. White face, skinny, maybe six feet or a little more or less, but about that. Brown hair. Maybe blond hair. No beard or anything."
"Nervous?"
"No." He looked at Marshall again, and then his eyes flicked away. "Doper. He was running on crack, I could tell by looking at him. He wanted the money, and he wanted it right that minute."
"What else?"
"Nothin' else. I had three hundred dollars on me, and that's what I gave him. I told him, take it or leave it, and he took it."
"Would you recognize him if you saw him again?"
Stans nodded. "Maybe. If he introduced himself, I'd remember."
They talked for another minute, but Stans insisted that the transaction had been quick and routine: Nothing had happened out of the ordinary, and the seller hadn't stayed for a drink or to look at the women. Lucas thanked him, and they headed for the door.
Outside, a little pissed, he said to Marshall, "That wasn't real cool, the way you jumped in there with the threats."
"Just being the asshole," Marshall said mildly. "Didn't mean nothing by it-and we got what we came for."
"You sounded like you meant it," Lucas said.
"I'm good at that," Marshall said.
Very good at it, Lucas thought.
They were in the truck when Stans appeared at the door and pointed at Lucas. Lucas ran the window down and said, "What?"
"Come talk to me a minute. Just you."
Lucas turned to Del, said, "Hold the fort," got out, and walked over to Stans, who held the door for him. They both stepped inside, and Stans said, "You gonna keep Deputy Dog away from me?"
"He was just being a hardass so I could be the nice guy," Lucas said. "You know how that works."
"So keep him off me," Stans said. Then: "I remembered one other thing about this white boy."
"Yeah?"
"He talked like a brother. I mean, you always running into white boys who see you're black and so they talk a little black, that's just bullshit. Fuckin' bigots. This boy, he talked like a brother like he didn't even know he was doing it. Sounded to me like he grew up in one of the projects."
"White."
"He was definitely white," Stans said.
"Did he look like he might've had a couple of fights? Fucked-up eyebrows, maybe a little loose in the nose?"
Stans thought about it for a minute. "Yeah, you know… he did," Stans said. "You know him? What happened to him?"
"I happened to him," Lucas said.
"Okay, forget Deputy Dog," Stans said, showing a grin. "You stay away from me."
When he got back into the truck, Del looked at Lucas's face and said, "What?"
"It's that fuckin' Randy Whitcomb," he said. "The fancy man."
"You know him?" Marshall asked.
Lucas nodded and said, "Yeah… it's not really that big a town. You hang around here long enough, and you get to know a lot of the characters."
"You think he could…?"
Lucas shrugged. "Randy could do almost anything. He's a fuckin' pimp, we know he beats the shit out of his girls from time to time, and he's cut up a couple of them. Probably has killed somebody, or even a couple of people."
"Crazy motherfucker," Del agreed from the back. "But…"
"Yeah. Not really his style. The guy we're looking for is nuts, but he's under control, deliberate. Randy's completely out of control," Lucas said. "The other thing is, he would have been too young when your niece was taken. Randy's still gotta be in his early twenties. Twenty-one, twenty-two."
"So maybe he was just passing the jewelry along."
"If he only took three hundred for it, for the necklace and the ring, then he probably got it for free, or the next
thing to it. If Randy didn't do it, the guy who gave him the jewelry knows who did."
"So we look up this Randy," Marshall said comfortably. "We find him, we're right there."
"Trouble is, the word was going around that Randy moved to L.A.," Del said. "He's supposedly been gone for a couple of months."
"Gotta find him," Lucas said. "He's a key."
"Somebody's gotta find him," Del said. "Not you."
Lucas nodded. "Okay."
Marshall picked up the interplay. "What happened?"
"I once arrested Randy a little too enthusiastically," Lucas said. "It created a situation."
Del snorted. "Shit. It got your ass fired, is what it did. Randy looked like a carpet that had been beat with an ax."
"But you're back," said Marshall. "You got unfired."
"Just about took an act of God," Del said. To Lucas: "But I'll get him. I'll look up some of his pals tonight and confer with them."
"I'm coming," said Marshall.
"You don't have any-"
"I don't give a shit," Marshall said. "I'm coming."
Del nodded. "Okay. You can watch. Gonna catch us a fancy man."
14
RANDY WHITCOMB, HIS clothes aside, resembled a photograph of a Civil War soldier: pale, rawboned, head slightly misshapen-not distorted, exactly, but simply lopsided-thin nose, broken a time or two, thin lips, crooked teeth, the skin of his face touched with pocks, the result of an early and violent encounter with acne.
He looked like a mean white hillbilly. He didn't let that stop him.
Randy Whitcomb was a fancy man. He liked blackthorn walking sticks with gold-nugget heads, big broad-rimmed llama-felt hats, gold chains, and red sport coats with black collars spiked with gold threads. Tall boots made of alligator skin, with three-inch heels. Moleskin pants. Not just cars: motorcars.
He'd driven a crimson Jaguar for a while in L.A.-a short while, before both the car and L.A. got too hot-and carefully called it a "Jag-u-war," a pronunciation he picked up from a radio advertisement. Randy thought he was a black pimp, though he was, in fact, a white boy from the suburbs of Minneapolis. His background didn't keep him from talking ghetto-black and laying down lines of hip-hop when he had a little crack rolling through his veins.
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