‘‘So catch up with Sherrill, tell her you’ll take this angle. Get away from your desk.’’
Lucas nodded: ‘‘Okay; I’ll look at it. And listen, I’m gonna send Del Capslock around with a problem.’’
‘‘That goddamn Capslock is a problem,’’ Roux grunted.
‘‘Good cop,’’ Lucas said.
‘‘Yeah, but I can’t stand to look at him: I keep wanting to give him a buck, or send him out to get his teeth fixed . . . What’s the problem?’’
‘‘He turned up an opium ring.’’
‘‘Drugs can’t handle it?’’
‘‘You might want to think about it first,’’ Lucas said. Again, the droopy grin: ‘‘I suspect most of the members are friends of yours.’’
SLOAN WAS DRINKING A CHERRY COKE AND READING a Star-Tribune story about sex in the workplace when Lucas wandered in, carrying xerox copies of the two letters. Sloan dropped the newspaper in the wastebasket, leaned back, and said, ‘‘You know what the thing is about you?’’
‘‘What?’’ Lucas pulled another chair around.
‘‘You can’t have an adulterous affair, because you’re not married. So if you go down to Intelligence, say, and pick out some single chick and fuck her brains loose, well, that’s just what bachelors do. But if I did it, that would be adultery and the Star-Tribune thinks I should be fired.’’
‘‘If you did it, your old lady’d kill you anyway, so you wouldn’t need a job.’’
‘‘I’m talking in theory,’’ Sloan said.
‘‘Did you pick out the guilty guy on Saturday? In theory?’’
Sloan shook his head. ‘‘They’re a pretty tough group. Robles was in a sweat, but I think he might sweat everything. Bone seemed to think that Kresge getting murdered was mildly amusing; he was cooperative, though. And he had to stop to think at all the right places. O’Dell was almost too busy figuring out the consequences to talk to me about whether she did it . . . and that made me think she didn’t. If she had, she’d have already figured out the consequences. I had a harder time getting a reading on Mc-Donald. He acted like the whole thing was a plot to personally inconvenience him.’’
‘‘Cold? Sociopathic?’’
‘‘Mmmm.’’ Sloan scratched his chin. ‘‘No . . . If he is, he covers it,’’ he said after a minute. ‘‘I’d say he’s more like . . . unpleasant. Arrogant.’’
‘‘So what’s it all mean?’’
‘‘If Robles did it, we might get him, eventually. If it’s one of the others, forget it. Unless the guy does something really stupid, like tell somebody else about it. Or if it was a group effort. But that’s . . .’’
‘‘Unlikely,’’ Lucas said.
‘‘More like ridiculous.’’
‘‘Perfect crime?’’
‘‘Just about,’’ Sloan said. ‘‘Lots of people probably heard the shot, but nobody thought anything about it. Nobody was looking for the shooter. Once he was off the scene . . . there’s no way we’re gonna get him. The only chance to get him was to have somebody see it happen, and recognize the shooter. That was it.’’
‘‘But we know some stuff,’’ Lucas said. He leaned back in the chair and put his feet on the edge of Sloan’s desk. ‘‘The shooter knew his way around there, in the dark. And he knew which tree stand Kresge would be in. That means that he was either close to Kresge or he worked for him, maybe out at the cabin. Is Krause checking any employees out there?’’
‘‘Yeah. There were only two or three people—a handyman who’d do maintenance work around the place, an old guy who patrols some of the cabins, just checking on them two or three times a day. And some guy who plows out the driveway in the winter. None of them had any apparent problem with Kresge. The sheriff doesn’t think they’re suspects.’’
‘‘If this was a movie, the handyman would have done it,’’ Lucas said, staring blankly at the ceiling. ‘‘He’d be like a Stephen King character, a secret psycho who everybody thinks is retarded . . .’’
‘‘. . . but who’s really pretty smart, but only behaves the way he does because he couldn’t get a date to the prom, which is why he burned down the high school.’’
‘‘How about Sherrill? Is she around?’’
‘‘I don’t know. She was working yesterday, but I haven’t seen her today. I know she was going to try to nail down people in Kresge’s office and talk to the ex-wife.’’
‘‘All right . . .’’
‘‘But suppose it is somebody close to Kresge,’’ Sloan said. ‘‘Suppose we find a guy who hated Kresge, but knew the farm, knew where the tree stand was, knew Kresge would be in it, and we can prove that he has a rifle, is a great shot, and has no alibi for opening day. You know what? We got all that, and we still ain’t got shit.’’
‘‘There might be one more way,’’ Lucas said.
‘‘Like what?’’
‘‘We build a pattern around him.’’
‘‘Good luck.’’
‘‘Rose Marie got some mail this morning,’’ Lucas said. He leaned forward and slid the copies across Sloan’s desk. ‘‘One letter nominates O’Dell, the other one McDonald.’’
Sloan read them slowly, then read the McDonald letter a second time, and finally looked up at Lucas: ‘‘Two more dead ones, huh? But we’d need more than a pattern. We’d have to push him out in the open.’’
‘‘That could be done,’’ Lucas said. ‘‘If it’s McDonald.’’
‘‘Are you buying into the case?’’ Sloan asked.
‘‘Rose Marie asked me to take a look . . . if you don’t mind. If Sherrill doesn’t mind.’’
‘‘I don’t mind,’’ Sloan said. ‘‘I’ve got the Ericson file. I could use some extra time.’’
‘‘I thought the boyfriend did it—the Ericson thing. I thought he admitted it.’’
‘‘Not exactly,’’ Sloan said. ‘‘He says he might have. He doesn’t deny it. But we can’t come up with any physical evidence, and he was so fucked up at the time, he can’t remember anything. And I’m wondering, if he was so fucked up—and he was, he had enough chemicals in him to start a factory—what’d he do with his clothes? They had to have blood all over them.’’
‘‘You’ve got nothing physical? No hair or semen . . .’’
‘‘No semen. And he had no blood on him, under his nails or in his hair. And the problem is, she was killed on the bed and he slept there every night and half the day. So he’s all over the place . . . but so what? He’s gonna be. And I’m really worried about the clothes. He says he’s not missing any, and I think he might be telling the truth. He doesn’t have all that much to begin with. Couple pairs of jeans, couple T-shirts, a coat, some sneaks.’’
‘‘Huh. Check the drains in the bathroom? Maybe he was naked . . .’’
Sloan nodded: ‘‘Yeah. The lab looked at it. No blood.’’
‘‘Okay. So I’ll take the McDonald thing,’’ Lucas said. ‘‘I’ll talk to Sherrill about it.’’
‘‘She’ll go along,’’ Sloan said. He said it with a tone .
‘‘Yeah?’’
‘‘She’s got the great headlights,’’ Sloan said.
‘‘Not exactly a key criterion for a police investigation.’’
‘‘Yeah, but . . .’’
‘‘You’ve been married too long; all you can think about is strange tits and adultery complaints,’’ Lucas said.
‘‘Not true. Sometimes I think about strange asses . . . Seriously, I heard them talking about you—some of the women. The idea was, don’t rush him, let him get a little distance away from Weather.’’
‘‘Fuck ’em,’’ Lucas said, pushing away from Sloan’s desk. ‘‘I’ll take McDonald. I’d like to see the interviews you did Saturday . . .’’
‘‘Krause tape-recorded them, he’s getting a transcript made. Probably today. He said he’d shoot a copy down as soon as it’s ready.’’
‘‘All right,’’ Lucas said. ‘‘Ship it over.’’
Lucas grinned. ‘‘Yeah. If you see her, tell her I’m looking for her; I’ll be around later in the day.’’
FIVE
DAMASCUS ISLEY WAS A VERY SMART FAT MAN WITH A taste for two-thousand-dollar English bespoke suits that almost disguised his size. Lucas spotted him at a back table at the Bell Jar, hovering over a chicken breast salad that had been served in what looked like a kitchen sink. Lucas told the mai^tre d’, ‘‘I’m with the fat guy,’’ and was nodded past the velvet rope.
‘‘Lucas,’’ Isley said. He made a helpless gesture with his hands, which meant, I’m too fat to get up . ‘‘Are you coming to the reunion? Gina asked me to ask.’’
Lucas shook his head, and took a chair across from Isley, who was sitting on the booth seat. ‘‘I don’t think so. I’ve busted too many of them.’’
‘‘Mary Big Jo’s gonna be there,’’ Isley said.
‘‘Fuck Mary Big Jo.’’
‘‘I certainly did,’’ Isley said cheerfully. ‘‘Made all the more glorious by your abject failure to do the same.’’
Lucas grinned: ‘‘No accounting for taste,’’ he said. Isley was six-five, a bit taller than Lucas. He’d once been a rope instead of a mountain, a basketball forward when six-five was a big man; Lucas had been hockey, and they’d chased several of the same women through high school and college.
A waitress stepped up behind Lucas, slipped a menu in front of him, and said, ‘‘Cocktail, sir?’’
‘‘Ah no, I just want . . .’’ He thought for a second, then said, ‘‘Hell, give me a martini. Beefeater, up, two olives.’’
‘‘I could give you three olives, if you need more vegetables in your diet,’’ the waitress said.
‘‘All right, three,’’ Lucas said; she was pretty in a dark-Irish way.
The waitress went to get the drink, and Isley, following her with his eyes, said, ‘‘The way she looked at you, something would be possible. Maybe you’d have to come back a couple of times, get to know her, but it’d be possible.’’ He looked down at the vast salad, the chunks of chicken breast, avocado, egg, tomato, cheese, and lettuce, covered with a bucket of creamy herb dressing, then back up at Lucas. ‘‘You know how long it’s been since that was possible with me? With all this fuckin’ . . .’’ He couldn’t say ‘‘fat’’ ‘‘. . . lard?’’
Lucas tried to put him off: ‘‘So you work out for a couple months.’’
‘‘Lucas . . . when I was playing ball, my last year, I weighed two-oh-five. So I go to this fat doctor and say, ‘Give me a diet I can stay on, something simple, that’ll get me back to two-oh-five.’ He says, ‘Okay, do this: Go to lunch every day and eat one Big Mac with all the fixings. And as much popcorn as you want, all day. Nothing else.’ I say, ‘Jesus Christ, I’ll starve.’ He says, ‘No you won’t, but you’ll lose a lot of weight.’ ’’
Isley looked at Lucas. ‘‘You know how long he said it would take to get to two-oh-five?’’ Lucas shook his head. ‘‘A year and a half. A fuckin’ year and a half, Lucas . . .’’
‘‘I’ll tell you what, Dama,’’ Lucas said bluntly. ‘‘You’re either gonna lose it, or you’re gonna die. Simple as that.’’
‘‘Not that simple,’’ Isley said.
‘‘Oh yeah it is,’’ Lucas said. ‘‘After all the bullshit, that’s what it comes down to.’’
‘‘I don’t even like food that much . . . and I’d like to live awhile longer,’’ Isley said wistfully. ‘‘I’d like to quit the company, go to London and study money . . . find out what it really is.’’
‘‘Money.’’
‘‘Yeah, you know. Money ,’’ he said. ‘‘Not many people really know what it is, how it works. I’d like to spend some time finding out.’’
‘‘So start hitting the McDonald’s,’’ Lucas said.
‘‘Fat chance.’’
The waitress arrived with the martini, and Isley’s wistfulness disappeared, replaced by the steel-trap investment banker. ‘‘So what’s going on? Starting another business?’’
‘‘No.’’ Lucas sipped the martini. ‘‘When you took my company public, we ran some of the money stuff through Jim Bone over at Polaris. You seemed to know him pretty well. He was hunting with Kresge when Kresge got shot, and I need a reading on him. Bone, I mean. And Susan O’Dell, if you know her. And Wilson McDonald.’’
Isley’s face went cautious: ‘‘Is this official?’’
‘‘No, of course not. I’m just trying to get a reading. Nobody’ll be coming back to you.’’
Isley nodded. ‘‘Okay. I know them all pretty well— socially and business, both. Either Bone or O’Dell has the guts to shoot Kresge, but I don’t think either one did. These people are very smart and very serious. If they’d wanted to lose Kresge badly enough, they would have done it another way.’’
‘‘What about Robles or McDonald?’’
‘‘Robles is a software genius. He does the math. But he’s more of a technician than a manager. He also doesn’t have the motive. With his math, he could go about anywhere. McDonald . . .’’ Isley looked away from Lucas, pursed his fat lips, then turned back. ‘‘There are McDonalds who are good friends of mine—same family. Not Wilson, though. There’ve been rumors . . .’’ Again, he paused.
‘‘What?’’ Lucas asked.
‘‘No comebacks?’’
‘‘No comebacks.’’
‘‘There’re rumors that he occasionally beats the shit out of his wife,’’ Isley said. ‘‘I mean, she goes to the hospital.’’
‘‘Huh.’’
‘‘Alcohol, is what you hear,’’ Isley said. ‘‘He’s a binge drinker. Sober for two months, then has to take a few days off.’’
‘‘Smart?’’
‘‘Pretty smart. Not world-class, but he got through law school with no problem.’’
‘‘I didn’t know he was a lawyer.’’
‘‘He never worked at it. He’s always been a salesman, and a damn good one. Knows everybody. Everybody . Access to all the old money in town—his family built a mill over on the river, hundred and some years ago, and eventually sold to Pillsbury to go into banking and real estate. Like that.’’
‘‘Okay,’’ Lucas said. ‘‘So here’s another question. Everything I’ve heard about him says McDonald’s rich, he comes from an old family, and all that. Why would he kill Kresge, just ’cause Kresge’s gonna merge the bank? He’s got all the money in the world anyway.’’
‘‘No, not really,’’ Isley said. He dabbed at his lips with a linen napkin, tossed the napkin aside, and made a steeple out of his fingers. After a moment of silence, he said, ‘‘He’s maybe worth . . . seven or eight million. The older generation was a lot richer, relatively speaking, but there were a lot of kids, and a lot of taxes, and the money got cut up. After taxes, and including his after-tax salary, I’d imagine his real expendable income is something in the range of a half-million. If he doesn’t dip into his capital, and assuming he puts aside enough to cover inflation.’’
‘‘Well, Jesus, Dama, that just about is all the money in the world,’’ Lucas said.
‘‘No, it’s not. It’s a lot by any normal standard, but having ten million dollars is nothing compared to being the CEO of a major corporation. Being an American CEO is like being an old English duke or earl.’’ He paused again, his eyes unfocusing as he looked for the right words. ‘‘Say you have a spendable income of a half-million a year, and your wife likes to fly first-class to Hawaii or Paris every so often. You can spend fifteen thousand after-tax bucks flying a couple first-class to the islands. You go out of town a half-dozen times a year—Hawaii, the Caribbean, Europe— you can spend a hundred and fifty grand, no trouble. And it’s all out of your own pocket. Plus you’ve got big real estate taxes, you’re probably running a couple of fiftythousand-dollar cars . . . I mean, you can spend a halfmillion a year and feel like your collar’s a little too tight. B
ut if you run a business the size of Polaris, screw first class—you’ve got your own Gulf-stream waiting at the airport. You’ve got several thousand people kissing your ass day and night. You’ve got people driving your cars, running your errands. From everything I can tell by watching it, this all must feel better than anything in the world . . .’’
‘‘So even if he had a lot of money, a guy might have reason to waste old Kresge.’’
‘‘Especially McDonald. Bone, O’Dell, and Robles are essentially hired guns. They are very good at what they do, but they’re here mostly by chance. They could go anywhere else. But everything Wilson McDonald is is tied to the Twin Cities. In New York or L.A. or even Chicago, they could give a rat’s ass about a Wilson McDonald.’’
‘‘Do you think Bone would talk to me about McDonald? Off the record?’’
Isley shrugged: ‘‘Maybe. If the idea appealed to him. He played a little ball at Ole Miss.’’
‘‘Yeah?’’
‘‘Yeah. Good quick guard. Probably not pro quality, but he would’ve been looked at. Called him T-Bone, of course. If you want, I could give him a ring. Just to say you asked about him, tell him you’re okay.’’
Lucas grinned. ‘‘Maybe I’m not.’’
Isley said, ‘‘Ah, you’re okay . . . if he’s innocent. And I’m pretty sure he is.’’
‘‘Anybody mourning Kresge?’’
Isley had been about to stuff a slice of chicken in his mouth, and stopped halfway to the target. Shook his head. ‘‘Not a single person that I know. He spent his life fucking people in the name of efficiency.’’ He stuck the chicken in his mouth, chewed, swallowed. ‘‘Why would you do that?’’ he asked. ‘‘I know all kinds of people who do, but I can’t figure out why.’’
‘‘Make money.’’
‘‘Hell, Lucas, I’ve made a pile of money, and I don’t fuck people. You made a pile, and your ex-employees think you’re a hell of a guy. But why would you do things in a way that you’d end up in life with a pile of money, but not a single fuckin’ friend?’’
‘‘Maybe you figure that if you get enough money, you could buy some.’’
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