Easy Prey

Chapter 27

Lester drove over from Minneapolis in time to see the body hauled away. He and Lucas stood on the Spooners' lawn and watched the Ramsey County ME working, and Lester said, "We may be fucked. Personally, I mean. We gotta go talk to Rose Marie so she won't be blindsided by the press."

"I know," Lucas said. "Before we do that, we ought to wring out Olson. And we have to fill in St. Paul on what we were doing, and get them to grab Spooners paper and his computers and close off his safe-deposit boxesget some people in early tomorrow and notify every bank inside a couple hours' driving time about the boxes, and maybe get a warrant for the house and grab any keys he's got."

"Jesus, Lucas, it's gonna look like we got him killed, and then we're persecuting his wife," Lester said.

"Persecuting his wife won't make a hell of a lot of difference if they hang us for killing her husband," Lucas said. "But if Spooners dirty, then we might kick loose of the whole thing. We've got to go after him hard."

"Aw, man" Lester was shaken up. He kept coming back to the body, still on the ground, now under a tarp.

"Listen, this ain't you," Lucas said. "This is me. I'm the one who tipped Olson. There are only two possibilities: Olson tipped the killerhe's managing the killeror somebody else put the killer on Spooner. I don't think anybody else leaked Spooner's nameits gotta be Olson."

"So what do we do?"

"I'll go talk to Rose Marie. You stay out of it. I won't mention your name. I'll just tell her that I asked you to put a couple people on Spooner. And that's really what happened."

"Except that I went along with it," Lester said.

"Bullshit. I didn't ask you before I did it. Afterwards, what were you gonna do? Tell Olson to forget the name? And you were just helping protect Rose Marie."

"Aw, man"

"Just sit tight," Lucas said. He got on the phone and called Del, filled him in. "I'm gonna go shake Olson, if you want to come along."

"I'll meet you," Del said. "Do you know where he is?"

"I'll have the guys at the church call us when he heads back to his motel. We want to get him alone."

A St. Paul cop across the street, in the backyard of the house opposite Spooner's, was yelling something, and two St. Paul plainclothesmen trotted toward him. "Something going on," Lester said.

Lucas hung up his phone and got on the radio, called the cops watching Olson. "Tell me when he's heading back to the motel. The minute he heads that way."

"You got it, Chief."

Back on the phone, calling the cops who were watching Jael: "Somebody may be coming. Keep her away from the windows, keep her away from the doors. If anythingmoves, shoot it."

He and Lester walked across the street. One of the St. Paul plain-clothesmen said, "We got a shell."

"What kind?"

One of the patrol cops who'd found it said, "Forty-four Mag."

"He's shooting a rifle," Lucas said. "One of those Ruger carbines, I bet. The shell ejected, and this one he couldn't find."

"What does that tell us?" Lester asked.

"Damned if I know," Lucas said.

Lucas called Rose Marie. "I've got a problem. I've got to come see you."

"What happened?"

"I'll come see you," Lucas said.

Rose Marie lived in a comfortable neighborhood on the south side of Minneapolis, a fifteen-minute drive from Spooner's. Lucas didn't think about what he was going to say, except that whatever it was, he had to cover Lester and the other cops. Rose Maries husband was just walking out the door with the family cocker spaniel when Lucas arrived. "As long as it's not another killing," he said genially.

"I hate to wreck your mood," Lucas told him grimly.

"Oh, boy. Here in town?"

"Over in St. Paul."

"That's a little break."

Rose Marie was reading. She dropped the book on the floor when Lucas pushed through the front door and called, "Hello?"

"Lucas what's going on?"

"William Spooner was shot to death. A half hour ago, over in St. Paul."

"My God." She was appalled.

"It's worse than that," he said. He told her the story, made it as flat as he could. She listened without much change of expression, and when he finished, said, "Let me think for a minute." She took the full minute, then said, "We're gonna have to talk to the mayor, I can put it off until early afternoon."

"Then what?"

"I don't know. You've saved several peoples butts over the years, but this could be tough. Especially if we can't make Spooner as the guy who killed Rodriguez and the others."

"You don't sound nearly as pissed off as I thought you'd be," Lucas said.

"Well" She shrugged. "I'm not. I know what you were doing. The fact is, Spooners name would have leaked sooner or later, just like Rodriguez's, and just like the muff-diving thing. This way, we controlled it."

"I controlled it," Lucas said. "I think, for damage-control purposes, we ought to keep the emphasis on me. I'd especially hate to see anyone else get hurt."

She shook her head. "I think it's just you and meif they hang you, they'll get me for not controlling the department."

"Which is bullshit."

"Its politics," she said. "Anyway, I can put it off until after lunch. You say you want to shake Olson. Go do it. I'll get the St. Paul chief moving, and serve some warrants on Mrs. Spooner, God help her. If we can get something going by noon, or one o'clock, the mayor'll think twice before he throws us to the dogs."

"If we actually get somebody, if we start a hunt, with an actual name"

"Then we've solved the crimes. Especially if we can make the case against Spooner. Then we've solved the crimes, and the whole thing becomes moot."

Lucas looked at his watch. "Fifteen hours."

He left Rose Marie's house in a better mood than when he arrived, hut the leaking of Spooler's name seemed, in retrospect, unforgivably stupid. On the other hand, if it had worked, it would have seemed brilliant: like Napoleon at Waterloobeaten by a hairsbreadth, but beaten.

The cops at the church called. Olson was moving west on 494, headed back toward his motel. Lucas scrambled to get to Dels, picked him up, and filled him in on the Spooner ploy. "So you're now one of four people who know what happened," he said.

"Should have worked," Del said.

"We had a wrong concept in our heads," Lucas said. "We figured the killer walked up, close range, like he had to with Plain, and bang! A pistol. But he was only close with Plain because he had to be. He was inside a building. A fuckin' rifle, manif we'd found a shell from a. 30-06, I would have had a two-block-wide net around Spooner. But a. 44? I assumed it was a pistol."

"So'd we all," Del said. "I wonder why that chick in the Matrix building"

"Yeah, the Oriental chick."

"why she didn't see the rifle. If that was him?"

"It's a small gun, man. You could put it down your pants leg, if you wanted to walk with a limp."

Del thought it over, looking out the window at the dark. Then: "How'd he get Spooner to come outside?"

"Huh. I didn't ask that," Lucas said. "The surveillance guys said he came out and looked at his chimney. You got your phone?"

"Yeah."

"Call St. Paul. See if Spooner took a call."

St. Paul was already working it. Spooner took a call, the St. Paul cops said, supposedly from a neighbor down the block, who said Spooner might have a chimney fire. Spooner had run outside to look, his wife said. St. Paul was in the process of tracking the calling number.

"That could be interesting," Lucas said.

"Got a buck that says it's from a pay phone," Del said.

Olson beat them to the motel by ten minutes. Lucas and Del checked in with the surveillance cops, then headed up to Olsons room. "I want you down the hallway, out of sight," Lucas said. "I'm going in hard. If I need you to interrupt, I'll call you on the cell phone and I'll ask for an update, as though I were calling downtown. Give me a minute, then come knock on the door."

"How do I come in?"

"Soft. He might need somebody to give him a little sympathy."

Del stayed out of sight. Lucas knocked on the door, heard a man's voice call, "Just a minute," and a minute later, Olson came to the door, buckling his belt. He looked out past the privacy chain, frowned, and said, "Chief Davenport?"

"We got to talk," Lucas said.

"Sure." Olson slipped the chain out, and Lucas banged in hard, put a hand on Olsons chest before he had a chance to react, and shoved him back against the bed. Olson fell back on it, and Lucas kicked the door shut and screamed, "How the fuck did you do it? Who are you working with?"

Olson, eyes wide, tried to sit up, but Lucas crowded against his legs, slipped his. 45 out of its holster, and held it by his side. "What what're"

"Don't give me that shit," Lucas said. "You set him up, you know you set him up. You got your own parents killed, and I don't want to hear any bullshit."

"What what"

Lucas took a breath. "I told one guy about Bill Spooner. One guy. You. So tonight Bill Spooner is shot to death on his own lawn, in front of his wife's eyes. Cold-blooded murder. Shot with a rifle."

"I don't, I Oh, no. No, no," Olson stuttered. "I told, I told, I told, oh no. I told four people. I told four people, my God, I told four people."

"Who?"

But the question died with a knock on the door. Del should have stopped any visitors. Lucas stepped back, opened the door, looked. Del was standing in the corridor. "Something came up," he said. He looked past Lucas at Olson, who was now sitting up on the bed. Lucas stepped back, and Del asked, "You already tell him about Spooner?"

"Yes."

Del looked at Olson. "Spooner was lured out on his front lawn by somebody who told him he had a chimney fire. The St. Paul police traced the phone call. It came from a cell phone registered to your mother."

"What?"

"To your mother," Del repeated.

Olson looked from Lucas to Del. "My God, I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't know she had her own phone."

"You didn't have anything to do with it," Lucas said skeptically.

"I told four people," Olson said. "At dinner Friday night. I told the Bentons and the Packards."

"Where are they now?"

"They went back home for the weekend," Olson said.

"How far is Burnt River?" Lucas asked.

"Five hours. By car."

"Do you have their phone numbers?" Lucas asked.

"Yes. Of course."

"I want you to call them," Lucas said. "If somebody answers, like Mrs. Benton, I want you to ask for her husband. If Mr. Benton answers, I want you to come up with a reason to talk with his wife. Just thank them for helping you out."

"I'd feel like I'd be betraying them," Olson said.

"But you won't be, if they're home," Lucas said.

"I'll know"

"People are dying," Del said.

Olson made the calls from the motel phone, with Lucas listening on an extension. Both couples were at home. "Couldn't be them," Olson said.

"You only told four people," Lucas said.

"Only those four. We walked across the street to Perkins and had dinner together before they left. Right after dark, on Friday."

Lucas thought for a moment. Burnt River, Burnt River. What if they'd been going about this all wrong? Or half wrong? A deep, old connection, but not family. Someone who'd known her from the old days, someone who'dHe picked up the phone and called Lane. "You know that genealogy you made up? Who was the guy who nailed Alie'e on the baseball diamond?"

"Gimme a minute, I'm watching the game," Lane said. A moment later, he was back. "Louis Friar," he said. "The people up there call him the Reverend, but he doesn't know why."

"Thanks. I'm running. Talk to you tomorrow," Lucas said. He turned back to Olson. "Who is Louis Friar?"

"He's a guy up in Burnt River."

"Would either the Bentons or Packards know him?" Lucas asked.

"Yes. His parents, especially. Louie's parents and my parents and the Bentons and the Packards and a few other families, we're all in the same social circle. Play cards and stuff."

"He once had a sexual relationship with Alie'e."

"That's just a rumor."

"Everybody in Burnt River believes it. They all seem to think it happened."

"Yes. I know," Olson said.

"Do you think he might have felt protective toward her? You think he might have"

"No, no he's just a guy. He's got a lawn service. He goes around to resorts and stuff, and does landscape maintenance."

"Single guy?" Del asked.

"Yes."

"Deer hunter?"

"Probably. I don't know him that well. He was a couple years behind me in school."

Lucas got back on the phone, called Rose Marie. "Call the airport, authorize the big chopper. We need to go to Burnt River, right now, tonight. Three of us."

"You think you might make the fifteen hours?" she asked.

"Got my fingers crossed," Lucas said.

"Get over to the airport. I'll call."