Easy Prey

Chapter 28

To Lucas it felt like three in the morninglike he'd been up foreverbut the chopper lifted off a few minutes before ten o'clock, with Lucas, Del, and Olson in the back. Before they left the metro area, Lucas called the Howell County sheriff's department, got switched to the sheriff, and gave him a quick summary. He asked if a sheriff's department car could meet them at the Sheridan airport, the nearest to Burnt River. The sheriff said he'd send a couple of cars, and would ride along himself. "Kind of interesting," he said.

The flight took a little over an hour. Lucas was unaffected. Fixed-wing planes scared him; when they came down unexpectedly, the people inside wound up as postage stamp-sized pieces of meat. With a helicopter, you always had a chance.

The sky had been mostly cloudy in the Cities, but they put down at Sheridan under crystalline skies, with stars as brilliant as those that Lucas had watched from his cabin the week before. They were met by two Ford Explorers with light racks. The sheriff and two deputies climbed out to shake hands, and the sheriff said, "Who do we want to find first? This Friar guy?"

"Yeah," Lucas said. "If he's not around, we'll want to talk with his parents, and take a look at his housesee if there's any sign that he might be involved with Alie'e."

"You might have trouble getting a warrant if you've got nothing more than an urge to look around," the sheriff said. He was a square-shouldered, square-faced man with a brush mustache. He wore jeans and cowboy boots, even with the snow. "Our judges aren't all that cooperative."

"We've narrowed down the number of people outside the police department who knew about the man who was shot tonight," Lucas said. "There were exactly five. That includes Mr. Olson hereand we know where he was tonightand two Burnt River couples, who are here, at home. But if Friar isn't hereand he couldn't be, if he's involved in the shooting tonight, not unless he's got his own chopperthen we think he's worth looking at. He once had a sexual involvement with Alie'e."

"Okay, I know the guy now," one of the deputies said. "If he's the guy who nailed Alie'e. They call him the Reverend."

"What do you think?" the sheriff asked the deputy. "You think he could do it?"

"Far as I know, he's just a good ol' boy," the deputy said. "He might've had a couple of DWIs over the years. Nothing serious."

"How about if his parents tell us they told him about Spooner?" Lucas asked.

"Might get you a warrant on that," the sheriff said. "Especially since it's Alie'e."

"So let's go," Lucas said.

Del and Lucas got in the back of the sheriff's truck, while Olson got in with the other two deputies. Once inside, Del told the sheriff, "I told your guys to kinda keep an eye on Olson," he said. "He's not entirely out of the woods yet."

"They can do that," the sheriff said. He pulled a cell phone from His pocket, turned it on, ran through a call list, and pushed a button. A minute later, he said, "Hey, Carl, this is me, you get anything on Friar? Yeah? When? At McLeod's? Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Okay, we're going out that way, then."

He rang off and looked at Lucas. "You may have wasted a trip. The Burnt River town cop says a guy he ran into at the Yer-In-And-Out Store saw Friar shooting pool with some friends at McLeod's Tavern out on the lake. They were there a half hour ago."

"Goddamnit," Lucas said.

"So what do you want to do?" the sheriff asked.

"We're here, let's talk to him," Lucas said. "Then we can go wake up the Bentons and Packards and find out what they have to say. It had to come out of heresomeplace along the line, it had to come from Olson, the Bentons, or the Packards." But he was no longer sure of it; what if it was a departmental leak? Or what if Olson was lying, and he was running another guy, one of his disciples? Maybe somebody who thought Olson was Jesus?

"Whatever you say," the sheriff said. He called the other car, and they swung toward McLeod's.

McLeod's looked exactly like five hundred other lakeside taverns: snow-covered parking lot with mounds of plowed snow on the side; fake dark-brown log-cabin styling; small windows under the eaves at the front; a Christmas wreath on the door; snowmobile parking at the lakeside. "We don't have any snow in the Cities yet," Lucas said as they pulled in.

"That's because you're practically living in Miami," the sheriff said.

"I guess that accounts for the palm trees outside the office," Del said to Lucas.

Talk in the bar stopped when they all walked in; Lucas could feel the heads turning. They clumped down toward the game room, through a haze of barbecue smoke. The deputy who knew the Reverend said, "That's him in the red shirt."

Louis Friar was focusing on the five-ball when he saw them all coming. He stood up and grounded his cue and said, "Evening, Sheriff." He looked puzzled, then saw Olson and said, "Hi, Tom. Sorry about Alie'e, jeez"

The sheriff said, "Could you come back over here and talk with us for a bit?"

"Sure what'd I do?" Friar handed his cue to a friend.

"Nothing, apparently. But we need to talk," the sheriff said.

They got in a corner, away from the bar, and Lucas quickly told Friar the problem. "Well, yeah, my folks told me," he said. "I mean, I couldn't have told you the guy's name tonight, but I could've told you Friday night and all day yesterday. Spooner, right? Banker."

"Did you tell anybody?" Lucas asked.

"Well, sure those guys over there."

They all turned and looked at the three men Friar had been shooting pool with. "When did you tell them?"

"Friday night, I guess. My folks got home about ten o'clock, and we just had that snow come through. I was over there blowing out their drive, and they told me. I came down here afterwards for a couple brewskies, you know I told a couple people."

"Do you think they might have told anybody?" Lucas asked.

"Look," Friar said. "I doubt there's anybody in Burnt River who hasn't heard this guy's name by now. The Bentons told my folks, and my folks probably told a couple more friends, and I imagine the Bentons told more. Everybody's interested in what happened to Alie'e, she's the most famous person ever come from hereor ever will. She's the only person in the whole county or maybe all the counties around whoever had her face on a magazine."

"Goddamnit," Lucas said.

The sheriff waved at the three guys around the pool table. "You guys, could you step over here for a minute?" When they did, clustering around, he said, "We want to know, did any of you hear about this banker fellow, the suspect in the Alie'e case, from anybody besides Louie? Nobody's gonna get in trouble, we just need to know how much the name's gotten around."

Two of them admitted passing the name along; two of the three had heard the name in conversation on Saturday or Sunday.

"So everybody knows," Lucas said.

"Everybody," said a guy in a green shirt. "What happened, anyway? Somebody shoot that asshole?"

Lucas looked at him. "Exactly. Somebody shot that asshole."

"Really?" They wanted details. Lucas shook his head and said, "Man, the question is, is there anybody in town who might pull something like this?"

A guy in a gold flannel shirt said, "What was he shot with?"

"A rifle, we think. The shooter was fifty yards out or so and hit him in the chest."

"That ain't much of a shot with a rifle," a blue flannel shirt said. "I woulda gone for a neck shot."

"You always go for a fuckin' neck shot, and the next time you come back with a deer, I expect to be a grandpa," Friar said.

"Wasn't a. 44 Mag, was it?" gold shirt asked.

Lucas and Del both focused on him. "What?"

"A. 44 Mag?"

"Yeah. It was," Lucas said. They all looked at gold shirt. "Who's got a. 44 Mag?"

Gold shirt swallowed, looked at his friends. "You know who it is? It's that jack-off Martin Scott."

Friar slapped his forehead. "Goddamn, Steve." He looked at Lucas. "It was Martin Scott."

"Who's that?"

"He's the jack-off Coca-Cola truck driver for Howell County," gold shirt said. "He shoots a. 44 Mag, a Ruger, and he's always had this thing about Alie'e. I mean, bad. He works free for her parents, mowing their yard and shoveling snow and shit, because he thinks that when she comes back, they'll let him hang out with her."

"He says he saw her tits once, when she was out in their pool," green shirt said. "I called him a lyin' SOB, I said nobody in Howell County ever saw her tits but the Reverend here, and he never saw them but once. But Martin said he's seen them."

"Only about sixty-six billion people seen them by now," gold shirt said, then he remembered Olson and swallowed and said, "Jeez, sorry, Tom."

"He's nuts. He thinks he's in the Coca-Cola army, walks around twenty-four hours a day in his Coke uniform," said blue shirt.

"Yeah, but you know what?" green shirt said. "Couldn't be him."

"You're full a shit. Gotta be him," Friar said.

"Nope. Because, guess what?" Green shirt crossed his arms.

Lucas bit. "What?"

"Because a whole bunch of those people got shot on Monday. Wasn't it a Monday?"

Lucas had to think; it seemed like a thousand years ago. But Marcy was shot on Monday afternoon, and all theothers. "Yeah," he said. "Monday."

Green shirt looked at his friends. "Martin works on Mondays."

"Oh, yeah," Friar said.

"And the chances of that carp-sucker Rand Waters letting him off are slim and none. He's a slave driver," green shirt said.

"I wouldn't work for him," said blue shirt. "He's a mean son of a bitch. I saw him pick up the back end of a Chevy Camaro one day, right down on River Street."

"Light car," gold shirt said.

"Let's see you pick one up," green shirt said. "Your balls would pop like birthday balloons."

Lucas jumped in. "So could somebody call this Waters guy, and find out if Scottwas here last Monday? That'd settle a lot."

"I can call him," the sheriff said.

"If he ain't home, he and his old lady'll probably be up at the Port," Friar said.

Gold shirt bought a round as they clustered around the bar. The sheriff got the bartenders phone book and made a series of calls from the kitchen. When he came out, he said to Lucas and Del, "We better run out to Martins house."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. He had last Monday off. He told Waters he had to go to the Cities to help the Olsons with Alie'e. He told him if he didn't get the day off, he'd quit. That's how serious he was."

Lucas looked at Friar. "So where's this guy live?" Lucas asked.

"Hard to explain, but we can show you," Friar said.

They left the bar in a convoy of two pickups and the two sheriff's department Explorers. They went into Burnt River, then out the other side, then off on a side road for a hundred yards. Martin Scott lived in a small log cabin, with a stick-built garage across a wide, snow-covered drive. The snow had been driven on, but there was no sign of truck at the house, and only a single lighted window. A pizza pan-sized satellite dish perched on the corner of the house, aimed at the satellite over Reno. A propane tank sat off on one side of the driveway, and next to the garage, a lean-to covered four or five cords of split wood. All of it was illuminated by a blue yard light.

"He ain't home," Friar said, looking at the dark house. They'd all gotten out of the truck and gathered next to one of the Explorers.

"How do you know?" Del asked. "Maybe he's asleep."

"He bums wood, and the wood-stove ain't going," Friar said. "That smoke there"he pointed at a thin stream of smoke burbling out of a four-inch-wide stack"that's from the propane burner. You only turn that on when you ain't home, to keep the wood stove going."

"Why don't you guys wait," Lucas said to the sheriff. "Del"

Lucas and Del took out their pistols and walked up toward the house. Lucas knocked, then pounded on the door; no sign of life. He opened the storm door and tried the door knob. Locked. The sheriff came up and said, "Let's look around back."

The house had a back porch, but the door apparently wasn't used much: It hadn't been shoveled since the last snow fall, and there were no tracks crossing it. Lucas stood up on the back porch and tried to peer through the window. "Want a flash?" the sheriff asked. He handed Lucas a flashlight. Lucas shined it in the window and saw a kitchen.

Gold shirt had wandered over to the garage and pulled the center-opening doors far enough apart to see inside. "Trucks gone," he said.

Lucas started down the far side of the house, Del and the sheriff trailing behind. One window showed a five-inch slit in the curtains. Lucas looked at Del and said, "If I boosted you up, could you look in there?"

"I guess."

Lucas made a stirrup out of his hands, Del stood in it, and Lucas boosted him up the side of the house. The sheriff handed him a flashlight, and Del looked through the window. A minute later he said, "All right," and Lucas let him down.

Del handed the flashlight to the sheriff and said to Lucas, "This is the guy."

"What'd you see?" The four shirts and two deputies and the sheriff pressed around.

"I'll let you look," Del said. "Could you pull one of those pickups up here?"

Gold shirt ran back to his pickup, gunned it out of the driveway and up to the house. Lucas took the flashlight from Del, and they all scrambled into the truck bed. Lucas shined the light though the window.

They were looking into what might have been a bedroom at one time; now it was a shrine. The walls were covered with the thousand faces of Alie'e Maison, all carefully cut out, all pasted flat to the wall, thousands of green eyes looking out at them from the wall opposite. In the center of the room sat a single lonely wooden chair, where a man might sit to look into the eyes.

The sheriff took it in, muttered something under his breath, then turned to a deputy. "Go yank Swede out of bed and get a warrant. Tell him I need it right now. Tell him I need it ten minutes ago, because I'm already in the house."

And Lucas added, "Get this guy's tag number and the make on his truck and call me. Quick as you can."

"Nineteen ninety-seven Dodge ram, metallic black in color, black-pipe running boards, impact bars on the front, and red script on the door that says, 'Martin Scott,' " gold shirt said.

As they walked around the front of the house, Lucas called Rose Marie. "'We ain't got him, but we know who he is," he said. "A deputy up here's gonna call Dispatch, and we need to get a truck description and tag out on the streets."

The sheriff opened the house by the simple expedient of punching out the window on the front door, reaching inside, and unlocking it. He told the four shirts to hang around, but wouldn't let them inside.

The sheriff, Lucas, Del, and one other deputy went into the house. The house smelled bad from the first step, "like he's been skinning some mink in here," the sheriff said. They went back to the shrine and looked in. From the outside, they could see only the wall opposite; from the inside, they could see that all four walls, plus the ceiling, had been done in Alie'e's face.

The sheriff shook his head. "This gives me the creeps," he said. "If he'd showed me this on a nice summer day with Alie'e running around alive, it'd give me the creeps."

"It's a little too much," Lucas agreed.

Green shirt was up on the porch. "Us guys just want to come in and take a quick look, or go back to McLeod's. It's too goddamn cold out here to be hanging around."

The sheriff looked at Lucas, who shrugged. "I don't care maybe they'll see something we don't."

So the sheriff let them come in as Del and Lucas probed Scott's bedroom and kitchen; they found a box of twelve-gauge shotgun shellsskeet shotin a bedroom closet, but no shotgun; a scoped. 300 Winchester Magnum; and a Ruger. 22 semiauto carbine.

"So maybe he's got a shotgun with him, too," Lucas said.

"I'll call it in," Del said.

A small living room had black velvet curtains to block the light; a love seat was pushed against one wall; opposite the couch was a projection TV, a Sony, with a screen five feet wide; and next to the TV, a rack of tuning and sound equipment. A Nintendo console sat on the floor next to the couch, with a dozen game boxesand next to that, a Dreamcast console with even more games. Five small speakers were spotted around the room, with a subwoofer the size of a trash can next to the TV.

"Nine hundred and ninety-nine channels of shit on the TV to choose from," Del said, sounding like he might be quoting someone.

In the kitchen, they found nothing at all. The last of the shirts had taken a look at the shrine, and gold shirt came out in the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, took out a beer, and screwed off the top.

"What the hell are you doing?" the sheriff asked.

"He ain't gonna need it," gold shirt said. "Gonna go to waste."

"Gimme one of those," Friar said. Gold shirt opened the refrigerator, handed him a beer. As he unscrewed the cap, Friar said, "The thing about Martin is, he always thought he'd be famous. That might beall he thought about. He thought he could do it by starting small here in Burnt River, and if he worked hard and kept his nose clean, Coke would take care of him. He's been working his ass off, driving that goddamned truck for ten years, and I'd have to say he ain't made much progress up the corporate ladder." He took a pull on the bottle, then added, "Such as the corporate ladder is around here."

"You think he could kill a guy?" Lucas asked.

"Nobody'll go huntin' with him," blue shirt said. "He likes them guns a little too much. One time this guy I know was walking in from his deer stand"

Gold shirt jumped in. "Ray McDonald."

Blue shirt continued. "and he bumps into Martin, and Martin goes, 'You smoke cigarettes and the deer'll smell it a mile away' So Ray goes on home and he's laying in bed that night about to go to sleep, thinking about nothing, and then all of a sudden he realizes that he was about a half-mile away when he stripped that butt and threw it away."

Blue shirt looked at Lucas, Del, and the sheriff, a look that said, This is of significance. Lucas took a minute to decipher the look. "He'd been watching him through his scope."

"Yup. Ray said he almost shit in his pants, laying there in bed. Martin Scott had been looking at him smoking, through a scopeon that. 300 Magnum."

"Didn't shoot him," Del said.

"But I bet he was thinking about it," blue shirt said. "Martin is fuckin' loony tunes, and he was a loony tunes when I met him in kindergarten."

Late that night, when Lucas and Del and a pensive Tom Olson were a hundred miles out of the Sheridan airport, on the way back to the Twin Cities, the sheriff called. "I got some sorta bad news," he said.

"Ah, God, I don't need any," Lucas said. "No time for it."

"We didn't find Scott, but we found his truck," the sheriff said. "It's parked next to the Coke truck, at the distribution center. We talked to Randy Waters again, and he said that Scott parks it there on nights he thinks will be extra cold, because his garage doesn't have heat."

"It's not gonna be that cold tonight," Lucas protested. "What's it gonna be?"

"Maybe ten below," the sheriff said.

"That's nothing," Lucas said. "Nothing."

"Yeah, I know. And we can't find ScottI don't think he's in town. But even if he is in the Twin Cities, looking for his truck won't do you any good."

"Keep an eye out," Lucas said. "If we don't find Scott, maybe he'll show up for work."

Lucas told Del, who shook his head. "Gotta be him, though," Del said. "You saw the room."

"But what do you think? He's hitchhiking down to the Cities?"

"No, he just got down, somehow. Be nice to know the car, though."

Halfway back, Lucas said, "I just thought of something else. You know that Oriental chick at the Matrix? She saw the guy we think was the shooteronly for a second or twobut she thought it was the vending machine guy. She also thought he looked a little porky, and so did Jael, when a guy tried to break into her house that night But when St. Paul picked up the vending machine guy, he wasn't porky. He was skinny."

"Yeah?"

"I bet this asshole Martin Scott was wearing his Coke coveralls. One of those guys said he wore them twenty-four hours a day. I bet that's what this chick was reacting tothe coveralls, the kind a vending machine guy would wear."

"That's thin," Del said.

"But it's there," Lucas said.

"My ass is kicked," Del said, just before they landed. "You gonna drop me?"

"Yeah. But I'm gonna cruise up and take a look at Jael's place, make sure they've spread out that perimeter."

"I'll ride along for that," Del said.

They'd left Lucas's car at the motel, because it could only handle two, and had ridden over in Olson's rattletrap Volvo. "I'm going back to the valley," Olson said as he drove them back to the motel. "Back to Fargo. Tomorrow. Have somebody call me when you're gonna release the bodies. I'll come and bury them, but I won't wait here anymore. This place is a suburb of hell."

"Oh, bullshit. It's a pretty nice place," Del said irritably.

"Think about the last week," Olson said. His voice was mild, quiet. "Ten days ago, I had a familynow I don't. But it's not so much individual people who did this: They're just souls trying to get through life. It's the culture that does it. It's a death culture, and it's here, right now. It comes out of TV, it comes out of magazines, it comes out of the Internet, it comes out of video games. Look at that television set that poor Martin Scott had. The biggest, most expensive thing he owned, except for his truck. And all those video games. And he was a hard-working man; worked hard. But the culture burned him out, reached out through that satellite dish and grabbed him. We see it in Fargo, but you can still fight it there. Here this place is gone. Too late for this place. Too late. You'll see."

"Shut the fuck up," Del said.