Hidden prey

Chapter 16

Like any good Minnesotan, Lucas rarely missed the TV weather before going to bed. But he missed it that night, caught up in watching The Hulk on a movie channel.

The phone call came early the next day, and, as he was running out of the hotel at seven in the morning, still half asleep, the weather smacked him in the face. Fall had arrived overnight, and he could see his breath in the air as he headed for the car.

Nadya called after him, "Wait, wait, wait." Lucas had suggested that maybe she could get a ride with Reasons, but she didn't want to ride with Reasons-the sarcasm was apparently lost on her-she wanted to go right now and with Lucas. She was wearing jeans and boots she'd bought when she was shopping with Weather, and the shoestrings were flapping and she couldn't get her shirt tucked in, and she had her new Patagonia jacket pinned under her chin as she tried to dress on the run and she called, "Wait, please, wait, wait…"

Lucas put the light on the roof and they were out of there, up the hill, over the top, running as hard as they could for Hibbing. "It's Piotr," she said.

"I think so."

"I hope it's not Piotr. It is Piotr, isn't it? I think it must be…"

Lucas was not good in the morning and had had neither a Coke nor a cup of coffee. On the outskirts of Duluth, he spotted a likely-looking gas station and roared into the lot, light still flashing, got two coffees to go, jumped the line at the cash register, ran back, hopped in the car, and took off again.

Nadya started with Piotr again, then went silent, and Lucas, grumpy, was blessing the silence when she said, "So, you know that I am sleeping with Jerry. This offends you?"

"You're sleeping with Reasons?" He feigned astonishment.

"Please." She said it exactly like a New Yorker.

"None of my business," Lucas said. "You're adults."

"That's exactly what I thought," she said. More silence, but Lucas knew she wasn't going to leave it alone. Two minutes went by with sipping of coffee, views out the passenger window-trees, then more trees-and then she said, "Do you want to know why?"

"It's none of my business," Lucas repeated, but he did want to know, so he tried to keep any harshness out of his voice.

"It's because, as Jerry would say, I am horny."

"Okay," Lucas said. "Okay."

"I am separated six years now, and here I am-I am out of town where my colleagues can't see me, I am in a nice hotel with a good bed, Jerry is somewhat attractive and certainly safe, and very enthusiastic."

"That's uh… Jesus, it's gotta be Piotr, don't you think?"

She looked at him sideways and said, "I am sorry if this affair offends you. But I have not had so much sex in my life, and I took the opportunity."

"No. No. Like I said… Poor old Piotr…"

Two-thirds of the way to Hibbing, Lucas said, "We should call Andy Harmon." But they didn't.

Chief Roy Hopper was standing on the edge of the road, bullshitting with a couple of guys in tan Carhartt jackets, all three of them with their hands in the jacket pockets. Lucas pulled into the weeds off the tarmac and climbed out.

"There you are," Hopper called cheerfully. He turned to the other two and he said, "Top guy from the BCA, and this is his Russian friend. Nadya? Got that right?"

"Is it Piotr?" Nadya asked.

"We don't know," he said. "You got a picture?"

"Yes, I do, on my laptop, I have my laptop…"

"Haven't got him up yet, he's over the edge…"

Lucas looked around. They were in a road cut, with trees and brush all around. "Down in what?"

"Down in the pit," the chief said. When Lucas didn't react, he said, "The Rust-Hull mine pit. Biggest pit in the country."

"Grand Canyon of the north, is what they call it around here," one of the Carhartts said.

"Where is it?" Lucas asked, looking around again.

"About thirty yards that way," the other Carhartt said, tipping his head toward the north side of the road.

"Whoever it is got throwed over the side, but he hung up on a ledge maybe a hundred feet down," Hopper said. "Come on, I'll show you."

"How'd you find him?" Nadya asked as they scrambled up the road cut. She'd gotten her boots properly tied, and Lucas thought they looked cute: retro-styled brown combat boots with giant cleated soles, but only about ten inches long.

Hopper didn't answer until they got over the top, then said, "Well, I knew you were going to ask… I told everybody to keep a lookout, and this morning, there were these crows flying around…"

"Crows."

"Sort of the all-purpose cleanup crew around here," Hopper said. "They'll eat anything."

Nadya stopped, blood draining from her face and she said, "Oh my shit."

"That's exactly right," Hopper said.

They pushed another twenty yards through light brush, and then suddenly the mine pit opened out in front of them. It wasn't the Grand Canyon, but it was big. The lowest part of it was filled with water, a good-sized lake. A pickup truck on the dry pit floor beneath them looked like a Tonka toy. "Jesus," Lucas said.

"Never seen it before?" Hopper asked.

"Never." The dirt and rock were a deep purple, or maybe magenta-he got those confused. The colored stuff must be the iron ore, Lucas supposed. They slid carefully down a slope to a rock ledge perhaps ten yards wide, where two men in firemen's uniforms were working with a winch. Lucas and Nadya stepped carefully to the edge and looked over the side.

The pit was deep enough that Lucas had no idea of exactly how deep. Hundreds of feet, anyway, and it appeared to be miles long, maybe a couple of miles across. As Hopper had said, the body was a hundred or so feet below them, arms thrown to the side, legs spread, wrapped in a black coat, faceup. Two more firemen were maneuvering a lift basket.

"You know how to rappel?" Hopper asked Lucas.

"Fuck no," Lucas asked.

"A man after my own heart," Hopper said.

Lucas had been on recoveries before, and they always seemed to take two hours longer than they should; but they'd arrived more than an hour into this one, so they only had to wait a half hour before the basket was winched over the lip of the cut and pulled onto the ledge.

Nadya had gone back to the truck for her laptop, and as the body came up, she opened the laptop and brought up a picture of Nikitin. The body was wrapped in a blanket.

"Want to look?" Hopper asked Nadya. "I can look for you."

"I must look," Nadya said.

Hopper nodded, and carefully unwrapped the blanket that covered the face. When he pulled back the last flap, Nadya said, "Ohhhh…" and turned away, put the laptop down, walked back to the fat part of the hill and tried to vomit. The crows had gotten the eyes and the other soft parts-the lips and the nose-before they'd been chased away.

Hopper said quietly, "Put some eyes on him…"

"It's him," Lucas said. "Could you get your guys to print him? We can send the prints back to the Russian embassy, just to make sure."

"You'll have them in a half hour."

"Thanks, Chief." Lucas went back and took Nadya by the arm. "Let's go."

"I had nothing in my stomach except some coffee," she said, dabbing at her mouth with the back of her hand. "Now my mouth tastes like acid. It's… Piotr, correct?"

"Yup. They're gonna print him for you. Let's get out of here."

They spent some time driving around; Lucas got her a bottle of Scope at a convenience store, and wound up on the main drag. Lucas asked a passerby about Svoboda's Bakery, got pointed, and they walked down together.

"Is this smart?" Nadya asked.

"We're pushing," Lucas said.

Lucas had been in dozens of bakeries like Svoboda's all over Minnesota and Wisconsin, small-town affairs with all the baking done on the premises, the varieties of cakes a fading tale of ethnic preferences from the early-nineteenth-century settlements. Lucas wandered down between the display cases, Nadya trailing behind. He chose two poppy-seed kolaches, and Nadya got a glazed doughnut, with two cups of coffee, and they carried them to one of two round metal tables at the front of the store and looked out at the street as they ate.

The woman behind the case busied herself with another customer, and then asked cheerfully, "You folks tourists?"

"Cops," Lucas said. He sipped his coffee, and said, "They had a Russian fellow killed up here a couple days ago. Found his body down in the Rust-Hull mine this morning. Crows got to him."

"Oh my… God," the woman behind the case said. Her hand went to her throat.

Lucas slipped into semi-hayseed mode. "Yup. Gonna be a big deal, all right. FBI flying around like a bunch of bats. They're talking spy rings, they're talking multiple murder. Haven't seen so much screaming and yelling since I went to a goat-fuck out in South Dakota." He sipped at his coffee and squinted NYPD-like at the street.

"Well… did they catch anybody?" the woman asked.

"Not yet. But they will," Lucas said. He dragged his index finger across his neck. "Murder one. Federal rap."

Nadya jumped in, her accent suddenly thicker. "They will be lucky peoples if they get to court. If my people catch them…" She smiled at the woman behind the counter. "… I am Russian-then they wish for your murder one."

"She's a spy," Lucas said to the woman, tipping a thumb toward Nadya. "But she's on our side for this one." He looked at his watch. "Oops. We better get going. Don't want to keep Chief Hopper waiting. Hey: great kolaches, huh?"

When they were back on the street, Lucas looked down at Nadya and grinned. "I hope to hell that was one of the Svobodas. I don't want to have wasted that act."

"You have some abilities," Nadya conceded. Then, sadly, "Now we get these fingerprints, eh? I did not know this man, but I feel sorry for his child. Not natural to lose both your parents this way. This should not happen to anybody."

Nikitin's body had been taken to the medical examiner's office. Nadya had given Hopper some of her fingerprint forms, and the prints were ready when they got there. They spent ten minutes going through his personal effects-comb, two expensive pens, a wallet, a couple of credit cards, two photos, one of a small girl and one of a Harley-Davidson motorcycle.

"Not much," Lucas said.

"He was very professional," said Nadya. "There shouldn't be much."

"Which doesn't help."

"Now what?" she asked.

"Nothing to do but push. Push Spivak, push the Svobodas, once we decide to talk to them… and I guess I better call Harmon now."

Nadya picked up the picture of the girl: "And I should call the embassy, send the fingerprints. Then they will have to talk to the child."

"Find out where he was staying," Lucas suggested. "Maybe he left something in his room."

She nodded: "I will do that also."