Hidden prey

Chapter 30

They were on the outskirts of Duluth when the call came in. Lucas took the car to the side of the street and stopped as he answered the phone: "Lucas Davenport."

"This is the person who called you at your hotel in Duluth. I have some more information."

"You're a little late. We broke things out this afternoon. We haven't got him yet, but we know who he is-"

"No, no. You mean this Roger person? You're chasing the wrong man. The man who killed the Russian-he's a boy, really-I saw him on television tonight. He was outside the house, the spies' house, where they committed suicide."

"The house?"

"Yes. Outside the house. If you get the video they had on Channel Three tonight, he's the blond boy who is hugging the blond woman. He conies into the camera scene and she gives him a hug. He's wearing a dark jacket, but it's open, he had a T-shirt underneath. He's handsome."

Nadya whispered, "What?"

Lucas shook his head at her, then said, "Look, I'm sorry, but you're going to have to come in. You can't just tell me…"

"I'm not coming in. But I will tell you two things. The first thing is-"

"I don't think that'll work," Lucas said, interrupting.

"Then the killer will get away with it, because I'm not coming in. Two things, and then I've got to run, because I'm afraid you're tracing this. First, when he tried to shoot me, I cut him on the arm with my knife. Left arm. He should still show the cut, because he bled a lot and I think I slashed him pretty good. Second, I've sent you the knife in the mail. It's still got some blood on the blade and in the grooves, and it's his blood. That should get you somewhere. I mailed it this evening at the main post office, right after the five-o'clock news, so you should get it tomorrow. I sent it to your name at the criminal apprehension office."

"I don't-"

"Good-bye." Click.

"Goddamnit," Lucas said.

"What?" Nadya and Andreno asked simultaneously.

Lucas dropped them at their hotel. Nadya said that she would cancel her flight: she would be there until they found the killer. Lucas said that wouldn't be necessary, but she insisted.

Andreno offered to cancel his flight, but had a problem-his ticket was nonrefundable, and it would cost six hundred bucks to cancel and get another.

"Take off," Lucas said. "If this is something, we pick up the kid. If it isn't, we don't. It's all over but the shoutin'."

"Well, shit, I feel like I'm running out on you," Andreno said uncertainly.

"There's not much to do," Lucas said. "If we go after him, which is still a big if, it might not be for a couple of days. We'll have to take local cops with us, and if I'm there, and Nadya… it's already overkill."

"All right. I'll take off. If you need me to cancel, call me on the cell phone."

"I think we're good," Lucas said.

Lucas went home. He hurried through the dark, pushing ninety the whole way, his flasher on top of the car. The Public Safety Department cleared him through the two highway patrol troopers still working I-35. On the way, he made phone calls:

He called Rose Marie Roux, to update her. "I'm going to need to talk to a lawyer. Tonight, if possible. See if you can get one to call me. I need to know how to handle this, if it turns out to be true." He called Del: "You working early tomorrow?"

"Three to eleven. I think I cracked the McDonald's thing."

"Three to eleven? Meet me at my office at seven o'clock. I'm gonna want you to handle something for me. Take an hour or two."

"See you then."

He took a call from John McCord, the BCA superintendent. "Why do you need a lawyer?" McCord asked. "What'd you do?"

"I haven't done anything, yet. But I gotta figure out a maneuver, and I need a guy."

"I can't get you one tonight-I tried, but he's not answering his phone. Rose Marie said you're on the way back, so I'll get him to your office the first thing. What time?"

"Eight? Seven thirty or eight?"

A moment of silence. Then, "Have you ever gotten here at eight in your life?"

"Just get the fuckin' lawyer, John."

He called Jennifer Carey, an ex-girlfriend who worked at Channel Three. She was also the mother of his first daughter. He called her at home.

"What's up?" she asked. "You still in Duluth? I saw some tape on you."

"That's what I'm calling about. I'm going through Hinckley right now, headed your way. I gotta see some of your film, the stuff you showed on the five o'clock. It's kind of urgent."

"Come on in," she said. "I'll go down and get it."

He slowed down when he got into the heavier traffic, followed I-35 through the northern suburbs, and turned west on I-95 into Minneapolis.

At Channel Three, Carey let him in the back door, so he wouldn't have to go through the ID-and-name-tag routine, kissed him on the cheek, and took him to her office. She had the clip on tape, and ran it.

"We put some time into this, almost two minutes," she said. Much of the clip consisted of old pictures of Burt and Melodie Walther, apparently collected from friends and neighbors, along with film of people gathered outside the Walther home.

"… neighbors and a few family members gathered across the street as Hibbing police and agents of the state's Bureau of Criminal Apprehension processed the crime scene in this modest Iron Range neighborhood where Burt Walther reportedly claims a Soviet spy ring has been operating since World War Two…"

The tape lingered on a blond woman whom Lucas recognized as Janet Walther. A few seconds after the camera picked her up, a blond boy stepped into the scene, and she grabbed him and hugged him.

Her son? When she'd spoken of her son, she'd left Lucas with the mental picture of a child, of an elementary-age kid. This boy was high-school age, tall, slender, in good shape. Handsome, as the laptop lady said. This kid, Lucas thought, might have run him up and down those hills.

"Is this a story?" Carey asked, from the chair beside him, as Lucas leaned toward her monitor. She had excellent instincts.

"Of course. A really good one, too," he said. "I'd hold on to this tape, if I were you."

"What is it?"

"You are absolutely gorgeous when you're pregnant," Lucas said. "How many is this? Four? It really agrees with you."

"Lucas…"

"Could you run the tape one more time?"

He got home at eleven thirty, found Weather and the housekeeper, Ellen, in the kitchen, eating cheese crackers and drinking beer.

"I knew you guys hit the bottle when I was gone," he said, dragging his bag in from the garage. "How's Sam?"

"Sam's fine," Weather said. "Throw your dirty clothes in the wash, don't leave them on the floor."

He threw dirty clothes in the wash, caught up on the family news, told them that he might have to go back to Range in the morning.

"I thought it was all done," Weather said. "Channel Seven said that they're 'bracing for a tidal wave of federal officers.' That's a direct quote."

"I'm not quite done," Lucas said. "Had something come up…"

He explained as he stuck his head in the refrigerator. Lettuce and grapes. Cheese. A couple of bottles of beer. He picked up a carton of one-percent milk, opened it, tried to sneak a gulp or two, behind the cover of the open refrigerator door.

"I can make you an egg sandwich or an omelet," Weather offered. "Or we have some instant oatmeal… Hey! Are you drinking out of the carton?"

A short, restless night. He got up with Weather, in the early red light of dawn, dressed, ate cinnamon-and-spice instant oatmeal, kissed a noisy Sam, and headed downtown.

Del was waiting at the office. "What's going on?"

"We're going to the post office to see if we can find a package with a knife in it."

He explained as they headed downtown in the Acura. "What I need from you is, I need you to walk the knife around to everybody. We need to get it photographed, we need to get it to the lab, we need to get the Woodwork going-we need to make sure that there even is some blood on it. I gotta head back north as soon as I talk to the lawyer. I really do need to know if there is blood on the knife before I get up there."

"So I'll walk it around," Del said. They were headed into downtown St. Paul, snarled in the early-morning rush. "I figured out the McDonald's thing, but we'll need some surveillance cameras. And some auditors. Even then, it's gonna be weird."

"Tell me." And Lucas thought, Should I really rush this thing on the kid? Maybe I should wait-but what if the kid disappears? Or somebody executes him? Or he kills himself?

Del was saying, "There's this guy named Slattery who delivers bulk goods to the Bruins' warehouse-the food. The warehouse is the central supply center for the stores in their chain. But this guy is also delivering for other stores in the area.

"Then there's a guy named Jones who works in the warehouse. As the truck is unloaded, he zaps the cartons with a product-code reader and manually counts the cartons and enters the manual count in a computer. So then we have two records of the stuff coming in-the product code list and the hand count. But the thing is, they go through the same guy…"

"Jones," Lucas said. Could the old man have been crazy enough to use his own great-grandson as an executioner? A high-school kid?

"Yeah. Jones. You listening?" Del looked at him suspiciously.

"I'm listening."

"I know that hamburger theft isn't one of your major interests, but I've been bustin' my balls…"

"I'm listening," Lucas said. "Really." And if it really was Roger, why didn't he take his fuckin' raincoat! Lucas wondered. It was raining like a sonofabitch.

Del continued. "What happens, I think, is that Jones reads a box with his hand reader, but the box stays on the truck. He also adds the box to the hand count. So the box just seems to vanish."

Lucas forced himself to pay attention: "Vanish."

"Like smoke. The Bruins were looking for theft from the warehouse, or collusion between somebody in the warehouse and one of their own stores. Or, maybe, somebody just selling burgers without ringing them up, but the thefts were too big for that. Anyway, they were looking for something that happened after the burgers got to the warehouse. The thing is, the stuff never got inside."

"A fuckin' box of hamburger patties," Lucas said. "Who gives a shit? What could be in it for this guy? Jones, Slattery, whoever…"

"They're stealing enough for maybe a thousand sandwiches a week," Del said.

"A thousand…"

"Yeah. And there must be a third guy, who's running one of the McDonald's stores outside the Bruins' chain. Probably another privately owned store, and he's selling the stuff off the books. I haven't figured that out, and that's why we need surveillance."

"Still…"

"You paying attention?" Del was annoyed. "Your eyeballs are rolling around like a couple of fuckin' marbles."

"I'm paying attention."

"We're talking a hundred and fifty or two hundred thousand a year-they're also stealing buns, fries, the whole thing."

Now he paid a little more attention. "Two hundred thousand dollars… in fuckin' hamburgers?"

"Yeah. Why do you think the Bruins are so pissed? This is like a major heist, dude, and you're sittin' there pulling your weenie. I need some goddamn help."

"All right. Let's take it from the top…" He tried to stop thinking about Carl Walther and Roger Walther, one or the other of them running him up and down the hills of Duluth.

At the post office, the superintendent of mails said that he didn't care what the problem was, they weren't getting any mail from him. "I'll get the guy who's sorting it-he ought to be just about done-and I'll have him deliver it up there first. I'll have him make a special stop. That's as far as I can go."

"Well, Jesus, we're right here. And he's right there," Lucas said.

"Hey-we're talking federal law. You ain't coming in here and taking the mail out. You're not even supposed to be here."

"We're cops," Del said.

"I know-that's the problem," the superintendent said. "You're not postal employees. See the sign?" He pointed. The sign on the wall said POSTAL EMPLOYEES ONLY.

Del said, "Next time you have a massacre, who you gonna call? A mailman?"

Lucas jumped in: "Wait, wait, wait… we'll just follow the truck."

They wound up following a mail truck back through traffic to the BCA building.

"That was really helpful about the fuckin' massacre," Lucas said.

"Fuck the guy," Dell said.

"You been in that hamburger place too long."

"No shit."

The carrier, a cheerful man with an out-of-fashion brown pony-tail, dumped twenty pounds of letters and cartons at the BCA mail-room, and said, "Have at it."

There were only half a dozen candidates, and one of them, wrapped in what looked like grocery-bag paper, with six feet of Scotch tape, had Lucas's name on it.

"Probably a bomb," Del said.

"Wish you hadn't said that," Lucas said.

Del pulled on a vinyl glove and picked it up. "I'll get the lab to unwrap it, and I'll call you at your office. We oughta know in ten minutes," he said.