Secret Prey

SEVEN

"Now we’re getting some heat," said Rose Marie Roux. She was drinking coffee from a bone china cup; a matching saucer sat on her desk, and on the saucer, a wad of green chewing gum. "Harrison White called, and said if you need to interview Wilson McDonald, or if you would like to bring him before a grand jury, McDonald will come over anytime and testify. Without immunity. He will answer any questions, without reservation. Under oath."

"And if we don’t need him to do that?" Lucas asked. He was facing Roux’s window, the sun streaming in. Another good day. Cold.

"Then knock off the innuendos-the snooping around asking other people about him. White says the snooping could cost McDonald the top job at the bank, and if it does, he’ll see that the city picks up the difference in what he makes now, and what he would have made in twenty-some years as bank president. He thinks it might be forty or fifty million."

Lucas grinned. "Would we have to pay it all up front?" Roux smiled back: "He didn’t say. But he also talked to a couple of people on the city council, and McDonald’s father has been calling around… but fuck them. Do what you need with McDonald. I thought you should know that glaciers are starting to move."

"Thanks," Lucas said.

"And, of course, what White says is true. McDonald could be completely innocent, and we could be screwing him out of his lifetime job. In fact, we could even have been set up to do it, with the letter."

"Tell you what," Lucas said. "Let me talk to White. I wanted McDonald bumped, I wanted him nervous, but I don’t need to push much harder. We could back off a bit."

"Whatever you think," Roux said. She finished the coffee, peeled the gum off the saucer, and popped it back in her mouth. "Nicotine," she said. "Too expensive to throw away before I chew it out."

"So I’ll…" Lucas was getting to his feet.

"Sit down," Roux said. She probed her desk for a moment. "We have a couple of things to talk about. First, the opium ring…"

"Oh, shit," Lucas groaned.

"And then Capslock has put in for thirty hours accumulated overtime for investigating it."

"Rose Marie…"

"He’s your guy, goddamnit. Now, this thirty hours. He took the thirty hours when he was supposedly on disability leave after the pinking shears incident. Now what I’m trying to figure is how…"

"Aw, Rose Marie, c’mon…"

Roux was amusing, and he laughed with her, and convinced her to sign off on the thirty hours. But the laughter was like a water bug on a pond, skating across the surface of his mind. He was amused and he laughed, but nothing was deeply funny; life was simply stupid most of the time. Going downhill, again, he thought. He walked back to his office, tired, a little unnerved by the overnight rattling in his brain, and found Sherrill waiting for him.

Sherrill was lanky and dark-eyed, with short black hair and-Sloan’s words-the good headlights. Her estranged husband had been killed by a crazy outlaw, who was himself killed by Lucas in a close-quarters firefight in the middle of a freak blizzard. It all happened just minutes before the cold-eyed Iowa boy had blown up both Dick LaChaise and Lucas’s marriage prospects. Last winter had been a bad one.

"There you are," Sherrill said. "Want to come detect?"

"Detect what?"

"An anonymous caller phoned the Garfield sheriff’s office and said that a US West lineman saw the killer, or might have seen him. The lineman was working on an exchange box near Kresge’s place. Said that he was talking about it in a bar, thought about calling the cops but didn’t because he didn’t want to get involved. So the sheriff tracked him down, and guess what?"

"He confessed and threw himself on the mercy of the court."

"Nope. He’s down here. They sent him to an NSP warehouse to pick up a bunch of splicer things… The sheriff talked to him and called me. He’s the only eyewitness we have so far. I’m going over."

"How far?"

"Ten minutes?"

"Let’s go," Lucas said.

Sherrill had a city car parked at the curb. They took I-394 west, falling into routine cop chitchat that covered a vaguely uncomfortable tension between them. Sherrill was at least somewhat available, and, rumor had it, would not be averse to exploring possibilities with Lucas. At the same time, word was around that Lucas hadn’t quite recovered from the loss of Weather, and nobody wanted to be the first woman afterwards.

Lucas, on the other hand, with a small reputation as a womanizer, had been expected to make a run at Sherrill ever since her marriage began going bad. He’d never done that. There lingered about them the sense that somebody ought to make a move, almost as a matter of common politeness.

"Did you get anything good out of Kresge’s office?" Lucas asked after a while.

"Naw. But there are some newly humble secretaries and assistants around the place, I’ll tell you," Sherrill said cheerfully. "Especially around Bone and O’Dell and McDonald. Everybody thinks one of them will get the job."

"What about the merger?"

"That’s apparently on hold."

"Hmph. So if somebody shot Kresge to stop the merger, it worked."

"Yup. For the time being, anyway."

"And this telephone guy…"

"Harold Hanks."

"… saw the killer."

"Maybe. But there’s something odd about the whole thing. Whoever called the sheriff’s office said she heard him talking in a bar. Harold Hanks is a hard-shell Baptist. He told the sheriff he hadn’t been in a bar for fifteen years, since he was born again. But he did see somebody, just like the caller said. But he never connected whoever he saw with the killing."

"The caller was a woman?"

"Yeah."

"They knew where the call came from?"

"A pay phone off I-35. I wrote it down, it’s up north somewhere."

"Nothing there, then."

"Nope."

"Both letters to Rose Marie were probably written by women-one of them for sure, and the one pointing at McDonald has a female feeling to it…"

"Yeah, it does," Sherrill agreed. "So we’ve got somebody out there who knows a lot more than we do, and she’s leading us in."

"Which makes you wonder…" He looked out the window.

"What?"

"McDonald’s wife," Lucas suggested.

"Hmm."

"He beats her up," Lucas said.

"Yeah?" Old story.

"Something to look into," he said.

They rode in the slightly tense silence for another few minutes, then Sherrill blurted, "Seeing Weather at all?"

"No. The shrink thinks we ought to spend some time apart." Everybody in the department knew about the shrink.

"But eventually get back?" Sherrill asked.

"Maybe," Lucas said moodily. Three teenagers in reflective vests were peering through a surveying total station just off the interstate. All three wore their caps backward.

"You know," Sherrill said, plowing ahead, "you’ve really got your head up your ass in a lot of ways. You walk around with this cloud over you, mooning over her. Why don’t you do something to get her back?"

"I’m afraid it’s more complicated than that," Lucas started, a distinct chill in his voice.

"Oh, bullshit, Lucas. If you love her, get her back. Don’t wait for her to work it out-plot something. Suck her in. The thing is, if she gets a little freaky when she sees you, then you’ve got to hang around more. Screw the shrink: the thing is, life goes on, and if you’re around all the time, and life keeps going on… the freakiness will go away. It’ll get boring. Tiresome. And if she basically loves you, and you love her…"

"Can we knock this off? You’re bumming me out."

"Jesus, what a crock," Sherrill said, angry now.

Lucas was just as angry: "It’s a crock, all right. I should trick her back? How would I do that? Huh? Get somebody to set up a blind date, and it’s me? Hide in her closet, and pop out when she goes to iron a blouse?"

Sherrill rolled her eyes and nearly took the car into the oncoming lane; Lucas flinched and she jerked it back to the right. "Lucas, this is Marcy Sherrill you’re talking to. I was there when you suckered John Mail, remember? I helped you track the LaChaise women. I heard you order up a traffic stop that you knew would never be made, so when we wasted them, our asses would be covered with the press. I was there, for Christ’s sake. I heard you work it out. So don’t tell me you couldn’t work out some little scheme to get close to her. When it came time to finish off John Mail, you didn’t get moody-"

"Shut the fuck up," Lucas said.

"Fuck you."

"There’s US West," Lucas said, pointing to the right.

"Maybe you don’t want her back," Sherrill said. She missed the turn.

"You missed the goddamned turn," Lucas fumed.

"I’ll make the goddamn turn," Sherrill said, and she braked, looked quickly left, then did an illegal U, bouncing across a median strip.

"Jesus Christ," Lucas said, startled, bracing himself, as the muffler dragged over the curb.

"You want the fuckin’ turn, I’ll make the fuckin’ turn," Sherrill snarled and, ignoring a red light, turned left across two lanes of traffic into the US West parking area. They lurched to a stop in a visitor’s space.

"Satisfied?" she asked.

"Yeah," Lucas said. "Really."

Sherrill was out of the car, steaming toward the warehouse entrance. Lucas trailed behind, deflected the door as it slammed on his face, and finally caught her at the service counter, where she flashed her ID at a guard and said, "We’re here to see Harold Hanks."

"Oh, yeah," the guard said. "He’s waiting up in the canteen on two."

"Second floor?"

"Take those elevators."

She steamed on back to the elevators. "Like you’re Miss Social Life," Lucas said at her back.

Then she was suddenly calm: "Lucas, I have an active social life. You just don’t see it." A blatant lie, and they both knew it. The elevator went ding and they got inside.

"Maybe Weather and I don’t recover quite as quickly as you do," Lucas said, as the doors slid shut.

"That’s a horseshit thing to say," Sherrill shouted, really angry now. "You take that back."

"I take it back," Lucas said meekly.

"I’d already signed off on Mike when he got killed," she shouted.

Now he just wanted to quiet her down. "I know, I know…"

"Jesus, what a jerk."

The elevator doors opened, and a short, rotund man in a brown suit was staring at them owlishly; he’d obviously heard the shouting. "Is there a problem?"

"Yeah, him," Sherrill said, tossing her thumb at Lucas, who hovered, embarrassed, in the doorway.

"There are some police officers coming up," the man ventured.

"We are the police officers," Sherrill said. "We’re looking for a man named Harold Hanks."

"The canteen… that way, left around the corner."

They went left around the corner and Lucas said, "That was really cute."

"Shut up," she said.

Harold Hanks was a gangly, rawboned man who wore a billed hat over plaid shirt, jeans, and boots, and though he’d spread out on a couch, he looked as though he’d be even more comfortable standing in a ditch somewhere. He was drinking a Welch’s grape soda from the can while he paged through a copy of Guns & Ammo.

"Anything good?" Sherrill asked, tipping her head to look at the magazine cover.

"Some. But it’s mostly pistol bullshit… You’re Miz Sherrill."

"Yes. And this is Chief Davenport. Sheriff Krause says you saw somebody up by the Kresge place."

"Yeah, I guess-but I didn’t tell anybody about it in no bar."

"Did you tell anybody about it at all?" Lucas asked.

"No, I never did," Hanks said. "No reason to. Just somebody in the woods during deer season. Only saw him for a minute. And see, I was up on the south side of Kresge’s place, way around from the driveway. I didn’t even think of it being up that far… I never put it together."

"So what’d he look like? The guy you saw?"

" ’Bout what you’d expect at that time of day, that day of the year. Blaze-orange hat and coat. Carrying a rifle."

"Couldn’t see his face?" Sherrill asked.

"Nope. He was wearing a scarf."

"A scarf?"

"Yeah. Covered the whole bottom part of his face. His hood covered the top part of his face, down to his forehead, and the scarf came right up to his eyes."

"Wasn’t that a little weird?" Sherrill asked.

"Nope. It gets damn cold out there, sitting in a tree."

"Big guy?" Lucas asked.

Hanks thought for a minute, then shook his head: "Mmm, hard to tell. I only saw him from about the waist up, walking along back in the trees. Not real big. Maybe average. Maybe even smaller than average."

Lucas looked at Sherrill: "Have you seen McDonald?"

She shook her head. "Not yet."

"Six-three, six-four, maybe two-sixty."

"Wasn’t anybody that big," Hanks said, shaking his head. "With them coveralls and the blaze-orange coat, a guy that big would look like a giant."

"Did you hear a shot before you saw him?"

"Heck, it was a shooting gallery out there. I was wearing blaze orange myself, just to stand in a ditch. I was happy to get out of there alive. But there was a shot, sort of close by, and in the right direction. About five, ten minutes before I saw him."

"That’d be right," Lucas said to Sherrill.

Sherrill nodded and went back to Hanks. "But that’s all. Just a guy in orange. Nothing distinctive?"

Hanks shrugged. "Sorry. I told the sheriff I couldn’t help much."

"Didn’t see any cars coming or going?"

"There were a couple of trucks and maybe a car or two. I don’t know. I wasn’t paying any attention."

"What were you doing out there, anyway?" Lucas asked. "Six-thirty, on a Saturday morning?"

"Aw, there’s this place called Pilot Lake, full of city people. They got maybe fifty phones around the lake, and some idiot put their exchange right on top of a spring. About once a month, the whole damn place goes down and then they all raise hell until somebody fixes it. It’s a priority for us, until we can redo the exchange."

"When did they go down?"

"About ten o’clock Friday night."

"Including Kresge’s place?"

"Nope. He’d be the next exchange up the road. Like I said, I was on the south side…"

"Okay." Lucas thought for a moment, then asked, "What’d the scarf look like? Black? Red?"

"Red," Hanks said. He scratched his jaw, thinking about it. "Or pink."

"What else? Was it wrapped on the outside, or inside…?" "Inside-like he covered his face, then pulled the hood up over."

"Okay…"

They dug for another five minutes, running him through it again, but came up with nothing more, until they both stood up. Then Lucas asked, "Where would this guy have been walking to? Assuming he had a car?"

"I don’t know," Hanks said. His eyes drifted off to the ceiling. "Probably… well, he could have been heading back to the Kresge cabin. He was sort of going that way, in a roundabout way."

"Could he have been going anywhere else?"

"Not that I know of."

"How about this Pilot Lake place?"

"Nope. I was on that corner and he was walking…" He made a hand gesture, like a time-out signal. "This way to the access road."

"Perpendicular," Sherrill suggested.

"Yeah. Like that," Hanks said.

"You didn’t hear a car start?"

"Nope. But I was quite a way from the house, and I was wearing my hat with earflaps… So I probably wouldn’t have."

"Pink scarf," said Lucas.

"Pink scarf," Hanks said.

"What’s the pink scarf?" Sherrill asked, after they let Hanks go. They were sitting alone in the canteen, eating Twinkies from the coin-op.

"Susan O’Dell wears a kaffiyeh as a scarf. It’s pale red and white-she was wearing it when I saw her Saturday."

"What’s a kaffiyeh?"

"You know, one of those head wraps like Arabs wear," Lucas said. "Like what’s-his-name, the Palestinian guy, always wears."

"Oh, yeah. Him. But his is black and white."

"There’s another kind that’s red and white. And it would look pink from a distance, or pink and white."

"He said pink."

"O’Dell said she never left her tree before seven-thirty, when she shot her buck," Lucas said. "Then she gutted him and dragged him up to the trail and sat down next to her tree to wait until nine, which was the agreed-on time to take a break. Didn’t go anywhere."

"I think it’s the car that’s interesting. If there wasn’t a car, it almost had to be one of those guys. Whoever it was had to know the Kresge place pretty well, and there’s no way you could walk in from very far away."

"Yeah, but he’s pretty shaky on that car stuff," Lucas said. "O’Dell would have been walkingawayfrom her tree stand if she was going in the direction Hanks said she was. She was definitely at her tree when Bone came by to pick her up at nine o’clock."

"Maybe we push Miz O’Dell," Sherrill said. "See which way she goes."

"Not yet," Lucas said. "I want to go back up there, to Kresge’s, look around. And we need to know more about the bank-merger idea-of the three realistic candidates to run the bank, we have accusations against two of them, McDonald and O’Dell. All the accusations came in anonymously, from women. At least, we think the accusation pointing at McDonald came from a woman… So the question is, are they legit? Or are they meant to drag O’Dell and McDonald into an investigation that would eliminate them from contenders to run the bank."

"You mean, by Bone? Or somebody working with Bone?"

"I’d hate to think so," Lucas said. "Because I kinda like the guy. But all of them are smart and tough. And the stakes are pretty big. Bone would be looking for an edge."

"So we push Bone."

"Let’s wait before we push anyone. Just a day or two… Let me get back up north."

"Want me to come?"

Lucas looked at her as he finished his Twinkie. "If you want to. If you stay out of my goddamned life while I’m trapped in the car."

She flushed and said, "I meant what I started out to say, before we got sidetracked. If you still want her, you’ve got to get off your ass and go after her. If you don’t, you’ll just… drift away. And you’ll never know for sure that it’s over. If you go after her, you’ll know pretty soon whether there’s any hope."

"I’ll think about it," he said.

"So when are we going up north?"

"Tomorrow," Lucas said, looking at his watch. "We should have some biographical stuff about the people McDonald supposedly killed: Let’s take a look at that."

They were six blocks from police headquarters when Sherrill’s telephone chirped. She fumbled it out of her jacket pocket one-handed, said, "Yeah?" and then passed the phone to Lucas. "Sloan," she said.

Lucas took the phone: "What’s going on?"

"I solved the Kresge case," Sloan said laconically. "I had a little break from the Ericson thing, and I thought I might as well clean it up."

"That’s good," Lucas said. "It’s a burden off my mind."

Sloan’s tone of voice changed: "Terrance Robles just walked in and said he may know who did it."

Lucas, uncertain, and not wanting to bite too hard, said, "You’re kidding."

"I’m not kidding. He’s out sitting at my desk. Where are you?"

"About two minutes away."

"See you in two minutes," Sloan said.