Extreme Prey (18 page)

“I can do that,” Robertson said. “We’ve got two more guys
coming this afternoon, we oughta get dinner together and work everything out.”

“Call me when they get here, we’ll meet downtown,” Lucas said.

“Sounds good.”

—

LUCAS WENT BACK
to the e-mails. After an hour of work, he had noted on the legal pad the names of thirty-one people involved with the PPPI, most of them already on the list he’d gotten from Lawrence. He found a few more by Googling their names, but there wasn’t much you could do with a name like Gregory Wilson—87,200,000 Google results.

When he was finished, he’d gotten the most PPPI hits on the names of Grace Lawrence and Joseph Likely. Of the thirty-one names he’d uncovered, there’d been only a single contact with twelve of them, and all twelve had been recipients of an old press release about an upcoming party “convention” in Cedar Rapids. Eight hadn’t bothered to reply, while the four replies were perfunctory: I’ll be there, or I won’t.

Of the nineteen with more than one hit, other than Lawrence and Likely, twelve had more than six contacts, and one had thirty. The killer, he thought, was very likely on that list of nineteen. He’d already talked to five of them, including Marlys Purdy, one of nine women on the list, and Robertson had talked to six more.

Lucas kicked back in his chair, and thought,
Let’s go to Sherlock Holmes. When you’ve eliminated the impossible, whatever was left, however improbable, must be the truth.
Or something like that.

There were only three logical possibilities:

(1) The killings were carried out by one person he hadn’t found yet.

(2) The killings were carried out by conspirators who were talking to each other, which meant that he may have wrongly eliminated somebody as a suspect because that person couldn’t have carried out both of the murders, but could well have carried out one of them, while another conspirator carried out the other.

(3) The killings were basically not connected to each other.

He was reluctant to consider the third possibility. The willingness to commit murder was extremely rare. The possibility that two people who were closely connected should be killed within a day of each other by different people for separate reasons would be more than unusual. He’d never encountered anything like it. (The third murder, of Patricia Baker, he believed to be a consequence of the murder of Joe Likely, so was probably unrelated to the motives for the other two.)

It was much, much more likely that he simply hadn’t yet located the killer, or that he had spoken to the killer but had eliminated him/her because he/she couldn’t have committed both of them. That could have been his mistake.

Most probable, he thought, was that he simply hadn’t yet found the killer.

Then, more reluctantly: Was it possible that there were two killers? Well, yes, of course it was possible—Henderson himself had
seen two candidates, the white-haired woman and her gray-eyed son, if the gray-eyed man was the woman’s son.

The problem with that was, nobody close to the center of the PPPI seemed to fit their descriptions—he’d yet to find a white-haired, chubby older woman with a gray-eyed son, or anyone who knew who they might be, or, at least, who would admit to it.

—

HE THOUGHT ABOUT IT
for a moment, then picked up the phone and called Grace Lawrence. Lawrence was at the school and answered on the second ring. Lucas explained what he was doing, and asked, “First, I’ve got this new list of names . . . do you have any idea where these people live?”

He read the names of the people for whom he had no location. Lawrence gave him general locations for several of them, from memory—the towns they lived in, or the towns they lived nearest to, but said that none of them were really closely involved with the machinery of the PPPI, and only a couple of them lived within an hour’s drive of Likely or Palmer. A few she didn’t know at all.

“Sounds like you’re kind of stuck,” Lawrence said.

“Well, I’m going to crack Joe Likely’s computer and see what I can find there . . . I can tell you, Grace, I’m right on top of the killer. I just can’t see him yet.”

“Is Mrs. Bowden still going to the fair?” she asked.

“At this point, yes. She could change her mind, though.”

“Then you better find this killer, or change her mind.”

T
wo hours later.

Grace Lawrence was angry and frightened: she sat in her country kitchen, which smelled of bread and herbs and a glass of dill tops she’d picked early that morning, curling into herself, staring at her half-empty coffee cup. Robertson, the DCI agent, had been rough, threatening, a coarse slap in the face after Davenport’s charming touch.

He’d been waiting on her stoop when she arrived home from school, and had invited himself in: “C’mon, Grace, you’re not gonna do real fuckin’ well up at Mitchellville, you’re too goddamn old for prison,” Robertson had said. “Talk to me now and maybe we can do something for you. Don’t talk, then fuck ya. If
Bowden
gets hurt, the feds will probably ship you off to Alderson, and some days, like once a month, they might even let you see some fuckin’ sunlight . . .”

—

DAVENPORT HAD BEEN
so friendly, both in person and that afternoon on the phone; Robertson had been just the opposite. Now,
she realized, Davenport had been nothing more than the good guy in a good-cop/bad-cop hustle. She’d figured that out when the school principal called to tell her about Davenport’s visit, and to ask . . . “Is there something we should know, Grace?”

The principal even pretended not to know that Lawrence had been involved with the Progressive People’s Party, though of course she
had
known. Grace had never made a secret of it, though she’d been careful not to preach.

Lawrence watched Robertson pull away in his state car, walked to a window and watched him disappear around the block. Would they be watching her? Had they somehow bugged her? Davenport had been alone in the bathroom . . .

She went to the bathroom and looked around, saw nothing unusual. Got down on her knees and looked behind the toilet, searching for a bug. But what would a bug even look like? And why would he put it in a bathroom, where she’d be by herself? Suddenly feeling dopey, she got up, washed her hands, looked at herself in the mirror, and said, “Dummy.”

—

SHE WENT OUT
and worked in the garden for an hour, pulling weeds. She threw the weeds in a mulch pile out along the back fence line, then got in her car and drove around the town, up one street, down another. The town was small enough that the unfamiliar was obvious, and she looked for lingering cars, unfamiliar faces. Saw none, and set out for Iowa City. Back to the 76 station, where she used the pay phone to call Marlys Purdy.

“This is the rhubarb woman again. We have a large problem,”
she said. “This Davenport man is coordinating a harassment attack on the party. He’s going to find you.”

“He already did,” Purdy said. “We pulled the wool over his eyes and sent him on his way.”

“Good. That’s good. I’ve got to warn you, though, they’ve changed their tactics. No more Mister Nice Guy. A state investigator was here and he was very, very threatening. It’s obvious to me what they’re doing—they’re trying to break down resistance. Pretty soon, people will be implicating anyone they can, because they’ll be scared. This man took a picture of me with his cell phone, to show around.”

Purdy thought about that for a few seconds, then said, “I appreciate the call. You sit tight, deny everything. We will figure out how to reach this Davenport person, and . . . Say, do you have his phone number? Did he leave it with you?”

“Yes, he did. He left me a card,” Lawrence said.

“Okay. Give me the number,” Marlys said.

“What are you going to do?”

“I had an idea pop into my head. Best not to talk about it on a telephone.”

—

LAWRENCE WENT BACK
to her house, and her garden, picked a butternut squash for dinner, then simply sat down among the vines and began to weep. She was frightened, she was appalled by the unfairness of it. After all this time, after all these years of being a good and decent person, trying to make amends for the accident at Lennett Valley.

She didn’t think of Anson Palmer at all. He’d gotten what was coming to him.

—

AT THREE O’CLOCK
Lucas left Anson Palmer’s house with a list of names and a list of local calls he’d made in the past two months. He’d made a couple of dozen calls to Joe Likely in the past two months and a few to Grace Lawrence. The calls were usually only a couple of minutes long. He’d made a couple other short calls to local PPPI members; that’d have to be checked.

—

FROM PALMER’S HOUSE
, he headed south to Mount Pleasant and Likely’s place, where he would hook up with Robertson, who had a key to the house. He found Robertson waiting for him with another investigator named Tom Robb, who would join them in interviewing PPPI members. Robertson and Robb were eating sack lunches.

“How’d it go with Lawrence?” Lucas asked.

“I scared her,” Robertson said. “I took a picture of her with my cell phone, told her we were going to put it on our network.”

“You got a network?”

“Yeah. It’s called the Internet,” Robertson said. “You want a dill pickle? I don’t do pickles.”

“Sure, I’ll take a pickle . . .”

—

ROBERTSON GAVE THE HOUSE KEY
to Lucas and he and Robb left to continue interviewing party members. Lucas ate the pickle
and began combing through Likely’s file cabinets. The house pushed against him as he worked: it hadn’t yet been cleaned, and the blood on the floor added a hostile stink to the place; and the ghosts of recent death hovered around, in the small reminders of an unfinished life: dull pencils tossed next to a pencil sharpener, food-encrusted plates in the kitchen, a coffee cup with a quarter-inch of coffee in it, sitting on a bookshelf.

Lucas worked through it, and when he was finished, without finding anything of interest—Likely apparently did most of his work on his missing computer—he headed back to Iowa City to meet with Robertson, Robb, and the last of the two new investigators assigned to the case. Halfway there, he took an incoming call from an unknown number.

“Officer Davenport?” A male voice; more young than old.

“Lucas Davenport, yes. Who is this?”

“Don’t worry about that. I’m a member of the Progressive People’s Party. Or, I was, but I quit. Anyway, the party people have been talking about you and I got your phone number from one of them. I know the people you’re looking for. This white-haired lady.”

“Hang on, I’m going to pull over so I can write this down,” Lucas said. He did that, pulling onto the shoulder of the highway. When he’d stopped, he said, “It’d be really good if we could get your name.”

“I’m sorry, I can’t be involved. My parents . . . Anyway, I can’t. But. The woman you’re looking for is named Sandra Burton. She has two sons and both of them have those gray eyes you’re looking for. The other thing is, they told me they had a project that they
wanted help with. This was the last time I saw them . . . They said they were keeping track of Mrs. Bowden so they’d know where she hadn’t been, and those might be soft spots in her vote, places that Governor Henderson could exploit. That seemed pretty weak to me. They were acting funny, so I said I had to concentrate on my classes. Anyway, they sound like the people you’re looking for.”

“Sandra Burton. Is there a Mr. Burton?”

“Yeah, he’s a truck driver, he’s gone most of the time. His name is Don. Anyway, it’s kinda hard to find their place, it’s out in the country. If you start exactly at the corner of E Street and Sixth Avenue in Grinnell, and then go exactly six-point-one miles on your car odometer from that corner out Sixth Avenue East—that turns into Highway 6. They’re on the north side of the road in a white house with a four-car red garage on the left side of the house.”

Lucas repeated the directions, and said, “I appreciate all of this, but please—we really need your name.”

“Can’t do that. I don’t want to get in trouble with my dad. You got the directions. Good-bye.”

—

LUCAS THOUGHT
he remembered a Burton on his list of e-mails sent or received by Anson Palmer. He checked, and found an e-mail from Palmer to Burton, but it was short, a few lines about an upcoming event in Iowa City sponsored by another group called Left Coast. Lucas hadn’t heard of Left Coast and didn’t have time to do the research. There was no Burton on Grace Lawrence’s list of members. The Burton residence was reasonably close to the line of towns from which e-mails had been sent to Henderson.

Lucas dug an iPad out of the seatback pocket, found that he had a good cell connection, and called up a map of Iowa. From where he was, the fastest route to Grinnell was through Iowa City, and then west along I-80. A map of Grinnell showed E Street and Sixth Avenue intersecting near Grinnell College—probably the “classes” that the caller had referred to. The Burton place would be about an hour from Iowa City, running just at the speed limit. For somebody who knew the roads and the habits of the highway patrol, probably less than an hour.

—

LUCAS TOSSED THE IPAD
on the backseat, pulled onto the highway, called Robertson and told him about the phone call.

“I want to go there right now and I’d like you or Robb to come with me, because you guys got the badges,” Lucas said. “If I pick you up in Iowa City, we’d get there before dark.”

“I’m coming—Robb’s got an interview at seven o’clock,” Robertson said. “This could be a break.”

“Pick you up in half an hour in front of the hotel,” Lucas said.

—

ROBERTSON WAS WAITING
when Lucas arrived. “Grinnell’s an hour from here, or less, so we should be good on daylight,” he said, when he got in the truck. He adjusted the bucket seat to his long legs and added, “Nice ride.”

“We gotta be careful when we get there,” Lucas said. “They don’t know we’re coming, but if they’re as goofy as we think they might be . . . The other possibility is, we’re being set up.”

“Huh. Why would you think that?”

“Because in my experience, tips like this don’t fall on your head, not unless the guy wants something. This guy didn’t want anything. Wouldn’t even tell me who he is.”

“What do we do about that?” Robertson asked.

“I’m open to ideas,” Lucas said.

“Do you have phone numbers for the Burtons?”

“Can’t your DCI guys get them? I know where she lives . . .”

Three minutes later, they had two cell phone numbers, one for a Donald Burton, one for a Sandra. “Watch this,” Robertson said.

He put his phone on speaker and dialed the number for Donald Burton. Burton picked it up immediately: “Yeah?”

Robertson: “Don! This is Chick Weber from State . . . Is this my boy Don Burton who once fought three strippers in the parking lot outside Iowa Bush Country and lost?”

Burton: “Hey, Chick, that sounds like me, but you got the wrong guy.”

“Ah, hell. Sorry to bother you, man. I’m going on Internet searches and I thought I had my guy. Say, what’s that buzzing sound? You in a plane?”

“I wish. I’m in an eighteen-wheeler going into Shaky Town,” Burton said.

“Well, take it easy,” Robertson said. “Sorry to bother you.”

He rang off and Lucas said, “Sounded like a truck to me—I think Shaky Town is L.A.”

“Which means we’re calling Sandra and her gang,” Robertson said.

He dialed Sandra Burton’s number. She picked up and they
could barely hear her over the background noise, and then the noise quit, and she said, “Sorry, I couldn’t hear you. I’m out mowing the lawn.”

“Okay. I think I might have the wrong number. I’m trying to get Don Burton about picking up a load in L.A.”

“That’s my husband,” she said. “I can give you that number.”

“That’d be great.”

Burton gave Robertson the number, he thanked her, and rang off. “What do you think?” he asked Lucas.

“If we’re being set up, I don’t think the Burtons are doing it. If they’re the ones . . . I don’t know. I still don’t like the idea of a tip like this, coming out of nowhere, falling on my head. But we gotta check.”

“I’m with you,” Robertson said. “This could be a big deal. You got a weapon?”

“In the back. Bell Wood got me a carry permit, so I’m legal,” Lucas said.

“Might want to get it out, then, before we get there.”

“I’ll do that,” Lucas said. “In fact, when we get to Grinnell, I might want to run into a McDonald’s and get a sandwich. I’m starving to death. I can gun-up then.”

—

LUCAS AND ROBERTSON
hadn’t had any real chance for casual conversation, and when they got out of town, Robertson asked about the BCA, the salaries and retirement. “You quit there, right? Bell told me that you don’t get along with bureaucrats all that well.”

“Not exactly right,” Lucas said. “Bureaucrats have their uses and
a good bureaucrat is worth his weight in gold. The particular one I ran into, though, wasn’t a good one. His idea of his job was to make the empire bigger, and not get in trouble. Not necessarily to get anything done, unless it’s convenient and noncontroversial. The last straw was when we got in a fight over an assignment to investigate a noncrime on behalf of a particularly stupid state senator.”

“Not good. I’m interested because I’ve been with the DCI for three years and I’ve done pretty well. Our organization is flat, though—not much vertical rise. I could be there for thirty years and not move up much,” Robertson said. “I’m looking around to see what else is out there. I like the Twin Cities. I’d move there in a minute.”

“Cold up there,” Lucas said. “Though I like it.”

“I was born and raised in Okoboji. How much colder is Minneapolis than that?”

“Not much,” Lucas said. “Tell you what: the bureaucrat that I ran into isn’t long for the political world. Henderson will fire his ass right after the next elections, a year from November. If you came in as a new agent, you wouldn’t be dealing with him anyway. A year from now, he’s outa there and maybe sooner than that.”

“You’re not a candidate for the job? You’re supposed to be asshole buddies with Henderson.”

“I’m not interested in administration,” Lucas said. “I’m not good at it, either.”

“Bell said you’re rich, that you’ve shot a whole bunch of people, and that you live for the hunt,” Robertson said.