Secret Prey (9 page)

‘‘. . . but who’s really pretty smart, but only behaves the way he does because he couldn’t get a date to the prom, which is why he burned down the high school.’’

‘‘How about Sherrill? Is she around?’’

‘‘I don’t know. She was working yesterday, but I haven’t seen her today. I know she was going to try to nail down people in Kresge’s office and talk to the ex-wife.’’

‘‘All right . . .’’

‘‘But suppose it is somebody close to Kresge,’’ Sloan said. ‘‘Suppose we find a guy who hated Kresge, but knew the farm, knew where the tree stand was, knew Kresge would be in it, and we can prove that he has a rifle, is a great shot, and has no alibi for opening day. You know what? We got all that, and we still ain’t got shit.’’

‘‘There might be one more way,’’ Lucas said.

‘‘Like what?’’

‘‘We build a pattern around him.’’

‘‘Good luck.’’

‘‘Rose Marie got some mail this morning,’’ Lucas said. He leaned forward and slid the copies across Sloan’s desk. ‘‘One letter nominates O’Dell, the other one McDonald.’’

Sloan read them slowly, then read the McDonald letter a second time, and finally looked up at Lucas: ‘‘Two more dead ones, huh? But we’d need more than a pattern. We’d have to push him out in the open.’’

‘‘That could be done,’’ Lucas said. ‘‘If it’s McDonald.’’

‘‘Are you buying into the case?’’ Sloan asked.

‘‘Rose Marie asked me to take a look . . . if you don’t mind. If Sherrill doesn’t mind.’’

‘‘I don’t mind,’’ Sloan said. ‘‘I’ve got the Ericson file. I could use some extra time.’’

‘‘I thought the boyfriend did it—the Ericson thing. I thought he admitted it.’’

‘‘Not exactly,’’ Sloan said. ‘‘He says he might have. He doesn’t deny it. But we can’t come up with any physical evidence, and he was so fucked up at the time, he can’t remember anything. And I’m wondering, if he was so fucked up—and he was, he had enough chemicals in him to start a factory—what’d he do with his clothes? They had to have blood all over them.’’

‘‘You’ve got nothing physical? No hair or semen . . .’’

‘‘No semen. And he had no blood on him, under his nails or in his hair. And the problem is, she was killed on the bed and he slept there every night and half the day. So he’s all over the place . . . but so what? He’s gonna be. And I’m really worried about the clothes. He says he’s not missing any, and I think he might be telling the truth. He doesn’t have all that much to begin with. Couple pairs of jeans, couple T-shirts, a coat, some sneaks.’’

‘‘Huh. Check the drains in the bathroom? Maybe he was naked . . .’’

Sloan nodded: ‘‘Yeah. The lab looked at it. No blood.’’

‘‘Okay. So I’ll take the McDonald thing,’’ Lucas said. ‘‘I’ll talk to Sherrill about it.’’

‘‘She’ll go along,’’ Sloan said. He said it with a
tone
.

‘‘Yeah?’’

‘‘She’s got the great headlights,’’ Sloan said.

‘‘Not exactly a key criterion for a police investigation.’’

‘‘Yeah, but . . .’’

‘‘You’ve been married too long; all you can think about is strange tits and adultery complaints,’’ Lucas said.

‘‘Not true. Sometimes I think about strange asses . . . Seriously, I heard them talking about you—some of the women. The idea was, don’t rush him, let him get a little distance away from Weather.’’

‘‘Fuck ’em,’’ Lucas said, pushing away from Sloan’s desk. ‘‘I’ll take McDonald. I’d like to see the interviews you did Saturday . . .’’

‘‘Krause tape-recorded them, he’s getting a transcript
made. Probably today. He said he’d shoot a copy down as soon as it’s ready.’’

‘‘All right,’’ Lucas said. ‘‘Ship it over.’’

‘‘And you’ll talk to Headlights? I mean, Sherrill?’’

Lucas grinned. ‘‘Yeah. If you see her, tell her I’m looking for her; I’ll be around later in the day.’’

FIVE

DAMASCUS ISLEY WAS A VERY SMART FAT MAN WITH A
taste for two-thousand-dollar English bespoke suits that almost disguised his size. Lucas spotted him at a back table at the Bell Jar, hovering over a chicken breast salad that had been served in what looked like a kitchen sink. Lucas told the mai^tre d’, ‘‘I’m with the fat guy,’’ and was nodded past the velvet rope.

‘‘Lucas,’’ Isley said. He made a helpless gesture with his hands, which meant,
I’m too fat to get up
. ‘‘Are you coming to the reunion? Gina asked me to ask.’’

Lucas shook his head, and took a chair across from Isley, who was sitting on the booth seat. ‘‘I don’t think so. I’ve busted too many of them.’’

‘‘Mary Big Jo’s gonna be there,’’ Isley said.

‘‘Fuck Mary Big Jo.’’

‘‘I certainly did,’’ Isley said cheerfully. ‘‘Made all the more glorious by your abject failure to do the same.’’

Lucas grinned: ‘‘No accounting for taste,’’ he said. Isley was six-five, a bit taller than Lucas. He’d once been a rope instead of a mountain, a basketball forward when six-five was a big man; Lucas had been hockey, and they’d chased several of the same women through high school and college.

A waitress stepped up behind Lucas, slipped a menu in front of him, and said, ‘‘Cocktail, sir?’’

‘‘Ah no, I just want . . .’’ He thought for a second, then said, ‘‘Hell, give me a martini. Beefeater, up, two olives.’’

‘‘I could give you three olives, if you need more vegetables in your diet,’’ the waitress said.

‘‘All right, three,’’ Lucas said; she was pretty in a dark-Irish way.

The waitress went to get the drink, and Isley, following her with his eyes, said, ‘‘The way she looked at you, something would be possible. Maybe you’d have to come back a couple of times, get to know her, but it’d be possible.’’ He looked down at the vast salad, the chunks of chicken breast, avocado, egg, tomato, cheese, and lettuce, covered with a bucket of creamy herb dressing, then back up at Lucas. ‘‘You know how long it’s been since that was possible with me? With all this fuckin’ . . .’’ He couldn’t say ‘‘fat’’ ‘‘. . . lard?’’

Lucas tried to put him off: ‘‘So you work out for a couple months.’’

‘‘Lucas . . . when I was playing ball, my last year, I weighed two-oh-five. So I go to this fat doctor and say, ‘Give me a diet I can stay on, something simple, that’ll get me back to two-oh-five.’ He says, ‘Okay, do this: Go to lunch every day and eat one Big Mac with all the fixings. And as much popcorn as you want, all day. Nothing else.’ I say, ‘Jesus Christ, I’ll starve.’ He says, ‘No you won’t, but you’ll lose a lot of weight.’ ’’

Isley looked at Lucas. ‘‘You know how long he said it would take to get to two-oh-five?’’ Lucas shook his head. ‘‘A year and a half. A fuckin’ year and a half, Lucas . . .’’

‘‘I’ll tell you what, Dama,’’ Lucas said bluntly. ‘‘You’re either gonna lose it, or you’re gonna die. Simple as that.’’

‘‘Not that simple,’’ Isley said.

‘‘Oh yeah it is,’’ Lucas said. ‘‘After all the bullshit, that’s what it comes down to.’’

‘‘I don’t even like food that much . . . and I’d like to live awhile longer,’’ Isley said wistfully. ‘‘I’d like to quit the
company, go to London and study money . . . find out what it really is.’’

‘‘Money.’’

‘‘Yeah, you know.
Money
,’’ he said. ‘‘Not many people really know what it is, how it works. I’d like to spend some time finding out.’’

‘‘So start hitting the McDonald’s,’’ Lucas said.

‘‘Fat chance.’’

The waitress arrived with the martini, and Isley’s wistfulness disappeared, replaced by the steel-trap investment banker. ‘‘So what’s going on? Starting another business?’’

‘‘No.’’ Lucas sipped the martini. ‘‘When you took my company public, we ran some of the money stuff through Jim Bone over at Polaris. You seemed to know him pretty well. He was hunting with Kresge when Kresge got shot, and I need a reading on him. Bone, I mean. And Susan O’Dell, if you know her. And Wilson McDonald.’’

Isley’s face went cautious: ‘‘Is this official?’’

‘‘No, of course not. I’m just trying to get a reading. Nobody’ll be coming back to you.’’

Isley nodded. ‘‘Okay. I know them all pretty well— socially and business, both. Either Bone or O’Dell has the guts to shoot Kresge, but I don’t think either one did. These people are very smart and very serious. If they’d wanted to lose Kresge badly enough, they would have done it another way.’’

‘‘What about Robles or McDonald?’’

‘‘Robles is a software genius. He does the math. But he’s more of a technician than a manager. He also doesn’t have the motive. With his math, he could go about anywhere. McDonald . . .’’ Isley looked away from Lucas, pursed his fat lips, then turned back. ‘‘There are McDonalds who are good friends of mine—same family. Not Wilson, though. There’ve been rumors . . .’’ Again, he paused.

‘‘What?’’ Lucas asked.

‘‘No comebacks?’’

‘‘No comebacks.’’

‘‘There’re rumors that he occasionally beats the shit out
of his wife,’’ Isley said. ‘‘I mean, she goes to the hospital.’’

‘‘Huh.’’

‘‘Alcohol, is what you hear,’’ Isley said. ‘‘He’s a binge drinker. Sober for two months, then has to take a few days off.’’

‘‘Smart?’’

‘‘Pretty smart. Not world-class, but he got through law school with no problem.’’

‘‘I didn’t know he was a lawyer.’’

‘‘He never worked at it. He’s always been a salesman, and a damn good one. Knows everybody.
Everybody
. Access to all the old money in town—his family built a mill over on the river, hundred and some years ago, and eventually sold to Pillsbury to go into banking and real estate. Like that.’’

‘‘Okay,’’ Lucas said. ‘‘So here’s another question. Everything I’ve heard about him says McDonald’s rich, he comes from an old family, and all that. Why would he kill Kresge, just ’cause Kresge’s gonna merge the bank? He’s got all the money in the world anyway.’’

‘‘No, not really,’’ Isley said. He dabbed at his lips with a linen napkin, tossed the napkin aside, and made a steeple out of his fingers. After a moment of silence, he said, ‘‘He’s maybe worth . . . seven or eight million. The older generation was a lot richer, relatively speaking, but there were a lot of kids, and a lot of taxes, and the money got cut up. After taxes, and including his after-tax salary, I’d imagine his real expendable income is something in the range of a half-million. If he doesn’t dip into his capital, and assuming he puts aside enough to cover inflation.’’

‘‘Well, Jesus, Dama, that just about
is
all the money in the world,’’ Lucas said.

‘‘No, it’s not. It’s a lot by any normal standard, but having ten million dollars is nothing compared to being the CEO of a major corporation. Being an American CEO is like being an old English duke or earl.’’ He paused again, his eyes unfocusing as he looked for the right words. ‘‘Say you have a spendable income of a half-million a year, and
your wife likes to fly first-class to Hawaii or Paris every so often. You can spend fifteen thousand after-tax bucks flying a couple first-class to the islands. You go out of town a half-dozen times a year—Hawaii, the Caribbean, Europe— you can spend a hundred and fifty grand, no trouble. And it’s all out of your own pocket. Plus you’ve got big real estate taxes, you’re probably running a couple of fiftythousand-dollar cars . . . I mean, you can spend a halfmillion a year and feel like your collar’s a little too tight. But if you run a business the size of Polaris, screw first class—you’ve got your own Gulf-stream waiting at the airport. You’ve got several thousand people kissing your ass day and night. You’ve got people driving your cars, running your errands. From everything I can tell by watching it, this all must feel better than anything in the world . . .’’

‘‘So even if he had a lot of money, a guy might have reason to waste old Kresge.’’

‘‘Especially McDonald. Bone, O’Dell, and Robles are essentially hired guns. They are very good at what they do, but they’re
here
mostly by chance. They could go anywhere else. But everything Wilson McDonald is is tied to the Twin Cities. In New York or L.A. or even Chicago, they could give a rat’s ass about a Wilson McDonald.’’

‘‘Do you think Bone would talk to me about McDonald? Off the record?’’

Isley shrugged: ‘‘Maybe. If the idea appealed to him. He played a little ball at Ole Miss.’’

‘‘Yeah?’’

‘‘Yeah. Good quick guard. Probably not pro quality, but he would’ve been looked at. Called him T-Bone, of course. If you want, I could give him a ring. Just to say you asked about him, tell him you’re okay.’’

Lucas grinned. ‘‘Maybe I’m not.’’

Isley said, ‘‘Ah, you’re okay . . . if he’s innocent. And I’m pretty sure he is.’’

‘‘Anybody mourning Kresge?’’

Isley had been about to stuff a slice of chicken in his mouth, and stopped halfway to the target. Shook his head.
‘‘Not a single person that I know. He spent his life fucking people in the name of efficiency.’’ He stuck the chicken in his mouth, chewed, swallowed. ‘‘Why would you do that?’’ he asked. ‘‘I know all kinds of people who do, but I can’t figure out why.’’

‘‘Make money.’’

‘‘Hell, Lucas, I’ve made a pile of money, and I don’t fuck people. You made a pile, and your ex-employees think you’re a hell of a guy. But why would you do things in a way that you’d end up in life with a pile of money, but not a single fuckin’ friend?’’

‘‘Maybe you figure that if you get enough money, you could buy some.’’

Isley nodded gloomily. ‘‘Yeah, probably; that’s the way they think.’’

Lucas finished the last of the three olives, and the last of the pleasantly cool martini, and said, ‘‘Listen, Dama. I got a pickup game once a week, bunch of cops, couple lawyers. You start eating those Big Macs and I’d like to get you out there.’’

‘‘Goddamnit, Lucas . . .’’

‘‘Feel good, wouldn’t it? Playing horse in the evening. Down on Twenty-eighth?’’

Isley tossed his fork in the salad bowl. ‘‘Get out of here, Davenport.’’

Lucas stood up. ‘‘Call Bone for me?’’

‘‘Yeah, yeah, soon as I get back.’’ He looked at his Patek Philippe. ‘‘Give me twenty-five minutes.’’

LUCAS GOT BACK TO THE OFFICE, STUCK HIS HEAD
into Administration, and said, ‘‘Got anything for me?’’

The duty guy said, ‘‘Computer’s down.’’

‘‘How long?’’

‘‘I don’t know, it’s not just us. Some state road guys cut a major fiber-optic. Half the goddamn city’s down.’’

‘‘Road guys?’’

‘‘Shovel operators.’’

• • •

JAMES T. BONE’S SECRETARY SUSPECTED LUCAS OF MAKING
sport of her. When she told him, peremptorily, on the phone, that Mr. Bone was making no new appointments, Lucas had answered, ‘‘Go tell Mr. Bone right now that a deputy chief of police wants to talk to him, and if he says no, I’ll have to come down and shoot him.’’

‘‘I beg your pardon?’’

‘‘I think you heard me,’’ Lucas said. He almost added, ‘‘sweetheart,’’ but decided that might push it too far.

She went away for a moment; then another voice came on, feminine, cool: ‘‘Mr. Davenport? This is Kerin Baki, Mr. Bone’s assistant. Can I help you?’’

‘‘I need to talk to Mr. Bone.’’

‘‘When?’’

‘‘As soon as possible.’’

‘‘Come over, and we’ll get you in,’’ she said.

BAKI WAS A CHILLY NORTHERN BLONDE, WITH AN
oval face and pale blue fighter-pilot eyes. She met him without any softening smile. In the spring, Lucas thought, she probably had genetic dreams of turning her tanks toward Moscow . . .

She led him through into Bone’s office, said, ‘‘Mr. Bone, Mr. Davenport,’’ and left them, shutting the door behind her.

Bone was dressed in a subdued single-breasted wool suit with a crisp white shirt and an Italian necktie; but somehow the ensemble came off as a wry comment on Yankee bankertude. He had a telephone to one ear and a foot propped on the N-Z volume of the
New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary
, which lay flat on his desk. He waved Lucas in, and as Lucas dropped into a bent-oak chair across the desk, said into the phone, ‘‘Two? That’s as good as you can do? Last week it was one and seven . . . Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’ll get back to you, but I think we might have to talk to Bosendorfer or Beckstein . . . Yeah, yeah. By four.’’