Field of Prey

by John Sandford

  “That’s awful,” Sandra said, as Clark sank into the couch next to her.

  “Not as awful as what happened to our daughter,” Clark said. “We haven’t been very happy with the investigation over there. Nothing seems to be happening . . . until Agent Shaffer got killed.”

  “Not much was,” Lucas admitted. “But Shaffer got right next to this guy. We’ll get there, too. This time, we won’t turn our backs.”

  “I hope you kill him,” Clark said.

  • • •

  OVER THE NEXT fifteen minutes, they told him almost nothing that was directly useful, but he noted all of it down, because he didn’t know that for sure. They hadn’t seen their daughter in the three days before she died. She had no boyfriend—she’d broken off a relationship with an Ellsworth man several months before she died, and hadn’t yet started over. The Ellsworth man had been investigated from his scalp down to the soles of his feet, and he was clean.

  Mary Lynn Carpenter had run a candy store on Main Street, and told her parents that while she wanted to meet a good man and have children, right now, she wanted to build her business. She’d taken business classes at the University of Wisconsin–Stout, in Menomonie, Wisconsin, a half hour north of Durand, and had bought the store with a loan from her parents.

  “She did great with it,” Clark said. “I mean, it was never going to be a huge money-maker, but she was already doing pretty darn well, and she had this idea for a whole chain of these small places, in small towns. See, they’re really efficient: you don’t need much capital to start one, and basically, one person can run it most of the year, with a half-time high school kid in the summer and at Christmas, when you do most of your business.”

  “I don’t think Agent Davenport wants to know about the candy business, dear,” Sandra said, touching her husband’s thigh.

  “Well, I’m just telling him,” Clark said. “She figured she could put together ten of these places, all within a hundred miles or so, and be pulling down a half-million a year. That’s real good money.”

  “Yes, it is,” Lucas said. “What happened to the business?”

  “She had this girl working for her, Cindy Tucker, she lives here in town,” Clark said. “Cindy was going to a junior college, and she was gonna run the store when Mary Lynn branched out. Anyway, Cindy bought it from us—got a loan from her folks, and we took back part of the price, she’ll pay it off over five years. We were Mary Lynn’s only heirs, and we gave Cindy a good deal on it. She’s a good kid, and that’s what Mary Lynn would have wanted.”

  “Is the store open now?” Lucas asked.

  “Sure.”

  “And Cindy saw Mary Lynn the day she disappeared?”

  “The day before,” Sandra said. “She didn’t work the day Mary Lynn disappeared. Something broke at the store . . .”

  “Pipe . . .”

  “They weren’t going to be able to do some of the cooking,” Sandra said. “Cindy wanted to go shopping up in the Cities, so Mary Lynn told her to take off.”

  “Who else saw her before she disappeared?”

  “Oh, Lord, lots of people,” Sandra said. “Your investigators made a whole list. Half the people in town were in there.”

  • • •

  WHEN LUCAS WAS LEAVING, Clark asked, “You really think you’ll get this guy?”

  “Yes. We will.”

  Clark showed a grim smile, more than a little skeptical: “You’re pretty sure about that.”

  Lucas stopped just below the porch. “Mr. Carpenter . . . if we don’t have this guy sewed up in two weeks, I will come to your house and give you a thousand dollars.”

  “I don’t need a thousand dollars, but I like the concept,” Clark said. “If you get him, I’ll tell you what: I’ll give a thousand dollars to whatever charity you want.”

  Lucas nodded: “It’s a deal. Or a bet. Whatever. But I’m gonna get him, so get your money ready.”

  Carpenter started laughing, an odd whinnying laugh, and tears started running down his face.

  • • •

  THE CANDY STORE was in the middle of the downtown business strip, a narrow shop, just wide enough for a candy case to one side, an aisle for the customers, and a counter with a cash register at the end of the aisle. It smelled like sweet chocolate and caramel, and featured a row of caramel apples in the glass case.

  Two women were working the shop: one maybe twenty, and one who might have been eighteen. Lucas asked the older one, “Are you Cindy Tucker?”

  The woman nodded: she was short, fair-haired, with a quick smile. “Yes, I am. Who are you?”

  Lucas dug his ID out and said, “I’m with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. I need to talk to you for a few minutes about Mary Lynn.”

  She grimaced: didn’t want to do it. “I’ve got to tell you, I’ve already talked to three different agents.”

  “I know, I need to hear some of it myself,” Lucas said.

  “Is this because that other agent was killed?” the younger girl asked.

  “Not exactly,” Lucas said. “I would have gotten here sooner or later, if we didn’t catch this guy first.” To Cindy, “It’ll just take a few minutes.”

  • • •

  SHE SUGGESTED that they walk across the street to a cafe. The place was nearly empty, and they took a corner table, ordered a Diet Coke and a root beer.

  Lucas said, “The killer we’re looking for chose a particular kind of person to prey upon . . .”

  “I know. Blondes.”

  “Not just blondes. Young blond women who liked nightlife. Liked bars. The thing about Mary Lynn, and the reason she interests me, is that she doesn’t fit that model. The other women who were killed were probably out drinking when they were picked up. He got to Mary Lynn some other way. Why would he go there, at that moment, when she was there? It is possible that it was an outlandish coincidence, and he acted on it. But if you’re going to kidnap someone, which is a lot more complicated than simply killing them, you’ve got to be ready. You’ve got to have some way to intimidate them, to keep them quiet, you’ve got to handcuff them or tie them up, you have to transport them.”

  “So . . . what? You think he saw her in the shop?” She looked around, with a shadow of fear in her eyes: she was pretty and blond.

  “I thought it was a good possibility, when I started over here today,” Lucas said. “I think it’s even a better possibility now that I see what her job was—she was in your little store, and all the time, I understand. It’s an attractive place, for anybody who wants a quick cheap sugar hit—fudge, chocolate peanut bars, candy apples.”

  “We do have a lot of regulars.”

  “The guy could have been in and out any number of times, checking her out,” Lucas said. “Even making friends. I don’t think he’s from here, in Durand. I think he’s from Minnesota, from Zumbrota, or Holbein, or Red Wing . . . in that area. So—did you or Mary Lynn know anybody like that? A Minnesotan, probably in his thirties to mid-forties, who came over here from time to time? Maybe some kind of job thing, who’d stop and talk to you? Buy a candy apple and talk to Mary Lynn?”

  She bit her lower lip, turned and looked out the front window, her eyes unfocused, and after a minute she said, “Oh, God, there must be people like that! I can’t think of any right off the top of my head, but there must be.”

  He let her think another minute, then said, “I’m going to give you a card. If you could ask anyone who knew Mary Lynn . . . I know she’d broken up with her boyfriend, so maybe she mentioned somebody who’d come on to her a bit? Just ask around.”

  Then she said, “I just thought of one guy from Minnesota who’s here every week, and he comes to our store almost every time. Doesn’t seem like the killer type, but then, what do I know?”

  “Who is it?”

  She tapped Lucas’s Diet Coke. “The Coke guy.”

  • • •

  THE COKE GUY.

  Lucas thought, Of course.

  And the Pepsi g
uy, and the bread guy, and the meat guy and the beer guy. Durand was a small town, and anything that came into the stores would be delivered by truck. With perishable stuff, probably on a weekly or even daily basis.

  “You think the Coke guy in particular?” Lucas asked.

  “No, it’s just that he usually comes in, when he’s in town. He didn’t really come on to us, he’s always paid more attention to the candy case than he does to us. He’s heavyset: he likes his candy. He buys it and leaves, but sometimes, he takes a while to make a choice.”

  “Know his name?”

  “It’s Andy, something. He works for a distributor in South St. Paul, and he has a route through the towns around here.”

  “All right. See, this is something,” Lucas said. “We can check the regular distributors through here. That’s good. Anybody else you can think of? Anybody?”

  “Not right now. Let me talk to people, I can probably find a few.”

  “Good. Here’s my card: call me as soon as you think of somebody. If you can point me at the police station, I’ll go have a talk with the people over there. But I’m really kind of leaning on you. You know how serious this is.”

  She shivered, and clutched her arms, her eyes welling up. “Yes. My God, when you think about what happened to Mary Lynn. She was just always . . . so . . . lively.”

  • • •

  HE LEFT HER at the store after getting directions to the police department. She said it’d be quicker to drive over, than to walk.

  When he walked back to the car, he found a tall unbent elderly man looking at it. Lucas said, “How ya doin’?” and the old man nodded at him.

  “What kind of truck is that?” he asked.

  “Mercedes-Benz.”

  The man said, “Huh.”

  “Let me ask you something,” Lucas said. “When you come into town from the west, across the bridge, almost the whole town is built south of the bridge, and only on this side of the river. Why is that? Most towns, they’re on both sides of the river.”

  The old man looked up toward the bridge, which wasn’t visible from where they were, and then back at Lucas. “’Cause they moved the bridge. Used to be right in the middle of town, but when they built the new one, they put it up there.”

  “Why didn’t I think of that?” Lucas asked.

  “I dunno,” the old man said. And, “Pretty fancy, that Mercedes.”

  • • •

  THE RIVER RAN down a V-shaped valley and the police department was in a long tan county government building on top of the east valley wall, across from the golf course. The chief, whose name was Carr, was walking out the door when Lucas was walking in—Lucas spotted him because his badge said “Chief”—and when Lucas identified himself, and said what he wanted, Carr suggested that they go back inside.

  They walked past a sheriff’s department window with nobody behind it, down the hall to the city police department office. A cop named Lucy was fiddling around with some paperwork. The chief called her over, and they all found chairs around the chief’s desk. Lucas told the same story that he’d told Cindy Tucker. “To sum it up,” Carr said when he finished, “you think the Black Hole guy might visit here from Minnesota, and go to the candy store often enough to get friendly with Mary Lynn. He’s probably in his late thirties or forties.”

  “That’s about it,” Lucas said.

  The Durand cops looked at each other, then Lucy said, “I don’t see that many Minnesota plates here. Every time we see one, we could just call it in and get a list going. We could ask the people in town here to chip in names. There might be quite a few, though.”

  “We can handle that,” Lucas said. “It’s not the length of the list that kills us, it’s not having the information.”

  “So let’s do that,” Carr said. “We can bring it up to the city council, and the Optimists and so on, and get everybody to spread the word around town, and call in to us. We could probably hand you a pretty good list in a couple of days.”

  “That would be excellent,” Lucas said.

  • • •

  LUCAS HAD TURNED his phone off while talking to Cindy Tucker and hadn’t turned it back on before he left the police department. When he did, in the truck, he found a couple of calls from Catrin Mattsson.

  He called her back and she said, “I might have been a little grumpy this morning.”

  “You’re apologizing?”

  “You were sort of smirking about me getting hit, so I’ll apologize if you will,” she said.

  “I’ll have to think it over,” Lucas said. “You started it.”

  “Ah, Jesus.”

  “All right, I apologize for that, and everything else I might have done, or will do, in the future.”

  “Okay,” she said. “I apologize for being grumpy.”

  “How’s the face?”

  “I look like somebody hit me six times,” she said.

  “That can’t be a first,” Lucas said.

  “It wasn’t. Anyway—where’d you go? Back to the Hole?”

  “No, I’m over in Wisconsin, in Durand, looking into Mary Lynn Carpenter.” He told her the story, and she said, “That could be something. We’ve got too many somethings, though, that keep coming up nothings.”

  “We’ll get him.”

  “Listen. One thing. I know you don’t believe Kaylee about seeing Sprick in the ditch—”

  “I do think she saw something,” Lucas said.

  “Well, I’ve got a digital photo of Sprick right here—I’m at my desk. If I sent it to your cell phone, could you run it by this Cindy woman? I know you don’t believe—”

  “I’m going right past the store on my way out of town,” Lucas said. “Send it to me.”

  “You’ll have it in ten seconds,” she said.

  • • •

  WHEN LUCAS GOT BACK to the store, Cindy Tucker was waiting on an elderly woman stuck like Buridan’s ass between two piles of chocolates, one with pecans, and the other with almonds. The woman kept glancing at Lucas, feeling his impatience, then made a forced choice of the almond ones. As they were being loaded onto a candy scale, she seemed to be reevaluating the choice, her eyes drifting back to the pecans.

  “Tell you what,” Cindy whispered to her. “I’ll throw in a free pecan, so you can think what they might have been like to have a whole bunch of them.”

  The elderly woman brightened at the deal, got her white paper sack, and waddled out the door.

  Lucas looked after her, and when she was gone, said, “One more thing. The sheriff’s investigator out of Red Wing was looking at a particular guy. She sent along a picture. I wonder if you could take a look?”

  He brought the photo up on his cell phone. Cindy took the phone, looked at the photo, a wrinkle creasing her forehead, and she looked up at Lucas with her mouth in an “O” shape. After a few seconds, she sputtered, “Oh my God! I’ve seen this guy. He comes in here two or three times a year. I mean, not regular, but I recognize him. I don’t know what he does . . .”

  She looked back at the photo again. “I think.”

  “You think? On a scale of one to ten, how sure are you?” Lucas asked.

  She studied the photo and then said, “Seven. Or eight. Not nine.”

  “How big is he? How does he dress? Has he ever said what he does?” Lucas asked.

  “He’s . . . a little short. He wears just regular button shirts and jeans. Pretty sure about the jeans. He’s never said what he does . . . mmm . . . I got the feeling that he’s well off, but he also works with his hands. He’s got that building-contractor look. The time before last, when he came in, he was wearing this watch, and Mary Lynn told me it was either a real Rolex or a fake Rolex, but the watch said Rolex on it.”

  “He was friendly with Mary Lynn?”

  “Well, he was trying, but she didn’t like him. I remember her saying that he seemed a little queer to her. She didn’t mean gay. She meant queer the other way.” She was still studying the photo, and after another mome
nt said, “Six.”

  “Six?”

  “Yeah. I think it’s him, but the longer I look at it . . . the more I think it might not be. But at first . . . jeez . . .”

  “All right. Listen, keep this under your hat,” Lucas said. “Don’t even tell your folks. For a couple of days, it’s important that you keep quiet.”

  “Oh . . . Oh my God,” she said, her hand at her mouth. “This might be the guy.”

  9

  R-A was in the parlor, where, in the olden days, visitors would be taken to chat. R-A had stripped out the furniture and put in beige accordion blinds for privacy, and moved in a weight bench and a few hundred pounds of bars and plates, plus speed and heavy bags.

  In the morning, before he went to work, he’d go to the weights for half an hour, in a custom routine he’d created after several hours of Internet research. He’d end with a hard ten minutes of punching.

  And a cigarette.

  Get his lungs open, punching, and the nicotine hit like a pack of razor blades.

  “You need to work out harder,” Horn said. He was in his wheelchair at the entrance to the parlor, watching. “Need to do something about that gut. When the cops come for you, they’re gonna put you in prison forever. The big black boys in there are gonna look at your fat white ass, and if you ain’t ready to defend yourself, they’re gonna wear you out.”

  “Fuck you,” R-A said. “How am I gonna get out of this?”

  “You gotta go proactive,” Horn said.

  R-A mocked him: “Proactive? What’s a shitkicker like you doing with five-dollar words?” He sat down on the end of a weight bench, dangling a forty-pound dumbbell from each hand. He stood—finishing a squat—curled the dumbbells, thrust them overhead, uncurled them, and sat down slowly. When he was solid on the bench, he did it again.

  “Shut up,” Horn said, showing some teeth, glittering and crooked like fresh-water pearls behind his dry lips. “I’ve been thinking about this. You want to take this Mattsson? How about this? You know that old typewriter up in your mom’s closet?”