Secret Prey ld-9

by John Sandford

  He nodded: "You could be good at this."

  She came over and stood on her tiptoes and kissed him on the lips. "Remember that," she said.

  The sheriff knocked a second later. Sherrill opened the door and let them in.

  "Damn near killed him," the Sheriff said.He was standing in front of the dresser, looking at Lucas, who was sitting on the bed, his back to the headboard. The other three men were standing near the door, while Sherrill stood at the head end of the bed, near Lucas. "He could still be in trouble."

  "Bullshit. I cracked his short ribs and busted his nose. He won’t be sneezing for a month or six weeks, that’s all," Lucas said.

  "That’s a fairly clinical judgment," Landis said. "You must’ve done this before."

  "I’ve had a few fights," Lucas agreed.

  "In all my time as sheriff, I haven’t had a man hurt that bad, except one who was in a car accident," the sheriff said. "We’re talking to the county attorney to see if an arrest would be appropriate. We don’t want you going anyplace."

  "We’re leaving tomorrow, I think," Lucas said. "But we’ll be available down in Minneapolis. I’m gonna talk to a couple of friends over at the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, maybe a guy in the attorney general’s office. About coming up here and deposing you people on the murder of George Lamb: to ask you why you’ve been covering it up all these years. Why you’d send a couple of cops to roust us, in the middle of a murder investigation that you’d been reading about in the Star-Trib."

  The sheriff shook his head: "We didn’t send anybody to roust you. These idiots thought of it themselves." He tipped his head toward the lanky man, who shrugged and looked at the curtains covering the single window.

  "The thing is, we can take care of Larry," the older deputy drawled. "Cops get beat up from time to time. The real question I got-not the sheriff, just me-is whether you can be talked to. Or if you’re just some big-city asshole up here to kick the rubes."

  "I’ve got a cabin outside a town half this size, in Wisconsin. The sheriff’s a friend of mine, and he’s been bullshitting me about moving up to run for the office when he quits, and I’ve thought about it. I’ve worked with a halfdozen sheriffs all over this state and Wisconsin, and this is the first time I’ve had trouble," Lucas said. "You want some references?"

  "Already made some calls," the older man said. After a few seconds’ silence, he said, "You want to talk, or do we do this all legal?"

  "Talk," Lucas said.

  The sheriff looked at the older deputy and said, "You think?"

  "Yeah, I think."

  The sheriff nodded and said, "The thing is, we don’t know whether or not George Lamb was murdered. But he might have been."

  "There were some problems at the time, with the way the death happened," the older man said. "Happened way too early in the morning. He got up early, for his job, but not in the middle of the night. It looked to us like he’d gotten sick the evening before, and they’d let him lay there until he died."

  "He came to see me twice in the month before he died. He was feeling sicker and sicker, and at first I thought it was the flu. He’d had some diarrhea, he’d had some episodes of vomiting, dizzy spells, and so on. We’d had some flu going around at the time, and it fit," Landis said. He pulled a chair out from the dresser/desk and sat down. "I gave him some antibiotics for a lung infection he’d developed-nothing serious, he was coughing up some phlegm with pus in it. And we had an argument the second time he came in, and he never came back. Then he dropped dead. Could have been a heart attack."

  "But you don’t really think so," Lucas said.

  Landis shook his head. "I think maybe it was rat poison. Arsenic. The thing is, when I went out and looked at this body, he had a rash, a particular kind of rash that flakes off the skin when you’ve been taking in arsenic for a while."

  "You didn’t take any tissue samples?"

  "If we’d taken tissue samples, and sent them to a lab, then the fat would be in the fire," Landis said. "Other people would know about it…"

  "You didn’t want other people to know?" Sherrill asked. The sheriff took off his hat, smoothed his hair back, and said, "My daughter went to high school with the Lamb girls. And the older Lamb girl had a reputation as knowing way too much about sex for a girl her age. Then, a couple of months before George died…"

  Landis picked it up. "The mother brought in the older girl, Audrey, to the clinic. Said she’d been fooling around with one of the boys at school, wanted me to keep it quiet, but wanted her tested to see if she was pregnant. She wasn’t. But I gave her a little standard lecture that I gave back then, about staying out of trouble, about saying no to boys, about using some protection… She sort of went along with the lecture until she got tired of it, then she got up and left," Landis said. "As she was going out the door, she turned and looked at me. The look was like ninety-five percent hate and fear. And she said, ‘That’s all fine and good, but not relevant in my case.’ "

  "Not relevant in my case," the sheriff quoted. "Hell of a line for a kid that age. The fact is, George had been f-" He glanced at Sherrill. "Having sex with her."

  "When I told you that his wife had some bruises," Landis said, "I was telling you the truth. But not all of it. The woman had been beaten from head to foot."

  "The whole goddamn house was a reign of terror," the sheriff said. "Steve told me what he thought was going on. I talked to the sheriff at the time, Johnny James, and he told me that there was nothing to do, unless somebody complained. So I caught up with George on his mail route one day and said if I ever heard of him screwing that little girl, I’d kill him."

  "Did he believe you?"

  "I don’t know, but he should of, ’cause I would of," the sheriff said. "But it never came up, because he dropped dead."

  "He was lying there on the floor, looking okay, except for this rash," Landis said. "We knew he’d been screwing at least the older girl, and maybe the younger one too; we knew he’d been beating the bejesus out of his wife. So the question was, do we do tissue samples? Didn’t have to. No requirement."

  "Steve came and talked to me, and we said screw it. Leave it alone. And we did. Shipped George off to the funeral home. And that was the end of it, until you showed up this morning."

  They all thought about that for a moment; then Lucas rubbed his chin and changed the subject: "That fat kid I beat up," he said to the sheriff. "He’s gonna be nothing but a pain in the ass for you. He’s gonna be in trouble for the rest of his career."

  "He’s had a couple problems," the sheriff said.

  "You oughta get rid of him before it’s too late. And this guy," Lucas said, nodding at the lanky man. "He rode along a little too easily. He’s gotta learn to stand up. He wanted to stop the whole thing, but he couldn’t get the job done."

  "I learned something," the lanky man said.

  "I hope the hell you have," the sheriff said. To Lucas: "What do you think?"

  "I think if you recast exactly what you told me here tonight, you’d have a perfectly good story if you ever had to go to court to testify. You know, that you thought it was a heart attack at the time-still think it was possible-but sometime later worked out that it might have been a poisoning. But by then it was too late, the body had been cremated. That kind of thing happens all the time. That’s why we have exhumations."

  "You think we might have to testify?"

  Lucas stood up, yawned, stretched. "We’re putting together a circumstantial case. So you might have to. But we’ve got a way to go, before we get anything together."

  "But her husband… The papers say he was beating her, just like her father beat her mother. It seems to me there might be some justification."

  "We’re looking at eight murders and several ag assaults over the last ten years, including a couple of out-and-out executions of absolutely innocent people," Lucas said.

  After a moment of stunned silence, the sheriff said, "Eight?"

  Lucas nodded.

  "God i
n heaven."

  And Landis stood up and looked at the sheriff and said, "Old George did a lot more damage than we knew about. You shoulda killed him."

  The older man pushed himself away from the wall. "So what’re we going to do about tonight?"

  Lucas shrugged. "Nothing happened to me. If you guys want to say nothing happened, nothing happened."

  The sheriff took a quick eye-poll, then nodded to Lucas: "Nothing happened."

  "If we need to talk to you again, an assistant county attorney’ll be calling," Lucas said. "I’ll give you a warning call ahead of time."

  "I appreciate it," the sheriff said. "I’d also appreciate it if you’d get the hell out of my town."

  "We’re going tomorrow morning," Lucas said.

  "And I surely wish you hadn’t taken Larry out in the parking lot. I’m always shorthanded when the snow starts to fly."

  "Sorry."

  "But not too sorry," the sheriff said.

  "Not too," Lucas agreed, and grinned at him.

  The sheriff showed the faintest hint of a smile, and eased out the door. The older man was the last to leave, and at the threshold, he turned and looked at Sherrill, and then back at Lucas. "I once had a woman looked just about like that," he said to Lucas. "When I was just about your age."

  "Oh yeah?"

  "Yeah." He gave Sherrill a long look, and said, "She flat wore me out."

  "Better to wear out than to rust," Sherrill said, from her corner.

  "Yeah." And he laughed, a nasty laugh for an old codger, and closed the door.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  The sun was only two or three fingers above the western horizon, the evening rush already starting, when Lucas and Sherrill dropped past the Dunwoody exit on I-394, zigged a couple of times, and rolled into downtown Minneapolis.

  "Now that was a road trip," Sherrill said, enthusiastically. "Fightin’, fuckin’, and detectin.’ So what’s next?"

  "I’ve got to work tomorrow," Lucas said. "You’re working, right?"

  "Yeah-but there’s not much going on. I could probably get away to help, if you needed me…"

  He shook his head: "Better not. I told you about the little talk with Rose Marie."

  "I might have a little talk with Rose Marie myself," she said with a flash of anger. "Pisses me off."

  "Probably wouldn’t help."

  "It’d make me feel better," Sherrill said.

  "Do what you want," Lucas said. "And when you get a minute, send me a memo on the whole sequence up there in Oxford. All the details. Make a copy for yourself. Take both copies over to the government center, have them notarized for date, but don’t let anybody read them."

  "Just in case?"

  "Can’t tell what’s gonna happen yet."

  "When you say all the details, you want the part where I said, ‘Oh my God, put it in, put it in’?"

  "I don’t remember that," Lucas said.

  "I think you were looking at your watch. We’re gonna have to talk about that, by the way."

  Lucas shook his head: "Christ, I’m beginning to understand what that old guy meant."

  "What old guy?"

  "You know, the old deputy, who once had a woman like you. ‘Flat wore me out,’ he said."

  She looked at him critically: "You still got a little good tread on you."

  Lucas kissed her goodbye outside City Hall-what the hell-and went down to his office, whistling, picked up the phone and got the brrnk-brrnk-brrnk message signal. The mechanical operator said there were six: all six were from Helen Bell, frantic, accusatory.

  "Did you do this with Connie? Did you call Child Protection? Why? Why? Please, please call me…" and "Why aren’t you calling? Did you do this? I’m getting a lawyer, goddamn you…"

  He punched in her phone number and the phone at the other end was snatched up halfway through the first ring. "Hello?" Still frantic.

  "This is Lucas Davenport. What happened with Connie?"

  A moment of uncertain silence. "You didn’t have anything to do with Connie?"

  "Mrs. Bell, I haven’t even thought of Connie since I last saw you. I was out of town all day yesterday and today, I just got back and got your messages."

  "They came and got her," she wailed.

  "Child Protection?"

  "Child Protection, Child Welfare, whatever they call it. They say I gave her marijuana and beat her up and I never did any of that, she’s my baby, I don’t understand, they said some teacher called, but I can’t find anybody at her school."

  "Let me make a call," Lucas said. "I know a woman over there who might know something."

  "Please, please get her back."

  Lucas talked to her for another minute, then hung up, found Nancy Bunker’s name in his address book, and punched her number in. She was just leaving.

  "Yeah, I know about it. Doesn’t look like much. The girl said her mother slapped her once during an argument, open hand, no injury, more like a girl fight. Said she’s used some marijuana around school, but that was what the fight was about. Her mother was trying to stop her."

  "So what’re you doing with her?"

  "Well, she’s out at a foster home right now; we usually keep them a couple of nights, just to make sure. She’ll be home tomorrow."

  "Huh."

  "What’s your interest, Lucas?"

  "Did you ever find the teacher who called in the information?"

  "No, it was anonymous, but you know how it is-we don’t take chances if there’re reports of physical abuse. Especially drugs and physical abuse. And we want to get the kid off to a safe place, where she feels safe about talking about it… So, what’s your interest?"

  "I think you were deliberately set up to mess with the kid’s mother. She’s a source of mine in this Kresge murder case."

  "Really? Set up?"

  "I think so. I don’t doubt that the kid smokes a little dope, but then so did you."

  Bunker laughed. "Yeah, the good old days. So what do you want me to do?"

  "How about releasing the kid to her mother? I’ll pick her up, take her home."

  "Damn it; I’d have to sit back down and turn the computer back on…"

  "Another little tragedy in your life."

  "You gotta be over here in ten minutes," Bunker said. "I’m trying to catch a bus."

  "Taking a little undertime today?"

  "Nine minutes, now."

  "Be right there."

  The foster home was in Edina, west of Minneapolis. Lucas picked up the papers for the foster parents, and on the way out, slowed by traffic, he called the medical examiner’s office and got an investigator on the line. "I’m looking for a file on an Amelia Lamb. About twenty years old."

  "Nothing here, Lucas. Are you sure of the name?"

  "Last name I’m sure of; the first name, I don’t know, there may be an alternative spelling."

  After a few more seconds, the investigator said, "Lots of Lambs, but nothing like an Amelia."

  "Can you get into the state death certificates from your computer?"

  "I’d have to call, I could get back to you."

  "Could you do that? This is kind of important." The ME’s investigator was back five minutes later. "You want Dakota County, and specifically, you want Mercy-South. You want that phone number?"

  "Give it to me." Lucas got the number, the date of Lamb’s death, and the attending physician, and scribbled it all in his notebook. He called the hospital, spent five minutes working his way through the bureaucracy, and was finally told by an assistant director that he could see the records if he brought a subpoena with him.

  "Even if the woman’s dead?"

  "It’s our policy," she said.

  "It’s a pain," Lucas said. "But I’ll get one for you. What’s the name of your director out there?"

  She gave him the name and he said, "Ask him to stick around the house tonight, we don’t want to have to have a cop run him down. We can probably get the subpoena out there before midnight."

  "Rea
lly? I think he and his wife are going to the chamber orchestra."

  "Well-he should be home before we get the subpoena. If we do get it earlier, we’ll just ask the orchestra people to page him during the concert."

  "Hang on."

  And she was back in five minutes: "The director tells me that I was misinformed. Since Mrs. Lamb is dead, and you’re a police officer conducting an official investigation, we can show you the records." She sounded faintly amused.

  "Gee. Thanks. That’s really nice. Will somebody be in your records department, about seven o’clock?"

  "There’s always somebody there. Around the clock."

  "Tell them I’m coming…"

  Connie Bell started crying when she saw Lucas. She had a small bag with her, and the foster mother patted her on the shoulder, and Connie said, "Did you do this?"

  "No."

  "Then who did?"

  "I don’t know," Lucas said, leading the way to the car. "But it was pretty mean."

  "My mom is really upset, I thought she was going to fight those people last night, I’ve never seen her like that."

  "Why don’t you call her?" Lucas said. "There’s a phone in the car."

  Connie called, told Helen that she was on the way home, and that Lucas was bringing her. She handed Lucas the phone and said, "Thank you, thank, thank you…"

  And when they arrived at Helen’s home, Helen ran out and wrapped up her daughter, and they both started crying again, and after a moment, Lucas said, "Could you send Connie inside to get cleaned up? I’d like to talk to you for a minute."

  Connie went, Helen watching her running up the steps.

  "Do you have any feeling who might have done this?" Lucas asked.

  "There was a literature teacher she had last year, who hated Connie-and several other kids too. If this was last year, I’d say her. But I can’t believe that she’d wait a whole year. I’ve been racking my brain…"