Lucas quite approved of the way she was conducting herself, aside from the aiding and abetting of her murderous husband and drug psycho brother- in- law.
Nothing was going to happen, he thought. Time to go home…
Lucas lived ten minutes from Heather’s apartment, west across St. Paul’s Highland district, in a new house on Mississippi River Boulevard, which wasn’t a boulevard. He and his wife, Weather, had designed and built the home themselves, to fit them. They’d done well, he thought, with a rambling two- story structure and ample garage, of stone and cedar shingles, and climbing ivy stretching up the siding.
He’d been home for fifteen minutes, yawning, listening to the rain in the quiet of the house, picking through a copy of Musky Hunter, when he felt, rather than heard, the garage doors going up. Weather.
He checked his watch: she was early. He ambled through the house and met her coming through the door carrying two grocery sacks. She looked around and asked, “Where is everybody?” meaning their toddler son and the live- in housekeeper. Their ward, Letty, was at school.
“Same place you were, I guess-went to the supermarket."
"Well, poop,” Weather said. She plopped the bags down on the food- prep island. “We’re gonna wind up with about thirty bananas.” Lucas snuggled up behind her and kissed her on the neck and she relaxed back against him, hair damp from the supermarket parking lot. She smelled like woman- hair and Chanel. She wiggled her butt once for his benefit, and then gave him an elbow and said, “We’ve got to talk.”
“ Uh- oh.”
“I saw Alyssa today,” Weather said, turning around. She was a Finn, through and through. A surgeon, a small woman with pale watchful eyes who saw herself as Management, and Lucas as Labor; or possibly saw herself as a Carpenter, and Lucas as Raw Lumber. “Actually, I didn’t so much see her, as she came to see me when I was working out. About you.”
“Ah…” He shook his head. “Nothing new on her kid?”
“Nothing new-but it’s not that. Did you see the story about the murder in Minneapolis, night before last?”
“The bartender,” Lucas said. There’d been two murders in Minnesota that day. Since one of the victims had been young, blond and female, with large, firm breasts, the bartender had gotten short shrift from television, even though his had been the more interesting crime, in Lucas’s opinion, and the blonde had been inconveniently placed in Lake Superior.
“He was a Goth,” Weather said. “He ran with the same group as Frances. Alyssa says the Minneapolis cops don’t have a clue, but came to talk to her because of the similarity of the killings. She said there was so much blood with Frances-”
“We’re not sure about that,” Lucas said. He looked in the sack of groceries, saw the white pastry bag, peeked inside. Cinnamon rolls. The small, tasty, piecrust kind. He took one out and popped it in his mouth. “Could have been a little bit of blood, but widely smeared.”
“But no viscera or skin,” Weather said. “Just blood.”
“Wouldn’t have much if she were stabbed in the heart through her blouse. The blouse works like a strainer,” he mumbled through the crumbs.
“Not the case with the bartender,” Weather said. A surgeon, she was familiar with the ways of blood. “I walked over and talked to Feeney. He says the guy was really ripped. Big, heavy knife with a long blade-could have been a hunting knife, but more likely was a butcher knife. Extremely sharp. Went in at the navel, was pulled up and out, and sliced right through the aortal artery. Also dumped out some of the contents of the stomach. The person who did it was strong, and close. To get that kind of a pull, even with a sharp knife, you’d need to be right up against the victim, so you could get the biceps into it. Be like lifting a dumbbell. So Feeney says.”Feeney was a Hennepin County assistant medical examiner and worked just down the street from the Hennepin County Medical Center, where Weather did most of her work.
“So what are we talking about?” Lucas asked. “Alyssa would like you to take a look,” Weather said. “So would I.”
“I took a look,” Lucas said. “You read some reports,” Weather said. “I’m talking about a serious look. She didn’t come straight to you, because she knows what you think.”
“She’s a fuckin’ wack job,” Lucas said. “Lucas: she believes in you,” Weather said, taking one of his hands, looking into his eyes, manipulating like crazy. “That you can find her daughter.”
He pulled away, held his hands up: helpless, hopeless. “Weather: Alyssa believes her daughter was killed because her Pluto was in her House of Donald Duck. Because of the stars and the moon. That we can find her if we hire the appropriate psychic. I can’t talk to the woman. Twenty minutes and I want to strangle her.”
“Then give her fifteen minutes,” Weather said. “Weather…"
"She looks dreadful,” Weather said, pressing. “She loses her husband, she loses her daughter. All she wants is a little help, and all she gets is a bunch of flatfeet.”
“Minneapolis guys are pretty good,” Lucas said. He popped another cinnamon roll. “They only look like a bunch of flatfeet.”
“But Minneapolis isn’t working her case,” Weather said. “They only came to see her because of this dead bartender’s connection to Frances-some other Goth told them about the connection.”
“So…”
“But she says they think it’s a waste of time,” Weather said. “She could tell by the way they asked the questions. And then…”
“What?"
"She says your investigator thinks she may be involved. With whatever happened to Frances. She says that’s all they can think of. They don’t have any real suspects, so they suspect her, and they stopped looking for the real killer.”
“Another reason you shouldn’t go around casting horoscopes,” Lucas said. “People tend to think you’re nuts.”
“You think she could have done it?” Weather asked. “No.” He thought about it for a moment, then said into the silence, “Hell, I don’t know.” Weather took a cinnamon roll, popped it in her mouth, chewed twice, put her hands on her hips, and said, “Mmm. Mega- fat calories. So: will you see her, or will I have to nag you into it?”
“Aw, for Christ sakes,” Lucas said. “Tomorrow?"
"I’m pretty tied up. Maybe-"
"Lucas. You haven’t done a thing for a month, except sit around and watch Heather Toms take her clothes off,” Weather said. “You always have this slump at the end of the winter. The only way out is work. So find the time.”
“If I go along, could you provide me with a few sexual favors?” He wasn’t really doing much. And he was bummed. Sexual favors would help, and asking for them, as payment, felt agreeably sleazy; and might drain the excess testosterone he’d worked up watching the lovely Mrs. Toms dress and undress.
“Maybe,” she said. “So I’ll talk to her,” Lucas said.“Excellent. I’ll call her and confirm it,” Weather said. “Get away from the cinnamon rolls.”
“At her house,” Lucas said. “I’ll see her at her house.” Weather went to make the call and Lucas popped a third roll. They were about as wide as a fifty- cent piece and three- quarters of an inch thick, a snail of pie dough layered with butter and cinnamon, and baked until they were chewy.
He was modestly pleased with himself. Sexual favors and cinnamon rolls. Like hitting three bells on the Indian slots.
Because, realistically, once Weather had decided that he was going to talk to Austin, there was no way out. If she put her mind to it, she could nag the paint off a garage. But, if he went to Austin’s house, he could always leave. No kicking, no screaming, no weeping, no people down the hall wondering what the hell was going on in Davenport’s office. He could simply leave.
He thought about a fourth cinnamon roll. He was in good shape; he’d been working out. He couldn’t even pinch a half an inch. How many calories could a cinnamon roll have, anyway?
3
The rain continued through the night-the better for the sexual favors, which we
re hottest in a flickering candlelight, with freshets of water pouring through the gutters and downspouts-but was beginning to ease by the time he’d finished breakfast. He drove into the office, made a series of morning calls, checking on his agents, then made the ten o’clock meeting at the planning center, where the BCA director, Rose Marie Roux, chaired the security committee for the Republican National Convention.
Lucas had reported to Roux for years, first when she was the Minneapolis chief of police, later when she was named the director of the BCA, and he’d followed her over. She’d always been political-a street cop for a couple of years, then an office cop while she went to law school, then a state representative, a state senator, Minneapolis chief, and over to the BCA.
She was smitten by the convention job. Lucas thought she was behaving like a starstruck teenager, hanging out with the guys in black suits and ear bugs, who spoke into their cuff links and cut their hair ranger- style.
Smitten was bad. The security for the convention was going to be inadequate, because the Twin Cities area didn’t have the police resources, and the feds weren’t coming through with enough extra. None of the big shots would get hurt, of course, because they’d be blanketed by gun- toting Secret Service thugs, but the town, in Lucas’s opinion, was toast. Whoever’d had the bright idea of inviting the convention to St. Paul, he thought, should have had his head X- rayed until it smoked.
He slipped out before the meeting was done and before he might be tempted to take out his gun and shoot someone. He went downstairs and called the governor’s chief weasel, up on Capitol Hill, and got three minutes alone with the great man.
The governor was at his desk, with a stack of outstate weekly newspapers by his left hand. The sun was shining through a crack in the clouds, in through the window behind the governor’s head, and bathed him in holy nimbus. Then the cloud- cut closed, and the nimbus went away.
“What?” the governor asked, when Lucas shut the door. “Got a favor to ask.” The governor was a thin man, sleek, his hair lacquered in place, with delicate cheekbones and an aristocratic lip. He’d been reading the real estate ads in one of the weeklies, his stocking feet up on a mahogany file cabinet. The governor was the scion of one of Minnesota’s bigger fortunes, originally considered to be the runt of the litter, and now pretty much running the state and the family. Some said he thought they were the same thing…
His socks, Lucas observed, were a pale lavender with the thinnest of scarlet clocks. The governor cocked an eye at him and asked, “Is this gonna cause me trouble? Whatever it is?”
“Probably the least amount of trouble of anything you’ve done today,” Lucas said, as he dropped into a leather armchair. “If you get assassinated this week, can I have those socks?”
“No. We pass these down through the generations, to the oldest sons.”
“C’mon. Where’d you get them?"
"Ferragamo.” The governor folded the paper, dropped it in a wastebasket, and said, “The shit is about to hit the fan. The question is, will it hit before the next election?”
“What shit?” Lucas asked. For one crazy moment, he thought the governor might be concerned about convention security.
“The ethanol market is gonna drop dead,” the governor said. “Capacity is outrunning demand, and the big energy companies are moving up to the trough. A whole bunch of farmers who mortgaged the farm to build all these small plants, they’re gonna lose their shirts. Then they’ll want to know what I’m going to do about it.”
Lucas shrugged. “That’s your problem. And the farmers’. Though it’s not your biggest problem.”
“What’s my biggest problem?” The governor’s eyebrows went up. “The convention,” Lucas said. “The protesters are gonna trash the place, right down the hill from your office. If we quadrupled the security we’re planning, it wouldn’t be a quarter of what we need.”
The governor frowned: “I don’t know. This is a pretty lefty state."
"The people causing the trouble aren’t lefties,” Lucas said, rapping his knuckles on the rosewood desk. “They’re vandals. Petty criminals. Jerkoffs. They wouldn’t care if the Blessed Virgin Mary showed up holding hands with Karl Marx. This is their Super Bowl, and it’s sixty forty that they’re gonna tear us a new asshole.”
The governor looked mildly impatient. “Is that what you came to tell me?”
“No, no. Nobody listens anyway,” Lucas said, discouraged. “The planners believe we can count on the goodwill of the people; like the vandals are just another caucus. Fuckin’ morons.”
“The people? Or the planners?"
"The planners."
"Anyway…” The governor didn’t pay any more attention than anyone else, and his eyes strayed back to the stack of newspapers.
“Anyway,” Lucas said, leaning forward, “this is something different. Do you know Alyssa Austin, Hunter Austin’s wife? Or widow, I guess?”
“Yes.” The governor straightened around, picked a pair of black loafers off the floor, and slipped his feet into them, wiggling his toes. “I read about her kid. That’s awful. She’s dead, right?”
“Ninety- nine percent,” Lucas said. “We cover Sunfish Lake on homicides, and we’ve got a new guy looking into it. He isn’t getting much. I’d like to be able to tell people that the governor asked me to poke around, as a personal favor, and that I had no choice but to say yes.”
“So you won’t piss off the new guy. Or Rose Marie,” the governor said. The runt of the litter, but no dummy.
“That’s right,” Lucas said. “Go ahead; I’ll cover for you,” the governor said. “I’ll be raising money there this summer, in Sunfish. Probably know half the people in town. So if you could settle it before then, that’d be good.”
“Not a problem,” Lucas said. “Let them know that you’re out there at my suggestion,” the governor added. “Especially if you catch the killers.” Lucas nodded. “Ferragamo,” he said, and stood up. The audience was over. “Yup. You want a fashion tip?” The governor picked up another paper and checked the front page before turning back to the classifieds.
“I always listen to fashion tips,” Lucas said. That was true; he did. He didn’t always follow them, but the governor had excellent taste.
“You always want your socks and your pajamas to be slightly gay,” the governor said. “Not too gay, but slightly.”
Lucas thought about it for a second, and said, “You’re right. I knew that, but I never explicitly formulated it.”
“Of course I’m right.” The governor glanced at his solid- gold Patek Philippe. “Get out of here.”
Back at his office, Lucas left a message with Rose Marie’s secretary about the governor’s request, made it clear that the message wasn’t too important, then found Jim Benson sitting in his cubicle, fingers knitted behind his head, looking at a whiteboard with a lot of names and arrows. Lucas knocked on the door frame and Benson swiveled, said, “Hey, Lucas, what’s up?”
“The governor called me in this morning, man. He raises a lot of money over in Sunfish Lake, and he’s asked me to take a personal look at the Austin case.”
Benson sat up: “I thought I had the bases pretty well covered.” Lucas said, “You probably do, but old lady Austin and the governor are pals, and she’s one of his big backers… Nothing personal, man.”
“I hate that kind of goddamn politics,” Benson said. “Favoritism for the rich, that’s what it is.”
“Shhh,” Lucas said. “For Christ’s sakes, you don’t know who can hear you.”
Getting the files out of Benson was like pulling a tooth; nasty. But Lucas got them, for a couple of hours, anyway. Told Benson he’d just skim the paper, talk to a few people, kick over a couple of rocks so when the governor asked… He’d already read the preliminary reports. Now he spent an hour looking at the paper, then gave the file to his secretary and told her to xerox it and return it to Benson, as quickly as possible. “It’d be nice if he thought I just glanced at it. Don’t mention
that you made a copy.”
“Ah, screwin’ the new guy, huh?” Carol said. By early afternoon, the storm had cleared. Splashing through the leftover puddles, Lucas took the Porsche off Robert Street south of St. Paul, and poked into the bare winter forest that was Sunfish Lake.
The Twin Cities have no really exclusive suburbs, except those that are exclusively rich or poor. No social barriers: if you had the cash or could get the mortgage, you could live there, whatever your race, color, creed, or national origin. Sunfish Lake was one of those.
The first fifty feet of the Austin driveway were gravel, as if to say, We may be rich, but we’re really country. The last three hundred feet were blacktop, which said, We may be country, but we’re not stupid.
The driveway ran slightly uphill, then over a crest and down to the house. The house had three sections that he could see-a center/main section, of stone and redwood, with barren flower beds under the white- painted window trim; and a cedar- shingled wing on each end, bending away from him, toward the lake. The four- car garage was in the right wing.
The house was buried in oaks and spruce, snuggled into the slope, surrounded by a patch of grass that faded into the forest. From the crest of the hill, Lucas could see a broad flagstone path meandering down to the lake. A wheeled dock had been pulled out of the water, next to the path, and a finger of snow hunkered beneath it. More snow hid out in the woods, where it had been protected from the rain.
Lucas parked the Porsche, and got out into the smell of wet old leaves, late- winter woods, and the faintest stink of rotting fish. He walked up to the door, rang the doorbell, and grinned at his reflection in the glass panel beside the door.
He was wearing jeans, a white shirt, Mephisto black- leather athletic shoes, a black leather jacket, and aviator sunglasses. He was packing heat, he thought, and also carried a gun.
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