Lucas Davenport Novels 6-10

by John Sandford

  ‘‘How about Black? Did he get anything?’’

  ‘‘Haven’t talked to him yet. He’s supposed to call when he’s done talking with Markham. So: You’ll take Bennett, and I’ll take Kerr.’’

  ‘‘Why don’t we go over to Saks first,’’ she suggested. ‘‘You can buy me something expensive.’’

  ‘‘I’ve got about twenty dollars on me,’’ Lucas said.

  ‘‘So let’s go to the bank and you can take out a bunch of money.’’

  ‘‘Give me a break, huh? I don’t—’’ The phone in Sherrill’s purse buzzed, and Lucas said, ‘‘Probably Black.’’

  Sherrill fished the phone out of her purse, said, ‘‘Hello,’’ listened, and passed the phone to Lucas. ‘‘Dispatch, looking for you.’’

  Lucas took the phone: ‘‘Yeah?’’

  THE DISPATCHER SAID, ‘‘LUCAS, A WOMAN NAMED

  Andi Manette is trying to get you. She says it’s about a personal friend of yours and it’s extremely urgent. You want the number?’’

  ‘‘Oh, Jesus,’’ Lucas said. Andi Manette was Weather’s shrink. ‘‘Hang on.’’ He patted his pockets, found a pen and a slip of paper, and said, ‘‘What is it?’’

  He copied the number, punched the power button, punched it again, and dialed.

  Manette picked it up on the first ring: ‘‘Yes?’’

  ‘‘Andi? This is Lucas.’’

  ‘‘Lucas, I need to tell you something, but I don’t want you running off to help. Nobody needs help.’’

  ‘‘What? What?’’

  ‘‘Weather was . . . Somebody firebombed Weather’s house last night. She was singed a little, and has some small cuts, but she’s not badly hurt. She’s going to be staying with us for a while, until this is straightened out.’’

  ‘‘Firebombed! What do you mean, firebombed? Where is she?’’

  ‘‘The thing is, it would be best if you didn’t go looking for her. She’s pretty freaked out, and having you around, with all the associations, won’t help.’’

  ‘‘Well, Jesus Christ, Andi, what happened? Do I get to know that?’’

  ‘‘Nobody knows what happened. It’s being handled by the Edina police.’’

  ‘‘You don’t mean just an explosion or something, you mean somebody threw a firebomb through her window.’’

  ‘‘That’s exactly what happened,’’ Manette said. ‘‘ Somebody threw a firebomb through her picture window.’’

  ‘‘Andi, I swear to God I won’t come after her, but where is she? Tell me that. Just tell me.’’

  ‘‘She’s at my house, taking a nap right now. She’s had a couple of sedatives, she’s feeling better. But we figured that people would let you know, and that I’d better talk to you.’’

  ‘‘Let me know? My God, Andi, I’m probably a suspect. And even . . . I gotta call those guys.’’

  ‘‘Don’t call . . .’’

  ‘‘Not Weather. I’ve got to call Edina.’’

  ‘‘Okay. But please don’t come out, okay?’’

  ‘‘Okay.’’

  ‘‘Thanks. You know I’m trying to bail this out for the two of you, and I’m bailing as hard as I can.’’

  ‘‘Hey listen,’’ Lucas said. ‘‘Thanks for calling me.’’

  He punched off and Sherrill said, ‘‘Weather? Firebombed?’’ She looked perplexed.

  ‘‘Yeah. Last night. Listen, you go after these other guys. I’m running out to Edina.’’

  HE CALLED FIRST: THE CHIEF’S NAME WAS PETER HAFMAN and Lucas barely knew him.

  ‘‘Don’t have much to show you,’’ Hafman said. ‘‘ Somebody walked up last night and pitched a gallon jug of gasoline through the front window. We’ve got bits of the wick, looks like a piece of ordinary cotton cloth, I’m told. There is one odd thing . . .’’

  ‘‘What?’’

  ‘‘The bottle was scored so it’d break easier. Scored with a glass cutter. The guys out here say that sounds like a pro.’’

  ‘‘I never heard of that,’’ Lucas said. ‘‘Look, could I come out and talk to your guys?’’

  ‘‘Come on ahead.’’

  He rang off and handed the phone back to Sherrill, and it immediately beeped again. She answered and handed it back: Dispatch again.

  YOU’VE GOT ANOTHER CALL COMING IN. THEY SAY this one is urgent too.’’

  ‘‘Put it through.’’

  There was a click, and a woman said, ‘‘Chief Davenport?’’ She had a purring voice, a little smoky.

  ‘‘Yes, this is Davenport. Who is this?’’

  ‘‘Did you know that Jim Bone was sleeping with Dan Kresge’s wife? For a long time? And now she’ll get all those options that used to be worthless?’’

  And the phone went dead. Lucas looked at it, looked at Sherrill.

  ‘‘Now what?’’

  ‘‘That was our woman, I think.’’

  ‘‘Really? What’d she say?’’

  ‘‘She said Jim Bone is sleeping with Kresge’s wife. And that she’s gonna get a pile of stock options now that he’s dead.’’

  Sherrill’s eyebrows went up: ‘‘Any more goddamn clues and we’ll have to get a secretary to keep track of them.’’

  ‘‘Jim Bone,’’ Lucas said. ‘‘Huh.’’

  WHEN WEATHER LEFT LUCAS, SHE’D STAYED WITH THE Manettes for a couple of weeks, then had taken over the lease on a small house being vacated by a University Hospitals surgical resident. Lucas had cruised it in city cars a half-dozen times, hoping to get a glimpse of her. He never had, but he knew the house.

  Now he cruised it again, a ranch-style house of stone and clapboard that reminded him of his own house. It looked much the same as it always had, except that the front picture window, which looked out across the flagstone walk, was covered by a piece of unpainted plywood; and the eaves over the window were stained with soot.

  He pulled into the driveway, got out, walked up to the front of the house, and peered through the small windows that flanked the center window. He was looking in at the front room: the place was a jumble of scorched furniture and carpeting, with burned drywall panels hanging down from the ceiling, books scattered across the floor in sodden clumps. He could smell the smoke and the water and the burned fiberglass insulation. No gasoline.

  He stepped back, and as he turned to leave, noticed a woman watching from next door: she wasn’t hiding, and didn’t pretend to be doing anything else. She’d come outside to watch him. He headed toward her, dug out his identification.

  ‘‘Hello. I’m Deputy Chief of Police Lucas Davenport from Minneapolis; I’m a friend of Weather’s.’’

  The frown on her face eased a bit, and she tried on a smile. ‘‘Oh, good. I’ve been trying to keep an eye on the place since last night.’’

  ‘‘Thanks. I, uh, I’m on my way to talk to your police chief out here, and I thought I’d take a look . . . Listen, do you know if anybody saw anything last night? Or heard anything?’’

  ‘‘Nobody in my house heard anything until the fire engines, but Jane Yarrow across the street heard the window break. She said she didn’t know it was a window breaking until later. She just heard something . And then she heard a car door slam, but she didn’t get up until she heard the sirens. And that was about it—nothing like this ever happened here before.’’

  THE CHIEF WAS OUT WHEN LUCAS ARRIVED AT EDINA, but he was routed to a Detective James Brown. Brown was a tall, shambling man with a shock of white hair; he wore a rough tweed sportcoat with suede elbow patches, a blue oxford cloth shirt, and khakis with boat shoes. He looked like a professor of ancient languages.

  ‘‘Not the James Brown?’’ Lucas asked.

  ‘‘Why yes, I am,’’ Brown said modestly. ‘‘This is my disguise: keeps the groupies off.’’

  ‘‘Excellent strategy,’’ Lucas said. He dropped into a chair beside Brown’s desk.

  Brown looked down at a file open on his desk, sighed, and said, ‘‘I understand you have a personal re
lationship with Weather Karkinnen.’’

  ‘‘Had one; she broke it off,’’ Lucas said. ‘‘I can’t prove to you where I was at three o’clock this morning, ’cause I was home in bed, alone. But . . .’’ He shrugged. ‘‘I didn’t do it.’’

  ‘‘And even if you did, that’s a pretty goddamn unbreakable alibi,’’ Brown said.

  Lucas said, ‘‘Hey . . . I didn’t do it.’’

  Brown sighed again and asked, ‘‘The chief told you about the scoring on the bottle?’’

  ‘‘Yeah. He said it looked like a pro job.’’

  ‘‘That’s what the fire guys say. You get a regular bottle, it might bounce, it might not even break. But with the scoring, it explodes when it hits the floor. Very fast, very efficient. What we think is, the bomber came in from the north, idled to a stop in front of the house, got out, leaving the car door open, walked up to the front of the house with the jug, flashed the wick with a cigarette lighter, and heaved it through the window. The whole thing, I timed it, would be ten to fifteen seconds, walking, from the time he got out of the car to the time he got back in. Then he rolled off down the street, around the corner, four blocks down to the highway, and back to Minneapolis. He was on the highway before Ms. Karkinnen even called 911.’’

  ‘‘Who owns the place?’’

  ‘‘A couple named Bartlett—they’re down in Florida. They’d rented it to a doctor for the past eight years, and then to your friend. Strictly an income property for them.’’

  ‘‘Any reason they might want to torch it?’’

  ‘‘Nothing obvious—it’s a good neighborhood, they could probably sell it for a lot more than they’d ever get from insurance. And they’re pretty reputable people.’’

  ‘‘Shit,’’ Lucas said.

  ‘‘All that stuff that was in the paper last winter . . . The LaChaises . . .’’

  ‘‘Yeah. That’s what I’m afraid of,’’ Lucas said.

  Brown tapped his desk: ‘‘But one thing doesn’t fit with that. Whoever did this wasn’t trying real hard to kill her. I mean, if it was a pro job. They didn’t even come close. She was in the back bedroom, ran out when she heard the window break, saw the fire, called 911, and if she hadn’t tried to save her pictures, she wouldn’t have been hurt at all.’’

  ‘‘She was hurt?’’ Lucas sat up, angry now. ‘‘I was told she wasn’t . . .’’

  ‘‘Not bad, not bad,’’ Brown said. ‘‘She got a couple of small cuts on her feet from broken glass, and her hair was singed, and she got some small spark burns on one hand. But she told us she has some operations tomorrow and she expects to do them.’’

  LUCAS TOOK IT SLOW DRIVING BACK TO MINNEAPOLIS, pulling threads together. Black checked in on Lucas’s car phone: ‘‘I had to do some psychotherapy on this Markham asshole, but the bottom line is, he thinks O’Dell couldn’t do it.’’

  ‘‘All right. You got another one yet?’’

  ‘‘L. Z. Drake,’’ Black said. ‘‘Went to school with McDonald.’’

  ‘‘Call when you get done.’’

  ‘‘Yeah. Hey, you know about Weather?’’

  ‘‘Yeah. How’d you hear?’’

  ‘‘They had some pictures of the house in a news brief . . . Markham had his TV on the whole time I was talking to him. They said she was okay.’’

  ‘‘Yeah, yeah . . .’’

  ‘‘You think there’s any chance it’s another comeback from LaChaise?’’

  ‘‘I don’t know what to think.’’

  ‘‘All right,’’ said Black. ‘‘I’ll call you after I talk to Drake.’’

  SLOAN AND FRANKLIN WERE WAITING OUTSIDE LUCAS’S office when Lucas got back. Both of them had been involved in the shoot-out that killed the two LaChaise women the winter before, though Sloan hadn’t fired his weapon and hadn’t been a direct target of the reprisal attacks. Franklin, on the other hand, had been shot in his own driveway.

  ‘‘We’ve been talking, man,’’ Franklin said in his booming voice. Lucas was large; Franklin dwarfed him. ‘‘We gotta look into this, unless there’s some motive for somebody hittin’ Weather.’’

  ‘‘How’d you hear about it?’’

  ‘‘It’s all over the department, it’s been on TV,’’ Sloan said.

  ‘‘You think I oughta call my folks, get them out of the house?’’ Franklin asked.

  ‘‘I don’t know,’’ Lucas said. They were milling in the hall, and he saw Sherrill starting down toward them. ‘‘I don’t know what’s going on. Nobody’s got a motive that I can figure, and there’s a possibility that it was a pro job.’’

  ‘‘Why a pro job?’’ Sloan asked. As Sherrill came up, Franklin said to her, ‘‘Could’ve been a pro job.’’

  ‘‘You’re sure?’’ Sherrill asked.

  Lucas told them about the scored bottle. ‘‘That’s it,’’ Franklin said. ‘‘I’m putting the old lady in a motel.’’

  Black arrived as they were talking about it, stood on the edge of the discussion: he hadn’t been in the shoot-out, hadn’t been a target.

  ‘‘I think what we need to do before we panic, is we need to get everybody we got out on the street,’’ Lucas said. ‘‘I’ll talk to Intelligence and Narcotics and the gang people, I’ll talk to St. Paul, and every one of us has got people . . . Let’s get out there and dig for a few hours. If this is a group, somebody’ll know.’’

  ‘‘Loring’s got the good biker contacts,’’ Franklin said. ‘‘He’s been working nights, he’s probably home asleep. You want me to roust him?’’

  ‘‘Get him moving,’’ Lucas said.

  ‘‘I’ll find Del, get him started,’’ Sloan said.

  ‘‘I’m outa here,’’ said Franklin.

  As the group started to break up, Black said, ‘‘Lucas, I talked to this guy Drake about McDonald.’’

  ‘‘Oh, yeah.’’ Old news; he wasn’t thinking about McDonald anymore.

  Black continued: ‘‘I had to push him, but he says he knew McDonald all the way through school, and he has a real violent streak. Bottom line was, Drake thinks he could kill somebody if he decided it was necessary. He said McDonald was a big guy, played a little high school football, and he and a couple of other guys stalked another kid for a couple of years, a little wimpy guy, beat him up a half-dozen times just because they knew they could make him cry in front of the girls . . .’’

  ‘‘Yeah, yeah,’’ Lucas said impatiently. ‘‘We can pick that up later.’’

  And as Black left, Sherrill, who’d been drifting away, said from down the hall, ‘‘You were gonna talk to O’Dell today . . .’’

  ‘‘No time now,’’ Lucas said. He remembered the phone call about Bone sleeping with Kresge, but pushed the memory away. ‘‘Let’s get out on the street.’’

  ELEVEN

  THE POLARIS BANK TOWER WAS A RABBIT WARREN OF meeting, training, and conference rooms, but only one of them was The Room.

  The Room was on the fortieth floor, guarded by two thick oak doors.

  No Formica here, no commercial carpeting or stainless steel. The conference table was twenty feet long and made of page-cut walnut; the chairs were walnut and bronze and plush crimson cushions; the lighting was subtle and recessed. The floor was oak parquet, accented with Quashqa’i rugs.

  An alcove at one side of the room contained a refrigerator stocked with soft drinks and sparkling water. A small bar was tucked discreetly away under a countertop, and a coffeemaker kept fresh three flavors of hot coffee, as well as hot water for anyone who wanted to brew tea. A Limoges-style sugar bowl and creamer waited next to an array of delicate cups and small serving plates. On the countertop itself was a tray of sandwiches cut into equilateral triangles, cookies, and a freshly opened box of Godiva chocolates.

  Constance Rondeau probed the box of chocolates, her sharp nose moving up and down like a bird going after a worm. O’Dell watched her work over the box, and realized that she recognized individual types among the Godiva variety, an
d was picking out the good ones.

  O’Dell pulled herself back: she was drifting. Oakes was talking.

  ‘‘. . . do agree that somebody had to take the reins. We’ve got too much going on, and it’s too dangerous out there right now. And somebody’s got to work with Midland . . .’’ If Rondeau looked like a bird, Shelley Oakes looked like a porkpie—all puffy and round-faced.

  ‘‘But my point is,’’ said Loren Bunde, ‘‘we can’t take forever finding someone. We don’t have the time, with this merger going on. We probably ought to go over to Midland and get one of their mechanics, and just pull the thing together.’’

  ‘‘Where would his loyalty be?’’ asked Bone. ‘‘It’d have to be with Midland, because that’ll be the successor bank. He’d find a way to screw us: hell, that’d be his job. I definitely think we should go with the merger: but on our terms. They need us. We don’t really need them. We’ve got the fifty-dollar price in play, but if everything shakes out right, we’ll get seventy-five.’’

  ‘‘Nobody ever mentioned seventy-five,’’ said Rondeau, looking up from the Godiva chocolates with a light in her eye.

  ‘‘I think that would be a minimum. I don’t know what was going on between Midland and Dan Kresge, but something was going on,’’ Bone said. ‘‘Fifty dollars is ridiculous. One-for-one is ridiculous. We should get cash as well: I don’t think a hundred is out of the question.’’

  ‘‘I think it is,’’ O’Dell said bluntly. ‘‘I think seventy-five is on the outer edge of any sane possibility.’’

  ‘‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’’ Bone said.

  O’Dell ignored him, and looked around at the other board members: ‘‘Listen: We must reconsider the possibility of continuing as an independent,’’ she said. ‘‘An immediate merger on the proposed terms would turn some quick profits for all of us, myself included. But the merger talk alone has pushed the stock price, and we’ll keep most of that whether or not we merge. So that much is locked in. And the fact is, if the new management were to take what I think is a proper view of the board and its duties, and the top management and its duties, then additional compensation would be provided anyway. There are also benefits available to board members and top management that we will lose in a merger, no matter how much money we got right away.’’