Lucas Davenport Novels 6-10

by John Sandford

  In this case, there were more than simple ties back to Weather. Weather had been something different—the love of his life, if Elle Kruger wasn’t—while Sherrill was much more like the other women he’d dated: pretty, smart, interesting, and eventually, moving on.

  He wasn’t sure that he wanted a relationship with a woman who’d be moving on, especially when she really wouldn’t be out of sight. Sherrill was a cop, who had a desk right down the hall from his office: even when he wasn’t trying to see her, he saw her four or five times a day.

  ‘‘You sighed,’’ she said.

  ‘‘What?’’

  ‘‘You just sighed.’’

  ‘‘A lot of shit going on,’’ Lucas said. She patted him on the leg. ‘‘You worry too much. It’s all gonna work out.’’

  They followed the interstate northwest to Fargo, crossed the Red River into North Dakota, took I-29 north past Grand Forks, then recrossed the Red into Minnesota on a state highway to Oxford.

  ‘‘Starting to feel it in my back,’’ Sherrill said to Lucas. Lucas was behind the wheel again. ‘‘Probably would’ve been more comfortable in my car.’’

  ‘‘Yeah, I’m getting too old for this thing, I need something a little smoother,’’ Lucas said. ‘‘Good car, though.’’

  ‘‘Too small for you.

  Though you’ll probably start to shrink a little, as the age comes on. You know, your vertebrae start to collapse, your hair thins out and sits lower on your head, your muscle tone goes . . .’’

  ‘‘You go from a 34-C to a 34-long . . .’’

  ‘‘Oooh. That’s mean. But I kinda like it,’’ she said.

  They passed a sign warning of a reduction of speed limits; Lucas dropped from eighty to sixty as they went past the 45 sign. Past a farm implement dealer with a field of new John Deeres and Bobcats and antique Fords and International Harvesters; past competing Polaris and Yamaha snowmobile dealerships, both in unpainted steel Quonset huts; past a closed Dairy Queen and an open Hardee’s, past a Christian Revelation church and a SuperAmerica; and then into town, Lucas letting the car roll down to forty-five by the time they got to the 25 sign. Past a redbrick Catholic church and a fieldstone Lutheran church and then a liquor store that may once have been a bank, built of both fieldstone and brick.

  ‘‘Just like Lake fuckin’ Wobegon,’’ Sherrill said.

  ‘‘No lake,’’ Lucas said. ‘‘Nothing but dirt.’’

  ‘‘If I had to live here, I’d shoot myself just for the entertainment value,’’ Sherrill said.

  ‘‘Ah, there’re lots of good things out here,’’ Lucas said.

  ‘‘Name one.’’

  Lucas thought for a moment. ‘‘You can see a long way,’’ he said finally, and they both started to laugh. Then Sherrill pointed out the windshield at the left side of the street, to a white arrow-sign that said, ‘‘Proper County–Oxford Government Center.’’

  The Proper County Courthouse and Oxford City Hall had been combined in a building that resembled a very large Standard Oil station—low red brick, lots of glass, an oversized nylon American flag, and a large parking lot where a grassy town square may once have been. Lucas spotted three police cruisers at one corner of the parking lot, and headed that way.

  ‘‘Watch your mouth with these people, huh?’’ Lucas said, as they got out of the car.

  ‘‘Like you’re Mr. Diplomat.’’

  ‘‘I try harder when I’m out in the countryside,’’ he said. ‘‘They sometimes resent it when big-city cops show up in their territory.’’

  THE OXFORD POLICE DEPARTMENT WAS A STARKLY utilitarian collection of beige cubicles wedged into a departmental office suite twenty-four feet square. The chief’s office, the only private space in the suite, was at the back; the department itself seemed deserted when Lucas and Sherrill pushed through the outer door.

  ‘‘A fire drill?’’ Sherrill asked.

  ‘‘I don’t know. What’s that?’’ An odd, almost musical sound came from the back; they walked back between the small cubicles, and spotted a man in the chief’s private office, hovering over a computer. As they got closer, they could hear the boop-beep-thwack-arrghh of a computer action game. Sherrill gave Lucas an elbow in the ribs, but Lucas pushed her back down the row, walking quietly away. Then: ‘‘Hello? Anybody home?’’

  The boop-beep-thwack stopped, and a second later a young man with a round face and a short black mustache stepped out of the chief’s office.

  ‘‘Help you folks?’’

  ‘‘We’re looking for the chief of police, or the duty officer . . .’’

  ‘‘I’m Chief Mason.’’ The young man hitched up his pants when he saw Sherrill, and walked down toward them. Lucas took out his ID and handed it over. ‘‘I’m Deputy Chief Lucas Davenport from Minneapolis, and this is Detective Sherrill . . .’’

  He explained that they had come up to review documents and interview people who might have any information about the death of George Lamb, Audrey McDonald’s father, twenty-four years earlier. The chief, who had been staring almost pensively at Sherrill’s breasts, started shaking his head. ‘‘I been a cop here for four years; nobody in the department has been here more than twelve. Better you should go up and talk to the county clerk, she might be able to point you at some death records or something.’’

  ‘‘Second floor?’’ Lucas asked.

  ‘‘Yee-up,’’ the chief said.

  THE COUNTY CLERK WAS EVEN YOUNGER THAN THE chief, her hair dyed an unsuccessful orange: ‘‘Okay, twenty-four years. About this time of year, you say?’’

  ‘‘About this time.’’

  ‘‘Okay . . . We’re computerizing, you know, but all this old paper is hard to get on-line,’’ she said, as she dug through a file cabinet. ‘‘Here we go. George Lamb? Here it is.’’

  ‘‘You got anything in there on an Amelia Lamb? George’s wife? Four years after George?’’

  She went back to the cabinet, dug around, then shook her head. ‘‘Nothing on an Amelia.’’

  She straightened up, stepped to the counter, pushed a mimeographed form across the counter at them, said to Marcy, ‘‘I really like your hair,’’ and Marcy said, ‘‘Thanks. I just got it changed and I was a little worried about doing it . . . used to be longer.’’

  The death form was filled out on a typewriter, and signed by a Dr. Stephen Landis. Lucas scanned the routine report and asked, ‘‘Is Dr. Landis still practicing here?’’

  ‘‘Oh, sure. He’s over at the clinic, right down the street to Main, take a left two blocks.’’

  Marcy looked over Lucas’s arm: ‘‘Heart attack?’’

  ‘‘That’s what it says.’’

  ‘‘You know, Sheriff Mason would’ve been a deputy back then; I bet he would know about it,’’ the clerk said, reading the file upside down. She tapped a line on the file with her fingertip. ‘‘This address isn’t right in town—it’s out at County A—so they would have been the law enforcement arm involved in a death.’’

  ‘‘We just talked to a Chief Mason,’’ Sherrill said. ‘‘They’re not the same guy?’’

  ‘‘Second cousins, though you could never tell,’’ the clerk said. ‘‘Sheriff John Mason’s grandparents on his father’s side, and Chief Bob Mason’s great-grandparents on his father’s and grandfather’s side, are the same people, Chuck and Shirley Mason from Stephen.’’

  ‘‘Thank you,’’ Lucas said. ‘‘Where can we find the sheriff’s office?’’

  ‘‘Down the hall all the way to the end.’’

  As they left, Sherrill asked, ‘‘Are Chuck and Shirley still alive?’’

  ‘‘Well, sure,’’ the clerk said. ‘‘Hale and hearty. Course, they’d be down in Arizona right now.’’

  THE SHERIFF WAS OUT, THE RECEPTIONIST SAID, BUTIF it was a matter of importance, he’d be happy to come right back. Lucas identified himself, and the receptionist’s eyebrows went up, and she punched a number in her telephone. A minute later, the phone ra
ng, and she picked it up and said, without preamble, ‘‘There’re some Minneapolis police officers here, looking for you.’’

  The sheriff was a chunky, weathered man, going bald; he wore an open parka and was carrying a blaze-orange watch cap when he stepped into the office five minutes later.

  ‘‘You want to see me?’’

  ‘‘Yes,’’ Lucas said. He introduced himself, produced his ID, and mentioned the death of George Lamb.

  ‘‘George Lamb? You mean about a hundred years ago, that George Lamb?’’ The sheriff’s voice picked up a hint of wariness.

  ‘‘Twenty-four years,’’ said Lucas.

  ‘‘Come on back,’’ the sheriff said. And to the receptionist: ‘‘Ruth, go get Jimmy and tell him to come back too.’’

  To Lucas: ‘‘You folks want some coffee?’’

  ‘‘That’d be fine,’’ Lucas said. They were passing a coffeepot in a hallway nook, and Sherrill said, ‘‘I’ll get it. Sheriff? Sugar?’’

  As the sheriff settled behind his desk, and Sherrill brought the coffee, Lucas said, ‘‘We’re sorta digging through the background on Lamb. The county clerk said you were around at the time, I don’t know if you’d remember it or not.’’

  ‘‘Yeah, I do. He used to be a mail carrier outa here, he had the rural route. Died of a heart attack. Why’re you looking into that? If I might ask?’’

  ‘‘We’ve got a case going on in the Cities, woman just shot her husband,’’ Lucas said. ‘‘She’s charged second degree, but that could get dismissed as self-defense. We’re looking into all the deaths that have been associated with her, and we found out that both her father and mother died young . . .’’

  ‘‘I know the woman,’’ the sheriff said. ‘‘Audrey. McDonald. Used to be Lamb. Been reading about the case in the Star-Tribune. What the heck is a chief of police doing way up here on a case like that?’’

  ‘‘Actually, uh, Marcy and I are friends,’’ Lucas said, tipping his head toward Sherrill. ‘‘We were both working the case, and we sorta wanted to get away for a weekend . . . and we were sorta curious about Lamb.’’

  The sheriff glanced at Marcy and then back at Lucas, nodded as if everything was suddenly clear. ‘‘I didn’t take the first call on Lamb, but when we got word that somebody out there was dead, I came in,’’ the sheriff said. He spun in his office chair, looking out of the office window toward the back of a line of Main Street stores. ‘‘This was early in the morning. I mean real early, like four o’clock. He was dressed in gray long johns, and he was laying on the kitchen floor. One of the girls had called us—Audrey I think, the other one was still pretty young—and the two little girls had their mom out in the living room, and she was sitting on the couch all wailing away. And Lamb was deader’n a mackerel. It was his practice to wake up in the morning by breaking a raw egg in a double-shot glass, then pouring the glass full with rye, and drinking it down. We found him laying on the floor in a puddle of rye, with the egg all over his face. Took him off quick.’’

  ‘‘Egg and rye. That’d open your eyes, all right,’’ Sherrill said.

  ‘‘ ’Spose,’’ said the sheriff. Another man, tall, lean as a fence post, ten years older than the sheriff but with a full head of hair, propped himself in the office doorway.

  ‘‘You wanted me?’’

  ‘‘Yeah, Jimmy, come on in . . .’’ The sheriff introduced Lucas and Sherrill and said, ‘‘They’re checking around about the time George Lamb died down there on A. You remember that?’’

  ‘‘Yeah. Long time ago. Don’t quite see what you’d be checking on. Dropped dead of a heart attack.’’

  ‘‘Was there anything unusual about the circumstances?’’ Lucas asked. ‘‘Something to make you wonder if it was more’n a heart attack?’’

  The sheriff shook his head, and Jimmy scratched his head and said, ‘‘Well, no. Not really. The population up here is older’n average—not much to hold the younger people anymore—so we see a lot of heart attacks. Probably once or twice a week we get a call, and a fair number of times, the victim is dead before the ambulance gets there. I probably seen a few hundred of them in my time, and . . .’’ He shrugged. ‘‘Soon as I saw him, I thought, Heart.’’

  ‘‘Shoot,’’ Lucas said. ‘‘How about the mother? Amelia?’’

  The sheriff shook his head. ‘‘They left here after George died—sold the place off and moved down to your territory, I think.’’

  ‘‘Really?’’ Lucas shook his head ruefully. ‘‘You know, I never asked. I just assumed . . .’’ Lucas glanced at Marcy, then said to the sheriff, ‘‘I didn’t see a motel coming in. Is there a place we can stay?’’

  The sheriff seemed to relax a half-inch. ‘‘North out of town a half-mile, there’s the Sugar Beet Inn. Real clean place.’’

  ‘‘Good enough,’’ Lucas said. They all stood up and Lucas shook with the sheriff and Marcy said, ‘‘Thanks for the coffee.’’

  And then they were outside and Lucas looked up at the building and said, ‘‘That’s the goddamnedest thing, huh?’’

  ‘‘He seemed a little tense,’’ Marcy said.

  ‘‘They oughta be a little tense,’’ Lucas said. ‘‘They’re covering something up.’’

  They were at the car, and Marcy looked at him over the roof: ‘‘All right, you got me. How do you know they’re covering something up?’’

  ‘‘Because they both remembered the details of a heart attack twenty-four years ago. What he looked like lying on the floor. Gray long johns. The egg-and-rye thing . . .’’

  ‘‘I might have remembered that, the egg and rye. ’Cause it’s unusual.’’

  ‘‘Audrey’s name . . .’’

  ‘‘They could have remembered that from reading the paper.’’

  Lucas shook his head: ‘‘Why? She didn’t change it until she married McDonald, eight years after her father died. You think they were tracking her?’’

  Marcy nodded. ‘‘All right. They remembered too much. What do we do next?’’

  ‘‘We go over and jack up the doctor.’’

  ‘‘You notice how I’m being the nice little housewife and sweetie pie? Get the coffee, girl-talk about hair, let it pass when you hint to the good sheriff that we’re up here for a little whoopee?’’

  ‘‘It’s making me nervous,’’ Lucas said. ‘‘The pressure’ll start to build. Sooner or later, you’ll explode.’’

  ‘‘That could happen,’’ she said.

  DR. STEPHEN LANDIS COULDN’T SEE THEM UNTIL THE end of his patient day, at four o’clock.

  ‘‘You can come right here to the clinic,’’ the nurse said. ‘‘Four o’clock sharp. He has some patient visits to make out in town, starting at four-thirty, so you’ll have about twenty minutes.’’

  ‘‘You mean, he actually goes out and visits people?’’ Marcy asked.

  ‘‘Of course.’’

  ‘‘Amazing.’’

  Back on the street, Lucas looked at his watch: an hour to kill. ‘‘Let’s go see the undertaker,’’ he said.

  THE UNDERTAKER WAS A ROLY-POLY YOUNG MAN INA plaid suit: he didn’t remember the case because he was too young. ‘‘Dad might remember, though,’’ he said. ‘‘He’s out in the garage . . .’’

  The senior undertaker was a pleasant fellow, dressed in cotton slacks and a V-necked wool sweater. He was in the back of the mortuary’s heated garage, hitting golf balls into a net off an Astroturf pad.

  ‘‘Yep, I remember Mr. Lamb,’’ he said, slipping his fiveiron back into his golf bag. ‘‘Actually, I don’t remember Mr. Lamb as well as I remember the daughter . . . the older one.’’

  ‘‘Audrey,’’ Sherrill said.

  ‘‘Don’t remember her name. Audrey could be right. I do remember that she handled all the arrangements. Her mother came along, of course, but it was Audrey who settled everything.’’

  ‘‘Cremation, I understand,’’ Lucas said.

  ‘‘Yes, it was. Quite a bit cheaper, you know
. I applaud that, by the way. The family didn’t have a great deal of money, and with the breadwinner gone, they had to watch their nickels and dimes. The young woman marched right in the door, said we could forget about a big funeral, they didn’t have the money, and she wanted the body cremated. Period. No argument allowed.’’

  ‘‘Did she pick up the ashes?’’

  ‘‘Yup. In a cardboard box. She said they didn’t need an urn, they were planning to scatter them over the family farm.’’

  ‘‘Tough kid,’’ Lucas said.

  ‘‘That she was,’’ said the senior undertaker. ‘‘Never saw a tear from her, except once when the sheriff happened to come by while they were making the arrangements, and then she couldn’t stop bawling. That was the only time.’’ He took another iron out of his bag. ‘‘What do you know about the two-iron?’’

  ‘‘If only God can hit a one-iron, then it’d probably take a prophet to hit the two,’’ Sherrill said.

  The senior undertaker looked at her with interest. ‘‘You’re a golfer.’’

  ‘‘A little,’’ she said. ‘‘My husband was a two-handicap.’’

  ‘‘Was?’’

  ‘‘He died.’’

  ‘‘Ah. That will play hob with your handicap,’’ he said cheerfully. Then, ‘‘Do you think that young lady— Audrey?—do you think she might have killed her father?’’

  Lucas looked at Sherrill and then back at the senior undertaker. ‘‘Why would you ask?’’