Текст книги "Lucas Davenport Novels 1-5"

Автор книги: John Sandford

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Текущая страница: 35 (всего у книги 105 страниц)

CHAPTER

14

Hart worked through an Indian-dominated housing project while Sloan did background on John Liss. Lucas, fighting a blinding hangover, made the rounds of barbershops, bars, fast-food joints and rooming houses.

A little after noon, Lucas called the dispatcher to check on Lily and was told that she was still meeting with the county attorney. He stopped at an Arby’s, ordered a roast beef sandwich and carried it outside. He was leaning on his car when his handset squawked and the shotgun touched him behind the ear again. He almost dropped the sandwich. He stood paralyzed, and the cold metal pressed against his head and Hood’s apartment rose up in front of his eyes, the circle of squad cars, the radios squawking . . . A few seconds later, it all faded and Lucas staggered from the car and half fell onto a mushroom-shaped concrete stool. He sat sweating for a few moments, then got up and walked shakily to the car and started off again.

A half-hour later, the dispatcher gave him a number to call. Lily’s hotel. Lucas called from a street booth across from a leather shop, staring at a Day-Glo-green sign advertising hand-tooled belts.

“Lunch?” Lucas asked, when Lily said hello.

“I can’t,” she said. There was a second’s silence, and then she said, “I’m going home.”

Lucas considered it, staring at the Day-Glo sign, then down at the telephone receiver in his hand. After a few seconds he said, “I thought you might stay over, see what happens.”

“I thought about it, but then . . . I finished with the county attorney and called to see when I could get a flight out. I was thinking tonight, but they said they could get me on a flight at one-thirty. I’ve got a cab coming downstairs . . . .”

“I could come . . .”

“No, don’t,” she said quickly. “I’d really prefer that you didn’t.”

“Jesus, Lily . . .”

“I’m sorry . . .” she said. There was a moment’s silence before she finished the sentence. “I hope you’re okay. And I’ll see you. Maybe. You know, someday.”

“Okay,” he said.

“So. Bye.”

“Bye.”

She hung up and Lucas stood leaning against the booth. “God damn it,” he said aloud.

Two young girls were passing, carrying schoolbooks. They heard him, glanced his way and hurried on. Lucas walked slowly back to his car, confused, unsure whether he was feeling disappointment or relief. He spent another hour touring Lake Street bars, apartment buildings and stores, looking for a toehold, an edge, a whisper, anything. He came up dry; and although he was given more names, more people to check, his heart wasn’t in it. He looked at his watch. Ten after two. She’d be off the ground, on her way to New York. Lily.

Daniel was in his office. He had turned the overhead fluorescent lights off and sat in a pool of yellow light cast by an old-fashioned goosenecked desk lamp. Larry Hart was sitting in the chair in front of his desk, Sloan, Lester and Anderson off to the side. Lucas took the last chair.

“Nothing?” asked Daniel.

“Not a thing,” Hart said. Lucas shook his head as he sat down.

“We’ve been getting some stuff about Liss. He worked for a metal fabrication plant out in Golden Valley. They said he was all right, but weird, you know, about Indian stuff.”

“Big help,” Anderson said.

Sloan shrugged. “I got some names of his friends, I can feed them to you, maybe the computer’ll have something.”

“Family?” asked Lucas.

“Wife and kid. Wife works a couple of jobs. She’s a check-out at Target and works at a Holiday store at night, part-time. And they got a kid. Harold Richard, aka Harry Dick, seventeen. He’s trouble, a doper. He’s been downtown a half-dozen times, minor theft, possession of pot, possession of crack. Small stuff.”

“That’s it?” asked Daniel.

“Sorry,” Sloan apologized. “We’re hitting it as hard as we can.”

“What about Liss himself? Are they getting anything out of him?”

Anderson shook his head. “Nope. About fifteen minutes after Liss went down, Len Meadows flew in from Chicago in his private jet. The first thing he did was bar any cops from talking to his client.”

“Fifteen minutes? Did Meadows know in advance?” Lucas asked.

“It wasn’t really fifteen minutes—” Sloan started.

Hart interrupted. “The Fire Creek Reservation office is in Brookings. When they heard about the shooting, they got scared about what might happen. They called Meadows” office. He’d done some pro bono criminal work for them. So then Meadows had his people call around, working with the information they were getting off the TV. They found out who Liss’ old lady was. Meadows called her—Louise, that’s her name—and offered his services. She said yes, so he flew out to Brookings. When Liss woke up after the docs got finished with him, Meadows went in and talked to him. That was it. No more cops.”

“Damn it,” Lucas said, chewing his lip. “Meadows is pretty good.”

“He’s a grandstanding asshole,” said Lester.

“Frank, you’re an asshole, but nobody ever said you weren’t pretty good,” said Daniel.

“I did once,” Sloan said. “He made me go out and investigate supermarket thefts.”

Lester grinned. “And I’d do it again,” he said.

“The problem with Meadows is, he won’t deal,” Lucas said. “He’s an ideologue. He prefers the crucifix to the plea bargain.”

They all chewed it over for a minute, then Daniel said, “Our Indian friends are putting out press releases now.”

“Say what?” asked Hart.

“We got a press release. Or rather, the media got press releases. All of them—newspapers, TV stations, WCCO radio. We got copies. They’re supposedly from the killers,” Daniel said.

Lucas sat up. “When did this happen?”

“They started arriving in the morning mail.” Daniel passed out photocopies of the press releases. “Channel Eight was out on the street for the noon news, asking Indians to read the press releases and then asking them if they agreed.”

Lucas nodded absently as he read. The authors took responsibility for all four killings, the two in the Cities, and those in New York and Oklahoma City. Nothing about the Brookings killing, so they were mailed before that. The killings were done as the beginning of a new uprising against white tyranny. There were unconvincing quotes from the Oklahoma assassin, but there were also details from Oklahoma that Lucas hadn’t seen.

“This Oklahoma stuff . . .” he said, looking up at Daniel.

The chief nodded. “They got it right.”

“Huh.” He finished the release, glanced at the second sheet Daniel had given him, a copy of the envelope the release had arrived in, and said “Huh” again.

“Interesting envelope,” Sloan remarked.

“Yeah.”

“What’s that?” asked Hart. He had been looking at the press release and now turned to the envelope.

“Look at the cancellation,” Lucas said. “Minneapolis.”

Anderson looked up. “We thought they were working out of here.”

“Now everybody will know,” Daniel said. “That’ll crank up the pressure.”

“That TV stuff we put out about Yellow Hand last night, blaming this group, I think it backfired,” Hart said. “A lot of people knew Yellow Hand. They know he was a crackhead. They figure he was killed by a dealer or another crackhead. Some kind of ripoff. They think the TV stuff is just more white-cop bullshit.”

“Shit,” Daniel said. He pulled at his lip, then looked at Lucas. “Any ideas? We gotta break something loose.”

Lucas shrugged. “We could try money. There’re a lot of poor people out there. A little cash might loosen things up.”

“That’s ugly,” Hart objected.

“We’re about to get lynched by the media,” Daniel snapped. He looked at Lucas. “How much?”

“I don’t know. We’d be on a blind trip, just fishing. But I don’t know what else to do. I’ve got no net with the Indians. You show me a problem with the black community, I can call two hundred guys. With the Indians . . .”

“You won’t make any friends by spreading money around,” Hart insisted. “That’s too . . . white. That’s what the people will say. That it’s just like the white men. They get in trouble, and they go out and buy an Indian.”

“So it’s not the best way. The question is, Will it work?” Daniel said. “We can worry about rebuilding community relations later. Especially since we don’t have any in the first place.”

Hart shrugged. “There’s always some people who’ll talk for money. Indians are no different than anybody else, that way.”

Daniel nodded. “And we have a source of money,” he said. “We don’t even have to tap the snitch fund.”

“What’s that?” Lucas asked.

“The Andretti family. When the word got out that we’d nailed Billy Hood, I got a call from old man Andretti himself, thanking us for our help . . . .” He frowned, remembering, and looked at Lucas. “Where’s Lily? I haven’t seen her.”

“She headed back to New York,” Lucas said. “She was done here.”

“God damn it, why didn’t she check out with me?” Daniel asked irritably. “Well, she’ll just have to come back.”

“What?”

“The Andrettis were happier’n hell about Hood, but apparently they’re no longer satisfied with getting what the old man calls ‘small fry.’ He’s convinced the NYPD that Lily should stay out here and observe until this whole crazy bunch is busted.”

“So she’s coming back?” Lucas asked, his breath suddenly coming harder.

“I expect she’ll be back tomorrow, as hot as the Andrettis are,” Daniel said. “But that’s neither here nor there. Anderson has started putting together some interview files . . . .”

Daniel kept talking, but Lucas lost track of what he was saying. A slow fire of anticipation spread though his chest and stomach. Lillian Rothenburg, NYPD. Lucas bit his lip and stared into a dark corner of Daniel’s office, as the chief rambled on.

Lily.

A moment later he realized Daniel had stopped talking and was staring at him.

“What?” asked Daniel.

“I got an idea,” Lucas said. “But I don’t want to talk about it.”

An hour after dark, Lucas found Elwood Stone standing under a streetlight on Lyndale Avenue. This time, Stone didn’t bother to run.

“What the fuck you want, Davenport?” Stone was wearing sunglasses and a brown leather bomber jacket. He looked like an advertisement for rent-a-thug. “I ain’t holding.”

Lucas handed him a deck of photographs. “You know this kid?”

Stone looked them over. “Maybe I seen him around,” he said.

“They call him Harry Dick?”

“Yeah. Maybe I seen him around,” Stone repeated. “What you want?”

“I don’t want anything, Elwood,” Lucas said. “I just want you to give the boy some credit on a couple of eight-balls.”

“Shit, man . . .” Stone turned away and looked up the street, doing a comic double-take in disbelief. “Man, I don’t give no credit, man. To a crackhead? You fuckin’ crazy?”

“Well, it’s like this, Elwood. Either you give Harry a little credit—and it’s got to be tomorrow—or I’ll talk to Narcotics and we’ll run your little round ass right off the street. We’ll have somebody in your back pocket every day.”

“Shit . . .”

“Or, I can have a talk with Narcotics and tell them you’re temporarily on my snitch list. I’ll give you some status for say . . . two months? How about that?”

“Why me?”

“ ’Cause I know you.”

Stone considered. If he went on the snitch list, he’d have virtual immunity from prosecution. It was an opportunity not to be missed, as long as nobody else found out.

“Okay,” Stone said after a moment. “But keep it between you and me. You don’t tell Narcotics, but if I get hassled, you jump in.”

Lucas nodded. “You got it.”

“So where do I find this motherfucker, Harry Dick? It’s not like I know where he lives.”

“We’ll spot him for you. You give me your beeper number and I’ll call you. Tomorrow. Probably early afternoon.”

Stone looked at him for another long minute, then nodded. “Right.”

CHAPTER

15

Lucas put a thousand dollars on the street between ten o’clock and noon, then headed out to the airport in a city car. Sloan called him on the way.

“He’s there,” Sloan said. “I talked to the next-door lady. She said he’s usually out of there in the early afternoon. Sleeps late, usually leaves between one and two. His mother’s gone out to South Dakota to see the old man.”

“All right. Keep an eye on the place,” Lucas said. “You got our friend’s number?”

“Yeah.”

“Lily’s plane’s on time, so I ought to hook up with you before one. If our boy goes for a walk before then, take him. No fuckin’ around.”

“Gotcha. Uh, our little Indian helper . . .”

“I’ll pick him up. Don’t worry about Larry.”

“He could be a problem, the way he’s talking,” Sloan warned.

“I’ll take care of it,” Lucas said.

Hart bitterly fought the idea of putting money on the street, and threatened to quit. Daniel went to the director of Welfare and Hart got a call.

When Lucas talked to him that morning, Hart seemed more sad than angry, but the anger was there too.

“This could fuck me forever, man,” Hart said. “With the Indian people.”

“They’re killing guys, Larry,” Lucas said. “We gotta stop it.”

“This is not right,” Hart said.

And when Lucas outlined the proposal to pick up Harold Richard Liss, Hart laughed in disbelief.

“Don’t fuck with me, Lucas,” he said. “You’re setting that boy up. You’re going to plant the stuff on him.”

“No, no, this is a legitimate tip,” Lucas lied.

“Bullshit, man . . .”

They’d left it like that, Hart heading down to Indian Country with a pocket full of cash and a growing anger. He could be handled, Lucas thought. He loved his job too much to risk it. He could be cooled out . . . .

Lily’s plane was early. He found her in the luggage pickup area, watching the carousel with the suppressed embarrassment of somebody who suspects she has been stood up.

“Jesus, I missed you at the gate,” Lucas said, hurrying over. She was wearing a beige silk blouse with a tweed skirt and jacket and dark leather high heels. She was beautiful and he had trouble saying the words.

“God damn it, Davenport,” she said.

“What?”

“Nothing. That was just a general ‘God damn it.’ About everything.” She rose on her tiptoes and pecked him on the cheek. “I didn’t want to come back.”

“Mmm.”

“There’s a bag,” she said. She stopped a suitcase and Lucas lifted it off the carousel. “And there’s the other, coming through now.”

Lily’s second bag came around, and Lucas grabbed the two of them and led the way to the parking ramp. On the way, he looked down at her and said, “How’ve you been?”

“About the same as I was yesterday,” she said with mild sarcasm, squinting as the outdoor light hit her face. “I was out of here. Finished. Job done. I got to our apartment, opened the door, and the phone was ringing. David was in the shower, so I picked it up. It was a deputy commissioner. He said, ‘What the fuck are you doing here?’ ”

“Nice guy,” Lucas said.

“If there were honorary degrees for assholes, he’d be a doctor of everything,” Lily said.

“How’s David?” Lucas asked, as though he knew her husband.

“Not so good the first time, ’cause he was a little overexcited. After that, he was great,” she said. She looked up at him and suddenly blushed.

“Women are no good at that kind of talk,” Lucas remarked. “But it wasn’t a bad try.”

They stopped at the gray Ford and Lily lifted an eyebrow.

“We got something going,” Lucas said. “In fact, we’re in kind of a hurry. I’ll tell you about it as we go along.”

Hart was worse. He’d tried to talk money with some of his acquaintances, and everything, he said, had changed. He’d be a pariah. The Indian man who bought people. And he worried about Harold Richard Liss.

“Man, I don’t like this, I don’t like this.” He sat in the backseat, twisting his hands. Tears ran down his face. He wiped them away with the sleeve of his tweed jacket.

“He’s a fuckin’ criminal, Larry,” said Lucas, annoyed. “Jesus Christ, quit whining.”

“I’m not whining, man, I’m . . .”

Lucas let the Ford idle along. A hundred yards ahead, Harold Richard Liss ambled down Lake Street looking in the store windows. “He was making money selling chloroform to little kids. And glue,” Lucas said, interrupting.

“This still isn’t right, man. He’s a fuckin’ teenager.” Hart shivered.

“It’s only for a couple of days,” Lucas said.

“It still isn’t right.”

“Larry . . .” Lucas started in exasperation. Lily touched his shoulder to stop him and turned and looked over the seat.

“There’s a big difference between Welfare work and police work,” she said to Hart, keeping her face and voice soft and sympathetic. “In a lot of ways, we’re on different sides. I think you’d be more comfortable if we just dropped you off.”

“We might need his help,” Lucas objected, glancing sideways at Lily.

“I won’t be much help, man,” Hart said. There was a new note in his voice, the sound of a trapped man who sensed an opening. “I mean, I spotted him for you. I don’t know shit about surveillance. It’s not like you need to interrogate him.”

Lucas thought about it, sighed and picked up the radio. “Hey, Sloan, this is Davenport. You still got him?”

Sloan came back: “Yeah, no sweat. What’s happening?”

“I’m dropping Larry. Don’t worry when you see us stop.”

“Sure. I’ll hang with Harry.”

Lucas pulled over to the side and Hart scrambled to get out. “Thanks, man,” he said, leaning over the driver’s side window. “I mean, I’m sorry . . . .”

“That’s okay, Larry. We’ll see you back downtown,” Lucas said.

“Sure, man. And thanks, Lily.”

They pulled away from the curb and Lucas turned to Lily. “I hope we don’t need him to talk to the guy.”

“We won’t. Like he said, you’re not planning to interrogate him.”

“Hmph.”

Lucas watched Hart in his rearview mirror. Hart was peering after them as they continued down the street after Harry. Then Hart turned and walked away, around a corner. Up ahead, Harry stopped on the street corner to talk to a fat white man in a black parka. The parka was a full season too big, the kind you wore in January when the temperature went down to minus thirty. Harry and the white man exchanged a few words, the white man shook his head and Harry started pleading. The white man shook his head again and stepped away. Harry said something else and then turned, despondent, and started down the street again.

“Dealer,” said Lily.

“Yeah. Donny Ellis. He wears that parka ’til June, puts it back on in September. He pisses in it, never washes. You don’t want to get downwind of him.”

“This is going to be stupid, Lucas . . . . Nobody ever sold anybody that much crack on credit. Especially not . . .”

“Hey, we don’t have to convince anybody. It’s just . . . Okay, there’s Stone . . . .” Lucas picked up the radio and said, “Stone just came around the corner.”

“I got him,” Sloan said.

Lucas looked at Lily. “You know what? We should have gotten rid of Larry sooner than we did. He’s the kind of guy who might go to the Human Rights Commission.”

“Maybe, but I don’t think so. That’s why he was sweating,” she said. She was watching as Elwood Stone walked toward Harry Dick, who was still shambling along the sidewalk. “It’s not like we’re going to do anything with the Liss kid. Hold him a couple of days and then kick him out of the system. My sense of Larry Hart is that his career means everything to him. He’s a success. He makes some money. People like him. They depend on him. If he went outside with this, he’d be on the city’s shit list. End of career. Back to the res. I don’t think he’d risk that. Not if we kick the kid back out on the street after a couple of days.”

“Okay.”

“But it will make him feel like a small piece of shit,” Lily added. “We whipsawed him between his job and his people and he’s smart enough to see that. He’ll never trust you again.”

“I know,” Lucas said uncomfortably. “God damn, I hate to burn people.”

“Professionally, or personally?”

“What?” Lucas asked, puzzled by the question.

“I mean, you hate to burn a guy because it loses a contact, or because it loses a friend?”

He thought about it and after a minute said, “I don’t know.” Up the street, Harry spotted Elwood Stone and quickened his step. Stone was one of the tightest dealers on the street, but it never hurt to ask. All he needed was a taste. Just a taste to tide him over.

“They’re talking,” Sloan said on the radio. “That goddamn Stone is shuckin’ like he’s on Broadway.”

“I told him not to overdo it,” Lucas muttered to Lily. Lucas had pulled into a parking place and couldn’t see well from the driver’s side. He crowded against Lily, who had her face pressed against the passenger-side window, and let his hand drop on her thigh.

“Watch it.”

“What?”

“The hand, Davenport . . .”

“God damn it, Lily.”

“It’s going down,” she said.

“It’s going down,” Sloan said. “He’s got it.”

“Let’s take him,” Lucas said.

Sloan came in from the west, Lucas from the east. Sloan pulled into the curb ahead of Harry, Lucas did a U-turn into a fire-hydrant zone behind him. Harry was still grinning, still had his hand in his jacket pocket, when Sloan hopped out of his car. He was inside fifteen feet before Harry figured out something was happening. He turned to run and almost bumped into Lucas, who was closing in from behind. Lily stayed in the street, blocking a dash to the side. Lucas grabbed Harry by the coat collar and said, “Whoa.” A second later, Sloan had him by the arm.

“Hey, man,” Harry started, but he knew he had been bagged.

“Come on, on the wall,” Lucas said, “on the wall.” They pushed him onto the wall. Sloan frisked him and found the baggies in his pocket.

“Holy shit,” Sloan said. “We got us a dealer.”

He opened his palm to Lucas, showed him the two eight-balls.

“I’m no fuckin’ dealer, man . . . .”

“A quarter-ounce of dog-white cocaine,” Lucas said to Harry. “That’s a dealer load, kid. That’s presumptive prison term.”

“I’m a juvenile, man, look at my ID.” Harry was old enough to be worried.

“You don’t get no juvenile break on a presumptive-dealer rap,” Lucas said. “Not unless you’re ten years old. You look older than that.”

“Oh, man,” Harry moaned. “I just got it, a guy give it to me . . . .”

“Right,” Sloan said skeptically. “He gave it to you all right. He gave it to you right in the ass.” He cranked down one arm while Lucas hung onto the other, and Sloan put on his handcuffs. “You got the right to remain silent . . .”

Daniel wanted to push as hard as they could. If they waited, he thought, Len Meadows would get Liss’ family organized and protected.

“You can fly out to Sioux Falls and rent a car . . .” Daniel started.

“Fuck fly,” Lucas said. “I’m driving. We’ll be there in four hours. We wouldn’t get there any faster if we waited for an airplane and then drove up from Sioux Falls.”

“Are you going?” Daniel raised an eyebrow and looked at Lily.

“Yeah. We’ll be dealing with this Louise Liss. Maybe a woman would do it better.”

“Okay. But take it easy with the Liss woman, will you? This whole thing is a little shaky. Larry Hart is shitting bricks. He’s scared,” Daniel said. “Worse than that, he’s pissed off.”

“Can you talk to him?”

“I already did and I’ll go back with him again. I’ll tell him if we squeeze anything out of Liss, we can probably send him back to work at Welfare . . . .”

They took overnight bags to Brookings. If they didn’t get the information the first night, there wouldn’t be much point in staying a second.

“Your friend . . . Jennifer. She’s in Brookings, right?”

“Yeah. They sent out a crew. She’s producing.” They were crossing the Minnesota River at Shakopee. A flock of Canada geese were standing on the riverbank, watching the water go by. Lucas said, “Geese.”

“Mmm. Will you stay with her?”

“What?”

“Jennifer. Will you stay with her?”

Lucas downshifted as they came into town and rolled up to a stoplight. He glanced at her, then turned right on the red light. “No. I’d rather that she not know I was there. She has a way of reading my mind. If she sees me, she’ll know something is up.”

“Do you know where she’s staying?”

“Sure. It’s out by the interstate that comes up from Sioux Falls. The Brookings cops told me that Louise Liss is staying in a place downtown. I thought we’d check in there.”

They were going through the town of Sleepy Eye on Highway 14 when they passed a man on bicycle, dressed in cycling clothes: a green-striped polo shirt, black cycling shorts, white helmet. It was cool, but his bare legs were exposed and pumped like machine pistons. Lucas estimated that he was breaking the speed limit through the downtown.

“He looks like David,” Lily said. “My husband.”

“David’s a cyclist?”

“Yeah. He was pretty serious about it, once.” She turned her head to watch the cyclist as they went by. “He’d go out every Saturday with a group of people and they’d ride centuries. Sometimes two. A century’s a hundred miles.”

“Jesus. He must be in great shape.”

“Yeah.” She was watching the storefronts in the tiny town. “Bicycles bore the shit out of me, to tell you the truth. They always break down, then you’ve got to fix them. Or they’re not broken, then you’ve got to fiddle with them to get them tuned up exactly right. The tires go flat all the time.”

“That’s why I bought a Porsche,” Lucas said.

“A Porsche’s probably cheaper too,” Lily said. “Those goddamned racing bikes cost a fortune. And you can’t have just one.”

A few minutes later, back in the countryside, they passed a herd of black-and-white dairy cows.

“Neat cows,” she said. “What kind are they?”

“Beats the hell out me,” Lucas said.

“What?” she said in amusement. “You’re from Minnesota. You ought to know about cows.”

“That’s the cheeseheads over in Wisconsin who know about cows. I’m a city kid,” he said. “If I had to guess, I’d say they’re Holsteins.”

“Why’s that?”

“ ’Cause that’s the only cow name I know. Wait a minute. There’s also Guernseys and Jerseys. But I don’t think they’re the spotted ones.”

“Brown Swiss,” Lily said.

“What?”

“That’s a kind of cow.”

“I thought that was a kind of cheese,” Lucas said.

“I don’t think so . . . . There’s another bunch.” She watched a herd of cows ambling down the pasture toward the barn, walking in ones and twos, like tourists coming back to a bus, shadows trailing behind them. “David knows the names of everything. You drive up toward the mountains and you say, ‘What’s that tree?’ And he says, ‘That’s a white oak,’ or, ‘That’s a Douglas fir.’ I used to think he was bullshitting me, so I started checking. He was always right.”

“I don’t think I could stand it,” Lucas said.

“He’s really smart,” she said. “He might be the smartest man I ever knew well.”

“Sounds like fuckin’ Mahatma Gandhi.”

“What?”

“You once told me he was the gentlest man you ever knew. Now you say he’s the smartest.”

“He’s really quite the guy.”

“Yeah, I doubt Gandhi rode a racing bike, so he’s one up . . .”

“I don’t think I want to talk about this anymore.”

“All right.”

But a few minutes later she said, “Sometimes, I don’t know . . .”

“What?”

“He’s so centered. David is. Peaceful. Sometimes . . .”

“It bores the shit out of you,” Lucas suggested.

“No, no . . . I just feel like I’m so taken care of, I can’t hardly stand the weight of it. He’s such a good guy. And I hang out at the refrigerator and eat too much and I walk around with a gun and I’ve shot people . . . . He was freaked out when I went back home. I mean, he wanted to know all about it. He had this friend come over, a shrink, Shirley Anstein, to make sure I was all right. He was wild when he heard I was coming back. He said I was damaging myself.”

“You think he’s screwing this Anstein broad?”

“Shirley?” She laughed. “I don’t think so. She’s about sixty-eight. She’s like an adoptive mother.”

“He’s faithful, then.”

“Oh, yeah. He’s so faithful it’s almost like it’s part of the weight on me. I can’t even get away from that.”

“Walnut Grove,” Lily said, looking at a highway sign as they rolled through the edge of another small town. The sun was dipping toward the horizon. It’d be dark before they got to Brookings. “When I was a kid, I used to read the Laura Ingalls Wilder books. I loved them. Then they put the TV show on, you know, Little House on the Prairie. I was grown-up and the show was pretty bad, but I watched anyway, because of Laura . . . . The show was set in a place called Walnut Grove.”

“This is it,” Lucas said.

“What?” Lily looked at the sign again. “Same place?”

“Sure.”

“Jesus . . .” She looked out the windows as they went through and saw a small prairie town, a little shabby, very quiet, with side streets that Huckleberry Finn would have been comfortable on. When they were out of the town, she still looked back, and said, “Walnut Grove . . . Damn. You know, given the change in time, it looks right.”

They found Louise Liss through the Brookings Police Department and went to her motel. She was in the coffee shop, sitting by herself, staring into a glass of Coke. She was overweight, worn, with tired eyes now rimmed with red. She’d been crying, Lucas thought.

“This’ll be bad,” Lily muttered.

“Let’s get her down to her room,” Lucas said.

“I’ll talk,” Lily said.

They closed in the last few steps to the table and Lily took her ID case from her purse. “Mrs. Liss?”

Louise Liss looked up. Her eyes were flat, dazed. “Who are you?”

“We’re police, Mrs. Liss. I’m Lily Rothenburg and this is Lucas Davenport from Minneapolis . . . .”

“I’m not supposed to talk to police,” Louise said defensively. “Mr. Meadows said I wasn’t supposed . . .”

“Mrs. Liss, we don’t want to talk about your husband. We want to talk about your son, Harold.” Lily sounded like somebody’s mother, Lucas thought, then remembered that she was.

“Harold?” Louise reached out and gripped the Coke, her knuckles turning white. “What happened to Harold? Harold’s okay, I talked to him before I left . . . .”

“I think we should talk in your room . . . .” Lily took several steps away from the table and Louise slipped out of the booth, following.

“Your purse,” Lucas said.

She reached back to get her purse, saying, “What happened, what happened?” And she started to cry. The cashier was watching them. Lucas handed him three dollars, flashed his badge and said, “Police.”

Outside the coffee shop, they turned toward the room. Louise grabbed Lily’s coat and said, “Please . . .”

“He was arrested on cocaine charges, Mrs. Liss.”

“Cocaine . . .” She suddenly pulled herself together and looked at Lucas; her voice rose to a screech. “You did this, didn’t you? You framed my boy to get at John.”

“No, no,” Lucas said as he tried to keep her walking toward her room. “He’ll tell you himself. The Narcotics people saw him touch a dealer. They stopped him and found two eight-balls in his pockets . . . .”