Текст книги "Lucas Davenport Novels 1-5"

Автор книги: John Sandford

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Текущая страница: 88 (всего у книги 105 страниц)

CHAPTER

4

Lucas followed Carr down the dark, snow-packed highway. A logging truck, six huge logs chained to the trailer, pelted past them and enveloped them in a hurricane of loose snow. Carr got his right wheels in the deep snow on the shoulder, nearly didn’t make it out. A minute later, a snowplow pushed glumly past them, then a pod of snowmobiles.

He leaned over the steering wheel, tense, peering into the dark. The night seemed to eat up their headlights. They got past the snowplow and the highway opened up for a moment. He groped in the storage bin under the arm rest, found a tape, shoved it in the tape player. Joe Cocker came up, singing “Black-Eyed Blues.”

Lucas felt like he was waking from an opium dream, spiderwebs and dust blowing off his brain. He’d come back from New York and a brutal manhunt. In Minneapolis, he’d found . . . nothing. Nothing to do but work for money and amuse himself.

In September he’d left the Cities for two weeks of muskie fishing at his Wisconsin cabin east of Hayward. He’d never gone back. He’d called, kept in touch with his programmers, but could never quite get back to the new office. The latest in desktop computers waited for him, a six-hundred-dollar swivel chair, an art print on the wall beside the mounted muskie.

He’d stayed in the north and fought the winter. October had been cold. On Halloween, a winter storm had blown in from the southern Rockies. Before it was done, there were twenty inches of snow on the ground, with drifts five and six feet high.

The cold continued through November, with little flurries and the occasional nasty squall. Two or three inches of new snow accumulated almost every week. Then, on the Friday after Thanksgiving, another major storm swept through, dumping a foot of additional snow. The local papers called it Halloween II and reported that half the winter snowplow budget had been used. Winter was still four weeks away.

December was cold, with off-and-on snow. Then, on January second and third, a blizzard swept the North Woods. Halloween III. When it ended, thirty-four more inches of snow had been piled on the rest. The drifts lapped around the eaves of lakeside cabins.

People said, “Well you shoulda been here back in . . .” But nobody had seen anything like it, ever.

And after the blizzard departed, the cold rang down.

On the night of the third, the thermometer on his cabin deck fell to minus twenty-nine. The following day, the temperature struggled up to minus twenty: schools were closed everywhere, the radio warned against anything but critical travel. On this night, the temperature in Ojibway County would plunge to minus thirty-two.

Almost nothing moved. A rogue logging truck, a despondent snowplow, a few snowmobile freaks. Cop cars. The outdoors was dangerous; so cold as to be weird.

He’d been napping on the couch in front of the fireplace when he first heard the pounding. He’d sat up, instantly alert, afraid that it might be the furnace. But the pounding stopped. He frowned, wondered if he might have imagined it. Rolled to his feet, walked to the basement stairs, listened. Nothing. Stepped to the kitchen window. He saw the truck in the driveway and a second later the front doorbell rang. Ah. Whoever it was had been pounding on the garage door.

He went to the door, curious. The temperature was well into the minus twenties. He looked through the window inset in the door. A cop, wearing a Russian hat with the ear flaps down.

“Yeah?” Lucas didn’t recognize the uniform parka.

“Man, we gotta big problem over in Ojibway County. The sheriff sent me over to see if you could come back and take a look at it. At least three people murdered.”

“C’mon in. How’d you know about me?”

Lacey stepped inside, looked around. Books, a few wildlife watercolors on the walls, a television and stereo, pile of embers in the fireplace, the smell of clean-burning pine. “Sheriff read that story in the Milwaukee Journal ’bout you in New York, and about living up here. He called around down to Minneapolis and they said you were up here, so he called the Sawyer County sheriff and found out where you live. And here I am.”

“Bad night,” Lucas said.

“You don’t know the half of it,” said Lacey. “So cold.”

Carr’s taillights blinked, then came up, and he slowed and then stopped, turned on his blinkers. Lucas closed up behind, stopped. Carr was on the highway, walking around to the front of his truck.

Lucas opened his door and stepped out: “You okay?”

“Got a tree down,” Carr yelled back.

Lucas let the engine run, shut the door, hustled around Carr’s truck. The cold had split a limb off a maple tree and it had fallen across the roadside ditch and halfway across the right traffic lane. Carr grabbed the thickest part of it, gave it a tug, moved it a foot. Lucas joined him, and together they dragged it off the road.

“Cold,” Carr said, and they hurried back to their trucks.

Weather, Lucas thought. Her image popped up in his mind as he started after Carr again. Now that might be an efficient way to warm up, he thought. He’d been off women for a while, and was beginning to feel the loss.

Grant appeared as a collection of orange sodium-vapor streetlights, followed by a Pines Motel sign, then a Hardee’s and a Unocal station, an LP gas company and a video-rental store with a yellow-light marquee. The sheriff turned right at the only traffic light, led him through the three-block-long business district, took a left at a half-buried stop sign and headed up a low hill. On the left was a patch of pines that might have been a park.

A white clapboard church stood at the top of the hill, surrounded by a grove of red pine, with a small cemetery in back. The sheriff drove past the church and stopped in the street in front of a small brick house with lighted windows.

Lucas caught a sign in his headlights: RECTORY. Below that, in cursive letters, REV. PHILIP BERGEN. He pulled in behind Carr, killed the engine, and stepped down from the truck. The air was so cold and dry that he felt as though his skin were being sandpapered. When he breathed, he could feel ice crystals forming on his chin and under his nose.

“That logging truck almost did us,” Lucas said as Carr walked back from his Suburban. Gouts of steam poured from their mouths and noses.

“Gol-darned fool. I called back and told somebody to pull him over,” Carr said. “Give him a breath test, slow him down.” And as they started across the street, he added, “I’m not looking forward to this.”

They scuffed through the snow on the rectory walk, up to the covered porch. Carr pushed the doorbell, then dropped his head and bounced on his toes. A man came to the door, peered out the window, then opened it.

“Shelly, what happened out there?” Bergen held the door open, glanced curiously at Lucas, and said, “They’re dead?”

“Yeah, um . . . let’s get our boots off, we gotta talk,” Carr said. “This is our new deputy, Lucas Davenport.”

Bergen nodded, peered at Lucas, a wrinkle forming on his forehead, between his eyes. “Pleased to meet you.”

The priest was close to fifty, a square, fleshy Scandinavian with blond hair and a permanently doubtful look on his pale face. He wore a wool Icelandic sweater and black slacks, and was in his stocking feet. His words, when he spoke, had a softness to them, a roundness, and Lucas thought that Bergen would not be a fire-and-brimstone preacher, but a mother’s-milk sort.

Lucas and Carr dumped their pac boots in the front hallway and walked in stocking feet down a short hall, past a severe Italianate crucifix with a bronze Jesus, to the living room. Carr peeled off his snowmobile suit and Lucas dumped his parka next to a plain wood chair, and sat down.

“So what happened?” Bergen said. He leaned on the mantel over a stone fireplace, where the remnants of three birch logs smoldered behind a glass door. A Sacred Heart print of the Virgin Mary peered over his shoulder.

“There was an odd thing out there.” Carr dropped the suit on the floor, then settled on the edge of an overstuffed chair. He put his elbows on his knees, laced his fingers, leaning toward the priest.

“Yes?” Bergen frowned.

“When I called, you said the LaCourts were okay when you left.”

“Yes, they were fine,” Bergen said, his head bobbing. He was assured, innocent. “They didn’t seem nervous. How were they killed, anyway? Is it possible that one of them . . .” He answered his own question, shaking his head. “No, not them.”

“A fireman saw your Jeep passing the station,” Carr continued. “A few seconds later the fire call came in. When the firemen got there, maybe five or six minutes later, it appeared that the LaCourts had been dead for some time. A half hour, maybe more.”

“That’s not possible,” Bergen said promptly. He straightened, looked from Lucas to Carr, a shadow in his eyes. Suspicion. “Shelly . . . you don’t think I was involved?”

“No, no, we’re just trying to straighten this out.”

“So what were they doing when you left?” Lucas asked.

Bergen stared at him, then said, “You’re the homicide fellow who lives over in Sawyer County. The man who was fired from Minneapolis.”

“What were you doing?” Lucas repeated.

“Shelly?” The priest looked at the sheriff, who looked away.

“We’ve got to figure this out, Phil.”

“Mr. Davenport is a mercenary, isn’t he?” Bergen asked, looking again at Lucas.

“We need him, Phil,” Carr said, almost pleading now. “We’ve got nobody else who can do it. And he’s a good Catholic boy.”

“What were you doing?” Lucas asked a third time. He put glass in his voice, a cutting edge.

The priest pursed his lips, moving them in and out, considering both Lucas and the question, then sighed and said, “When I left, they were fine. There was not a hint of a problem. I came right back here, and I was still here when Shelly called.”

“The firemen say there’s no mistaking the time,” Lucas said. “They’re certain.”

“I’m certain, too,” Bergen snapped.

Lucas: “How long were you there at the house?”

“Fifteen minutes, something like that,” Bergen said. He’d turned himself to face Lucas more directly.

“Did you eat anything?”

“Cupcakes. A glass of milk,” Bergen said.

“Were the cupcakes hot?”

“No, but as a matter of fact, she was frosting them while we talked.”

“When you left, did you stop anywhere on the way out? Even pause?”

“No.”

“So you went right out to your Jeep, got in, drove as fast as seemed reasonable to get out of the road.”

“Well . . . I probably fiddled around in the Jeep for a minute before I left, a minute or two,” Bergen said. He knew where they were going, and began to stretch the time. “But I didn’t see any sign of trouble before I left.”

“Was the television on?” Lucas asked.

“Mmm, no, I don’t think so.”

“How about the radio?”

“No. We were talking,” Bergen said.

“Was there a newspaper on the table?”

“I just can’t remember,” Bergen said, his voice rising. “What are these questions?”

“Can you remember anything that would be peculiar to this day, that you saw inside the LaCourt house, that might still be there, that might have survived the fire? A book sitting on a table? Anything?”

“Well . . .” The priest scratched the side of his nose. “No, not particularly. I’ll think about it. There must be something.”

“Did you look at the clock when you got home?”

“No. But I hadn’t been here long when Shelly called.”

Lucas looked at Carr. “Shelly, could you call in and have somebody patch you through to the LaCourt house, and tell somebody to go into the kitchen and check to see if there was a bowl of frosting.”

He turned his head back to Bergen: “Was the frosting in a bowl or out of one of those cans?”

“Bowl.”

To Carr: “ . . . check and see if there was a frosting bowl or a cupcake tin in the sink or around the table.”

“Sure.”

“She might have washed the dishes,” Bergen suggested.

“There couldn’t have been too much time,” Lucas said.

“Use the office phone, Shelly,” the priest said to Carr.

He and Lucas watched the sheriff pad down the hall, then Lucas asked, “Did Frank LaCourt come outside when you left?”

“No. He said good-bye at the door. At the kitchen table, actually. Claudia came to the door. Did you go to Catholic schools?”

“Through high school,” Lucas said.

“Is this what they taught you? To interrogate priests?”

“Your being a priest doesn’t cut any ice with me,” Lucas said. “You’ve seen all the scandals these last few years. That stuff was out there for years and you guys hid it. There were a half a dozen gay brothers at my school and everybody knew it. And they affected more than a few kids.”

Bergen stared at him for a moment, then half-turned and shook his head.

“Was Frank LaCourt wearing outdoor clothing or look like he was getting ready to go outside?” Lucas asked, returning to the questions.

“No.” Bergen was subdued now, his voice gone dark.

“Did you see anyone else there?”

“No.”

“Did Frank have a pair of snowshoes around?” Lucas asked.

“Not that I saw.”

“Did you see any snowshoe tracks outside the door?”

“No.” Bergen shook his head. “I didn’t. But it was snowing.”

“Did you pass any cars on the way out?”

“No. How far is it from the corner by the firehouse back to LaCourts’?”

“One-point-one miles,” Lucas said.

Bergen shook his head. “I’m a careful driver. I said it took a minute or two to get out to the corner, but two minutes would be thirty miles an hour. I wasn’t doing thirty. I was probably going a lot slower than that. And I was pulling my trailer.”

“Snowmobile?”

“Yes, I’d been out with the club, the Grant Scramblers, you can check with them.”

Carr came back: “They’re looking,” he said. “They’ll call back.”

Lucas looked at Carr. “If we have somebody waiting for Father Bergen to leave, and if he lures Frank LaCourt outside somehow, right away, kills him, then kills the other two, burns the place immediately and gets out, in a frenzy, and if you build a little extra time in between the firemen’s arrival at the place and finding the bodies—we could almost make it.”

Carr looked at Bergen, who seemed to ponder what Lucas had said. He’d chosen Lucas as the enemy, but now Lucas had changed direction.

“Okay,” Carr said, nodding. To Bergen: “I hated to hit you with it, Phil, but there did seem to be a problem. We can probably figure it out. When you were there, what were you talking about? I mean, it’s not confessional stuff, is it? I . . .”

“Actually, we were talking about the Tuesday services and the concept of an exchange with Home Baptist. I wanted to get some ground rules straight.”

“Oh.” Now Carr looked uncomfortable. “Well, we can figure that out later.”

“What’s all this about?” Lucas asked.

“Church stuff, an argument that’s going around,” Carr said.

“Could somebody get killed over it?”

Bergen was startled. “Good grief, no! You might not get invited to a party, but you wouldn’t get killed.”

Carr glanced at him, frowned. The phone rang down the hallway, and the priest said, “Let me get that.” A moment later he returned with a portable handset and passed it to Carr. “For you.”

Carr took it, said, “This is the sheriff,” then, “Yeah.” He listened for a moment, said, “Okay, okay, and I’ll see you out there in a bit . . . okay.” He pushed the clear button and turned to Lucas: “There was a bowl in the sink that could have been used to make frosting. No frosting in it, but it was the right kind of bowl.”

“Like I told you,” said Bergen.

“Okay,” Lucas said.

“If we’re done here, I’m going back out to the LaCourt place,” Carr said. He picked up his snowmobile suit and began pulling it over his feet. “I’m sorry we bothered you, Phil, but we had to ask.”

“These killings are . . . grotesque,” the priest said, shaking his head. “Obscene. I’ll start thinking about a funeral service, something to say to the town.”

“That’ll be a while yet. We’ll have to send them down to Milwaukee for autopsies,” Carr said. “I’ll stay in touch.”

When they were outside again, Carr asked, “Are you coming back out to LaCourts’?”

Lucas shook his head. “Nah. There’s nothing there for me. I’d suggest you button the place up. Post some deputies to keep out the curiosity-seekers and coyotes, and wait for the Madison guys.”

“I’ll do that. Actually, I could do it from here, but . . . politics.” He was apologetic. “I gotta be out there a lot the next couple of days.”

Lucas nodded. “Same way in the Cities.”

“How about Phil? What do you think?”

“I don’t know,” Lucas said. Far away, somebody started a chain saw. They both turned to look up the street toward the sound, but there was nothing visible but garage and yard lights. The sound was an abrasive underline to the conversation. “We still don’t have enough time. Not really. The bowl thing hardly clears him. But who knows? Maybe a big gust of wind scoured off the roof and put that snow on LaCourt in two minutes.”

“Could be,” Carr said.

“This Baptist thing—that’s no big deal?” Lucas asked.

“It’s a bigger deal than he was making it,” Carr said. “What do you know about Pentecostals?”

“Nothing.”

“Pentecostals believe in direct contact with God. The Catholic Church has taught that only the Church is a reliable interpreter of God’s word. The Church doesn’t trust the idea of direct access. Too many bad things have come of it in the past. But some Catholics—more and more all the time—believe you can have a valid experience.”

“Yeah?” Lucas had been out of touch.

“Baptists rely on direct access. Some of the local Pentecostal Catholics, like Claudia, were talking about getting together with some of the Baptists to share the Spirit.”

“That sounds pretty serious,” Lucas said. The cold was beginning to filter through the edges of the parka, and he flexed his shoulders.

“But nobody would kill because of it. Not unless there’s a nut that I don’t know about,” Carr said. “Phil was upset about Claudia talking to Home Baptist, but they were friends.”

“How about Frank? Was he a friend of Bergen’s?”

“Frank was Chippewa,” said Carr. He stamped his feet, and looked back in the direction of the irritating chain saw. “He thought Christianity was amusing. But he and Phil were friendly enough.”

“Okay.”

“So what are you gonna do now?” Carr asked.

“Bag out in a motel. I brought clothes for a couple of days. We can get organized tomorrow morning. You can pick some people, and I’ll get them started. We’ll need four or five. We’ll want to talk to the LaCourts’ friends, kids at school, some people out at the Res. And I’ll want to talk to these fire guys.”

“Okay. See you in the morning, then,” Carr said. The sheriff headed for his Suburban and muttered, mostly to himself, “Lord, what a mess.”

“Hey, Sheriff?”

“Yeah?” Carr turned back.

“Pentecostal. I don’t mean to sound impolite, but really—isn’t that something like Holy Rollers?”

After a moment Carr, looking over his shoulder, nodded and said, “Something like that.”

“How come you know so much about them?”

“I am one,” Carr said.

CHAPTER

5

The morning broke bitterly cold. The clouds had cleared and a low-angle, razor-sharp sunshine cut through the red pines that sheltered the motel. Lucas, stiff from a too-short bed and a too-fat pillow, zipped his parka, pulled on his gloves and stepped outside. His face was soft and warm from shaving; the air was an icy slap.

The oldest part of Grant was built on a hill across the highway from the motel, small gray houses with backyard clotheslines awash in the snow. Wavering spires of gray woodsmoke curled up from two hundred tin chimneys, and the corrosive smell of burning oak bark shifted through town like a dirty tramp.

Lucas had grown up in Minneapolis, had learned to fish along the urban Mississippi, in the shadow of smokestacks and powerlines and six-lane bridges, with oil cans, worn-out tires and dead carp sharing space on the mud flats. When he began making serious money as an adult, he’d bought a cabin on a quiet lake in Wisconsin’s North Woods. And started learning about small towns.

About the odd comforts and discomforts of knowing everyone; of talking to people who had roads, lakes, and entire townships named after their families. People who made their living in the woods, guiding tourists, growing Christmas trees, netting suckers and trapping crawdads for bait.

Not Minneapolis, but he liked it.

He yawned and walked down to his truck, squinting against the sun, the new snow crunching underfoot. A friendly, familiar weight pulled at his left side. The parka made a waist holster impractical, so he’d hung his .45 in a shoulder rig. The pistol simply felt right. It had been a while since he’d carried one. He touched the coat’s zipper tag with his left hand, pulled it down an inch, then grinned to himself. Rehearsing. Not that he’d need it.

Ojibway County wasn’t Minneapolis. If someone came after him in Ojibway County, he’d bring a deer rifle or a shotgun, not some bullshit .22 hideout piece. And if somebody came with a scoped .30-06, the .45 would be about as useful as a rock. Still, it felt good. He touched the zipper tag again with his left hand and mentally slipped the right hand into the coat.

The truck had been sitting in the brutal cold overnight, but the motel provided post outlets for oil-pan heaters. Lucas unplugged the extension cord from both the post and the truck, tossed the cord in the back seat, cranked up the engine and let it run while he went down to the motel office for a cup of free coffee.

“Cold,” he said to the hotel owner.

“Any colder, I’d have to bring my brass monkey inside,” the man said. He’d been honing the line all morning. “Have a sweet roll, too, we got a deal on them.”

“Thanks.”

Cold air was still pouring from the truck’s heater vents when Lucas returned to it, balancing the coffee and sweet roll. He shut the fan off and headed into town.

There were only two real possibilities with the LaCourt killings, he thought. They were done by a stranger, a traveling killer, as part of a robbery, picked out because the house was isolated. Or they were done for a reason. The fire suggested a reason. A traveler would have hauled Frank LaCourt’s body inside, locked the doors, turned off the lights, and left. He might be days away before the murders were uncovered. With the fire, he couldn’t have been more than fifteen or twenty minutes away.

A local guy who set a fire meant either a psychotic arsonist—unlikely—or that something was being covered. Something that pointed at the killer. Fingerprints. Semen. Personal records. Or might the fire have been set to distract the investigation?

The gun he’d found with Claudia LaCourt, unfired, suggested that the LaCourts knew something was happening, but they hadn’t called 9-1-1. The situation may have been somewhat ambiguous . . . Huh.

And the girl with the missing ear might have been interrogated. Another suggestion that something was going on.

The image of the ear in the Ziploc bag popped into his mind. Carr had bent and retched because he was human, as the LaCourt girl had once been. She’d been alive at this time yesterday, chatting with her friends on the telephone, watching television, trying on clothes. Making plans. Now she was a charred husk.

And to Lucas, she was an abstraction: a victim. Did that make him less than human? He half-smiled at the introspective thought; he tried to stay away from introspection. Bad for the health.

But in truth he didn’t feel much for Lisa LaCourt. He’d seen too many dead children. Babies in garbage cans, killed by their parents; toddlers beaten and maimed; thirteen-year-olds who shot each other with a zealous enthusiasm scraped right off the TV screen. Not that their elders were much better. Wives killed with fists, husbands killed with hammers, homosexuals slashed to pieces in frenzies of sexual jealousy. After a while it all ran together.

On the other hand, he thought, if it were Sarah . . . His mouth straightened into a thin line. He couldn’t put his daughter together with the images of violent death that he’d collected over the years. They simply would not fit. But Sarah was almost ready for school now, she’d be moving out into the bigger world.

His knuckles were white on the steering wheel. He shook off the thought and looked out the window.

Grant’s Main Street was a three-block row of slightly shabby storefronts, elbow to elbow, like a town in the old west. The combinations that would have been strange in other places were typical for the North Woods: a Laundromat-bookstore-bar, an Indian souvenir store-computer outlet, a satellite dish-plumber. There were two bakeries, a furniture store, a scattering of insurance agents and real estate dealers, a couple of lawyers. The county courthouse was a low rambling building of fieldstone and steel at the end of Main. A cluster of sheriff’s trucks sat in a parking lot in back and Lucas wheeled in beside them. A Bronco with an unfamiliar EYE3 logo was parked in a visitor’s slot by the door.

A deputy coming out nodded at him, said, “Mornin’,” and politely held the door. The sheriff’s outer office was behind a second door, decorated with curling DARE antidrug posters and the odors of aging nicotine and bad nerves. A reporter and a cameraman were slumped in green leatherette chairs scarred with cigarette burns and what looked like razor cuts. The reporter was working on her lipstick with a gold compact and a small red brush. She looked up when Lucas stepped in. He nodded and she nodded back. A steel door and a bulletproof glass window were set in the wall opposite the reporter. Lucas went to the window, looked at the empty desk behind it, and pushed the call button next to the window.

“It’ll just piss them off,” the reporter said. She had a tapered fox-face with a tiny chin, big eyes and wide cheekbones, as though she’d been especially bred for television. She rubbed her lips together, then snapped the compact shut, dropped it in her purse, and gave him a reflexive smile. The cameraman was asleep.

“Yeah? Where’re you guys from?” Lucas asked. The reporter was very pretty, with her mobile eyes and trained expressions, like a latter-day All-American geisha girl. Weather could never work for television, he thought. Her features were too distinctive. Could be a movie star, though.

“Milwaukee,” she said. “Are you with the Star-Tribune?”

“Nope.” He shook his head, giving her nothing.

“A cop?” The reporter perked up.

“An interested onlooker,” Lucas said, grinning at her. “Lots of reporters around?”

“I guess so,” she said, a frown flitting across her face. “I heard Eight talking on their radios, so they’re up here somewhere, and I heard the Strib came in last night. Probably out at the lake. Are you one of the lab people from Madison?”

“No,” Lucas said.

A harried middle-aged woman bustled up behind the glass, peered through, and said, “Davenport?”

“Yes.” The reporter was wearing perfume. Something slightly fruity.

“I’ll buzz you in,” the woman said.

“FBI?” the reporter pressed.

“No,” he said.

The woman inside pressed her entry button and as Lucas slipped through the door, the reporter called, “Tell Sheriff Carr we’re gonna put something on the air whether he talks to us or not.”

Carr had a corner office overlooking the parking lot, the county garage and a corroded bronze statue of a World War I doughboy. The beige walls were hung with a dozen photographs of Carr with other politicians, three plaques, a bachelor’s degree certificate from the University of Wisconsin/River Falls, and two fish-stamp prints with the actual stamps mounted in the mats below the prints. A computer and laser printer sat on a side table, and an intricate thirty-button decorator-blue telephone occupied one corner of an expansive walnut desk. Carr was sitting behind the desk, looking gloomily across a tape recorder at Henry Lacey.

“You got reporters,” Lucas said, propping himself in the office door.

“Like deer ticks,” Carr said, looking up. “Morning. Come in.”

“All you can get from deer ticks is Lyme’s disease,” said Lacey. “Reporters can get your ass fired.”

“Should I let them shoot pictures of the house?” Carr asked Lucas. “They’re all over me to let them in.”

“Why wouldn’t you?” Lucas asked. He stepped into the office and dropped into a visitor’s chair, slumped, got comfortable.

Carr scratched his head. “I dunno . . . it doesn’t seem right.”

“Look, it’s all bullshit,” Lucas said. “The outside of a burnt house doesn’t mean anything to anybody, especially if they live in Milwaukee. Think about it.”

“Yeah.” Carr was still reluctant.

“If I were you, I’d draw up a little site map and pass it out—where the bodies were and so on,” Lucas said. “That doesn’t mean shit either, but they’ll think you’re a hell of a guy. They’ll give you a break.”

“I could use a break,” Carr said. He scratched his head again, working at it.

“Did the guys from Madison get here?” Lucas asked.

“Two hours ago,” said Lacey. “They’re out at the house.”

“Good.” Lucas nodded. “How’s it look out there?”

“Like last night. Uglier. There was a lump of frozen blood under Frank’s head about the size of a milk jug. They’re moving the bodies out in an hour or so, but they say it could take a couple of weeks to process the house.”

“We gotta push them: there’s something in there we need, or the guy wouldn’t have burned the place,” Lucas said irritably. Two weeks? Impossible. They needed information now. “Anything more new?”

“Yeah. We got a call,” Carr said. He reached across his desk and pushed a button on the tape recorder. There was a burst of music, a woman country-western singer, then a man’s voice: You tell them goddamned flatheads down at FNR to stay away from white women or they’ll get what LaCourt got.

Lucas stuck out his bottom lip, shook his head: this was bullshit.

The music swelled, as if somebody had taken his mouth away from the phone, then a new voice said, Give’m all a six-pack of Schlitz and send them down to Chicago with the niggers.

The music came up, then there were a couple of indistinguishable words, a barking laugh, a click and a dead line.

“Called in on the 9-1-1 number, where we got an automatic trace. Went out to a pay phone at the Legion Hall. There were maybe fifty people out there,” Lacey said. “Mostly drunk.”

“That’s what it sounded like, drunks,” Lucas agreed. A waste of time. “What’s the FNR? The Res?”