"I don't know." Lucas called to ask, and was told that both bullets that hit Sherrill had done clean pass-throughs. Another crime-scene team was at Jael Corbeau's studio, trying to recover a slug from what looked like a bullet hole in a wooden railing. Jael was still at the hospital.
A cluster of television camera trucks had appeared at a diner across the street. Bloomington was keeping them away from the motel, and a Bloomington cop had moved Lucas's Porsche back into the lot. As they left the motel, Lucas could see sudden movement among the cameramen, the cameras going up on their shoulders.
"We're about to go on TV," he said. Del dipped his head and stepped behind Lucas. At the car, he kept his head down, one hand over his face. As they pulled out of the parking lot, a TV truck pulled out behind them in pursuit. Lucas lost it on the interstate, cutting through evening traffic like a shark.
They'd made the phone checks: Sherrill was still on the table. She'd taken a lot of blood, but the prognosis had improved. Tom Olson was asleep. He'd been disoriented at the hospital, his body overcome with shock. He'd been sedated.
North of town, at James Bee's house, the cops had cleaned out the computers and the Rolodex. There'd been one cross-match between the Rolodex and the names on the party list from Silly Hanson's, and a competent Minneapolis cop named Loring was running down the cross. The cops at Bee's house also found three ounces of cocaine in a bedroom. Bee claimed it belonged to his wife, the blonde, who denied it. They were both being transported to the county jail.
They still had the outstanding warrant for the second house, but Del shook his head: "Everything's too heavy right how," he said. "If we need it, let's do it tomorrow. Let's go talk to Beemaybe he'll give us what we need."
"Let's stop at the hospital first."
"Yeah, wellI assumed that," Del said.
They weren't allowed to look into the operating room, and Sherrill was still on the table.
"Jesus, how long's it been?" Lucas asked Rose Marie.
Rose Marie bad taken an empty hospital room, and was working two separate patient telephones. She looked at her watch. "Four hours."
"How much more can they have to do?"
"I don't know what they've done, Lucas. Look go away. Go do something."
"Like what?" he asked.
"I don't care, but this isn't good for you." She looked at Del. "You either."
Del said, "So lets go talk to Bee."
Bee was with his lawyer. Lucas knocked on the door, poked his head in. "Wanted you to know we're looking for some information and we might be able to talk."
"I don't think so," the lawyer said. "Your search warrant is a piece of toilet paper."
"Au contraire," Del said. "That thing is a piece of gold. Your client here is going straight to jail, and he won't be passing Go."
Bee looked troubled. He said, "I don't think I've exactly got a problem. For one thing, it wasn't my cocaine, it was Connie's. But say I wanted to help Connie what would you need to know?"
"We're trying to find out who was running Sandy Lansing, the woman killed with Alie'e Maison. She was dealing, but she was retail. We're looking for the guy behind her."
Bee shrugged. "Let me talk to Ralph here. I don't know if I could help you even if I wanted to. But let me talk to Ralph."
"Talk to Ralph," Lucas said. And to Ralph: "I understand you've been shootin' beaver again."
Ralph grinned and said, "Shhh," and Bee said, "What?"
Ralph said, "I got a little beaver problem up at my cabin."
"Larry Connell said about once an hour he'd hear a high-powered rifle," Lucas said.
"Deer seasons coming up," the lawyer said. "I need the practice. And those fuckin' beaver, if they block up that creek, it's gonna flood my whole property. Goddamn rodents. I hate them almost as much as I hate the DNR."
"What beaver?" Bee asked.
"Talk to you later," Lucas said.
"You know what you dumb shits did?" Bee said. "You took the one guy who'd know about this for sureyou took and put him in prison. He hates your ass, and he ain't never gonna talk to you."
Del said, "What?" and he and Lucas looked at each other, then simultaneously said, "Rashid Al-Balah."
Outside, Lucas said, "We gotta nail down that poker game. If Tricks gonna be anywhere, that'd be it."
"Gimme two hours," Del said. "You going back to the hospital?"
"Yeah."
"Turn on your cell phone."
"Okay."
"No. I wanna see you do it," Del said.
Lucas took out the cell phone and turned it on. Del took out his, punched a speed-dial code, and Lucas's phone buzzed. "Satisfied?"
"Keep it on," Del said. "I don't want to be kicking down the door of a high-stakes game by myself."
Lucas walked through the tunnel to the government center and took an elevator up to the county attorney's office. Randall Towson was in conference. Lucas got him out, into a hallway.
"What's going on?" Towson asked. He was holding a printout of what looked like a financial spreadsheet.
"Have you talked to Al-Balah's attorney about Del bumping into Trick Bentoin?"
"Not yet, but I can't put it off much longer," Towson said.
"Could you call him now?" Lucas asked. "And tell him that we've lost Trick, and can't do anything yet, but we're looking. And that we might want to talk to Al-Balah tomorrow."
"Makes us look retarded," Towson said. "He'll be calling the papers two minutes after he hangs up."
"We really need to talk to Al-Balah," Lucas said. "It's the Maison case."
He gave Towson a quick explanation, and Towson said finally, "All right. I gotta call him anyway. I'll do it right now. You sure you'll find Bentoin?"
"No. But Del's heard that it's a big game, and that normally would be a magnet for the guy. Even if he's not there, somebody else at the game might know where he is."
"How's Marcy?"
"I'm going over there now. She was still on the table, the last I heard."
"Listen, she's gonna make it," Towson said. He knew that Lucas and Marcy had had a relationship. "She's in good shape, and once they get her on the table"
"Yeah, well. I hope."
"She's gonna make it, man."
At the hospital, Lucas nodded at a couple of loitering cops and headed straight for the desk. A nurse saw him coming, shook her head, and said, "She's still not out, but Dr. Gunderson came out for a Coke and said they've got almost everything hooked up again. It shouldn't be much longer."
"She's doing okay?"
The nurse equivocated. "She's doing as good as she could. I understand" She looked both ways, as though worried she might be caught giving out unauthorized information.
"Yeah, yeah?"
"I understand that the bullet hit her just below her breast and a couple of inches off the centerline, so there's a lung problem and they've got a problem with bone splinters from her ribs, but there's no spinal involvement. I think if they've got the bleeding under control and if she's strong enough, she should make it. That's whatI think, but I'm not in there."
"Bless you," Lucas said. "She's pretty strong."
He headed down to the room that Rose Marie had commandeered, and found her talking with Frank Lester.
"Anything new?" Lester asked.
"Maybe the edge of something," Lucas said. "How about you? And where's Jael?"
"You talk first."
Lucas gave them a quick account of the raid on Bee's house, Bee's suggestion that Al-Balah might come up with the name, and Del's search for Trick Bentoin. Rose Marie took it all in and said, finally, "You're still about three levels away from the killer."
"Or maybe four or five," Lucas said. "Where's Jael?"
"We had Franklin take her back to her place to get some clothes. We're gonna ditch her someplace safe, maybe over in Hudson, keep her covered. She wants to talk to you again. I think she blames herself for what happened to Marcy."