“I won’t ask,” she said, grinning at him.
“I’ll tell you if you want. But I’d need the Girl Scout’s oath that you won’t tell.”
“Nah. I can live without knowing,” she said. She was still grinning at him. “And if you’re going to fly, you might want to break out the bourbon.”
The airline that flew between Twin Cities International and Cedar Rapids was perfectly reliable. Never had a fatal crash. Said so right in its ads. Lucas held both seat arms with a death grip. The elderly woman in the next seat watched him curiously.
“This can’t be your first time,” she said ten minutes into the flight.
“No. Unfortunately,” Lucas said.
“This is much safer than driving,” the old woman said. “It’s safer than walking across the street.”
“Yes, I know.” He was staring straight ahead. He wished a stroke on the old woman. Anything that would shut her up.
“This airline has a wonderful safety record. They’ve never had a crash.”
Lucas nodded and said, “Um.”
“Well, don’t worry, we’ll be there in an hour.”
Lucas cranked his head toward her. He felt as though his spine had rusted. “An hour? We’ve been up pretty long now.”
“Only ten minutes,” she said cheerfully.
“Oh, God.”
The police psychologist had told him that he feared the loss of control.
“You can’t deal with the idea that your life is in somebody else’s hands, no matter how competent they are. What you have to remember is, your life is always in somebody else’s hands. You could step into the street and get mowed down by a drunk in a Cadillac. Much more chance of that than a plane wreck.”
“Yeah, but with a drunk, I could see him coming, maybe. I could sense it. I could jump. I could get lucky. Something. But when a plane quits flying . . .” Lucas mimed a plane plowing nose-down into his lap. “Schmuck. Dead meat.”
“That’s irrational,” the shrink said.
“I know that,” Lucas said. “I want to know what to do about it.”
The shrink shook his head. “Well, there’s hypnotism. And there are some books that are supposed to help. But if I were you, I’d just have a couple of drinks. And try not to fly.”
“How about chemicals?”
“You could try some downers, but they’ll mess up your head. I wouldn’t do it if you have to be sharp when you get where you’re going.”
The flight to Cedar Rapids didn’t offer alcohol. He didn’t have pills. When the wheels came down, his heart stopped.
“It’s only the wheels coming down,” the old woman said helpfully.
“I know that,” Lucas grated.
Lucas cashed the return portion of the plane ticket.
“You’ll take a loss,” the clerk warned.
“That’s the least of my problems,” Lucas said. He rented a car that he could drop back in Minneapolis and got directions to the police station. The station was an older building, four-square concrete, function over form. Kind of like Iowa, he thought. A cop named MacElreney was waiting for him.
“Carroll MacElreney,” he said. He had wide teeth and an RAF mustache. He was wearing a green plaid sport coat, brown slacks, and brown-and-white saddle shoes.
“Lucas Davenport.” They shook hands. “We appreciate this. We’re in a bind.”
“I’ve been reading about it. Sergeant Anderson said you don’t think Sparks did it, but might know something? That right?”
“Yeah. Maybe.”
“Let’s go see.” MacElreney led the way to an interview room. “Mr. Sparks is unhappy with us. He thinks he’s been treated unfairly.”
“He’s an asshole,” Lucas said. “You find his girl?”
“Yeah. Kinda young.”
“Aren’t they all?”
Sparks was sitting on one of three metal office chairs when Lucas followed the Cedar Rapids cop into the room. He’s getting old, Lucas thought, looking at the other man. He had first seen Sparks on the streets in the early seventies. His hair then had been a faultless shiny black, worn in a long Afro. Now it was gray, and deep furrows ran down Sparks’ forehead to the inside tips of his eyebrows. His nose was a flattened mess, his teeth nicotine yellow and crooked. He looked worried.
“Davenport,” he said without inflection. His eyes were almost as yellow as his teeth.
“Sparky. Sorry to see you in trouble again.”
“Whyn’t you cut the crap and tell me what you want?”
“We want to know why you left town fifteen minutes after one of your ladies got her heart cut out.”
Sparks winced. “Is that what—”
“Don’t give me any shit, Sparky. We just want to know where you dumped the knife.” Lucas suddenly stopped and looked at MacElreney. “You gave him his rights?”
“Just on the prostitution charge.”
“Jesus, I better do it again, let me get my card . . .” Lucas reached for his billfold and Sparks interrupted.
“Now, wait a minute, Davenport,” Sparks said, even more worried. “God damn, I got witnesses that I didn’t do nothin’ like that. I loved that girl.”
Lucas eased his billfold back in his pocket.
“You see who did it?”
“Well, I don’t know . . .”
Lucas leaned forward. “I personally don’t think you did it, Sparky. But you gotta give me something to work with. Something I can take back. These guys from vice want to hang you. You know what they’re saying? They’re saying, sure, he might not be guilty of this. But he’s guilty of everything else and we can get him for this. Dump old Sparky in Stillwater, it’d solve a lot of problems. That’s what they’re saying. They found some coke in your lady’s purse, and that doesn’t go down too well either . . .”
Sparks licked his lips. “I knew that bitch was holding out.”
“I don’t care about that, Sparky. What’d you see?”
“I seen this guy . . .”
“Let me get my recorder going,” Lucas said.
Sparks had a crack habit that was hard to stay ahead of. On the night Heather Brown was killed, he had been sitting on a bus bench across the street, waiting for her to produce some money. He had seen her last date approach her.
“Wasn’t it pretty dark?”
“Yeah, but they got all them big blue lights down there.”
“Okay.”
There was nothing particularly distinctive about the maddog. Average height. White. Regular features, roundish face. Yeah, maybe a little heavy. Went right to her, there didn’t seem to be much negotiation.
“You think she knew him?”
“Yeah, maybe. But I don’t know. I never saw him before, and she was on the street for a while. Wasn’t a regular. At least, not while she was with me.”
“She still doing the rough trade?”
“Yeah, there was a few boys would come around.” He held his hands up defensively. “I didn’t make her. She liked it. Get spanked a little. Good money, too.”
“So this guy. How was he dressed? Sharp?”
“No. Not sharp,” Sparks said. “He looked kind of like a farmer.”
“A farmer?”
“Yeah. He had one of them billed hats on, you know, that got shit wrote on the front? And he was wearing one of those cheap jackets like you get at gas stations. Baseball jackets.”
“You sure this was her last date?”
“Yeah. Had to be. She went to the motel and I went off to get a beer. The next thing I knew was the sirens coming down the street.”
“Farmer doesn’t sound right,” Lucas said.
“Well . . .” Sparks scratched his head. “He didn’t look right, either. There was something about him . . .”
“What?”
“I don’t know. But there was something.” He scratched his head again.
“You see his car?”
“Nope.”
Lucas pressed, but there wasn’t anything more.
“You think you’d recognize him?”
“Mmm.” Sparks looked at the floor between his feet, thinking it over. “I don’t think so. Maybe. I mean, maybe if I saw him walking down the street in the night with the same clothes, I’d say, there, that’s the motherfucker right there. But if you put him in a lineup, I don’t think so. I was way across the street. All there was, was those streetlights.”