"Damnit. I would have liked to have been there, see how the guy takes it."
"He went over there… he said he'd be right back, maybe we could catch him."
THEY FOUND HOFFMAN and Anderson just outside an employee's canteen off the main floor. Anderson was a thin, dark-haired white man with big crooked teeth and a small narrow mustache. He was waving his arms around, his face harsh and urgent, as he talked to Hoffman, who leaned against a wall with his arms crossed. Lucas heard, "Goddamnit, Clark, you know me better than that, I just ate lunch… "
Lucas came up, with Del trailing, and said, "There you are."
Hoffman turned and pushed away from the wall. To Anderson he said, "These are the cops."
Anderson pushed a finger at Lucas: "What the hell are you doing, telling Clark that I've been cheating on Suzie?"
"Didn't exactly say that," Lucas said. "We heard from a guy in town that you were pretty friendly with Jane Warr."
"What guy?"
"Can't tell you, unless we bust you. Then you'd have a right to know," Lucas said, hardening up. "Your lawyer could get the name."
Anderson shriveled back. "My lawyer? What the hell is going on?"
Del edged in, the beat-up good guy. "Listen: just tell us-how well did you know her?"
"I wasn't screwing her, if that's what you mean."
"How well?" Del pressed.
Anderson took a step back, and the stress in his voice dropped a notch. "A little bit. She used to deal in Vegas and I worked out there for a while, years ago. I didn't know her then-we weren't even there at the same time-but you know, working in Vegas was sort of a big deal for both of us. When we were both off at the same time, we'd eat lunch together, here in the canteen, sometimes. But most of the time, just in a group, only once or twice, when there was just the two of us." He looked at Hoffman: "Clark, I wouldn't bullshit you."
"All right," Hoffman said.
Del said, "Did you ever meet any of her friends, Deon Cash or Joe Kelly?"
"I didn't really meet them, but I knew who they were, because they were black," Anderson said. To Hoffman: "That's another reason I wouldn't do it, Clark. Even if I'd wanted to. You ever see her boyfriend? The guy was like some kind of ghetto killer or something."
"All right," Hoffman said again.
"She ever say anything about them?" Lucas asked. "Or was she worried about anything? Did she seem apprehensive, or scared?"
"A few weeks back, I don't know, three or four weeks, the Joe guy took off. Or disappeared. She didn't know where he went, she said he just vanished. She was pretty worried about him, but that's all I know. She never did say if he ever showed up."
"She seemed scared about it?"
Anderson dipped his chin, thinking, scratched his head, straightened his hair-a little relieved grooming, Lucas thought-and said, "Maybe scared. Sort of more freaked out, like when you find out something weird about someone. Like if somebody told you your best friend was a child molester, or something."
"Did you see a guy watching her last night? A big guy."
"Wasn't here last night. I was out with my wife," Anderson said, leaning on the wife.
"Okay," Lucas said. "Tell me this: how much coke was she pushing out on the floor here?"
"What?"
"Cocaine," Del said.
Anderson looked at them like they were crazy. "She wasn't dealing cocaine. No way. I woulda known about that. You get a bunch of dealers and one of them is pushing, everybody knows. There was nothing like that about Jane."
"She use it?" Lucas asked.
Anderson's eyes flicked away. "Maybe… I never saw her use it." He unconsciously rubbed his nose with the back of his hand. "But she used to get a little cranked, and once or twice I thought she might've gone back to the ladies' can and done something."
"You didn't tell us," Hoffman said.
"I didn't know," Anderson said. "Hell, you even hint at something like that around here, and the next thing you know, somebody's looking for a job. And I kinda liked her."
"But not too much," Hoffman said.
"No. Jesus, Clark." Then his eyes narrowed, and he turned to Lucas. "Did that asshole Bud Larson put you on me?"
Lucas kept his face straight and shook his head. "Haven't heard any Larsons mentioned," he said. "Why?"
"Nothin'," Anderson said. To Hoffman: "He was the guy who complained that we cold-decked him. Last week? Mean-looking guy?"
Del looked at Lucas and shook his head.
WHEN THEY WERE finished with Anderson-still a worried man, despite Hoffman's assurances that he believed him-they went looking for other employees who remembered the big man. Les, the computer operator, brought down the first printout of the man's face: it was fuzzy, but would be recognizable in context.
Nobody else remembered talking to him.
By the time they finished talking with other employees, Les had saved a dozen shots of the man, and two stitched-together composites, to a CD that could be opened on any PC with the Imaging program, which he said was most of them.
"We still need the actual tapes," Lucas told him.
"We're pulling them; we'll hang on to them," he said.
THEY'D BEEN IN the casino for an hour and a half when Mitford called back. "We're running with Amex. They accepted a faxed subpoena and they're putting the list together now. They say they'll have it in half an hour. I'm having copies faxed to the sheriff's office up there, and another one down here. They say there might be a couple hundred names."
"We'll head downtown," Lucas said. "I've got a CD with some photos on it."
"We'd like to see some down here."
"I'll e-mail them to you. You gonna be there?"
"Until you guys go to bed," Mitford said. "Washington just had a press conference in Grand Forks and he says the law enforcement agencies must be complicit in this crime-I'm reading this-either actually or morally. Then… ah, blah blah blah. I think he's on his way up there to have a rally."
"Yeah? In Armstrong? Who's gonna rally?"
"I don't know. I'm just telling you what he says."
"I'll get back to you," Lucas said.
On the way out, they thanked Hoffman, agreed that Anderson probably hadn't been playing around on his sister, and made arrangements to have the videotapes picked up by a BCA crime scene man.
"SO WE GOT a face and a few hundred names," Del said. He looked at his watch. "You think we'll get him by midnight?"
"We're rolling," Lucas said. "And I'll tell you what: he left enough stuff on the bodies that when we identify him, we've got him. I'd bet that hair was his, I bet that blood on Warr's face was his."
"Could be Cash's."
"Not dripping down like that. It was fresh when she was hanging."
"God bless DNA," Del said.
ON THE WAY back to town, Lucas called Dickerson and filled him in. Then, "Did you get anything out of that motel room? Fingerprints, hair, anything?"
"We've got an ocean of fingerprints, but we've also got some places that appear to have been wiped," Dickerson said. "I wouldn't get your hopes up."
"Did you hear anything from St. Paul about tracking down the Cherokee?"
"If you go back a month, you can find maybe thirty Cherokee transactions in Minnesota. We've got the names on those, and we're working with North and South Dakota, Missouri and Iowa. I think Iowa's in, haven't gotten word from the others yet. I'm not sure South Dakota is computerized enough to get what we need that quick."
"Let's get what we can."
ABUNCH OF cops were leaning on the wall outside the Law Enforcement Center, smoking, when Lucas and Del pulled into the parking lot. Lucas had just gotten out of the car when his cell phone rang.