Outside, Sherrill said, "I see what you mean-another case of remarkable memory. Lamb had a cigarette between his fingers when he died."
"There’s something here," Lucas said, turning to look back at the front of the clinic. "I have trouble thinking what it might be."
"Maybe she’s some kind of town philanthropist and gives them money or something, so they protect her,"
Sherrill suggested.
"Have you seen her? She doesn’t look like she’d give a nickel to a starving man. And if it has been that, somebody would have mentioned it."
"So what do you want to do?"
"Let’s go check into this motel. Get some dinner."
Lucas always expected a certain amount of awkwardness when he and a new woman friend got around a bed, and the room at the Sugar Beet Inn was basically a queen-sized bed, a television set, and bathroom; along with the built-in scent of disinfectant. Sherrill wasn’t quite as inhibited: she pulled off her jacket, tossed it on the chair, jumped on the bed, giving it a bounce, then hopped off to check the TV. "I wonder if they have dirty movies?"
"Give me a break," Lucas said. "Come on, let’s find a restaurant."
"Too early. It’s barely five o’clock. I wanna take a shower and get the road off me," she said. "You wanna take a shower?"
"If we take a shower, we’ll probably wind up on the bed, dealing with sexual issues," he said, injecting a tone of disapproval into his voice. "We’re here on business."
"Quit bustin’ my balls, Davenport," she said. She pulled her sweatshirt over her head. "But if you want to sit out here and wait…"
"I suppose we’d save water if we both got in there."
"And water is precious out here on the prairie."
"Well, I mean, if it’s for the environment…"
The desk clerk at the Sugar Beet told them two restaurants would be open: Chuck’s Wagon, a diner, and the Oxford Supper Club, which had a liquor license. They drove down to the supper club and were met at the entrance by a cheerful, overweight woman with hair the same tone of orange as the county clerk’s, and a frilly apron. She took them to a red-vinyl booth and left them with glasses of water and menus.
"That hair color must be a fashion out here. She looks like a pumpkin," Sherrill whispered.
"Mmm. Open-face roast beef sandwich with brown gravy, choice of potato, string beans, cheese balls as an appetizer, and pumpkin or mince pie with whipped cream, choice of drink, seven ninety-five," Lucas said.
"You ever hear of cholesterol?"
"Off my case. I’m starving."
Lucas ordered a martini, to be followed by the roast beef sandwich; Sherrill got the Traditional Meatloaf with a Miller Lite up front. They ate in easy companionship, talking about the day, talking about cases they’d worked together and what happened to who, afterwards. Touched lightly on Weather’s case. Lucas got a Leinenkugel’s and Sherrill got a second Miller Lite, to go with the pie. They were just finishing the pie when Lucas felt the khaki pants legs stepping up to the table. He looked up at two sheriff’s deputies, two men in their late twenties or thirties, one hard, lanky, the other thicker, like a high school tackle, with the beginning of a gut.
"Are you the Porsche outside?" asked the one with the gut.
"Yeah. That’s us," Lucas said.
"So you’re the guys from Minneapolis."
"Yeah. What can we do for you?"
"We were just wondering if you’re done here," said the lanky one. His voice was curt: his cop voice.
"I don’t know," Lucas said. He was just as curt. Across the table, Sherrill had swiveled slightly on her butt so that her back was to the wall, and her legs, still curled up, projected toward the deputies. Their attitude was wrong; and other patrons in the restaurant had noticed. "We didn’t get very far today. We weren’t getting a lot of cooperation."
"We were just talking over at the office about how everybody was cooperating, and you were being pretty damn impolite about it," said Gut.
"Not trying to be impolite," Lucas said. Swiveling a bit, as Sherrill had. "We’re trying to conduct an investigation."
"Yeah. I bet you were investigating the hell out of this chick up to the Sugar Beet," Gut said.
Sherrill said, "Hey, you…" But Lucas held up a peremptory finger to silence her, and she stopped and looked at him; then Lucas said to Gut, "Fuck you, you fat hillbilly cocksucker."
Gut looked at the slender man, who stepped back a bit and said, "Let’s cool this off," but Gut put his fists on the table and leaned toward Lucas and said, "If you said that outside, I’d drag your ass all over the goddamn parking lot."
"Let’s go," Lucas said. "I’m tired of this rinky-dink bullshit."
Lucas tossed a twenty on the table and followed Gut toward the entrance; the lanky man said, "Hey, whoa, whoa," and Sherrill said, "Lucas, this is a bad idea…"
But six feet outside the door, Gut took a slow, short step, feeling Lucas closing behind him, spun and threw a wild, looping right hand at Lucas’s head.
Lucas stepped left and hit the heavy man in the nose, staggering him, bringing blood. As Gut turned, bringing his hands up to his face, Lucas hooked him in the left-side short ribs with another right; when Gut pulled his arms down, Lucas hit him in the eye with a left, the other eye with a right, then took the right-side short ribs with a left, then crossed a right to the face. Gut was trying to fall, staggering backward, got his back wedged against a pickup truck, and Lucas beat him like a punching bag, face, face, gut, face, ribs, face, face, like a heavy workout in the gym.
Lucas felt it all flowing out: the frustration with Weather, the attacks on Weather and Elle, the uncertainty, the depression. And heard Sherrill screaming, flicked somebody’s arm off his shoulder, was hit from the left and turned, almost punched Sherrill in the forehead, felt another man moving behind him, spun, and saw the lanky man covering Gut, holding his hands in front of him, shouting something…
The world began to slow down, and Lucas backed up, hands up, Marcy pushing him, shouting. He could barely hear her. "Okay," he said finally, through the roaring in his head. "Okay, I’m done."
Marcy faded in. "You’re done. Are you done?"
"I’m done…" He dropped his hands. They were dappled with blood, and blood from Gut’s nose was sprayed across his shirt. He said, "This shirt’s fucked."
Gut was stretched on the ground next to the pickup running board, groaning, the lanky man leaning over him, saying, "Breathe easy. Come on, you’re okay."
But he wasn’t okay. He said, "I can’t, I can’t, I can’t…" Every time he tried to sit up, he moaned, holding his sides; he was blowing streams of blood from his nose. "We better get an ambulance," the lanky man said. "Get him over to the clinic."
"Can you call from your car?" Sherrill asked.
"Yeah, I can do that," he said, as if the concept were new to him. He hurried to the squad car, parked at the edge of the lot, pushing through a narrow ring of spectators. As he went, Marcy asked, quietly, "Are you okay?"
"Yeah, yeah, he never touched me," Lucas said.
"That’s not what I meant."
He looked at her: "Yeah, I’m okay. I sorta let it all out, there."
"I’d say."
The lanky deputy was back, said, "The ambulance’ll be here in a minute." Then to Lucas, "I ain’t gonna try to take you in, ’cause we all got guns, but you’re under arrest."
"Bullshit," Lucas said. "You two came here to try to push us out of a murder investigation and he took the first swing. If I don’t get some answers, I’ll get the goddamn BCA up here and we’ll tear a new asshole for your department. You two are gonna be lucky to get out of this with your badges."
"We’ll see," the lanky man said. "Why don’t you go on down to the courthouse. I’m gonna get the sheriff in. And you’re not helping around here."
"Why don’t you just come up to the Sugar Beet," Lucas said. "We’ve got a big room."