"Did he believe you?"
"I don’t know, but he should of, ’cause I would of," the sheriff said. "But it never came up, because he dropped dead."
"He was lying there on the floor, looking okay, except for this rash," Landis said. "We knew he’d been screwing at least the older girl, and maybe the younger one too; we knew he’d been beating the bejesus out of his wife. So the question was, do we do tissue samples? Didn’t have to. No requirement."
"Steve came and talked to me, and we said screw it. Leave it alone. And we did. Shipped George off to the funeral home. And that was the end of it, until you showed up this morning."
They all thought about that for a moment; then Lucas rubbed his chin and changed the subject: "That fat kid I beat up," he said to the sheriff. "He’s gonna be nothing but a pain in the ass for you. He’s gonna be in trouble for the rest of his career."
"He’s had a couple problems," the sheriff said.
"You oughta get rid of him before it’s too late. And this guy," Lucas said, nodding at the lanky man. "He rode along a little too easily. He’s gotta learn to stand up. He wanted to stop the whole thing, but he couldn’t get the job done."
"I learned something," the lanky man said.
"I hope the hell you have," the sheriff said. To Lucas: "What do you think?"
"I think if you recast exactly what you told me here tonight, you’d have a perfectly good story if you ever had to go to court to testify. You know, that you thought it was a heart attack at the time-still think it was possible-but sometime later worked out that it might have been a poisoning. But by then it was too late, the body had been cremated. That kind of thing happens all the time. That’s why we have exhumations."
"You think we might have to testify?"
Lucas stood up, yawned, stretched. "We’re putting together a circumstantial case. So you might have to. But we’ve got a way to go, before we get anything together."
"But her husband… The papers say he was beating her, just like her father beat her mother. It seems to me there might be some justification."
"We’re looking at eight murders and several ag assaults over the last ten years, including a couple of out-and-out executions of absolutely innocent people," Lucas said.
After a moment of stunned silence, the sheriff said, "Eight?"
Lucas nodded.
"God in heaven."
And Landis stood up and looked at the sheriff and said, "Old George did a lot more damage than we knew about. You shoulda killed him."
The older man pushed himself away from the wall. "So what’re we going to do about tonight?"
Lucas shrugged. "Nothing happened to me. If you guys want to say nothing happened, nothing happened."
The sheriff took a quick eye-poll, then nodded to Lucas: "Nothing happened."
"If we need to talk to you again, an assistant county attorney’ll be calling," Lucas said. "I’ll give you a warning call ahead of time."
"I appreciate it," the sheriff said. "I’d also appreciate it if you’d get the hell out of my town."
"We’re going tomorrow morning," Lucas said.
"And I surely wish you hadn’t taken Larry out in the parking lot. I’m always shorthanded when the snow starts to fly."
"Sorry."
"But not too sorry," the sheriff said.
"Not too," Lucas agreed, and grinned at him.
The sheriff showed the faintest hint of a smile, and eased out the door. The older man was the last to leave, and at the threshold, he turned and looked at Sherrill, and then back at Lucas. "I once had a woman looked just about like that," he said to Lucas. "When I was just about your age."
"Oh yeah?"
"Yeah." He gave Sherrill a long look, and said, "She flat wore me out."
"Better to wear out than to rust," Sherrill said, from her corner.
"Yeah." And he laughed, a nasty laugh for an old codger, and closed the door.
TWENTY-SEVEN
The sun was only two or three fingers above the western horizon, the evening rush already starting, when Lucas and Sherrill dropped past the Dunwoody exit on I-394, zigged a couple of times, and rolled into downtown Minneapolis.
"Now that was a road trip," Sherrill said, enthusiastically. "Fightin’, fuckin’, and detectin.’ So what’s next?"
"I’ve got to work tomorrow," Lucas said. "You’re working, right?"
"Yeah-but there’s not much going on. I could probably get away to help, if you needed me…"
He shook his head: "Better not. I told you about the little talk with Rose Marie."
"I might have a little talk with Rose Marie myself," she said with a flash of anger. "Pisses me off."
"Probably wouldn’t help."
"It’d make me feel better," Sherrill said.
"Do what you want," Lucas said. "And when you get a minute, send me a memo on the whole sequence up there in Oxford. All the details. Make a copy for yourself. Take both copies over to the government center, have them notarized for date, but don’t let anybody read them."
"Just in case?"
"Can’t tell what’s gonna happen yet."
"When you say all the details, you want the part where I said, ‘Oh my God, put it in, put it in’?"
"I don’t remember that," Lucas said.
"I think you were looking at your watch. We’re gonna have to talk about that, by the way."
Lucas shook his head: "Christ, I’m beginning to understand what that old guy meant."
"What old guy?"
"You know, the old deputy, who once had a woman like you. ‘Flat wore me out,’ he said."
She looked at him critically: "You still got a little good tread on you."
Lucas kissed her goodbye outside City Hall-what the hell-and went down to his office, whistling, picked up the phone and got the brrnk-brrnk-brrnk message signal. The mechanical operator said there were six: all six were from Helen Bell, frantic, accusatory.
"Did you do this with Connie? Did you call Child Protection? Why? Why? Please, please call me…" and "Why aren’t you calling? Did you do this? I’m getting a lawyer, goddamn you…"
He punched in her phone number and the phone at the other end was snatched up halfway through the first ring. "Hello?" Still frantic.
"This is Lucas Davenport. What happened with Connie?"
A moment of uncertain silence. "You didn’t have anything to do with Connie?"
"Mrs. Bell, I haven’t even thought of Connie since I last saw you. I was out of town all day yesterday and today, I just got back and got your messages."
"They came and got her," she wailed.
"Child Protection?"
"Child Protection, Child Welfare, whatever they call it. They say I gave her marijuana and beat her up and I never did any of that, she’s my baby, I don’t understand, they said some teacher called, but I can’t find anybody at her school."
"Let me make a call," Lucas said. "I know a woman over there who might know something."
"Please, please get her back."
Lucas talked to her for another minute, then hung up, found Nancy Bunker’s name in his address book, and punched her number in. She was just leaving.
"Yeah, I know about it. Doesn’t look like much. The girl said her mother slapped her once during an argument, open hand, no injury, more like a girl fight. Said she’s used some marijuana around school, but that was what the fight was about. Her mother was trying to stop her."
"So what’re you doing with her?"
"Well, she’s out at a foster home right now; we usually keep them a couple of nights, just to make sure. She’ll be home tomorrow."
"Huh."
"What’s your interest, Lucas?"