Andrew Ingall, who was killed in a boating accident in 1993 on Lake Superior. (He was from North Oaks and his wife still lives there.)
I hope you catch him on this one. He cant go on like this.
A Concerned Citizen.
Lucas looked at Roux, and she caught the small light in his eye. Interesting?
More than the first one, Lucas admitted. No waffling about the presentation. He gets right to it: Daniel S. Kresge was shot by Wilson McDonald.
You think a man wrote it?
Lucas hesitated for a minute, then said, Maybe not. Could be a woman.
When I read it, I assumed it was a woman. I dont know why, Roux said.
Something about the wording, said Beverly. I think its a woman too.
Would you look into it? Roux asked Lucas. Sort of… carefully? Lot of rich people involved.
Lucas said, Sloan and Sherrill are on it.
Sloan is working on the Ericson killing. Thats getting complicated. Sherrills doing the routine for the sheriff up there. Id just like you to look at this letter. It sounds so… sure of itself. You want me to look into it because you think its necessary? Lucas asked. Or because youre worried that Im going crazy?
Roux nodded: Both. Itd be nice if we could catch whoever killed Kresge.
Are you getting pressure?
No, not really. Kresge was divorced, no family around here, not all that well liked. But I mean, hey, its what were supposed to do, right?
The paper this morning said that McDonald would be speaking for Polaris, at least until the board of directorsmeets, Lucas said. The infighting could get pretty intense; something could fall out. In fact
… He tapped the first letter with the second. Something already has.
So catch up with Sherrill, tell her youll take this angle. Get away from your desk.
Lucas nodded: Okay; Ill look at it. And listen, Im gonna send Del Capslock around with a problem.
That goddamn Capslockisa problem, Roux grunted.
Good cop, Lucas said.
Yeah, but I cant stand to look at him: I keep wanting to give him a buck, or send him out to get his teeth fixed… Whats the problem?
He turned up an opium ring.
Drugs cant handle it?
You might want to think about it first, Lucas said. Again, the droopy grin: I suspect most of the members are friends of yours.
SLOAN WAS DRINKING A CHERRY COKE AND READING a Star-Tribunestory about sex in the workplace when Lucas wandered in, carrying xerox copies of the two letters. Sloan dropped the newspaper in the wastebasket, leaned back, and said, You know what the thing is about you?
What? Lucas pulled another chair around.
You cant have an adulterous affair, because youre not married. So if you go down to Intelligence, say, and pick out some single chick and fuck her brains loose, well, thats just what bachelors do. But if I did it, that would be adultery and theStar-Tribunethinks I should be fired.
If you did it, your old ladyd kill you anyway, so you wouldnt need a job.
Im talking in theory, Sloan said.
Did you pick out the guilty guy on Saturday? In theory?
Sloan shook his head. Theyre a pretty tough group. Robles was in a sweat, but I think he might sweat everything. Bone seemed to think that Kresge getting murdered was mildly amusing; he was cooperative, though. And hehad to stop to think at all the right places. ODell was almost too busy figuring out the consequences to talk to me about whether she did it… and that made me think she didnt. If she had, shed have already figured out the consequences. I had a harder time getting a reading on Mc-Donald. He acted like the whole thing was a plot to personally inconvenience him.
Cold? Sociopathic?
Mmmm. Sloan scratched his chin. No… If he is, he covers it, he said after a minute. Id say hes more like… unpleasant. Arrogant.
So whats it all mean?
If Robles did it, we might get him, eventually. If its one of the others, forget it. Unless the guy does something really stupid, like tell somebody else about it. Or if it was a group effort. But thats. ..
Unlikely, Lucas said.
More like ridiculous.
Perfect crime?
Just about, Sloan said. Lots of people probably heard the shot, but nobody thought anything about it. Nobody was looking for the shooter. Once he was off the scene… theres no way were gonna get him. The only chance to get him was to have somebody see it happen, and recognize the shooter. That was it.
But we know some stuff, Lucas said. He leaned back in the chair and put his feet on the edge of Sloans desk. The shooter knew his way around there, in the dark. And he knew which tree stand Kresge would be in. That means that he was either close to Kresge or he worked for him, maybe out at the cabin. Is Krause checking any employees out there?
Yeah. There were only two or three peoplea handyman whod do maintenance work around the place, an old guy who patrols some of the cabins, just checking on them two or three times a day. And some guy who plows out the driveway in the winter. None of them had any apparentproblem with Kresge. The sheriff doesnt think theyre suspects.
If this was a movie, the handyman would have done it, Lucas said, staring blankly at the ceiling. Hed be like a Stephen King character, a secret psycho who everybody thinks is retarded…
… but whos really pretty smart, but only behaves the way he does because he couldnt get a date to the prom, which is why he burned down the high school.
How about Sherrill? Is she around?
I dont know. She was working yesterday, but I havent seen her today. I know she was going to try to nail down people in Kresges office and talk to the ex-wife.
All right…
But suppose it is somebody close to Kresge, Sloan said. Suppose we find a guy who hated Kresge, but knew the farm, knew where the tree stand was, knew Kresge would be in it, and we can prove that he has a rifle, is a great shot, and has no alibi for opening day. You know what? We got all that, and we still aint got shit.
There might be one more way, Lucas said.
Like what?
We build a pattern around him.
Good luck.
Rose Marie got some mail this morning, Lucas said. He leaned forward and slid the copies across Sloans desk. One letter nominates ODell, the other one McDonald.
Sloan read them slowly, then read the McDonald letter a second time, and finally looked up at Lucas: Two more dead ones, huh? But wed need more than a pattern. Wed have to push him out in the open.
That could be done, Lucas said. If its McDonald.
Are you buying into the case? Sloan asked.
Rose Marie asked me to take a look… if you dont mind. If Sherrill doesnt mind.
I dont mind, Sloan said. Ive got the Ericson file. I could use some extra time.
I thought the boyfriend did itthe Ericson thing. I thought he admitted it.
Not exactly, Sloan said. He says he might have. He doesnt deny it. But we cant come up with any physical evidence, and he was so fucked up at the time, he cant remember anything. And Im wondering, if he was so fucked upand he was, he had enough chemicals in him to start a factorywhatd he do with his clothes? They had to have blood all over them.
Youve got nothing physical? No hair or semen…
No semen. And he had no blood on him, under his nails or in his hair. And the problem is, she was killed on the bed and he slept there every night and half the day. So hes all over the place… but so what? Hes gonna be. And Im really worried about the clothes. He says hes not missing any, and I think he might be telling the truth. He doesnt have all that much to begin with. Couple pairs of jeans, couple T-shirts, a coat, some sneaks.
Huh. Check the drains in the bathroom? Maybe he was naked…
Sloan nodded: Yeah. The lab looked at it. No blood.
Okay. So Ill take the McDonald thing, Lucas said. Ill talk to Sherrill about it.