The press conference itself was the same routine: scraping chairs, posturing TV people. Ruffe Ignace was in the front row, but his story that morning had been anticipated by the TV news the night before. He was now behind in the cycle, had lost his edge, and wasn't happy: he snapped questions out at Lucas, thrashing around, looking for something, anything. Lucas was polite.
Lucas described how Sloan picked up on the Samples killing, out-lined what had happened, and what they believed. The Albert Lea cops vere going through the retained evidence from the case, he said, looking for anything that might have a dab of Pope's DNA on it. When he finished, the reporters gave Sloan an only moderately sarcastic round of applause. That was a first, ever.
Sloan said, "It really was nothing much." but Lucas said, "It was amazing."
WHEN THEY WERE FINISHED, they headed back to Lucas's office. Halfway back, they bumped into Shrake and Jenkins, the BCA's des-ignated thugs, who'd been sent to Mike West's designated halfway house to pick him up.
Jenkins was a square man who smoked too much; Shrake was tall and thin, and smoked more than Jenkins. They both wore sharp, shiny European-cut suits that had fallen off a truck somewhere; Shrake referred to them as quasi-Armanis.
"Fuckin' waste of time," Jenkins said. He habitually walked around with his hands in the pockets of his jacket, so all his jackets had stretched-out pockets. "The guy's been gone for a month. We talked to the administrator over there. He said West's meds were fogging him up so bad that he couldn't stand them. The house rules are that you have to take your meds-and since he couldn't stand doing that, he took off."
"Any idea where he might be?"
"Doc says he's probably on the street. His parents live in Arizona- they're retired. We could check with the Scottsdale cops."
"Do that," Lucas said. "See if they could have somebody stop by. And get a bulletin out to the local uniforms, get them to poke around. We really would like to talk to him."
AT LUCAS'S OFFICE, they found a note from Caroclass="underline" "Dr. Grant called from St. John's and asked that you call him back. He's on his cellphone."
"Grant was the shrink," Sloan said.
Lucas called him, and Grant answered on the third ring: "Listen, I don't know if you're interested, but I pulled out all my session tapes on Pope," he said. "There're five or six hours of material. Most of it was just talk. How was he feeling, what was he doing. But there's an hour or so when he's talking about getting out, what he'll do, about the women he attacked. I edited down to the good stuff, an hour or so."
"I need that," Lucas said. "Can you messenger it up?"
"I'm coming up there tonight. If you want to tell somebody that I'm coming, I could drop it at the BCA office… it's just a regular cassette tape."
"Where're you going in the Cities?"
"Downtown Minneapolis."
"Why don't you drop it at my house? That'll save you a half hour, and it's easy to find."
LUCAS WENT HOME, ate a steak-and-onions low-carb, low-fat, low-protein microwave meal that had apparently been made purely from coal tars and goobers, perhaps seasoned with industrial phlegm; watched the television news; thought his suit looked pretty good but that his face looked too harsh-maybe from the diet? He looked at himself in the mirror, wondered if he should use a moisturizer-Weather's solution for anything that didn't involve bleeding or broken bones-but was embarrassed by the thought and eventually went out to the garage.
When Grant showed up, a few minutes before eight o'clock, Lucas was lying in the driveway, his head under the ass end of his Lexus, trying to rewire the trailer harness. The harness hung in an exposed position and had gotten trashed while he was dragging a boat around Wisconsin. More fine auto design.
"You under there? Lucas?"
"Yeah." Lucas turned his head, saw a pair of cordovan loafers, and pushed himself out; "Just a minute. I almost got it." He didn't, though. After fooling with the inadequate male-female connection for a moment, he decided he'd have to readjust the wiring distance between a support bracket and the connection. That would take more light than he had. He pushed himself out again and got to his feet.
"How's it going?" Lucas hadn't paid special attention to Grant at St. John's, but now he looked him over. He was about Lucas's height, but maybe fifteen pounds lighter, with edges. He didn't look like he worked out, but there was a feral toughness about him.
Grant fished a tape cassette out of his jacket pocket and handed it Lucas. "There's not really anything hard on it; it just sort of shows you what he thinks about."
"That could help," Lucas said. "I'll listen to it tonight…I hope you didn't come all the way up to bring the tape."
"No, there's not much to do down by St. John's, so I hang out up here. I'm too old to chase college girls."
"Especially Lutheran college girls." Lucas said.
"Especially intellectual Lutheran college girls," Grant said. He drifted over toward the Porsche, which was crouched in the garage. "Of course, if I had a car like this… this is the wide one, right? Wide enough for Lutheran girls?"
"I'm a happily married man," Lucas said.
"Yeah… And if you happened to be unhappily married, I can tell you that Karen Beloit liked your looks. She was sort of bubbling about you."
Lucas laughed and said, "Hmm… Listen, you want a beer? What do you think about the Big Three? Is that just bullshit, or did they really do something with Pope?"
LUCAS GOT A COUPLE of beers and a step stool for Grant to sit on, and while Lucas hauled some work lights and tools out to the truck, Grant unwound a tangled coil of orange extension cord, plugged it into a garage outlet, and trailed it out to the truck. Lucas crawled back underneath and went to work on the wiring harness, while Grant sat on the stool, handed him tools, and they talked about Pope, the Big Three, and Mike West.
"I was pretty skeptical about Charlie, when I heard about it. But then, I heard about the reaction from Lighter and Taylor, and I thought-okay, I'll buy that, somewhat. But Charlie might tend to drift. They could wind him up and send him out, but after a while, he'd sorta… run down. So I wouldn't be surprised if there's somebody else involved. A battery kind of guy. Somebody to provide the energy."
"Mike West?"
"I don't know. I mean, I really don't know-I didn't have much contact with him."
"But two guys makes sense to you."
"More than Charlie by himself. You need something or somebody to provide the intensity. If you had that, I don't doubt Charlie would go along. These murder scenes you laid out for us… I can see Charlie enjoying all that."
"Hand me that small Phillips." Grant handed him the screwdriver, and Lucas asked, "But if Pope is doing all of this, with or without the West guy, and if one or both of them were programmed by the Big Three… why did they wait so long before they started killing? You think they'd come right out, when the programming was the strongest…"
"I don't know. To get organized? To locate targets?"
"Mmm."
"We don't even know if they were programmed. That might all be bullshit," Grant said.
Lucas tightened the last screw and pushed out from under the car. "That's not bullshit. They did something. You had to be there to see it- those motherfuckers are involved," Lucas said.
THEY PUT THE TOOLS AWAY, and Grant handed Lucas his empty beer bottle. "Give me your bottom line," Lucas said.
Grant shrugged: "Something's wrong. Something stinks. For one thing, you should have caught Charlie by now. He's the kind of guy who would flee on a Greyhound bus."