'And Carmel starts screwing her boyfriend, knowing that the woman she's kicking out of the saddle is a professional killer? Bullshit. Nope: this is a set-up.
That's why there won't be any semen, and that's why we're gonna find a gun,'
Lucas said. 'When you said you could make a pretty good case that Clark is a shooter, you're exactly right. You could. And a pro defense attorney like Carmel could make an even better one. She could make a perfect case. Trying to get anyone else for these murders is pointless: we'll never do it.'
'What're we gonna do?'
'I don't know what you're gonna do,' Lucas said, standing up. 'But I'm going up north. You can handle this fuckin' thing.'
Lucas arrived at his cabin a little after five o'clock, driving back roads most of the way to dodge the Wisconsin state patrol, the most rapacious gang of weasels in the North Woods. As he drove, the image of the dead Louise Clark hung before his eyes.
Then, just before the turnoff for his cabin, he saw a neighbor, Roland Marks, driving an orange Kubota tractor along the side of the road. The tractor had an oversized loader on one end, and a backhoe on the other. Lucas pulled off and climbed out of the car, and Marks rode the throttle back to idle.
'What the hell are you doing?' Lucas asked, walking around the tractor. Louise
Clark began to fade.
'Gonna clear me off some snowmobile trails on the back,' Marks said. Marks had forty acres of brush, gullies and swamp across the road. He called it his huntin' property.
'You don't know how to drive a tractor,' Lucas said. 'You're a goddamn stockbroker.'
'Yeah? Watch this.' Marks drove the backhoe down a shallow slope into the roadside ditch; did something with the controls, set the brake, turned his seat around backwards, lowered hydraulic support pads on both sides of the tractor, and raised the bucket. With one slow chop, he took a couple of cubic feet of dirt out of the bottom on the ditch.
'How much did that thing cost?' Lucas asked, impressed despite himself.
'About seventeen, used,' Marks said, meaning seventeen thousand dollars. 'Got four hundred hours on her.'
'Jesus, you're starting to talk like a shitkicker.'
'What're you doing this evening?' Marks asked.
'Going out in the boat.'
'Why don't you come over? I'll check you out on this thing.' He carefully dumped the dirt back in the hole where he'd gotten it; only half of it slopped over the edge.
'Yeah? What time?'
'Half-hour?'
'See you in a half-hour.'
Lucas turned the pump and the water heater on, got a light spinning rod and carried it down the dock and flipped a Moss Boss out into a shallow area spotted with water lilies. The Moss Boss slid and skated frog-like through the lilies and reeds, back up to the dock.
He threw it out again, then again, and on the third cast, a bass hit. He fought it in, unhooked it, dropped it back in the water. A twelve-incher, and fun; but he didn't eat bass.
He flipped the Moss Boss around the dock for twenty minutes, taking three small bass, tossing them all back, feeling his shoulders loosen up. Louise Clark was almost gone. After the last cast, he walked back up the sloping lawn to the cabin, got four cold Leinies out of the refrigerator, put them in a grocery sack, and had one foot out the door when the phone rang.
He stopped, thought about it, shook his head at his own foolishness, and went back.
'Yeah?'
'Sherrill. I'm down at the ME's. They're doing the autopsy on Louise Clark.'
'Anything, yet?'
'Yeah. She'd had sex shortly before she was killed. The semen hadn't been dissipated yet, and they got a pretty good sample. But to tell you the truth, I figure there's only one place it could have come from.'
'Man! I don't believe that,' Lucas said. He was shocked. 'What about Allen?'
'They haven't started on him, but I'll let you know. If you want to know.'
'Of course, I want to know…'
'Okay. And there's more stuff. We found the gun, just like you said. It's a Colt . 22 with a silencer. Stuffed inside a boot in the closet. And we found a couple hundred bucks worth of cocaine in the bedside table.
There's the connection to Rolo. Crime scene found some pubic hair in Allen's bed. In fact, they've got three different samples. Most of it comes from Allen, but some of it's blonde, and that'd be Carmel – but there's a third sample that's this mousy-brown color. We don't have the lab work yet, but I know it came from Clark. I know it.'
'All right. Call me back when they get to Allen. Keep pushing the ME, don't let them put anything off until tomorrow. We need it now…'
'You going fishing?'
'Actually, I was on my way out the door. A neighbor's gonna teach me to run a backhoe.'
'Speaking of backhoes…'
'What?'
'You never told me that special agent Malone of the FBI was a woman. And a woman with a sexy voice who wants to dance with you.'
'Didn't seem relevant,' Lucas grunted. 'Our relationship is purely professional.'
'She wants you to call her, in Wichita. I've got a number.'
Malone picked up the phone on the first ring. 'Hello, Lucas Davenport,' she said. 'I'm told you're off rusticating.'
'Fishing,' Lucas said.
'I wanted you to know that I'm moving up to Minneapolis with my group, and
Mallard is coming in from Washington. We're very interested in this
Louise Clark. Very interested.'
'There's something wrong with the whole thing. Did Sherrill tell you about the semen?'
'No, nothing…'
Lucas summarized his conversation with Sherrill and Malone said, 'If the semen checks out, if the DNA checks out… that's it.'
'Makes me feel weird,' Lucas said. 'It's not right. This Clark isn't a pro killer, not unless she was doing it for the fun of it. Because she didn't have any goddamn money.'
'Could have had it hidden away.'
'Bullshit,' Lucas said. 'She kills people, but hides it all away? The inside of her house looked like a cut-rate motel. She had a TV set that couldn't have been worth more than a couple hundred bucks, new. Everything in the place said she was a secretary, and struggling to keep her head above water.'
'All right. Well, I'm coming in tomorrow. Maybe, when you get back, you can take me out for a nice little foxtrot somewhere – some place where you won't spend all of your time dancing with the waitress.'
Lucas carried the sack of beer next door to the Marks' place. Lucy Marks was snipping the heads off played-out coneflowers as her husband maneuvered the
Kubota in and out of a shed. The shed showed splintered wood at the side of one of the doors, evidence of a recent impact.
'Role tells me you're gonna learn how to run the tractor/ she said, shaking her head. 'I'm glad I bought the quart-size bottle of peroxide.'
'Hey…'
'Lucas, you gotta encourage him to be careful. I'm afraid he'll roll it over on himself. He's like a kid.'
'He'll be all right,' Lucas said.
'That wouldn't be beer in that sack, would it?'
'Couple Leinies,' he said, guiltily.
'Yeah, well, I'll take the Leinies, you go figure out the tractor. When you get back, we'll fry some crappies and we can have the beer then.'
'Well…' She gave him a look and he handed her the bag.
The Kubota was… different. Running wasn't a problem, but maneuvering the joystick for the back-hoe took a little practice: 'I'll have you buttering your bread with this thing before we're finished,' Marks said, enthusiastically. 'I figure with a few hours practice, I could do all the driveways for this whole area, come winter.'
'Jesus Christ, Role, you make what, a half-million dollars a year selling stock?
And now you're gonna pick up an extra two hundred dollars a month doing driveways?'
When Lucas was checked out, Marks showed him where he was going to hide the key in his shed:
'Anytime I'm not up here, you're welcome to use it.'
'Maybe I could help you brush out a couple of those trails,' Lucas said; he liked the backhoe.
'Terrific'Then, as they walked back up toward the cabin, 'You gettin' any?'