"The gravedigger…"
"If he is, we figure it's best not to attract his attention."
THE COP WAS waiting in the squad with the motor running. Lucas opened the door and climbed in, and the cop said, "Four speeders. They passed me with impunity."
"Impunity, huh? You in a vocabulary class?"
Del was waiting when he got back, and he took two minutes to explain it. Marshall added, "We got that fax from Stout. He was there for two years, then went to Madison the year after Laura disappeared. He majored in art at Stout, and from Madison, they tell me that he was in art history."
"So he's gotta be able to draw," Lucas said.
Marshall asked, "I wonder what he was doing with that pimp?"
"We can ask Randy," Lucas said. To Marcy: "We need to get somebody from intelligence to track him down, Qatar, and take a picture of him without him knowing it."
"Lane can do that," Marcy said. "He's got a darkroom at his house. He's a good photographer."
"All right, that's good. Let's get Lane going."
When they were all assembled, Lucas laid out what they had: Qatar had been at Stout when Laura Winton disappeared. He'd grown up near St. Pat's, where his father had been a professor and his mother an administrative employee and later head of the Wells Museum. He fit the image of the man described by Winton, or, at least, he would if he had hair. He had art training. His office was just down the hall from Neumann. His mother died shortly after saying that she'd snoop around a bit. And his current girlfriend was the spitting image of all the women who'd been killed.
"Her name is Ellen Barstad," Marcy said. "Believe it or not, there are two Ellen Barstads in Minneapolis, so we're sorting that out now."
"We know he steals valuables from his victims-they're not souvenirs, though, he's apparently doing it for the money. Once we get in his house, we've got to look at everything with a microscope, in case he keeps anything else. If we could find one thing that comes from the victims, that would be enormous."
"We gotta get in and grab his computers," Lane said. "If Marcy's artist friend is right, and he's drawing from computer photos, then maybe they'll have everything we need."
"Good," Lucas said. He made a note on his legal pad. Then: "I would like to know why we weren't onto him sooner, with all the time we put in at St. Pat's."
Black said, "Because we were looking for people connected with art, and the art department and the museums. That's hundreds of people. And after that, we were just asking around. Qatar and Neumann were in the history department." He shrugged. "We never looked in history."
THEY'D ALL GATHERED at the desks in the work bay, but as the talk continued, they'd pulled chairs around until they were in a rough circle, facing each other, intent. When they'd talked out all the possibilities and probabilities, Lucas said, "Check me on this. I see two keys: We need Randy to identify him as the guy who sold him the jewelry, and maybe-maybe-we can do something with his girlfriend."
"I can get a headshot," Lane said. "It might take me a day or two if we don't want him to spot me."
"Push it hard," Lucas said. "I'd love to get something today, so we can get it over to Randy."
"How about the girlfriend?" Del asked.
"That's you and me," Lucas said.
Marshall said, "And me."
Lucas nodded and turned to Swanson and Black. "You two, I want you back at St. Pat's. See if there's any way we can nail down whether he was at that museum reunion party-but keep it tight, undercover. I need a bio on him. Something that could put him with the other dead women that we've identified."
"Are we gonna track him?" Marcy asked.
"I'll get some guys from intelligence. We don't need a full team, I don't think-that's too dangerous. We'd have to talk with his neighbors and college faculty people to pull off a team, and the word might get around. So maybe just one guy at a time, keeping a light tag. No reason to think he's gonna run."
Marcy asked, "What about me?"
"Go talk to the county attorney. Tell him what we've got and find out what we need-how bad we're hurting and what we can do."
"I think we're hurting a little," she said. "Like Terry said, we've connected a lot of dots but nothing really critical."
"Except Randy."
"Who we managed to cripple," she said.
"Yeah… the little prick."
BEFORE THEY WENT looking for Ellen Barstad, Lucas stopped at Rose Marie's office to tell her what they were doing.
"What are the chances?" she asked after he gave her a quick summary.
"I think he's the guy. Proving it is gonna be harder. The problem is, except for the first one, they were coming to him-he seemed to be picking on women from out of town, or women who just got to town, so her friends would never see him. Who knows, they may never even have known his real name… We think he gave a fake name to the Winton girl."
"Are we watching him?"
"Yeah. I need you to talk to the intelligence guys. We're not gonna climb all over him, but we want to know where he is."
"I'll talk to them," she said. She made a note on her desk pad. Then: "New topic: If you had a chance to take a job with the state, would you take it?"
He shrugged. "I sorta like it here."
"But if you couldn't stay here?" she pressed.
"What are you working on?"
She leaned across the desk. "The guy running the department of public safety? The governor doesn't like him. He does like me-and he should, since I did most of his homework for him when he was in the state senate. We get along on a chemical level."
"So you're thinking of moving up."
"The possibility's out there," she said.
"Well…" He rubbed his forehead with his fingertips. "That's a different kind of work."
"Not for you, it wouldn't be. You'd be doing the same thing you do here-working on your own, big cases, intelligence. Figuring things out. Maybe some political work. You could bring along Del, if you wanted."
"I don't know if Del would go. Maybe he would."
She leaned back. "Think about it. I don't know if the whole thing is gonna work out, anyway. A couple of things have got to fall just right."
"But the governor likes you," Lucas said.
"He does," she said. "What's even more important, he's gonna be reelected, if he doesn't fuck up the tax thing, so we'd have at least seven more years. We'd be like Hawaii Five-O."
"Jesus, Hawaii Five-O. All right. I'll think about it."
"Keep in touch on this Qatar thing," she said. "It wouldn't hurt our image if we nailed this down. Politically, it's just the right time."
HE PICKED UP Del and they got a city car and went looking for Barstad. Marcy had straightened out the confusion on the two Ellen Barstads-one of them was an elderly resident of a nursing home-and so they had an address and phone number, but nothing else.
The address turned out to be in another one of the faceless business parks, not far from the nearly identical one where Ware had his porn studio.
"I thought it was her home address," Del said, as they pulled into the parking area. Thirty or forty cars were scattered down the length of the narrow, block-long lot.
"Maybe she lives here," Lucas said.
"There's a sign on the door."
The door was heavy silvered glass, and the sign was in gold stick-on letters: "Barstad Crafts." The door was locked, but they could see a light in the back. Lucas knocked, then cupped his hands on the glass to peer past the reflections. He knocked again, and a woman stepped into the light in the back, then started toward them. When she got close, Lucas took out his ID case and held it up so she could see it.
She turned the lock and said, "Yes?"
Lucas recognized her from the ME's office. "Ellen Barstad?"
"Yes?" A worried, tentative smile.
Lucas introduced himself, and then Del, and said, "We have a serious problem, and we need to talk to you about it. Would you have a few minutes?"
"Well…" She looked carefully at Del and then said to Lucas, "You're the man who was at the medical examiner's office."