Then, his voice soft and unshaken, Towson said, "This is a problem."
"Yeah." Lucas nodded, though there was nobody to see it.
"I've clearly identified it as a problem. Tomorrow, when I get to work, I'll get my best people working on a solution."
"That would be good," Lucas said.
Another long silence. Then: "Great Jesus fuckin' Christ, Davenport," Towson screamed. And meekly added, "Sorry, darlin'."
Catrin.
What to wear to a Sunday lunch? She was married to a doctor, so she probably had some bucks. She'd be more comfortable with something neat, rather than something out on the edge: Boots and black-leather jackets were out. Lucas dug through his closet, through a stack of dry cleaning, and finally came up with what he hoped would be righttwill pants in a deep khaki, a crisp blue shirt, and a brown suede sport coat. He added dark brown loafers and his dress gun, a P7 in 9mm.
Checked himself in the mirror; smiled a couple of times. Nah.
Better to can the little smile, he thought. Go for sincerity and pleasure at seeing her
On Sundays, City Hall was dead quiet. Not today. Lucas went straight for Roux's office; the secretary's desk was empty, but Rose Marie, dressed in slacks and a sweater with fuzzy white sheep on it, was in her office with two visitors. Dick Milton, the department's media specialist, was a former newspaper reporter who'd once written an eight-part investigative seriesSunday through Sundayon oak wilt. Angela Harris, a departmental contract shrink, was perched on the windowsill.
"What do you think?" Lucas asked as he stuck his head in the door.
"Media-wise?" Roux looked up. "Just about what we expected."
"Been a little rough on George Shaw," Milton said.
"That's not rough," Lucas said. He'd never liked Milton, even when he was reporting. "Rough is sitting in the county jail, waiting to go to Stillwater for ten years, which is what George is gonna do."
"Its not gonna hold, the connection between Shaw and Alie'e," Milton said. He looked at Roux. "This whole lesbian business they stayed pretty delicate about it last night, on the news shows, but I was on the Net and I saw a scan of the first copies ofThe Star, and they got a big sexy picture of this Jael Corbeau. She's hotter than Alie'e, so it ain't gonna stay delicate very long."
"When'sThe Star gonna get here?" Lucas asked.
"This afternoon, I guess. They got stories on the Net about how theStar editors tore the ass off a whole issue as it was going out the door, and turned it around to do an Alie'e issue. The Journal says all them other rags are suckin' wind."
"So it's gonna pump everything up," Lucas said. He looked at Roux. "You're still working the press pretty hard?"
"We're doing another press conference at ten o'clock, and then the Olson family and friends are supposed to be back around noon. They want the body as soon as they can get it. The funeral's gonna be later in the week, up in Burnt River. Then we'll probably have another press briefing around three o'clock, and if we need another, around seven."
"Nothing came up overnight?"
"Nothing. Except this morning, Randall Towson called about Trick Bentoin."
"I forgot to tell you about it," Lucas said. "The murder washed it away. Del says Tricks in a Days Inn down on 694, so we'll pick him up tomorrow and get a statement. Towson is gonna call Rashid Al-Balah's attorney, I guess, as soon as we get a statement from Trick."
"Maybe nobody will notice?"
"We should announce it the day of the funeral," Milton said. "If we can hold off until then."
"I dunno," Lucas said. "We really ought to get Al-Balah out of Stillwater as soon as we can."
"Al-Balah?" Roux said. "Fuck him. But why don't you get Bentoin today? Just in case."
"Okay." Lucas looked at the shrink. "What do you think about Alie'e? We got a crazy?"
She shook her head. "Too soon to tell. It looks more efficient than crazy, though. Of course, the man is disturbed in some sense."
"He'd be more disturbed if I could get my goddamned hands on him," Rose Marie said.
"Twelve of the people at the party have arrest records, and I'm looking at them for any sign of psychiatric involvement, but I don't see any so far," the shrink continued.
"Twelve?" Lucas asked, looking at Rose Marie.
"Talk to Lesterbut it's all small stuff. Shoplifting, petty theft, two misdemeanor domestic assaults, one street fight, a couple of ticket scofflaw cases like that."
Nothing.
A Post-it note was stuck to Lucas's door: Come get me. It was signed, Marcy. He walked down to Homicide, and found the place full of copsmore homicide cops than he'd ever seen in one spot, at one time, on a Sunday. Lester was perched on a desk at the end of the room, talking to a cop with a notebook. He spotted Lucas and shook his head. Nothing happening.
Lucas stepped back to Marcy Sherrill's desk. She saw him coming, said something into the phone she was holding, and hung up. "I'm really coming over?" She was a pretty woman in her early thirties; she liked to fight. She and Lucas had had a brief, intense affair, which everyone in the office had considered inevitable and overdue. After a couple of months, they'd called the thing off by mutual consent, to their mutual relief.
"Yeah, at least for a while," Lucas said.
"Good. I'm trying to track down more people from the partyI bet we're missing forty peoplebut I'm not getting anywhere. I'm ready to bag it."
"So you're up? Right now?"
"I could be, if you whispered in Frank's shell-like ear," Marcy said.
"You remember Trick Bentoin?"
Sherrill didn't want to go after Bentoin, but if she could bring him into the state attorneys office, he could keep Del free all day.
"Soif I do this, I can work Alie'efor you?"
"We're all working Alie'e after this," Lucas said. "Maybe forever."
Sherrill leaned back in her chair, locked her hands behind her head, and studied him.
"What?" he asked.
"You've got something going on, the way you look. You look sort of snazzy."
"Meeting an old friend for lunch," Lucas said. No point in denying it. During the affair, Sherrill had learned to read his mind.
"Nice-looking, I'd guess." She smiled.
"I don't know. I really haven't talked to her in twenty years."
"Whoa. So what happened? She just came back to town?"
"No, she's been living down south, on the Mississippi, somewhere down there."
And shecould read his mind. She rocked forward, her face serious. "Lucas, is she married?"
He shrugged. "She's not entirely unmarried, as I understand it. Look, we're just having lunch."
"Oh, God. Don't fuck her up, Lucas."
He was offended, stiffened up. "I won't. And you go get Bentoin, okay? Call me when you've got him."
"Lucas" Even more serious now. "Lucas, man, she's your age, she's married, she's in the danger zone. You could seriously mess her up. I can tell by the way you're acting."
"Find Bentoin." He turned and left. In the hall, under his breath, he said, "Fuck you," and looked at his watch. Plenty of time for an errand.
Carl Knox had taken a fine Sunday morning to look at a stolen Kubota 2900 tractor with a front loader and rear-mounted backhoe; an accessory mower was piled on the front of the trailer that held the tractor. While Carl looked, a freckle-faced, straw-haired, outraged thief was talking about the turf tires, practically unusedthe goddamn machine had only 145 hours on it, came straight off the best golf course in southern Minnesota. What was this two-thousand-dollar shit?
Carl couldn't hear him, because he was thinking about a Cree Indian guy named Louis Arnot up in Canada, who'd been calling around looking for just such a machine. Arnot would pay twelve thousand American if Carl could deliver the tractor to Kenora, Ontario, which he could, but his guys would have to change the numbers and he'd have to come up with some Kubota papers, and he hadn't done Kubota in a couple of years.
His daughter had come out to the shop with him. She'd been inside, fooling with the books, but now suddenly broke through the Service Department door and said, "The cops are here."