The cop lifted the tape, and asked her, “Can I have a job?”
She patted him once on the cheek. “I'm sure you're too nice a boy to work for me.”
“Hey, I'm not,” the cop said to her back. “I'm a jerk. Really.” To Lucas, as Lucas ducked under the tape, “Seriously. I'm an asshole.”
“I'll tell her,” Lucas said.
Rose Marie had briefly been a street cop before she moved into administration, law school, politics, and power. She walked carefully down the route suggested by one of the crime-scene cops, cocked an eye in the window, looked at Widdler, backed away, and said, “That made a mark.”
“Yeah.”
“He killed Bucher? For sure?” she asked.
“He and his wife, I think. I don't know what all of this is about- except… You've been briefed on the Jesse Barth kidnapping attempt, and the firebombing.”
She nodded: “Screw the pooch.”
“The Screw thing and bomb, might have been an… effort, attempt, something… to distract me,” Lucas said. “To get me looking at something else, while the Bucher thing went away. Might have worked, too, except for the white van, and then Gabriella.”
He scratched his head. “Man, is this a mess, or what?”
“Then he decided on direct action, shooting you with a moose gun, but chickened out and shot himself instead?” She was dubious.
“That's what I got,” Lucas said. “Doesn't make me happy.”
“What about the wife?”
“As soon as the crime-scene guys get finished with the basics, we're going to lift up Leslie's pant legs,” Lucas said. “See if he's got Screw holes. If he does, we go have an unpleasant talk with Jane.”
“If he doesn't?”
“We'll still have an unpleasant conversation with Jane. Then everybody'll talk to lawyers and we go back into the weeds to figure out what to do next,” Lucas said.
“How much of this would have happened if Burt Kline hadn't been banging a teenager?”
Lucas had to think about it, finally sighed: “Maybe… there'd be one or two more people alive, but we wouldn't solve the Bucher case.”
They were standing, talking, when John Smith showed up, looking sleepy, said, “Really?”-looked into the car, said, “Holy shit.”
“You want to come along and talk to Jane?” Lucas asked.
“Yeah,” Smith said. “This whole thing is…” He waved a hand in the air; couldn't think of a phrase for it.
“Screwed up?” Rose Marie offered.
Eventually four guys from the Medical Examiner's Office carefully lifted, pulled, and rolled Leslie Widdler's body out of the Lexus and onto a ground-level gurney.
“Guy shoulda worn a wide-load sign,” one of them said. When they got him flat, one of the ME investigators asked Lucas, “Which leg?”
“Both,” Lucas said.
They only needed the first one. Widdler's left leg was riddled with what looked like small-caliber gunshot wounds, surrounded by half-dollar-sized bruises going yellow at the edges. There were a few oohs and aahs from the crowd. Though they didn't really need it, they pulled up the other pant leg and found more bites.
“Good enough for me,” Smith said. “DNA will confirm it, but that, my friends, is what happens when you fuck with a pit bull.”
“Half pit bull,” Lucas said.
“What was the other half?” Rose Marie asked.
“Nobody knows,” Lucas said. “Probably a rat terrier.”
On the way to Widdler's, Lucas and Smith talked about an arrest. They believed that Leslie had been bitten by a dog, but had no proof that Screw had done the biting.
That was yet to come, with the DNA tests. But DNA tests take a while. They knew there had been a second person involved, a driver. They knew that Jane Widdler had probably profited from at least three killings, in the looting of the Donaldson, Bucher, and Toms mansions, but they didn't have a single piece of evidence that would prove it.
“We push her,” Smith said. “We read her rights to her, we push, see if she says anything.
We make the call.”
“We take her over to look at Leslie, put some stress on her,” Lucas said. “I've got a warrant coming, both for her house and the shop.
I'll have my guys sit on both places… look for physical evidence, records. We'll let her know that, maybe crack her on the way to see Leslie.”
“If she doesn't crack?”
“We do the research. We'll get her sooner or later,” Lucas said. “There's no way Leslie Widdler pulled these killings off on his own. No way.”
The thing about Botox, Lucas thought later, was that when you'd had too much, as Jane Widdler had, you then had to fake reactions just to look human-and it's impossible to distinguish real fake reactions from fake fake reactions.
Widdler was at her shop, working the telephone, her back to the door, when Lucas and Smith trailed in, the bell tinkling overhead. Widdler was alone, and turned, saw them, sat up, made a fake look of puzzlement, and said into the phone, “I've got to go. I've got visitors.”
She hung up, then stood, tense, vibrating, gripped the back of the chair, and said, “What?”
“You seem… Do you know?” Lucas asked, tilting his head.
“Where's my husband?” The question wasn't tentative; it came out as a demand.
Lucas looked at Smith, who said, “Well, Mrs. Widdler, there's been a tragedy…”
A series of tiny muscular twitches crossed her face: “Oh, God,” she said. “I knew it. Where is he? What happened to him?”
Lucas said, “Mrs. Widdler, he apparently took his own life.”
“Oh, no!” she shouted. Again, Lucas couldn't tell if it was real or faked. It looked fake… but then, it would. “He wouldn't do that, would he?” she cried. “Leslie wouldn't… Did he jump? Did he jump?”
“I'm afraid he shot himself,” Smith said.
“Oh, no. No. That's not Leslie,” Widdler said. She half turned and dropped into the chair, and made a weeping look, and might have produced a tear. “Leslie would never… his face wasn't… was he hurt?”
Lucas thought, If she's faking it, she's good. Her questions were crazy in pretty much the right way.
“I'm afraid you'll have to come with us, to make a technical identification of the body, but there's really no doubt,” Smith said. “Both Lucas and I know him, of course… Where did you think he was last night? Was he here? Did he go out early?”
Widdler looked away, her voice hesitant, breaking. “He… never came home.”
“Had he ever done that before?”
“Only… yes. I don't think… well, he wouldn't have done it again, under the same circumstances…” Her face was turned up at them, eyes wide, asking for an explanation. “But why? Why would he hurt himself? He had everything to live for…”
She made the weeping face again, and Lucas thought, Jeez.
Smith said, “There are some other problems associated with his death, Mrs. Widdler.
Some illegal activity has turned up, and we think you know about it. We have to inform you that you have the right to remain silent, that anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to speak to an attorney…”
“Oh, God!” She was horrified by the ritual words. “You can't think I did anything?”
They were in Lucas's truck, but Smith drove. Lucas sat in the back with Widdler.
Lucas asked, “How well did you know Claire Donaldson?”
“Donaldson? From Chippewa Falls?”
“Yes.”
Widdler made a frownie look: “Well, I knew of her, but I never met her personally.
We bought some antiques from her estate sale, of course, it was a big event for this area. Why?”
“Your husband murdered her,” Lucas said.
“You shut up,” Jane Widdler shouted. “You shut up. Leslie wouldn't hurt anybody…”
“And Mrs. Bucher and a man named Toms in Des Moines. Did you know Mrs. Bucher or Mr. Toms?”
She had covered her head with her arms; hadn't simply buried her face in her hands, but had wrapped her arms around her skull, her face slumped almost into her lap, and she said, “I'm not listening. I'm not listening.”