"Okay. Quicker is better, though." He looked out toward the choppers, still hanging south of the crime scene. He could see them clearly, just above the brush. They would have had a straight shot of the bodies hanging from the tree. To Dickerson: "There's no chance that you had the bodies down before the choppers arrived?"
"No." The BCA man shook his head. "If they've got the right cameras, they got the shot. If we'd had another twenty minutes… "
"They tried to come right in and we waved them off," Anderson said. "Not much more we could do."
"Spilled milk," Lucas said.
THE BCACRIME scene crew was already working the site, and Lucas drifted over and spoke for a moment to the supervisor. "Nothing. No good footprints-everything is frozen, and the snow didn't hold anything," the man said. "The length of stride and the size of the foot would make the killer a male, but hell… we didn't think a woman dragged them back there anyway. Looks like just one guy, if that means anything."
"Yeah, it does," Lucas said.
"So it's one guy. Not much else-we're gonna clean the whole place out, though, right down to the dirt."
LUCAS TURNED TO go back to Dickerson, but the phone rang again and he pulled it out and punched it up.
"You're not going to believe it," Del said. "There was a guy staying at the Motel 6 the night before last, driving a '95 Jeep Cherokee, paid with cash. I've got his registration card, he shows Minnesota plates, including the tag number. I'm gonna run it, see what happens. The night clerk says he saw the guy again last night-that he pulled into the parking lot as if he were going to check in again, but he didn't. He just sat in the lot for a few seconds, then pulled away. The clerk says he was a white guy with a short beard, big guy, well-spoken. He was wearing a dark blue parka and a watch cap. If Letty's right on the time, he would have been in the motel parking lot about an hour earlier. Maybe a little less."
"Huh. Anybody else stay in the room since him?"
"One guy last night, who already checked out, and the room's been cleaned. We've got a credit card on the guy who checked out, so we should be able to get him for some prints. I locked up the room and put some duct tape on the doors."
"What else?"
"If I don't get something to eat in the next twelve minutes, my ass is gonna fall off."
"Got a place?"
"There's a cafe called the Red Red Robin. It comes reluctantly recommended."
"See you there in fifteen," Lucas said.
He went back to Dickerson and they stepped away from the crowd to talk. Lucas told him about the dope baggies at the Cash farmhouse. "I was just heading back down there," Dickerson said. "Anything else?"
"We interviewed the kid and she thinks the killer's car was a Jeep Cherokee," Lucas explained and outlined the conversation with Del. "So the guy at the motel saw the Jeep not long before Letty saw the lights out here on the road. It makes me nervous to say it, but it fits."
"Gotta process the room," Dickerson said. He was interested now. "Priority one."
"It's sealed with official duct tape," Lucas said. "Feel free."
"Do any good for us to talk with the kid?"
"I don't think so. She mostly just found them," Lucas said. "You can take a crack at her if you want."
"We got other stuff to do, if you think you got it all."
"I'm taking her back downtown, to see if I can keep her away from the reporters for a while," Lucas said. "We'll talk to her some more."
LETTY WAS SITTING on the hood of the Oldsmobile, apparently impervious to the cold, when Lucas got back to the road. "Couldn't breathe inside the car," she said. "But I stayed right here." She hopped off the passenger side, popped the door, and climbed in. "The bodies in the bags looked stiff, like bags full of boards," she said, as Lucas got in and fumbled out the key.
"Uh. You know a place called the Red Red Robin?"
"The Bird. Downtown. Nice place. My mom and I went there once for Thanksgiving."
"I'm going in to get a bite to eat with Del. I hate to leave you without your mother." He didn't mention that he hated even more to leave her with a pack of reporters outside her door. "Want to come?"
"Sounds good to me," Letty said. "If you're buying."
"I'm buying."
On the way, Letty asked, "They were stiff in the bags. Is that like, rigor mortis?"
Lucas shook his head. "No. They were frozen. Like Popsicles."
THE RED RED Robin was a storefront cafe with a robin painted on a swinging wooden sign outside the door, like the sign on an English pub. Inside, a dozen red-topped stools ran straight down a coffee bar, and behind those, and behind a sign that read, PLEASE SEAT YOURSELF, were sixteen booths covered with the same red leatherette as the stools. The place smelled of fried eggs, fried onions, fried potatoes, and fried beef. Eight other customers sat in three groups down the booths. They seemed to be arranged to keep an eye on Del, who sat halfway down the right-hand wall.
"Anything?" Lucas asked Del, as he and Letty slid into the booth.
"Ran the numbers. No such tag," Del said.
"Shit." He glanced at Letty. "Shoot."
"But it occurs to me that a guy who's gonna come up here and do something like hang two people would have to be pretty weird to do it in a small town, in his own car. He's gotta know he's gonna be somewhat noticed."
"You'd think."
"So maybe he wouldn't lie about the Minnesota part of the plates, in case the clerk might notice. Maybe he just jumbled the numbers. I got the guys in St. Paul to look for recent title transfers on older Jeep Cherokees. Turns out the new ones don't have those taillights. The motel clerk thought that it might be an older model, too."
"Maybe get lucky," Lucas said.
Letty asked, "Can you guys talk while you eat? Or is that too complicated?"
Del lifted an eyebrow at her. "My daughter is only three years younger than this kid," Lucas told him. "Do you think I could lock her in a freezer? I mean, what if she grew a mouth like this one?"
"Ha ha," Letty said. She handed a slightly greasy menu to Lucas. "You're buying."
LETTY STUFFED HERSELF. Del and Lucas went out of their way to prove that they could talk while they ate. The food struggled toward mediocrity, but, Lucas realized as he sampled the potatoes, wasn't going to make it. Half of the meatloaf was refrigerator cold; the other half, microwave hot. As they were finishing, a tall man in tan Carhartt coveralls came in, stamping his feet and snuffing with the cold. Letty called, "Hey, Bud."
The man looked around until he spotted Letty, then stepped over. He was about fifty, Lucas thought, and as thin and hard-looking as an oak rail, with a bulbous red nose and flinty white eyes.
"Hey, Letty," he said, his eyes bouncing off Lucas and Del. "Been working hard, or hardly working?"
"Doin' okay," she said. "I heard you been shootin' beaver again."
"Yeah, over to Spike. What's this about you finding those people? I heard about it at Jerry's."
"Yep." Letty puffed up a little. "They were nude. "
"All right," Lucas said dryly. "Let's finish the meatloaf."
"Bud's a trapper, like me," Letty told them. To Bud: "These guys are state agents. They're taking me around."
Bud nodded. "I thought Jane might come to a bad end," he said.
"Why was that?" Lucas asked.
"Not good people," he said. "She thought we were a bunch of hicks. She was always laughing at people behind their backs, and she used to talk about Las Vegas all the time, like that was the navel of the universe. Every time she opened her mouth she'd start off by saying, 'In Las Vegas we used to… whatever.' "
"Sounds like you knew her pretty well," Del said.
"Just to play blackjack," the trapper dude said. "She was the main dealer up at Moose Bay." He hesitated, then said, dropping his voice, "You know what you ought to do when you get up to the casino, is talk to a guy named Terry Anderson. He knew Warr real well." He leaned on real just enough.