"You think it might be possible that Joe did this? That there was some kind of an argument, and for some reason… "
Calb shook his head. "Nah. To tell you the truth, Joe just didn't have the grit to do this. Not hanging them, where he had to look them in the face."
"So maybe he just took off," Del said. "Or maybe… "
"Something else I thought of, after the other BCA boys was here," Calb continued. "If this whole thing didn't come out of the Kansas City jail-and that's gotta be it, in my opinion, but if it didn't-then you oughta get up to Moose Bay. That would be the place to look, along with KC."
"Why?" Del asked.
"The word around town is that Letty West saw them out there at the stroke of midnight," Calb said. "Is that right?"
Lucas nodded. "Close to that."
"Jane worked the three-to-eleven shift. She couldn't have got home much before half-past eleven, and last night, with that ground blizzard, it was probably later. If he took them up there to hang them at midnight, he must have grabbed her the minute she got home. So he was waiting for her-or followed her home."
Lucas and Del both nodded. They talked for another five minutes, and Lucas got the impression that Calb was genuinely confused by the killings. Cash had had some words from time to time with coworkers, but never anything serious, nothing that had even led to a confrontation. "Just that, you know, mechanics and guys like Deon don't mix. He thought he was a basketball star. One of those bad gangsta dudes, whatever they call them. That's what he thought."
OUTSIDE, WALKING BACK across the highway, Lucas said, "I thought about her getting off at eleven, and being hanged at twelve."
"I did too," Del said. "I was saving it up."
"Pig's ass," Lucas said. "Anyway, somebody thought of it."
"Maybe Warr was the target," Del said. "We've been doing nothing but talking about Cash."
"Got to get on her, get some background going. I'll talk to Dickerson."
"Gotta get up to Moose Bay," Del said. "How's the heater in the Olds?"
"Fine."
"Then let's take your car. Mustang heater wouldn't soften up butter."
MOOSE BAY WAS run by the Black River band of the Chippewa, on the banks of a river whose water was stained so absolutely black by decomposing vegetation that when it froze over, even the ice looked black. From Cash's house to the res was twenty-four minutes, nine minutes down to Armstrong, then another fifteen minutes through Armstrong and out the county road to the casino.
"Tell me your theories," Del said, on the way out. "You give good theory."
"I'm thinking… drug deal," Lucas said. "Calb was probably right both ways: it's connected with Kansas City and Cash's jail contacts, and it's probably connected with the casino. The casino Indians don't have much truck with drugs, but the people who come in to gamble, have a good time… they'd do a little coke."
"So the money's drug money," Del said. "All in cash, all bundled up, but not fresh bricks. Cash makes the wholesale contacts, driving for Calb back and forth. Warr has the contacts up here, delivers it out to the individual dealers. Or deals it herself."
"Then they fuck with somebody. Or, somebody knows they've got that money, and they come looking for it."
"But then they'd just shoot them-they wouldn't hang them," Del said.
"Trying to get them to talk?"
"More likely they fucked with somebody and got made an example of," Del said. "A bigger network that's still up and running, where they need an occasional example."
"Maybe," Lucas said. "Where does Calb come in?"
"He doesn't. Not necessarily."
"Look at the farmhouse-there was a lot of work done in there, new work, and it cost a bundle. Believe me, I know." The Big New House back in St. Paul had cost $870,000. "If Calb knows Cash is only getting paid for driving, and if Warr is just dealing cards, where'd he think they got the money to fix that place up? There's a hundred grand in work in there, minimum, and a ten-thousand-dollar television set."
"Tell you what-if the total's a hundred and thirty-five thousand dollars, that's not much for a house, with two incomes, and a guy upstairs who might be paying rent," Del said.
"C'mon," Lucas scoffed. "How many drug dealers do you know who have a mortgage? How many have bought a house?"
"Jimmy Szuza bought a house for his mother."
"Jimmy Szuza was working for his mother, the treacherous old bitch. He was fronting for her."
"Still." After a couple of minutes: "And what about the cell?"
"Beats the shit outa me."
"CALB WAS RIGHT about the travel time," Lucas said, glancing at his watch as they rolled into the casino's parking lot.
The casino looked like a larger version of Calb's truck shop, but a truck shop on steroids: a huge, rambling, two-story yellow-and-green metal building with a prism-shaped glass entry built to resemble a crystal tepee. "Liquor in the front, poker in the rear," Del said.
"Bumper sticker," Lucas said. "But I don't think they sell booze."
THE MOOSE BAY security chief was a cheerful Chippewa man named Clark Hoffman, who hurried down to meet them after a call from the reception desk. "Figured you'd get here sooner or later," he said, shaking their hands. He looked closely at Del. "Did you hang out at Meat's in the Cities?"
"Yeah, I'd go in there before it closed," Del said.
"It closed? Shit."
"Couple years back."
Hoffman thought about that for a moment, then said, "I used to kick your ass at shuffleboard. I thought you were a wino."
Del grinned and shrugged. "I remember. You told me you were at Wounded Knee."
"That's me," Hoffman said. "Sneaking through the weeds with a hundred pounds of frozen brats in a backpack. Fuckin' FBI-no offense. C'mon this way."
They followed him upstairs to his office, Del filling him in about Meat's. "Trouble with the health inspectors," Del told him. "You name it, they had it: mice, rats, roaches, disease. The only thing that kept you from dyin' was the alcohol."
"Everything did have a… particular flavor," Hoffman said. "Ever notice that?"
"Yeah."
"I always sorta liked it. What happened to Meat?"
"He moved to San Clemente and opened a porno store."
"Not much money in retail porno anymore," Hoffman said, shaking his head. "Not since they started piping it into every motel room in the country."
JANE WARR'S EMPLOYMENT file sat in the center of Hoffman's desk. He pushed it across at Lucas and said, "Not much there. She learned to deal at a school in Vegas, held a couple of jobs there, worked at a Wal-Mart for a while, outside of Kansas City, then came up here."
"We heard a rumor that she might have had a relationship here with a guy named Terry Anderson."
Hoffman frowned. "Where'd you hear that?"
"Downtown. Can't tell you exactly who mentioned it," Lucas said.
"I'll check, and I'll find out. I hadn't heard anything, but then-I might not have. About anyone else, but not about Terry."
"Why not Terry?" Del asked.
"He's my brother-in-law," Hoffman said. He grinned at Lucas, but it wasn't a happy face. "He's married to my sister."
"Aw, shit," Lucas said. "Listen, all we heard was one guy, who didn't like Warr, but maybe got turned down by her and knew we'd be up here talking to you. Maybe just a wise guy."
"One way or the other, I'll know in the next half hour," Hoffman said. He interlinked his fingers, stretched his arms out in front of him, and cracked his knuckles. "I'll let you know."
"Take it easy," Del said.
"I'll take it easy," Hoffman said. "My sister, on the other hand, might kill his ass. If it's true."
"Tell her to take it easy, too," Del said. "I mean, Jesus."
"You have any cocaine going through here?" Lucas asked after an awkward pause.
Hoffman spread his hands. "Sure. On the res, and some of the customers bring it in. We try to keep it out-we make so much money that we try to keep everything spotless. We don't need to give some asshole state senator an excuse to build state-run casinos. When we see it, we call the cops. Anybody caught with it is banned, no matter what the cops do."