"That sounds good. I'll get McCord on it right now. There've got to be some publicity shots around. He's served on committees and so forth. Can we transmit them up to you?"
"I think so. You'll have to talk to the local people, I don't know exactly what the printing facilities are here… hang on." He took the phone down and asked, "Do we have a photo printer of some kind?"
One of the deputies said, "Sure. We've got two or three different kinds. Standard stuff."
Back to the phone: "We're good, sir. When your guys find a photo, send it up here to the sheriff's department."
"We can do that," Henderson said. "Man, you moved fast-this is exactly what I wanted. That asshole Washington hasn't even gotten out of Grand Forks yet. He's supposedly going up to the hanging tree to make a speech."
"Sir, we can't let that happen. It's really a bleak place-it looks like it was invented for a hanging. The image'll be so strong that nothing else will make any difference, nothing we say. Maybe we could keep him out of there on the grounds that it's a crime scene."
"Can we blame that on the sheriff, too?"
"I think it could be worked out, sir."
"Is he right there, listening?"
"Yes, sir."
"Let me talk to him. Say something that would lead to me talking to him."
Lucas nodded. "I think you should talk to Sheriff Anderson about that, sir."
"Good. Give him the phone."
Lucas passed the phone to Anderson, saying, "The governor. He needs to speak with you."
Anderson took the phone. "Uh, Governor Henderson… "
As Anderson talked, Lucas said to the group of deputies, "Is there somebody here who usually handles photo spreads? We'll need a half-dozen pictures of white men with dark hair, probably in business suits, looking charming. Like a political picture." He looked around at the pictures on the walls. "Like these. Like that one." He pointed a finger at a smiling head.
One of the deputies said, "We got that."
The rest of it took an hour and a half. Lucas was in a semi-frenzy, driven by the momentum of the day, and Dickerson arrived, running hot with lights and siren, wanting to be there if it all cracked open. Forty minutes after Lucas talked to the governor, the sheriff's ID division took the transmission of two recent photos of Hale Sorrell, one a formal portrait, the other taken at a press conference after the disappearance of his daughter.
A deputy put together two different photo spreads: one of dark-haired white men in informal situations, another of dark-haired white men in formal poses. Then he retransmitted all the dummy photos to himself, so they'd be printed on the same paper and have the same general look.
Hoffman was still on the job at the casino. Small Bear was on the floor, he said, pushing her change cart.
"Keep her there," Lucas said. "We're on the way."
LUCAS, DEL, AND Dickerson went with Anderson in a sheriff's truck, a comfortable GMC Yukon XL with a big heater. At the casino, Hoffman met them at the door. "Small Bear's upstairs," he said. "How're we doing?"
"Gonna find out," Lucas said.
Small Bear was sitting at a table in a conference room, her hands folded in front of her, looking a little frightened. Lucas explained quickly: "We have two sets of photos. We're gonna show you one set, then ask if you see the man who was here last night, and then we'll show you the other set. Okay?"
She nodded. Lucas spread the informal photos in front of her. She looked at them, slowly, slowly, pushing one after another away from her, until finally she was left only with Sorrell's. "I think this might be him. Not a very good picture."
"Okay." Lucas scooped up the deck of photos, put them back in the brown envelope they came in, opened a second envelope, and took out the formal shots. This time, Small Bear didn't hesitate.
"I'm pretty sure this is him," she said, tapping the photograph of Sorrell.
They all stood in silence, nobody moving, nothing audible but some breathing, and then Anderson groaned, "Jiminy," and Lucas turned and looked at Del.
Del nodded. "Got him."
8
MARGERY SINGLETON LOOKED like a green heron-a sharp-billed stalking bird with a mouth like a rip in a piece of rawhide, an arrowhead nose, rattlesnake eyes; her eyebrows plucked naked and redrawn with a green pencil. She worked the first shift at Elysian Manor, pushing patients to and fro, cleaning up after them, rolling pills when a registered nurse wasn't available. Her best friend, Flo Anderson, was a registered nurse, having put in her two years at Fargo, and they'd worked out a system where, if somebody needed a shot or to get blood taken, Margery could do it and Flo could sign. The patients, most of whom had Alzheimer's, didn't know one way or the other.
Margery heard about the hanging of Warr and Cash from a breathless young nurse's aide who came back from lunch bright eyed with a tale she'd heard from a sheriff's deputy at the minimart.
"They're hanging down there, naked as jaybirds, all purple and frozen. The woman's tongue was sticking out like this:" She tilted her head, hung her tongue out of the side of her mouth and crossed her eyes. Straightening, she added in a lower voice, "They said that the black guy had a penis that was about ten inches long."
"That's bullshit," Margery said, her rattlesnake eyes fixing the young woman. "I seen two thousand dicks since I been in this place and there ain't been one of them more than seven."
"How many black men have been in here?" the nurse asked, an eyebrow going up. Had the old bat there.
"Hanged in a tree?"
"That's what they say. Do you think Loren might know more about it?"
"I'll find out," Margery said. She looked at her watch. She had another two hours before she could get off.
A supervisor named Burt stuck his head into the station where they were talking. "Old man Barrows got shit all over the couch. Clean it up, okay?"
Burt continued down the hall and Margery muttered, "Clean it up yourself, asshole." But she went to get her spray bottle and sponge, and the nurse's aide said, as she left, "If you hear anything from Loren, let me know. I mean, jeez."
LOREN SINGLETON FINALLY rolled out of bed at two o'clock. He'd been unable to sleep much, dozing off only to see, in his dreams, Deon and Jane hanging from a tree. He stretched, scratched, went into the bathroom. As he shaved, looking in the mirror, he started thinking about his latest Cadillac restoration. The car was at Calb's, and that could be inconvenient. The more he shaved, the more inconvenient it seemed. He finished shaving, showered, brushed his teeth, got dressed, and called Gene Calb.
Calb came on the phone and said, "Katina said you'd heard."
"Woke me up on the clock radio this morning," Singleton said. "I thought it might be a good idea to move the Caddy outa there, you know, until things quiet down."
Calb nodded. "Yes. Right away. Where do you want it?"
"My garage. You got somebody who could drive it down for me? I'll drive them back."
"I'll get Sherm, he isn't doing anything. So-what do you think?"
Singleton shook his head. "I don't know. I wonder if it has anything to do with Joe? You think they were fighting? I mean, Deon never said anything."
"I'm completely confused," Calb said. "If you told me shit was Shinola, I'd just nod my head and agree."
"Same with me. When can you move the car?"
"Right now. We're closing everything down, moving everything out. Sherm'll be there in fifteen minutes."
"I'll be outside waiting."
"Listen, Loren-we're really counting on you. You gotta keep an eye out. This is why you got the job."
"I understand. You can count on me."
THE CAR SHUFFLE took forty minutes. When it was done, Singleton went downtown, probed for information, got small pieces, and one essential fact: nobody knew anything. He called Calb, told him that. At three-thirty, he was back home. As he always did, when he first got home, he checked his money. He kept it in the basement, inside the holes in a row of concrete blocks. Maybe, he thought, he ought to move it. Get a bank box far away, maybe in Minot, or somewhere. If anybody looked at him seriously, the BCA people, they'd find the money and then the cat would be out of the bag.