Do you really think Id do this? Bone asked. He sounded more curious than afraid.
Lucas thought for a moment and then said, I dont know you well enough to say. But even if I didnt, I have to make sure. If McDonald left here a little after ten-thirty, and you were here alone, and the woman didnt get here until eleven-thirty… who has an alibi?
I wasnt alone, Bone said. Im sorry, I should have said so… My assistant, I think you met her at the bank, the blonde? Kerin Baki? She was here. We were working on a presentation for the board.
When did she leave?
A few minutes after Wilsonshe was heading down to the bank. Shes probably still there, Bone said. And between the time she left and the time Marcia got here, I made a half-dozen phone calls. There must be some way to get at phone records.
Lucas nodded. Well get those.
And Bone said, Ill tell you something else: We know exactly how many votes Ive got, which is nine. And we know how many Susan had, which is seven. Im one vote away. At least three votes are uncommitted, and we were just working out ways to get one of those three. Because when we get one, all the others will come. He hopped off the couch, and started to prowl the apartment as he talked. So what Im saying is, I think I had the top job. Thismight knock me outor slow things down. If the board thinks theres the slightest chance that Im implicated, Im dead meat. Better to hire somebody else, and apologize to me later, if Im innocent, than get stuck with a CEO who turns out to be a killer.
You know who the real beneficiary is? Kresge said. Wilson McDonald.
He made a deal with her, Lucas said.
Kresge made a rude noise: She might have made a tactical agreement with him, just to grab the top slot. But after shed gotten rid of Bone and a few other people, shed have gotten rid of McDonald. She and Jim were actually friends, in a waybut she hated McDonald.
But everybody says McDonalds out of it.
Not if theres nobody else left, Kresge said. She looked at Bone. Jim darling, Id be very careful if I were you. Very careful.
BONE AND KRESGE AGREED TO STAY AT THE APARTMENT until Sloan got there. Lucas talked to Sloan by phone, and Sloan said he was nearly done with the McDonalds.
What do you think? Lucas asked.
When I talk to Mrs. McDonald alone, shes pretty straight, Sloan said. When I get her around her old man, shes a fucking ventriloquists dummy.
I talked to Elle Kruger about that. She said severely abused women can get like that.
We need to give McDonald a good look, Sloan said. Something tells me hes involved. I dont know if I think that because hes really involved, or because I just dont like the sonofabitch.
Listen, when you get to Bones… get him aside and talk to him about his sex life. Who hes screwing. Because I think that tip about him sleeping with Kresge is right. Youll understand what I mean when you see them together. And find out if hes screwing his assistant. Shes a little chilly, but thats probably just me. Maybe Bone can warm her up.
Ill do that, Sloan said.
And youll need to talk to the assistant. Ill give you her name and you can call her, and get her over to Bones.
Wherere you going?
Home to make a list, Lucas said. This fuckin thing is starting to confuse me.
FOURTEEN
LUCAS LIVED IN A RANCH-STYLEHOUSE IN ST. PAUL, ON a road that ran along the top of a Mississippi River bluff. From his front window he could see the lights of Minneapolis across the river. The neighborhood was quiet, fine for walking, and he and Weather had walked a lot when they were together.
Weather.
Why would somebody hit Weather? The Edina cops had exactly nothing. Zero. Zip. No likely neighborhood kids. One of the Edina guys had checked on Lucaswould he do it, why wouldnt he do it. Hed been told emphatically that Lucas would not, and the cops had gone away.
But Lucas couldnt accept it as a nutcase. Nutcases didnt pick out random houses to bomb; or if they did, the chances of hitting someone with Weathers history were…
Impossible. Not just slim. Impossible.
HE'D ONCE CONVERTED THE MASTER BEDROOM TO use as a den, but after Weather arrived, hed converted it back to a bedroom, and moved his drawing table into one of the smaller bedrooms. He hadnt worked on a commercial game for years now: everything had gone to computers, and while he might still develop ideas and scenarios, hewas rapidly moving away from game development.
Too much money, he thought sometimes. Hed made too much money, almost inadvertently, as sometimes happened in the computer age. Hed drifted from writing tabletop war games to writing game scenarios, which a University of Minnesota computer freak turned into games, to writing simulations of police emergencies to be played out on police computers. And his company had simply grown, first run out of his hip pocket, then with the computer freak, and finally by a professional businessman whod taken the company public.
And now that he really didnt need to write games, didnt need to sit up until three in the morning thinking of new sci-fi beasts to challenge computer geekdom… he didnt. He missed it, but he didnt do it.
NOW HE SAT AT HIS DRAWING TABLE, CLEARED AWAY detritus from earlier skull sessions, pulled out a sheet of heavy paper and started making a chart.
The situation at the bank was too complicated. There were too many suspects, and all of them had motives. He needed to simplify and clarify.
But the firebombing prowled around the edge of his consciousness: thats what he needed to settle. The bank killings were almost technical problems, problems that cops solved. The firebombing was personal. What if it was aimed at him rather than Weather? But why would it be?
What if Weather had a new boyfriend, a freak of some kind? Naw. That wasnt Weather. She had a built-in bullshit detector, and nobody would get past that. Maybe she snubbed somebody…
Goddamnit. Work. The suspects:
Wilson and Audrey McDonald. What appeared to be a possibly explosive relationship; who knew what might be brewing in that little perfecta? And the more he thought of it, the more he thought that Audrey McDonald was the woman whod called himwho was pointing the finger at her own husband.
JIM BONE. AND MARCIA KRESGE AND KERIN BAKI.
He chewed on the end of his pencil. Baki was a little thinwhat would she get out of the killings? Her job? An assistants job didnt seem heavy enough, but hell, it might to the assistant. Bone, of course, had that reputation as a ladies man, and supposedly had been sleeping with Kresges wife. What if he was also sleeping with the assistant? And if he was, so what? There might be some kind of twisted connection between an illicit relationship between Bone and Marcia Kresge, and the killing of Dan Kresge, but even if they had a relationship, how could that lead to the killing of ODell?
Blackmail? He remembered one of Bones colleagues saying that Bone wouldnt tolerate blackmail. Could ODell have tried? But Bone, if he wasnt bullshitting about the phone records, pretty much had an alibi. Of course, the phones could be finessed.
Then there was Mr. X.
A Mr. X who might be killing for the reason everybody suspectedto stop the mergereither to save his job or simply as an expression of the general feeling at the bank. But if the killer was a Mr. X, hed be almost impossible to find. And nobody knew what jobs would be lost yet. And why would he kill ODell, whod taken a stand against the merger?
The killing of ODell, Lucas decided, had been an insane risk. Neither the McDonalds nor Bones group had enough to gain by killing her, to take the risk. If anybody had come along while the killer was going up and down in the elevator, theyd have been cooked…