John Sandford - Hidden Prey

"Nobody looked at the tape?" Andreno asked.

"Not yet. We've got a crime-scene guy coming, and we want him to check the camera for prints… and the tape too, I guess. Goddamnit. What a mess. Oh. Forgot. Burt called his lawyer just before he did it, told him what he was going to do. The lawyer called nine one one, but by that time, Jimmy was already inside."

"We need to see the tape," Lucas said. "Get your guy to bag it, and make a copy of it, before he tries to lift any prints. I don't want him putting anything on the tape, or doing the Super Glue trick, or anything that might fuck it up."

"I'll tell him."

Nadya touched Lucas on the shoulder and said, "This tape will tell us."

"I hope."

Nothing to do except get out of the way. Lucas gave Hopper his cell-phone number, asked him to call when they could move the camera, and they went back to the truck, ignoring Janet Walther, who called to them from across the street.

In five minutes, they were in a downtown cafe, drinking coffee, eating hamburgers and fries, not much to say.

"Is this a good time to get back home?" Lucas asked Nadya.

"You mean, weather? I think this is the best time, the early autumn. We still have the daylight, the trees begin to color. Do you think I'll go?"

"Something will come out of the tape," Lucas said. "Walther completely bullshitted me the first time, and the second time, he was the tough guy. Now this, with the camera. There'll be something."

"Maybe you oughta defect," Andreno said to Nadya.

She laughed, said, "No, I don't think. I am happy to get back."

"Too many signs here?"

Now she frowned, looking at her sandwich: "You know, it seems very hard here. Harsh. All the time, work, work, work, money, money, money." She turned to Andreno. "You are retired, no? You have this pension. Yet, you travel hundreds of kilometers to work on a job with no future. Why is this?"

"Better than sitting on my ass," Andreno said.

She nodded. "This is the thing. In the rest of the world-maybe not Japan, I have not been there-people enjoy sitting on their asses and talking, dancing, playing games. Here, there is no time. You are all too busy making signs."

Then Hopper called and said, "Our technical guy has popped the tape and bagged it. We're going to take it downtown and look at it."

"See you there."

The police station was five minutes away. They watched the tape in the chief's office, ten people crowded inside, standing, the tape running on an aging Panasonic TV out of an equally aged VCR. "This is a copy," the tech said. "I made a quick copy so there wouldn't be any screw-ups with the original, and we can run it back and forth. I watched it. It's nasty. You don't want to be here if you don't have a strong stomach." Nobody moved, and he started the tape.

Lucas had been shocked when Hopper told him about the suicide: the tape dragged him further down, and he flinched away from the killing of Melodie, and Nadya dug her fingers into his arm and pressed her forehead into it, not looking, and jumped at the sound of the shot that killed her. Half the people in the room said, "Oh, Jesus," or "Ah, shit," and one woman hurried out of the room.

When Walther killed himself, Lucas watched-did Walther have a small amused smile on his face?-then closed his eyes as the body flung itself to the floor. He felt the air leaking out of him, out of the case.

The tech said, "Anybody want anything run back?"

There was a chorus of "nos" except Lucas: "Let me see the lawyer part again. When he's talking on the phone."

They watched the lawyer portion again, and then shut down the machine.

Lucas said to Hopper, "Keep the house sealed. Nobody in, nobody out, at least until I talk it over with the feds."

"Okay. What else?"

"I don't know. There might not be much more."

"What about the tape? We can't just give it to Burt's lawyer-I mean, he's a good guy, and all, but I don't see…"

"Hang on to it. Just hang on to it. Make him take you to court to get it-that'll take awhile, and by the time he gets it, it won't be of so much interest."

"Oh, bullshit," Andreno said. "That tape'll be hot two years from now. Fox would give its left nut to get its hands on it."

"Okay," Lucas said. "It won't be so hot for us."

"Ah. Now that you 'splain it that way…" Hopper said.

Nadya was still unsure about American jurisprudence, and Lucas and Andreno took a couple of minutes to explain some of the pragmatic aspects of it.

"Every serious criminal charge here winds up in front of a jury, if the defendant wants one," Lucas told her. "Even if we don't believe what Burt Walther said on the tape, even if he had some paid assassin from somewhere else, we have nothing from the shootings that would prove it. And the defense has the tape in which Walther not only takes responsibility, but also gives a credible explanation of who did the shooting. By committing suicide, he not only removes himself from the possibility of interrogation and cross-examination, he seems to… mmm… demonstrate the sincerity of his statement."

"Which is the big deal," Andreno said. "Here, a guy is absolutely assumed to be innocent until he's proven to be guilty beyond any reasonable doubt. What Walther did was drop a huge reasonable doubt on almost anything we could take to court."

Lucas concluded: "So unless something really radical shows up… there's no point in continuing the investigation. We'd never get anybody else into court."

Nadya understood perfectly: "For me, anything that would upset this tape would be unwelcome. We have now an explanation for everything. We can take this to Maksim Oleshev and say this and this and this, one-two-three, is how your son came to die. This is all that is wanted."

"So we're good," Andreno said. To Lucas: "I can hang around if you want, but I don't know what I'd do."

"Take off," Lucas said. "You can probably get a flight out tomorrow morning."

Lucas borrowed an empty office from Hopper and started by calling the boss, Rose Marie Roux. They were on the phone for fifteen minutes.

At the end of the conversation, she said, "Okay. Let me talk to the governor, but I'd say that you're done. Turn it over to the feds, and to the local people, and come on back."

When he got off the phone with Roux, he called Harmon, spent another fifteen minutes filling him in. Harmon said, when Lucas was finished, "All right. The house is sealed, I'm going straight to Washington to get a crew out here. They really can't ignore it. Who knows what they'll find in that place? Who knows who went through there?"

"You should know that I'm not quite right with it," Lucas said. "If you find Roger anywhere-if you find him in Russia-I'd like to see him. I'd like to talk with him. I'd like to run around the block with him."

"I don't know what that means," Harmon said. "Is that cop talk? I don't know the jargon."

"What?" Lucas was puzzled.

" 'Run around the block…' "

"No, no. I mean, I'd really, actually like to run around a block with him. Or once around a track. That's what I meant."

Roux called back: "Where are you? In Duluth or on the Range?"

"Still in Hibbing."

"Good. The governor wants to see you, and it turns out he's in Eveleth tonight at seven o'clock. Can you get there?"

"No problem. Just up the way."

"He's at a dance at some hall up there… one of the ones with all the initials and you never know what they mean… I'll find it here somewhere…"

Nadya had made reservations: "I leave for Minneapolis and then Washington tomorrow at three o'clock. Micky goes at two o'clock and says he will ride me to the airport. What do you do?"

"Probably go home tonight. I've got to hang around here for a while, though. The governor wants to talk to me about something. Want to meet a governor?"