John Sandford - Field of Prey

“Can’t tell yet. Three of them, at least, seem to be opportunity-based. Women out partying, maybe drunk, alone, at night. He might have scouted them, but he didn’t have to-they were ripe for the picking. When their disappearances were investigated, nobody remembered seeing anyone with the women.”

“Observant and careful,” Lucas said.

“And bold,” Shaffer added. “Maybe with a backup excuse, if somebody should question him.”

“Like what?”

“We’ve been picking around the idea that it could be a cop,” Shaffer said. “We haven’t found anything that would make us think we’re right.”

“Hope not,” Lucas said.

“We all do,” Shaffer said. “But we’re having trouble picking up patterns, which makes it seem more likely that he was killing spontaneously-no pattern except opportunity, which is the next thing to random.”

“All blondes,” Lucas said.

“Yeah, and not dishwater-mostly all pale blond. That’s a pattern, but it doesn’t mean much in Minnesota, in terms of prediction.”

“Anything on the ropes?” Lucas asked. They’d found more than a dozen ropes in the cistern, dumped with the bodies.

“Not much. A variety of brands, a variety of materials. Could be. . this is weak. . from marinas. Half of them are nylon, which you don’t see that much of, outside marinas. The rest are polypro, which is everywhere.”

“Plenty of marinas around Red Wing,” Lucas said.

“Yeah, and we’ve been in all of them,” Shaffer said.

They talked about some miscellaneous possibilities, all thin, and then Lucas asked, “How much trouble are you having with the TV people?”

Shaffer grimaced. “Ah, you know: they’re waiting outside every morning. I’ve actually had them follow me around town.”

“Be cool,” Lucas said.

“Oh, yeah-but you know, if you could just count on the newsies being as competent as we are, things would be a lot easier.”

That had been the last extended conversation they had about the case, although the rumor mill said Shaffer was choking. Lucas doubted that: it had seemed from the beginning that, barring a fantastic piece of good luck, the investigation would be a long one. Shaffer was patient.

The news media, on the other hand, wasn’t. They were looking for a hero, not an accountant.

After the departure of the golfing twosome, Lucas and Del continued plowing through the Black Hole paper, looking for something they could get their fingernails beneath, something that might suggest a trail.

“Gotta be something in common with the girls,” Del said. “They’re all under twenty-five. Most of them were known to party. . ”

“They weren’t known to go to the same clubs, or even the same parts of town. . any town,” Lucas said. “They weren’t known to hang out with the kinds of guys who’d intersect. None of them went to the same school. Ever. They don’t have any relatives in common. Their jobs weren’t similar, so it wasn’t like a UPS man was picking them out. One of them had a night job, and was probably picked up in the early morning. . so it’s not a cable guy, snatching them out of their apartments.”

They were still at it when Hopping Crow stuck his head in the door. He was vibrating. “We have a developing anomaly in the DNA tests.”

“Is an anomaly the same thing as a break?” Del asked.

“Could be.”

“Since you’re standing in my door, it must be interesting,” Lucas said, leaning back in his chair.

“Not so much interesting, as batshit crazy,” Hopping Crow said. “Getting clean DNA has been a problem. With those water-soaked bones and all the meat that came off them, it was like a DNA stew down that cistern. We’re mostly getting the clean stuff out of teeth, and even then, we haven’t had much to match it to. Three hours ago, we got a cold hit from the criminal database.”

“Really,” Del said.

“Yeah, really-the skull came from a woman named Doris Mead, the mother of Roger Douglas Mead, who was convicted of first-degree sexual assault four years back.”

Lucas’s chair came upright with a bang: “I’d call that some kind of break.”

“Eh, it’s more complicated than that. For one thing, he obviously couldn’t have killed Carpenter or Fisher, because he was locked up when they disappeared. And he has no history of violence. He was a high school social studies teacher, and the girl was sixteen, and cooperative. Anyway, he’s in Stillwater, and Buford talked to him. He says his mom is definitely dead. She died thirteen years ago, of a stroke. She was buried in a cemetery at Demont, which is over by Owatonna. When she went in the ground, her head was still attached.”

Lucas and Del both stared at him for a second, then Del said, “Her skull was. . grave-robbed?”

“Looks like it,” Hopping Crow said. “The good thing about it is, apparently not all the skulls belong to people who were murdered. The bad thing is, we don’t know yet which is which. That’s going to take some more lab work.”

“Who’s going down to the cemetery?” Lucas asked.

“Shaffer. Got in his car and took off like a big-assed bird. Shaffer told me to tell you about it, in case you wanted to go down yourself-everybody’s heard you’re done with Bryan.”

“How’s he doing?” Del asked Hopping Crow. “Shaffer?”

Hopping Crow said, “He seems to be calm. Unnaturally calm. Especially for a guy who has about fifteen people screaming at him, from the governor on down.”

Del said to Lucas, “Probably why we got the invite. All those screaming people.”

Lucas said to Del, “I’m going. You want to come along? What’s happening with the old folks and the rifles?”

“They’re buying. Betty Case bought two mint Bushmasters from a guy up in Anoka yesterday. They’re pretty close to a full load. Her old man took the RV in for servicing yesterday, probably won’t get it back before tomorrow. So, today. . I could go.”

“Then let’s.”

Shaffer was fifteen minutes ahead of them. Lucas called him and Shaffer said, “It’s the Valley View cemetery, just west of I-35 at Demont. You don’t go into town, you take a left on the first street you come to, after the exit. That’s Twelfth Street. The cemetery borders the street, about a half-mile down.”

“Are you pulling the coffin?”

“That’s the plan,” Shaffer said. “Buford got authorization from her son-Doris Mead’s husband took off for the Florida Keys after she died, and Roger doesn’t know how to get in touch with him. So, we’re good on that. I talked to the guy at the funeral home down there, they should be digging now.”

“We’re right behind you,” Lucas said.

THE drive to the DEMONT exit took forty-five minutes, and another five down to the cemetery, which was between the town and the freeway, on a flat square of ground with cornfields on three sides, and the approach road on the fourth.

Shaffer’s blue Chevy Equinox sat with a couple of sedans on the left side of the square, where an orange Kubota tractor/backhoe sat motionless next to a pile of yellow dirt. Lucas pulled up and he and Del got out, and found Shaffer and two middle-aged men in sober blue suits watching a third man, in coveralls, who was down in the grave, using a spade to scrape dirt off a coffin.

When Lucas came up, Shaffer turned and said, “We’re not going to pull it yet-we’re just going to open it and see what’s inside.” He gestured at the two men in suits: “This is Joe and Leon Murphy, they run Murphy’s Funeral Home in Owatonna. They arranged Mrs. Mead’s funeral.”

“Any idea of what happened?” Lucas asked.

Shaffer said, “Two theories: one, the killer is weird. .”

“Good call,” Del said.