John Sandford - Field of Prey

“It is tomorrow, Dad,” Letty said.

They talked about other immediate needs-Lucas would tell the new crew leader to pull all of Shaffer’s cell phone records, and take his phone apart. He had an iPhone, so it probably had a file of his phone-call locations. “That might tell us where he was, and when, and who he was talking to. I’ll tell them to get that information to you as fast as we can pull it out. We need everybody pulling together to limit the confusion.”

“We can do that,” Mattsson said. “I gotta tell you, I’m a little pissed about not being included in that exhumation at Demont. You BCA guys aren’t paying a hell of a lot of attention to what us folks are doing. I’ve been running my ass off all over the county, talking to people, and Shaffer acted like I was some loony on the sidewalk.”

“He was. . focused,” Lucas said. “He did what he did.”

“I’m sorry he’s dead, but I didn’t like the way he handled things,” Mattsson said.

“Well, I’m sorry,” Lucas said. “When the new guy takes over, I’ll tell him to work with you. To pay some attention to what you’re thinking.”

“If you’re not important enough to run it, why would they pay any attention when you tell them to work with me?” Mattsson asked.

Lucas shrugged: “That’s the way it is.”

Mattsson looked at him, without saying anything, then Letty reached out and touched her hand and said, “Dad’s good friends with the governor and with Rose Marie Roux. The BCA people pay attention to him.”

Mattsson looked at him for another moment, weighing him, then glanced at Letty and said, “All right.”

Lucas said, “Listen, for your guys out here, the ones who’ll be doing the walking. Make sure they go in pairs. Nobody out there alone. This guy. . well, you know.”

“Yeah. But you-what’re you going to do?”

“I’m going up to Holbein and talk to the funeral home guy. You might want to come along.”

She nodded again.

“If we get anything, we’ll follow it up. You might want to keep some guys handy, in case that happens. If there’s nothing there, I’ll head on home, get some sleep,” Lucas said. “Then tomorrow, I’m going to look at everything everybody got, then I’m going back to Demont and Owatonna and Holbein, walk the same ground Shaffer did, talk to the same people in the same places, and see if I can figure out what Shaffer found that got him to the killer.”

“Careful,” one of the deputies said. “Like you said, you don’t want to come up on him, without knowing it.”

They went to Holbein in three cars, Lucas in his SUV, another deputy chosen by Mattsson in a second car, and then Letty and Mattsson in Mattsson’s car. When Letty asked if she could ride with her, Mattsson shrugged and said, “Sure, if you want to.”

“Tired of me?” Lucas asked.

“I talk to you all the time,” Letty said. “I’d like to get another viewpoint.”

They didn’t call ahead: in an excess of caution, they decided they wanted to talk to the funeral home director without his knowing they were coming.

“Though I can’t see that he did it,” Letty said, as they walked out to the cars. “Looked like Shaffer’s notes on him were finished.”

Mattsson nodded: “Yup. But then, there was that smear of blood, right after he finished writing. Maybe the funeral guy was right there.”

The drive to Holbein took ten minutes, and another couple of minutes to find the funeral director’s home. They knocked and rang the bell, and Gibbons’s wife showed up first, and then Gibbons, wearing blue flannel pajamas with little rocket ships on them. “He was murdered?” Lucas had seen the phrase “his jaw dropped,” usually in not-very-good novels, but he saw it now in both Gibbons and his wife. Their jaws dropped, and Letty looked at Lucas, and Lucas nodded: the funeral director was out of it.

“We didn’t talk for very long, and he was perfectly okay when he left-I don’t think he was much interested in talking to me when he found out that I moved up from Texas only a couple years ago,” Gibbons said. “He seemed to be kinda in a hurry about something. He wanted to know if Neil Parsons-he was the former owner here-had told me anything about the sepulchers out at the cemetery, but Neil never did.”

“Where’s Parsons now?” Mattsson asked.

Gibbons tipped his head to the south. “In the cemetery.”

He recapitulated the whole interview with Shaffer, and after twenty minutes, Lucas, Letty, Mattsson, and the other deputy were back out on the sidewalk. “I got nothing out of that,” Mattsson admitted. “Didn’t even scratch up an idea.”

“Me neither,” Letty said.

Lucas said, “All right. We’re heading home. I’ll be back tomorrow morning. We’re close to the guy, whoever he is. That’s new. Here’s something to sleep on: Shaffer saw something, and it took him straight to the guy. What did he see?”

Mattsson: “Did he know what he was seeing?”

ON the way home, Lucas took a text from June Shaffer that said, “Find him and kill him.”

He passed the phone to Letty: “June Shaffer’s been notified.”

“Ah, jeez,” she said. “If I ever get to be a cop, I’ll never be a notifier.”

Lucas usually slept late. He and Letty hadn’t gotten back home until four in the morning, but he was up at nine, not rested but alert. Weather had taken the two small children, Sam and Gabrielle, to the park, but had left a note: call me when you get up. He called her and told her about Shaffer.

“Oh my God. That poor June. How many kids did they have? Two, I think? Both in school?”

“I think so,” Lucas said. “From what we could see, there were no defensive wounds, no struggle, and Shaffer was in shape, and did that aikido stuff-whoever did it shot him down in cold blood. I suspect he never saw it coming. Had to have been indoors, I think. He had to have gone somewhere, pretty much on impulse. He’s such a compulsive record-keeper that if he’d developed a serious clue, he would have made a note of it, or called someone. Anyway, I’m going back down there. I might be late getting back.”

“Do not-DO NOT-take Letty.”

“I’m not planning to, though I suspect she’s already sitting in the truck,” Lucas said.

“Don’t take her,” she said. “Just find this guy.”

Lucas finished cleaning up, and before he left the bathroom, saw on his shaving-TV a photo of Shaffer, with the report of his murder. The news report was light: they didn’t know much yet. He turned off the TV, got dressed, including a.45 that he carried in a belt rig, and went downstairs.

Letty was sitting in an easy chair, legs casually crossed, pretending to read a magazine, and he said, “No.”

She dropped the magazine. “Why not?”

“Because you’re a kid. Besides, your mom made me swear I wouldn’t take you. Otherwise, I might.”

“Listen, Dad-”

“I don’t have time for an argument,” Lucas said. “I’ll be back tonight. Ask me again, when I get back. Though I’m not the one you have to convince. You need to work on your mom.”

With Letty watching from the garage door, Lucas backed out of the driveway and headed across town to BCA headquarters.

The place was crawling with agents; he had to thread his way through a crowd listening at the conference room door. Henry Sands, the director, just back from Alaska, had already appointed an agent named Jon Duncan to run Shaffer’s crew, and Duncan was briefing the crew on Shaffer’s murder. When he saw Lucas, he waved him in and asked, “What do you know?”

Lucas told them about the scene the night before, what he thought had happened. “I’m going down there now, and I’ll go over the same ground that we know that Shaffer covered. Do we have anything from the crime-scene crew yet?”