John Sandford - Field of Prey

Lucas was less sure. Eyewitnesses were often useless-or even worse than useless, because they could point you in the wrong direction. Kaylee had seen something, but it was impossible to know what. The man in the ditch might have been wearing the kind of hat Sprick wore, or might have walked the way Sprick walked, or carried a shoulder bag, if Sprick carried one of those. . almost anything might have triggered off a pre-programmed Sprick response in the little girl’s brain.

“Go easy,” he said. “You want me there? Or do you want to take it?”

“We can take it. Not a problem. If you want to sit in, that’s okay, too.”

“I’ll stop by,” Lucas said. “Just to hear his voice.”

On the way back to Zumbrota, Lucas took a call from the Star-Tribune ’s lead crime reporter, Ruffe Ignace. “So. . you down in Owatonna?” Ignace asked.

“No,” Lucas said.

“Let me rephrase that,” Ignace said. “Are you somewhere down south of the Twin Cities, investigating the Black Hole case and the murder of Robert Shaffer?”

“Maybe.”

“That sounds like a big ‘yes.’ Anything new?”

“Yeah, but don’t feel like telling you what it is,” Lucas said.

“Thanks. Another thing. I’m sure you’ve heard of Emmanuel Kent, who’s threatening to kill you and Jenkins. Or maybe Shrake. I get those guys confused.”

Lucas smothered a groan. “Yes, what about him? He’s probably harmless.”

“Yeah, well, he might not be physically dangerous, but he might be, media-wise. He’s sitting outside City Hall, on a rug. He’s gone on a hunger strike, and says he won’t eat anything until you and Jenkins are fired. He’s got a big sign around his neck. He will drink water and a variety of donated fruit juices, to drag it out. His death.”

“Aw, for Christ’s sakes,” Lucas said. “And you’re gonna blow this up into a crisis?”

“No, not me, but we’ve got a feature writer working it-Janet Frost. She did that story on the guy who got stuck in the chimney last winter. She could jerk a tear out of a brass monkey. And a photographer, of course. I’m told Emmanuel’s quite articulate, not to say picturesque.”

“What’s she gonna say?” Lucas asked. “We should have given a free pass to a bank robber, so the crazy guy can get a cheese sandwich once a week?”

“I don’t know what she’s doing, but I thought I’d warn you, so that you’d owe me one. She’ll be calling you. I would counsel you not to use the phrase ‘the crazy guy.’ It reeks of the incorrect. Possibly even the Republican.”

“All right, I owe you one.”

“So what’s new?” Ignace asked.

Lucas thought for a moment, about the fact that all the TV stations probably knew about it: “Off the record. Didn’t come from me.”

“Sure.”

“The Goodhue County sheriff’s investigator is questioning a Zumbrota man about his possible involvement in Shaffer’s murder.”

“Stop the fuckin’ presses,” Ignace said. He said it in a way that wouldn’t stop any presses. “I’m thinking you sound skeptical.”

“Maybe. That’s all I’m saying.”

“But you think it’s bullshit.”

“I’m sure the Goodhue County sheriff’s department has good reason to question the gentleman in question.”

“Okay, I won’t put quotes on you thinking it’s bullshit,” Ignace said. “When Janet calls, remember: you’re a liberal, she’s a liberal. These are complicated issues, and though Kent’s story is a tragic one, and mental health care is certainly an issue deserving of additional serious funding by both the federal and state governments, his brother, in robbing those banks, was putting in danger the lives of many innocent people, including rug rats and chicks, maybe even hot chicks with serious boobies.”

“I’ll keep it in mind,” Lucas said, and clicked off.

Fuckin’ media.

Sprick’s house was a small white clapboard place on the south side of town. A Zumbrota cop car was parked outside, with two Goodhue County cars. Lucas left his truck at the curb and went up the walk and knocked on the door. A Goodhue deputy came to the door, said, “We’re almost done,” and pushed the door open.

Sprick and the cops were in Sprick’s living room.

Sprick was six feet tall, blond and slender, wearing a T-shirt, jeans, and a frightened expression. He was sitting on a broken-down love seat. The only other furniture in the living room was a giant stereo system, with two five-foot-tall speakers and three smaller ones, a fifty-inch television, and an array of boxes with blinking lights. The cops were sitting on folding chairs, and Lucas, looking into the kitchen, saw a folding card table, apparently used as a dining table, that matched the chairs; and there were no other chairs in the kitchen.

Post-divorce clean-out, Lucas thought.

Mattsson said, “Mr. Sprick says he was home asleep last night.”

“I was,” Sprick said. “I gotta get up at six o’clock. I got mail to sort, you can ask anyone.”

Lucas said to Mattsson, “Let’s talk out front for a minute.”

They went back through the front door, and Lucas asked: “What do you think?”

“Well, he’s got an unbreakable alibi-he was home asleep-and he’s sticking to it. Won’t move at all.”

“But what do you think ?” He emphasized the think.

“I don’t know,” she said. She looked back through the screen at the clutch of deputies. “We just can’t move him off the spot. Didn’t get up to pee, didn’t get up for a drink. He drank some beer last night, watched the last part of the Twins game-he got the score right, and what happened in the last couple of innings-then he went to bed, and didn’t move until the alarm went off at six. Period. End of story. His story. But Kaylee. .”

“You ask him to give up some DNA?” Lucas asked.

“Yes. He says he’ll do it. Or fingerprints. Whatever we want,” Mattsson said.

“Not a good sign,” Lucas said.

“But Kaylee. .”

“. . Saw something,” Lucas said. “You’re right there. I gotta tell you, though, you don’t have an arrest. Not that I see. Not unless he blurts something out.”

She bit her lip, glanced sideways at the screen door, and the sound of Sprick’s voice, then nodded. “You’re right.”

“And you’ve got trouble,” Lucas said, looking past her.

She turned, and saw the mobile broadcast truck rolling down the street toward them. “Ah, boy.”

“Tell them the truth-that you’re talking to a lot of people around town, and Sprick was one of them. Don’t commit to anything, don’t say Sprick’s a suspect. You’re doing the routine.”

“I can do that,” she said, hitching up her gun belt as she looked down the street at the approaching van. “What are you going to do?”

“I’m gonna run for it,” Lucas said.

Sprick lacked the intensity of the Black Hole killer. He was a mistake, now trailing away in Lucas’s rearview mirror. In the same rearview mirror, he saw the TV van stop next to Sprick’s house, and Mattsson walking out to meet it.

What next?

He decided to start over, to do what he’d planned to do when he left St. Paul. Visit each of the four cemeteries, and talk to the Owatonna funeral home brothers, to see if Shaffer had left any clues behind, if they’d said anything to point Shaffer in a particular direction.

He turned a corner and headed out to the main drag; another TV van turned the corner and rolled past him.

Mattsson said she could handle it. Maybe she could. Maybe not.

Not his problem.

R-A was having his early-evening drink, one of five or six he would have after work, and watching television with Horn, when he saw Catrin Mattsson on the evening news. She was talking to a TV reporter about the murder of Bob Shaffer.