John Sandford - Field of Prey

Closed his eyes and saw it all, and groaned, slipped one hand into his jeans. Deep in his heart he thought Horn might be right, that it was all coming to an end. The cops would never quit. But if he could have Mattsson first. .

He knew nothing about her, where she lived, what she did when she wasn’t working. He’d have to figure out a way to ambush her, or perhaps to draw her in. If she came to the door as Shaffer had, unaware, tracking a lead, he could take her right there in the hallway.

But how to bring her in, without bringing in a troop of cops behind her?

How would he do that?

A steel bar ran from one side of the concrete wall to the other, a little more than seven feet off the floor. It had nothing to do with the bomb shelter-R-A had put it there, because he’d fantasized about hanging the girls up there, the better to whip them. He’d done it a few times, too, but it never worked out as well as he’d hoped it would-they usually fainted, and they’d bleed all over the place.

He wasn’t a big fan of actual blood . He wanted submission, and sex, and. . admiration? Well, fear, anyway. Respect.

He went over and stood under the bar, and did five pull-ups. Stood under the bar, waiting for the burn to subside, and then did three more. Not bad: most American men his age couldn’t even do two.

If he could get Mattsson down here. . He looked around.

You know what? What he’d do, he thought, was fight her. Get everything out of here, so she couldn’t build a weapon somehow, strip her buck naked, then get naked himself, and lock the door, and tell her what he was going to do to her.

Tell her to fight for the key.

Fight her.

That’s what he’d do, he thought. He was handling himself now, the urge growing again. Before his mind went completely blank, he made two resolutions. He would figure out a way to beat the cops; and he’d have Catrin Mattsson.

Lucas spent four futile hours driving between and walking the cemeteries, checking out the sepulchers in Owatonna and Holbein, ending outside the cemetery in Zumbrota, where Shaffer had been found. He was alone for most of it-he’d had the Murphy brothers in Owatonna come out to Holy Angels, got them to recall everything that Shaffer had said, which led him nowhere-and finally he wandered through the Zumbrota burial ground, his hands in his pockets, feeling a little foolish.

Cemeteries couldn’t talk, he thought. Yet. .

At four-thirty, he called Duncan, who was still at the office.

“You going home?” Lucas asked.

“Sooner or later. I talked to Mattsson about this Sprick. She thinks it’s something, but says you disagree.”

Lucas told him the story, then asked, “How long are the murder books now? How many pages?”

“Lord, I don’t know. Twenty-five hundred pages, for everything. Most of it’s junk.”

“Do you have any staff around?”

“Why?”

“I’d like to get somebody to xerox it all, for me, tonight. You can charge it to my group.”

“Let me check, I’ll call you back,” Duncan said. He was back in a minute. “Maizy says she’ll do it, but it’ll take some time.”

“It’ll take me a while to get back. Tell her to bind it up in those blue report covers, leave it on my desk if she’s finished before I get there.”

“What’re you doing?”

“I can’t see what Shaffer was up to,” Lucas said. “It has to be a combination of what he already knew, from the files, and what he saw, or maybe. . somebody he saw. I’m lost down here, this isn’t working. I need to study it, I need to soak it up.”

“Okay. By the way, I’m supposed to tell you that Del crossed the Iowa line about an hour ago, heading south with the ATF. And there’s a note on your office door that says you should call Virgil.”

Lucas called Virgil Flowers, one of his agents. Flowers worked on his own, out of Mankato, Minnesota. He’d been on vacation in New Mexico, where, he said, he’d caught all the muskys in the state’s only musky lake.

“What’s up?” Lucas asked, when Virgil answered.

“Man, I hate to ask this, with Shaffer dead and you working the Black Hole. But you know my friend Rick Johnson?”

“Yeah, I know him,” Lucas said. “ There’s a goddamn accident waiting to happen.”

“Actually, it’s happened several times already. . anyway, Johnson needs some help on, mmm. . a non-priority mission,” Flowers said. “I’m not doing anything heavy, and nobody’s called me for the Black Hole group, so I’d like to run over there. It’s down south of La Crescent.”

“You’re not telling me what it’s about,” Lucas said.

“No, but if Johnson is telling the truth, and I make a couple of busts, it’ll bring great credit upon the BCA.”

“We don’t need credit,” Lucas said. “The legislature’s already adjourned. But, go ahead, on your best judgment. From the way you’re talking, I don’t want to know what it is. If it blows up in your face, it’s your problem.”

“Deal. I just wanted you to know where I was,” Flowers said.

“You taking your boat?” Lucas asked.

Long pause. Then Virgil said, “Maybe.”

“Let me know if you get in trouble,” Lucas said. “But before then. .”

“You don’t want to know.”

“That’s right.”

Lucas was back in St. Paul in an hour. Weather called as he crossed the Mississippi and said that the housekeeper had picked up a rotisserie chicken and some potato salad, and when would he be home?

“Half an hour, hold on for me,” he said. “I’ve got to stop at the office, and then I’ll be home.”

“Learn anything?”

“No. I’m missing something, though. I can feel it. Give it a week, and it’ll be driving me nuts.”

THE black hole books were sitting in a pile on his desk, two red, two black, and one blue. He picked them up and headed home, talked to the kids, ate chicken and potato salad, and then went and sat in the den with the five books.

An hour into it, Letty came by and asked if she could read behind him: “Feel free,” he said. He explained that he was reading from beginning to end. She picked up the last book, and said she’d read from end to beginning.

“Did you see Catrin on TV?” Letty asked, as she settled into the other reading chair.

Lucas looked up from the book: “No. She do good?”

“She’s good, for a cop without any training,” Letty said. Letty had interned at Channel Three for four years, from the time she was in ninth grade. “And she really, really liked it. Even when Jim Burns got on her case, about pulling the trigger on the mailman guy. You can tell when they like it: their eyes shine.”

“Mmm. Hope she doesn’t like it too much-that can get you in trouble.”

“Or a good job in PR,” Letty said.

They sat comfortably together in the den, reading. Weather looked in at ten o’clock to say she was going to bed. Lucas read until midnight, then went to bed, leaving Letty reading in the big leather chair.

He was back downstairs at nine o’clock the next morning when she rolled through the kitchen door in her nightgown, yawning, and Lucas asked, “Find anything good?”

“Lots of interesting stuff-the autopsies were pretty awesome-but nothing that goes anywhere. Not, at least, until you’ve got a serious suspect. They think they might have his DNA.”

“Yeah, I saw that. Not a sure thing, though.”

“But it’s male. No male bodies, yet,” she said.

Lucas scratched his neck and then said, “When those sepulchers were broken into. . they only took female heads. I wonder why? Could there be something in that?”

They both thought about it for a minute, then Letty laughed and said, “If there is, I’m not smart enough to see it, and we both know I’m smarter than you.”