John Sandford - Field of Prey

“This range is up toward the Black Hole?”

“Well, yeah. More or less. Not real close, but that direction,” Toby said.

Lucas wrote the names down, and asked if there was anything he could do for Toby, who said, “I don’t know. Maybe.”

“What happened?” Lucas asked.

“You heard of the Raleigh Duane Cornwall case, up in Canada?”

Lucas looked around the bar, then leaned closer to Toby and said, “Am I wearing a Mountie hat? Look around, Toby. We’re not in Canada. My jurisdiction stops at the border.”

“Yeah, but if somebody could put in a word. . Raleigh’s one of my best boys, and what happened to him isn’t fair.”

The story was about as stupid as any Lucas had ever heard. According to Toby, Cornwall had known the location of an extremely large, extremely old black bear-the best kind for gallbladders. The bear lived on an island in the Rainy River, which was the border between the U.S. and Canada. Cornwall paddled out to the island in a car-topped canoe, set up a lightweight tree stand, spread around a can of bear bait, which consisted of stale donuts and a quart of bacon grease, and climbed up in the tree stand with his bow, to wait.

The bear showed up ten minutes later, moving fast. Cornwall drew on it, but as he was about to let the arrow fly, the bear sensed him, and stopped quick. Cornwall reacted by yanking the bow off his lead, and let the arrow go. He’d reacted too much-the arrow hit the bear in the ass. The bear let out a yelp, spotted Cornwall in his tree, trotted over, and started climbing.

Cornwall had just the instrument for such an occasion: a.357 Magnum. The bear got halfway up the tree to the stand, Cornwall shot him twice, and the bear dropped like a rock.

“The thing is,” Toby said, “the island turned out to be in Canada. I mean, just across the line. Who was to know? There aren’t any markers. And there was a goddamn provincial game warden who heard the shots, and come up on Raleigh from behind.”

He caught Raleigh standing there with a gallbladder in his hand, a pistol in his holster, and a twist of cocaine in his shirt pocket.

“They got him for illegal entry, importation and possession of an illegal firearm, importation and possession of illegal drugs, and shooting a bear out of season. He could be looking at fifteen years.”

Lucas said, “Toby, man, I’d like to help. But I gotta say, with a guy like that. . the rest of us are probably better off without him walking around loose.”

Lucas left Toby looking morosely at his beer, and headed toward Holbein.

The first guy on the list, Blair Tucker, was sitting in his office, which was surrounded by flatbed trucks loaded with pieces of well-drilling equipment. He was counting twenty-dollar bills, when Lucas stuck his head in.

“Yeah, I’m Blair,” Tucker said, sliding the stack of bills into his desk drawer. “What can I do for you?” He had an environmental likeness to Toby, the spare dry face of a man who spent his time working outdoors.

Lucas showed him his ID. “I’m looking for a guy named Horn.”

“I figured somebody’d be coming around,” Tucker said. He’d known Horn, but said he hadn’t hung with him. “I knew he was some kinda fruitcake. The thing is, he didn’t get off on the shooting, he got off on the killing. The guy would kill a hummingbird if he had a chance. With a hammer. Knew another fellow who went squirrel hunting with him, said old Horn shot a heron, walking along a pond. Just to see the feathers fly. Then didn’t even pick them up. The feathers.”

Tucker didn’t know anything good, but confirmed Lucas’s picture of Horn as a killer. When Lucas left Tucker’s place, driving into town, he thought about Horn’s disappearing act: not many people could simply walk away from their house, and never again use an ID or a credit card or a cell phone, and set up again in a new town, and start a new life all over.

Though it had been done. . the mob guy from Boston had done it.

He was on the outskirts of Holbein when Mattsson called: “Where are you?”

“Holbein.”

“Good. I just got a call from Reggie Scott, Kaylee’s father. Kaylee was out riding her bike with a girlfriend, and says she saw Mr. Sprick staring at her from his car. Said he drove by really slow, staring at her. She said he looked at her in a really mean way, and scared her.”

“Have you talked to Sprick?”

“On the way. I’ll be there in a half hour,” Mattsson said.

“I’ll be there in eight minutes,” Lucas said. “Exactly when did she see him?”

“Five minutes ago.”

Lucas looked at his watch, noted the time, and said, “I’m on the way.”

Kaylee or Sprick? Sprick first, Lucas decided. He had Sprick’s cell phone number and as he drove into Zumbrota, called him. “Where are you?”

“At the office. They pulled me off my route, they got me subbing, sorting mail. What happened?”

“Where’s the post office?”

Lucas parked at the Shell station across the street and walked over to the post office and found Sprick sitting in the back, not doing much of anything. “Now what?” Sprick asked.

“Where were you fifteen minutes ago?” Lucas asked.

“Right here.”

“A half hour ago?”

“Right here,” Sprick said. “I’ve been here since six o’clock this morning. I had a break at ten and walked up to the Shell station and got some coffee. That took five minutes. Then I came back and I’ve been here ever since. Three guys here with me.”

One of the three other guys, who’d been listening while trying to look like he wasn’t, glanced at Lucas and Lucas asked, “Was he?”

“Right here,” the guy said. “And he’s a guy who wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

“What happened fifteen minutes ago?” Sprick asked.

“Kaylee said she saw you, in your car. Said you were stalking her.”

“Aw, for Christ’s sakes. What’d I do to deserve this? What the heck did I do?” He threw his hands up.

From his car, Lucas called Mattsson: “Sprick was at the post office, sorting mail, since six o’clock this morning. He has three witnesses, and they don’t look like a criminal conspiracy.”

“Meet me at the Scotts’ house,” Mattsson said. “I’m getting tired of this.”

“I’m way past tired of it,” Lucas said.

“I saw that story in the paper this morning,” Mattsson said. “You sound like quite the fashionable gunslinger.”

“Hey, Catrin? Stick a sock in it.”

“In what?”

“See you at the Scotts’.”

Kaylee Scott insisted that she’d seen Mr. Sprick. She had a witness. “We were riding our bikes over to the swimming pool,” Kaylee said. “He went by in his truck real slow. He looked out the window at me, a really mean look. It was him.”

Another little girl, with a bobbed blond hairdo, her bangs right down to her eyebrows, nodded solemnly as she said, “He did. Look mean at us.”

Her name was Jane Windrew, and she was sitting between her parents, Marge and Lanny. Mattsson asked Jane, “Do you know Mr. Sprick?”

“Mr. Sprick. Yes. We’d see him in his truck, every day, until he scared Kaylee.”

Reggie Scott said, “I’m telling you, the guy’s a maniac.”

Lucas said, “I’d appreciate it if you’d keep that talk to yourself. Sprick has three witnesses who say he never left the post office today, except for five minutes at ten o’clock, to walk across the street to the Shell station.”

“We prefer to believe our daughter,” Carol Scott said.

Mattsson asked, “Who else was around there, on the street? Just you two, or were there more girls?”

“It was just us,” Jane said.

“Were there any other adults around? If you’d yelled or screamed, would anybody have heard you?” Lucas asked.