John Sandford - Field of Prey

Lucas pulled up behind the last SUV and got out: Buford, the BCA agent, was there, an M-16 on the car seat next to his leg.

To Lucas: “He’s in the barn. That’s his wife.”

The helmeted cops were leading the woman toward the metal building. She pulled open a door and shouted something inside. A moment later, a man came out, short, muscular, and balding, in a white T-shirt and blue jeans, just as Saferstein had described him.

Buford said, “Shit: it ain’t him.”

Lucas: “Yeah?”

“The guy would have run, or put up a fight,” Buford said. “He and his old lady just look scared.”

“Yeah.”

Lucas turned away for a moment, looking out across the countryside. Another beautiful day, the corn gone dark green, the soybeans a lighter green, rolling away for miles and miles. And down the road, a white van with a big “3” on the side.

He turned back and walked along behind Buford to the cluster of cops around Tory.

Tory was saying, “. . can look at the computer. I was on there until after midnight, writing invoices. They should be date-stamped on the program. I’ll tell you what, I know you’re supposed to have a search warrant and all, but this is no joke: I’m giving you permission to go in the house and the barn and anywhere else you want to go, and look at anything you want.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Duncan said. “But if it’s okay. .”

“I wouldn’t do that, if it wasn’t for this crazy man running around the countryside,” Tory said. “You’d be up to your knees in lawyers, but this guy, somebody’s got to get your cop back, this what’s-her-name.”

“Catrin Mattsson,” Duncan said.

Lucas asked, “How’d you know about Catrin?”

Tory, showing a streak of sweat on his scalp, wiped it back with the heel of his hand and said, “It’s all over TV. They’re not doing anything else.”

Lucas said, “Speaking of which. .”

They all turned and looked down to the road, where the van had pulled off to the side. As they watched, a cameraman came running around the nose of the van, a camera on his shoulder.

Tory asked, “Should I smile for the camera?”

Lucas left.

He drove to Holbein. On the way, Duncan called and said, “You took off?”

“I’m going to Holbein. I don’t know. . I think the answer is in Holbein or Zumbrota. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

“Whatever it is, you’re gonna be on your own,” Duncan said. “The Red Wing cops found a video camera at a liquor store on Plum Street, which turns into Highway 58, which is the fastest way down to Holbein and Zumbrota. They say they can almost read the plates on every car and truck that went by last night. We’ve got a guy on the way down there, he’s going to get some screenshots off the video and pull the plates, starting with any dark-colored pickups, and then everything else. I’m going over there with Buford, we got a lot of tape to look at. . I think it might be our best shot.”

“What about the other guys?”

“Some of them I’ve got to send home. They haven’t had any sleep for two days now, and they’re out of gas. I’m also gonna drop a couple guys off at the Black Hole. . you know, if the guy’s nuts. .”

“I hear you, Jon. Jesus, if he’s already killed her. .”

“Keep the faith, bro.”

Ten minutes to five. Lucas went to the bank, found it about to close. He identified himself and told the receptionist, “I need to talk to your president, or your manager. The boss.”

A couple of years earlier, Virgil Flowers had been stuck with a similar problem, and he’d partly solved it by the simple expedient of asking the smartest people in a small town who they thought the killer might be. He got back a long list, but, sure enough, the killer had been on the list. But Flowers had had more time. Lucas looked at his watch: he had no time, no time.

Flowers’s technique had created a scandal in law enforcement circles, where many argued that the technique had been severely unprofessional, and nobody had tried it again, as far as Lucas knew.

Not that Flowers particularly cared about the question of professionalism. Lucas had once been with him when Flowers had tried to stop a killing by shooting the prospective killer in the chest. He’d hit her in the foot.

Lucas had nothing else: his brain felt like it was stuffed with fudge: nothing was moving. So he sat on a black leather couch while the receptionist. .

“Yes? Officer? Can I help you?”

The branch manager was named Sandy Rodriguez. She took him back to her office and said, “I really want this guy caught.”

“We’ll get him,” Lucas said. “The question we’re dealing with now is, will we get him before he kills Catrin Mattsson?”

“My family said a prayer for her at lunchtime,” Rodriguez said, as she sat behind her desk. “How can I help?”

Lucas said, “I’ll tell you the absolute truth, and trust that you won’t go talking to the television people. We’ve got a huge pile of information that we can use when we get a name. We got two possible names today, and we were able to eliminate them almost immediately.”

“That book man, up by Cannon Falls. .”

“That’s been on television already?”

“About fifteen minutes ago.”

“Aw, jeez. We’re trying not to hurt people. . anyway, I came here because bankers are smart and knowledgeable about their communities. . and I want to ask. . if you were to come up with a list of people who you thought might be able to do something like that. . from here in Holbein. . who’d be on your list?”

She looked at him steadily for a few seconds, then shook her head once and said, “Nobody.”

“Nobody?”

“Nobody. I can say that, because, I’ve been thinking about it. So has everybody in town. I talked to three or four. . or five, or maybe six. . different people today about it, almost everybody who was in my office today talked about it. We don’t know. Nobody knows. We can’t come up with a name. We all know people who are troubled, but we wouldn’t even suspect that they could do anything like this. . and for so long. That’s the thing. There’s a boy in my oldest son’s class, he’s very troubled. . but he’s fourteen.”

“Not him,” Lucas said.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

Lucas said, “Okay. Then give me five names of people who might know, smart people who know the community. . ”

Lucas got five names from her, and he hurried along Holbein’s Main Street like a gust of wind, cornering the people on Rodriguez’s list, asking the question, getting shakes of the head. . and a few more names. When he ran the names through the BCA databases, he always found disqualifying problems: too young, too tall, and in one case, too much in the Hennepin County Jail for the last four months.

Letty called, as he was walking past a tiny park, with three loose dogs playing with each other as their owners chatted. “Del’s out of the OR, but he’s still asleep,” Letty said. “The docs said they got two tiny holes, and they think they got them all this time. They say he’s strong, and unless something weird pops up, he’s going to make it.”

“They said that?”

“They did. Cheryl was all over them, and that’s what they said, and she believes them. He’s going to be asleep for a few hours. We’re going back to the hotel and try to sleep ourselves.”

“All right. That’s good, that’s good. Jesus, that takes a load off,” Lucas said.

“What about Catrin?”

“I’ll find her. I’m going to find her.”

At seven-thirty, he was sitting in the supermarket parking lot, watching shoppers come and go. The killer had had Mattsson for eighteen hours. If she wasn’t dead yet, she’d be dead soon. Looking out at quiet streets, at the lights coming on in the windows, at the ash trees marching up the hills. . What could he do?