John Sandford - Secret Prey

"How was it famous? The name doesn’t ring a bell with me…"

"It was over on the St. Paul side of the river. Somebody started shooting white guys who were walking in the black areas-there were like three or four of them in a few weeks, shot in the back of the head."

"Ah, jeez, I remember that," Lucas said. "Never solved. And Arris was one of them?"

"Yup."

"What’d he do here?" "Worked with the trust department, setting up portfolios for rich folk."

"Would he have worked with McDonald?"

Bone said, "Probably. I’d have to look up the exact dates, but they probably overlapped. They certainly both went through that department. I don’t really know the details. I wasn’t here yet. I just heard about the killing later."

"Okay. How about Andrew Ingall?"

"Andy? He was a vice president, also in the trust department, but he died a few years ago in a boating accident up on Superior. You think Wilson had something to do with it?"

"Why would he?" Lucas asked.

Bone leaned back, then spun his chair in a circle, stopped it with one foot, reached into a desk drawer where he apparently had a stereo tuner hidden. A Schumann piano piece, simple, easy, elegant, and sweet, sprang into the office, and Bone said, "Schumann," and Lucas said, "I know- Scenes from Childhood ," and Bone said, "Christ, we’re so cultured I can’t stand it," and Lucas said, "A friend of mine used to play them. Why would McDonald do Andy Ingall?"

"Because they were both candidates to run the operation. Then Andy sailed out of Superior Harbor one day, just moving his boat up to the islands. He never got there. No storm, no emergency calls, nothing. Just phhht. Gone. The theory was that he had a leaky gas tank-he had some kind of old gas engine, an Atomic, or something like that-and gas leaked into the bilge, and he fired up the engine out on the water somewhere, and boom. He was gone before he could call for help. That was the theory, but nobody ever knew for sure. No wreckage was ever found."

"So McDonald got the job."

"Well, no. When Andy disappeared, everything was screwed up for a while; then we had a general shuffling around, and McDonald wound up as a senior vice president in the mortgage company."

"Huh," said Lucas, and Bone said, "Yeah," and asked, "Can’t you get this stuff from the FBI or somewhere?"

"Probably not. Besides, the computer’s down."

"You too? Christ, it’s chaos downstairs…"

"Did you ever hear that McDonald might whack his wife around from time to time? Pretty seriously?"

Bone nodded. "I heard it. I went out with a lawyer lady for a while, old family, she knows that whole country club bunch; and she said something to me about it. She might have some details… You could talk to her if you want."

"That’d be good…"

Bone scratched a name and phone number on a piece of notepaper and pushed it across the desk. "Sandra Ollsen, two l ’s. That’s her office phone over at Kelly, Batten."

"What kind of law?"

"Estate planning, wills, trusts." He looked at his watch and said, "Listen, I’ve got to go to a meeting, but I can talk to a guy who’s gonna be there, and find out if there was anything between Wilson and Arris."

Lucas said, "Thanks," stood up, and as they shook hands, said, "I understand you used to play a little ball."

"Yeah, a little," Bone said.

"How well do you know Dama Isley?"

"Reasonably well-I heard he played for the Gophers, back when. Hard to believe."

"Yeah. Listen, next time you see him, take a couple of minutes and talk a little ball, old-time stuff, like college days."

Bone shrugged. "Sure. Why?"

"Private project," Lucas said. "You still play?"

Bone, grinning, said, "I still shoot around a little bit on Saturdays. Always a couple of kids trying to take advantage of me."

Lucas said, "A banker? Playing for money?"

"Good grief, no," Bone said. "Not for money. That’d be illegal."

On the way out, Lucas paused in the open door of Bone’s office, saw Kerin Baki talking to the secretary, and said, loud enough for her to overhear, "I’m probably going to want to talk about McDonald again."

Bone, already settling back into his desk, distracted, missed the double-directed comment, nodded, said, "Okay," and Lucas pulled the door shut. He smiled at Baki on the way out and said, "Thank you."

By the time the elevators reached the bottom floor, he thought, the word on McDonald would be out. If Baki was as efficient as she looked, she could never pass on the chance to screw one of her boss’s competitors.

Like Bone, Sandra Ollsen was really too busy to talk to Lucas; but he mentioned Bone’s name and was admitted to the mahogany offices of Kelly, Batten, Orstein & Shirinjivi. Ollsen was a tall, coordinated woman who looked as though she might once have played some ball herself.

"How’s Jim?" she asked casually as Lucas settled into the chair across her desk.

"Looks fine; something of a power struggle going on over there," Lucas said.

"Yes. With Susan O’Dell. I hope she kicks his butt."

"Really?" Lucas asked.

"Really," she said. Lucas, bemused, watched her for a moment, waiting, and then she said, "He sort of dumped me."

"Ah. I know the feeling," Lucas said.

She looked him over. "I don’t think so," she said after a minute.

"You’d be wrong," Lucas said. "Anyway… he seems to think of you as a friend."

"Right." She rolled her eyes. "Actually, I don’t think he was actually looking for friendship when he started squiring me around. He was looking…" She grinned at him, not a bad smile at all. "Why am I telling you this?"

"Because of my open face and genuine curiosity?"

" ’Cause you’re a trained interrogator, that’s why. When I was in college, we called you pigs."

"When I was in college, I called us pigs," Lucas said. "So what was he looking for when he started taking you around?"

"Sex," she said, ingenuously. "Any place, any time… Some of the girls around the bank call him the Boner, if you know what I mean."

"All right," Lucas said. "Listen, the reason I came by…"

"Bet nobody would ever call you that," Ollsen said. "The Boner."

"Only ’cause I carry a big leather sap in my pocket," Lucas said. "I’d beat the tar out of them."

"Oh, it’s a sap. And I just thought you were happy to see me."

Lucas held up his hands: "All right, you win the war of wits." And they both laughed. "But listen, the real reason I came around: You know about the Kresge killing, of course. We’re investigating it, and I’m wondering how well you know Wilson McDonald?"

A sudden wariness appeared in her eyes, and she put a hand to her throat. "You think Wilson did it?"

"No, we don’t think anything, just yet. But he was one of the four people up there when Kresge…"

"Bit the bullet?"

"Exactly the words I was looking for," Lucas said. "Anyway: How well do you know McDonald?"

"My parents knew the family quite well…"

"Does Wilson McDonald beat his wife?"

"Ah, Jesus," she said, softly. "I wondered what Jim told you. What are you going to do, blackmail him with it? Wilson?"

"Domestic violence is not my department," Lucas said. "I’m just trying to get a reading on him, what kind of a guy he is."

Again, she hesitated, and Lucas added, "This is all informal. There won’t be any record of what you say."

"But you could subpoena me."

"If it got to that point, you’d be morally obliged to tell us anyway," Lucas said.

She thought about that for a moment, then said, "I was at a pool party last summer-Rush and Louise Freeman, he runs Freeman-Hoag."

"The advertising agency."

"Yes. Wilson got drunk. He was getting loud and he went into the pool with his clothes on-Audrey said he fell, but I saw it, and he looked like he was jumping in. Anyway, we got him out, and Audrey walked him around the house out toward their car, and they started arguing. And Louise went over to Rush-I was talking to Rush- and she said something like, ‘Rush, you better go around, they’re starting to argue.’ Something about the way she said it. So Rush went around the house, and I followed, and we both came around the corner just in time to see Wilson hit her right in the head. He just swatted her and knocked her down. Rush ran over and they started arguing, and I thought Wilson was going to fight him. But Audrey got up and said she was all right, and I got between the two guys. And they went off."