John Sandford - Mortal Prey

Lucas was of two minds about going, but finally, on the morning of the funeral, flew into Lambert and was picked up by Andreno, who insisted on carrying Lucas's bag out to the car and said, "This is the most amazing thing I ever heard of, Davenport. I couldn't believe it when you called."

The funeral was done from a funeral home chapel, with Treena Ross's Unitarian minister presiding. Mallard was walking across the parking lot when they pulled in, and he waited for them.

"End of a part of my life," Mallard said. "I looked for her for ten years. This will be the first time I've ever seen her, when I knew it was her. I didn't know, that time in Wichita."

He and Andreno stepped toward the chapel, but Lucas hung back. "I'll wait for you guys here. I don't want to see her, and I don't want to hear what the minister says."

"You're just gonna stand here?" Andreno asked.

"I'll go to the cemetery," Lucas said.

"I gotta go in," Mallard said. He sounded glum. "So I can see for myself."

"You okay?" Andreno asked.

"Yeah. But different. I keep thinking it was worth the trade, Malone for all the people who won't be killed. Who might not be killed. But I don't feel that way."

"Malone was Malone-all those other anonymous people are just police reports," Lucas said.

Lucas waited in Andreno's car with the windows down. October, and still too warm in St. Louis-but then, it was warm in St. Paul, too. Almost seventy, the day before. Twenty people came to see Rinker buried, and Lucas suspected that there were St. Louis FBI agents somewhere out on the edges, making movies. He didn't care about that. He just wanted to get it done.

When Mallard and Andreno finally came out of the funeral home chapel, Andreno said, "Wasn't bad." They all three rode to the cemetery together, and Mallard asked Lucas, "Why'd you come?"

"I kind of liked her," Lucas said. "All the time I've been a cop, I've divided assholes into two groups: people who were assholes because they wanted to be-people who made themselves into assholes-and people who were made that way by life. Rinker never had a chance. But she kept trying."

"You sound like National Public Radio," Mallard said. They fell into the short line of cars going to the cemetery.

"Fuck a bunch of public radio," Lucas said. "Rinker was twisted and tortured by people a hell of a lot worse than she ever was, and nobody did anything about it. And she was probably getting out of it when we came along. I think if she'd never come to Minneapolis, she'd probably be out of it now."

Andreno shook his head. "Ross never would have let her get out. If she'd tried to get out, he'd have had her killed the first chance he got."

They rode along for a while, then Mallard said, "You're really bummed out, Lucas."

"I bum myself out. I keep thinking that for everything that was bad in the woman, there were all these good things. And one of the good things was, she was a romantic. She believed in love and marriage and babies and working hard and standing on your own. You know why we got her? Because she could never have seen that somebody would be cynical enough to fake his own wedding for the sole purpose of setting her up to be killed."

"You didn't exactly…"

"Yes, I did. I thought that if she showed, there was maybe a two percent chance of taking her alive. I set her up to be killed, and she was."

More silence, then Mallard said, "Good. Fuck her. She killed Malone."

"And that's your last word on it."

"It is. Fuck her."

"You're a hard man," Andreno said, and he wasn't smiling.

At the graveside, the mourners dropped dirt on the coffin, while Lucas, Mallard, and Andreno hung back. Treena Ross cried, wiping her nose with a big white hanky. She was still crying when the service ended, and people began to drift away. She walked past Lucas and Mallard as they headed to their car, and she called, "Hey, FBI."

They looked at her and she said, "I was never that stupid, you know?"

Lucas nodded, and couldn't suppress an acknowledging smile. "We know."

When everybody else was gone, Lucas and Andreno dropped handfuls of dirt on Rinker's coffin at the bottom of the grave. Mallard watched. He hadn't had much to say after Lucas's pronouncements on Rinker. And when Lucas and Andreno came away from the grave site, he said, "I'll leave you here. I've got a ride downtown."

"Okay."

They shook hands and Mallard said, "You done good, Lucas. You ever need a job…"

"I'll call," Lucas said.

Andreno dropped him back at the airport and said, "Well. I'm probably not as bummed out as you are, because I never knew her. But I'm gonna have a hard time getting back to the fuckin' golf course."

"You ever do any undercover work?" Lucas asked.

Andreno's eyebrows went up. "From time to time. I make a real good traveling salesman, for some reason."

"You know about my new job. You could be getting a call."

Andreno nodded and said, "Lucas, I'd owe you more than I could tell you."

Back in St. Paul that night, Weather asked if he were feeling better. He'd been shuffling around with his hands in his pockets, hangdog and moody. She'd been playing something light on the piano, maybe Chopin, and he'd been watching the tag end of a meaningless football game.

"I'm okay, really," he said.

"Okay for the real wedding?"

"Sure. Two weeks. I'm up for it-and the house. The house is looking good, if we could just get the goddamn parquet guys to put in the trim."

"Calm down."

"Yeah." He took a deep breath and exhaled, looked up at her perched on the arm of the couch. "I wouldn't want to do this again. Run into another Rinker."

"I don't think there could be another Rinker," Weather said. She bounced and smiled and said, "Ouch."

"What?"

"The kid just kicked me."

Lucas put a hand on her belly. "Matt, or maybe Sam. New Testament or Old. Emilie spelled with an i-e, like the French do, or Annie, with an i-e, like the English."

"But never Clara."

"Never Clara," Lucas said. "Clara's gone."