John Sandford - Stolen Prey

“I’ve got a problem, and it could be serious,” Bone said. “Are you at your office?”

“No, I’m down in South St. Paul, arresting some guys,” Lucas said.

“Damnit. Well, this is the thing. I saw on television that you’re involved in this murder out in Wayzata,” Bone said.

“Some,” Lucas said. “I’m not running it.”

“That’s good enough,” Bone said. “I’ve got a vice president named Richard Pruess. He’s about six tiers down and he’s involved in a bunch of investment funds. Basically, he’s a salesman. If a customer is big enough, and wants an investment adviser, Richard sets that up.”

“What does that have to do with Wayzata?” Lucas asked.

“Pruess is missing,” Bone said. “He didn’t come to work today. He’s been sick some, I guess-I don’t see him much, myself. Anyway, he’s been under the weather for a few days, but still working. Today he didn’t show up at all, and he didn’t call in. He had a couple of meetings scheduled and hung up some customers. His supervisor tried to contact him, but couldn’t. His cell phone keeps kicking us over to the answering service. He’s gay, somebody in the office knew his partner, and his partner said Pruess was getting ready for work this morning, he was fine, when the partner left. The partner went back to their apartment and Pruess isn’t there.”

“You call the cops? I mean, other cops?” Lucas asked.

“No, I decided to come straight to you. The reason is, you know … Pruess used to work with Candace Brooks. She was his assistant.”

“What?” Lucas had been watching the copper thieves being put into the back of the squads, but now he walked away, across the oily dirt outside the shed.

“That’s why I decided to call you,” Bone said. “Candace Brooks worked here until a year ago, or fifteen months. Something like that-I don’t have her file yet. She had an assistant VP job in Pruess’s office. I didn’t know that myself-I just heard it from Sandy Bernstein, who runs that end of things. Anyway, I’m wondering if there might be something going on.”

“Jesus, Jim, I hope not, but there might be,” Lucas said. “Listen, we’re going to a full-court press on this. If you hear from this guy, call me right away. I’ll be there quick as I can. Another guy’s actually running the investigation, his name is Bob Shaffer. I’m gonna call him, I’m sure he’ll want to be there. And some DEA guys, and even a Mexican Federale.”

“You think it’s dope?” Bone asked.

“I’m afraid it could be. I don’t want to get ahead of ourselves, here, maybe your guy’s just out getting a haircut, but this business out in Wayzata … it’s bad as it can get,” Lucas said. “We can’t let this go, we can’t wait. We’ve got to find out if it’s related.”

“I really don’t need any of this money-laundering bullshit dropped on us,” Bone said.

“I can’t help what falls on you, if it’s anything,” Lucas said. “But this Pruess guy could be in the worst kind of trouble. The worst kind. I can’t even begin to tell you…. Listen, I’ll see you in an hour or so.”

“See you then,” Bone said. “I’ll do some poking around, maybe I’ll turn something up.”

Lucas got off the phone and told Del, “I gotta go, man, I gotta run.”

“Bad?”

“Yeah. Feels bad. Like, really bad.”

Lucas called everybody on the way back to the office, and once there, got a quick rinse in the men’s room, dried off with paper towels, and changed back into his suit. As he went out the door, Weather phoned and asked if he was interested in going to dinner.

“Probably, if it’s like routine. I don’t want to do a big deal.”

“I’ll call the Lex.”

“Fine. I’ve gotta go over and talk to T-Bone. I’ll probably be six o’clock.” He told her, briefly, what had happened.

“I hope Jim doesn’t get hurt,” Weather said.

“If his bank’s been laundering, he’s probably gonna get hurt,” Lucas said.

“I can’t believe that he’d know about it.”

“Neither can I,” Lucas said. “But it’s open season on bankers right now. Maybe … He’s a smart guy. He’ll figure a way to handle it.”

On the way over to the bank, Bone called again and asked how long he’d be.

“Ten more minutes,” Lucas said. “Something happen?”

“Yeah. Your guy Shaffer is here and he’s pissed because I won’t talk until you get here. And ’cause I got a lawyer to sit in.”

“Nine minutes,” Lucas said.

Polaris National Bank was in downtown Minneapolis, a skyscraper of pale yellow stone and blue glass. Bone’s corner office was on the fiftieth floor, from where he could look crosstown at the slightly higher IDS Center. Lucas had been in Bone’s office probably fifty times, after men’s league basketball games, to drink a glass of bourbon or a G amp;T, if it was hot, and talk about money.

Lucas pushed through the revolving door into the lobby a little after five o’clock and found Rivera and Martinez talking to the security guards. Lucas walked over, showed his BCA identification, and they went up together.

In the privacy of the elevator, Rivera said, a question in his voice, “Mrs. Brooks?”

“Could be a false alarm,” Lucas said.

“Do you think it’s a false alarm?” Martinez asked.

“No, I don’t,” Lucas said. “But I’ve been wrong before.”

“She was the first to die.”

Lucas said, “We assumed they’d torture the main target last-let him see the others suffer. They didn’t. They went right after her, and when she died, they tried to get what they wanted out of the husband, by torturing the daughter, and then the husband himself. He had nothing to give them.”

“Again, this is a guess,” Rivera said.

“Yes. Absolutely. A guess,” Lucas said. “Except that we haven’t found anything at Sunnie so far. We’re really having some problems nailing down anything that looks like a laundry. So maybe it isn’t.”

“You know the president of this bank?” Martinez asked.

“Yeah. Good guy. I really believe that,” Lucas said. “If there’s a money laundry here, he didn’t know about it.”

“We’ll see,” Martinez said. “If this vice president is missing, and if he worked with Mrs. Brooks, there must be a connection.”

“Or the Criminales think there is,” said Rivera.

“There must be,” Martinez said to her boss. “For somebody so high up to be involved.”

Lucas said, “He wasn’t that high up. Americans … banks especially … sometimes give titles instead of money. You could ask Bone, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there were dozens of vice presidents. It impresses the clients, to be dealing with somebody … so high up.”

Shaffer and O’Brien, the DEA agent, were sitting on a narrow red designer couch in Bone’s office. Bone and a tough-looking woman, who Lucas thought must be the lawyer, were facing each other across a cocktail table, on separate red chairs that matched the couch.

Two other men, who Lucas didn’t know, one short and bald, the other tall and long-haired, both in good suits and ties, sat on the third side of the table, while three empty non-matching chairs were at the fourth side. Lucas, Rivera, and Martinez took the empty chairs and Lucas said, “Thanks for waiting.”

Shaffer, who already looked unhappy, registered another few degrees of unhappiness when he saw Rivera and Martinez, but he didn’t say anything.

Bone, a thin athletic man with a strong nose and thick black hair, introduced the unknowns-the woman was the lawyer, the two men worked as an account manager and a systems director-and then said to Lucas, “We’ve already been over a few of the ground rules here. Kate will jump in if you ask any questions that would suggest that I, or the bank as an institution, were knowingly involved in any kind of illegal activity. Other than that, I need to get this figured out as badly as you do.”