John Sandford - Stolen Prey

Further efforts to elicit information were fruitless, but he decided that Tom would bear watching.

He was out of the house at eight-thirty, at Hennepin Medical Center at nine, where he checked with Weather’s secretary and was told that she was already doing a scar revision. He went down to the clinic, stated his business, and was told to take a seat.

He was reading a home furnishings magazine when his name was called. He took a seat in an examination room, and five minutes later a small fussy middle-aged man showed up, said he was a doctor, and showed Lucas what he, the doctor, called “a specialized kind of saw.” The saw looked a little like a Dremel tool with a sanding disk. “It will cut the cast with a vibration. It will not cut your arm,” the doctor said.

“Sounds good to me,” Lucas said.

The doctor peered at the tool, as though he was unsure exactly how to turn it on, then said, “I don’t usually do this-a nurse practitioner usually does it, but she’s not here right now.”

“Just glad to get it off,” Lucas said.

The doctor began cutting, and it went quickly enough, but an inch down the foot-long cast, Lucas felt a cutting pain, and flinched. The doctor said, “Just hold on, you may feel a few twitches, but it won’t cut.”

He started again, and another inch or two along the way, there was another slicing pain, and Lucas flinched away again.

“Don’t do that,” the doc said impatiently. He took the head of the tool and pressed it against his palm, where it buzzed away. No cut.

“You think it’s cutting, but it’s not,” he said. “Let’s not break the cutting head.”

Another inch, and Lucas said, “Ahhhh…” but didn’t flinch; another inch, and he did flinch, and the doctor said, “Hold on, hold on.” To Lucas, it didn’t seem like his imagination…. One more searing pain, and the cast popped loose.

The doctor carefully pulled it off and said, “See, no cuts.”

Lucas could still feel something like cuts, and looked closely at his arm. There were five inch-long white lines on the fresh pink skin.

“What’re these things?” he asked. “They hurt like hell.”

Del said, “Burns?”

Lucas: “Yeah. I’ve got five burns, each one an inch long, gonna be scars, right up my arm. What he didn’t know was, the saw doesn’t cut you, but if you go through the cast slowly enough, like he did, the blade gets red hot. He was branding me, and telling me the pain was just my imagination, the silly asshole.”

Del said, “Ah, well … you know. Accidents happen.”

“Accidents? The guy was supposed to be a medical doctor.”

“You’re getting to be a sissy, man….”

“Sissy?”

At the press conference, Shaffer spent fifteen minutes describing and discussing the extent of the hunt for Martinez and the last of the Mexican shooters, and Lucas said that the BCA was expecting some kind of movement in regard to the thieves who’d started the chain reaction that led to the murders.

“Any more about the gold?” he was asked.

“I just want to say that anyone who sees Martinez should not get any ideas about this gold-that will get you killed,” Lucas said. “We believe she has it, as much as twenty-two million in untraceable gold coins, but that should not be a motive to go after her. Let the law handle this. No amount of gold is worth losing your life, and these two people are professional killers. So stay clear.”

VIRGIL FLOWERS called fifteen minutes after the press conference. “You looked good. Nice suit.”

“You know what I was doing? I was saying ‘gold,’” Lucas said. “Gold, gold, gold, gold. I want everybody thinking gold, and that Martinez has it.”

“Whatever works,” Flowers said. “Listen, Richie wants to pop these guys at the farm so bad that he walks around with his legs crossed. He can’t wait-I think we’ll be going in this afternoon. Everybody coming out of there has had a drug problem. He’s talking to his favorite judge about a warrant, and probably Channel Three. Did I mention that he’s up for reelection this fall?”

“Yeah, you did. What time you want me there?” Lucas asked.

“I don’t know. I’ll call you. Be ready. It’s about an hour out of town.”

Kline’s attorney, Jay Keisler, called: “Can we get together?”

“If you make it worth our while,” Lucas said.

“I think we can, but maybe not exactly the way you want it,” Keisler said. “We’ve run into a bump in the road.”

“If I hear about bumps, we might have to go with what we’ve got,” Lucas said.

“Who’re we talking to over at the county?”

“Dave Morgan,” Lucas said.

“So let’s let Dave decide,” Keisler said. “What time’s good for you? I’ve got to be in court at eleven-thirty, but only for a motion, take five minutes.”

“One?” Lucas suggested.

“One’s good,” Keisler said.

“I’ll check with Dave and get back to you.”

Lucas checked with Morgan, who said try for twelve-forty-five, because that’s what lawyers do, and Keisler sighed as though it were the end of the world, but agreed.

Lucas, Del, Shrake, and Jenkins went out for an early lunch, much of it spent in a thoroughly despicable gossip session about another agent and an extraordinarily attractive female tech, both in their early forties, both married with children, who may or may not have been having a hot affair, that may or may not have included sex on the upstairs gun-testing range.

By the time they got back to the office, Lucas had to hurry to make the appointment at the prosecutor’s office. Morgan’s office was in the Ramsey County courthouse, and Lucas parked kitty-corner in the Victory parking garage. As he hustled across the street, something felt wrong, but he wasn’t sure what it was, so he kept going.

A secretary showed him into a conference room, where Kline was waiting with a man who looked as though he’d just been electrocuted: the Einstein hair. Lucas said, “You must be Jay,” and they shook hands, and then Morgan bustled into the office and said, to Lucas, “We’ve been talking for a couple of minutes in the hallway…. It’s not quite what I thought.”

Lucas looked at Kline: “What’s up?”

Keisler answered. “We have a small problem. My client is innocent. I try not ever to get into that question, but he told me before I could stop him. Then, you know, he convinced me. He also convinced me that even if he isn’t innocent, you could never convict him. So, we don’t have a basis for a bargain. But we do have something.”

Morgan: “What?” He was not at all perturbed; just another workday.

“There’s the possibility that my client might be able to provide you with some information about an accomplice of the real criminal in this matter, Ivan Turicek,” Keisler said.

“If your client is innocent, he has the obligation to provide us with any information he has,” Morgan said.

“But not misinformation. Let me put it this way. This is more of a feeling than hard information, and while it includes a name, it’s possible that he would be implicating a completely innocent person. He wants to cooperate, and if he cooperates, and you guys, from some misplaced sense of vengeance, go after him, we want the court to know that he cooperated.”

After a lot of to-ing and fro-ing, which took the best part of fifteen minutes, a name was spat out: Mohammed Ibriz.

Lucas: “This guy, Mohammed Ibriz, is an accomplice?”

“I can’t swear to it,” Kline said. “But I heard Ivan talking to the guy several times, when we were working down there in Systems. I was over on the other side of the computers, and you know how you listen to somebody when they’re trying to be confidential and quiet? I heard him call him Mohammed several times, and you know now, how you notice Islamic names because of all the trouble?”