Part 12 (2/2)

”And the guy with the beard,” Connell said, prompting her.

”Yeah. He came in during the talk. And he must've left right away, because I didn't see him later. I sorta looked. Jesus-I could of been dead. I mean, if I'd found him.”

”Was he tall, short, fat, skinny?”

”Big guy. Not tall, but thick. Big shoulders. Beard. I don't like beards, but I liked the shoulders.” She winked at Connell again, and Lucas covered a grin by scratching his face. ”But the thing is,” she said to Connell, ”you asked about smoking, and he snapped a cigarette into the street. I saw him do it. Snapped a cigarette and then came in the door.”

Lucas looked at Connell and nodded. Heinz caught it. ”Was that him?” she asked excitedly.

”Would you know him if we showed you a picture of him?” Lucas asked.

She c.o.c.ked her head and looked to one side, as though she were running a video through her head. ”I don't know,” she said after a minute. ”Maybe, if I saw an actual picture. I can remember the beard and the shoulders. His beard looked sort of funny. Short, but really dense, like fur . . . Kind of unpleasant, I thought. Maybe fake. I can't remember much about his face. k.n.o.bby, I think.”

”Dark beard? Light?”

”Mmm . . . dark. Kind of medium, really. Pretty average hair, I think . . . brown.”

”All right,” Lucas said. ”Let's nail this down. And let's get you with an artist. Do you have time to come to Minneapolis?”

”Sure. Right now? Let me tell my boss.”

As the woman went to talk to her boss about leaving, Connell caught Lucas's sleeve. ”Gotta be him. Smokes, arrives after the talk, then leaves right away. Wannemaker is lingering after the talk, but suddenly leaves, like somebody showed up.”

”Wouldn't count on it,” Lucas said. But he was counting on it. He felt it, just a sniff of the killer, just a whiff of the track. ”We got to put her through the s.e.x files.”

The woman came back, animated. ”Let's go. I'll follow you over.”

GREAVE WANTED TO stop at the apartment complex so Lucas could look at the locked-room mystery. ”C'mon, man, it's twenty f.u.c.kin' minutes. We'll be back before she's done with the artist,” he said. A pleading note entered his voice. ”C'mon, man, this is killing me.”

Lucas glanced at him, hands clutched, the too-hip suit. He sighed and said, ”All right. Twenty minutes.”

They took I-94 back to Minneapolis, but turned south instead of north toward City Hall. Greave directed him through a web of streets to a fifties-era mid-rise concrete building with a hand-carved natural-wood sign on the narrow front lawn that had a loon on top and the name ”Eisenhower Docks” beneath the bird. A fat man pushed a mower down the lawn away from them, leaving behind the smell of gas and cheap cigar.

”Eisenhower Docks?” Lucas said as they got out.

”If you stand on the roof you can see the river,” Greave said. ”And they figured 'Eisenhower' makes old people feel good.”

The man pus.h.i.+ng the lawn mower made a turn at the end of the lawn and started back; Lucas recognized Ray Cherry, forty pounds heavier than he'd been when he'd fought in Golden Gloves tournaments in the sixties. Most of the weight had gone to his gut, which hung over beltless Oshkosh jeans. His face had gone from square to blocky, and a half-dozen folds of fat rolled down the back of his neck to his shoulders. His T-s.h.i.+rt was soaked with sweat. He saw Davenport and Greave, pushed the lawn mower up to their feet, and killed the engine.

”What're you doing, Davenport?”

”Lookin' around, Ray,” Lucas said, smiling. ”How've you been? You got fat.”

”Y'ain't a cop no more, so get the f.u.c.k off my property.”

”I'm back on the force, Ray,” Lucas said, still smiling. Seeing Ray made him happy. ”You oughta read the papers. Deputy chief in charge of finding out how you killed this old lady.”

A look crossed Cherry's face, a quick shadow, and Lucas recognized it, had seen it six or seven hundred or a thousand times: Cherry had done it. Cherry wiped the expression away, tried a look of confusion, took a soiled rag out of his pocket, and blew his nose. ”Bulls.h.i.+t,” he said finally.

”Gonna get you, Ray,” Lucas said; the smile stayed but his voice had gone cold. ”Gonna get the Joyces, too. Gonna put you in Stillwater Prison. You must be close to fifty, Ray. First-degree murder'll get you . . . s.h.i.+t, they just changed the law. Tough luck. You'll be better'n eighty before you get out.”

”f.u.c.k you, Davenport,” Cherry said. He fired up the mower.

”Come and talk to me, Ray,” Lucas said over the engine noise. ”The Joyces'll sell you out the minute they think it'll get them a break. You know that. Come and talk, and maybe we can do a deal.”

”f.u.c.k you,” Cherry said, and he mowed on down the yard.

”Lovely fellow,” Greave said in a fake English accent.

”He did it,” Lucas said. He turned to Greave and Greave took a step back: Lucas's face was like a block of stone.

”Huh?”

”He killed her. Let's see her apartment.”

Lucas started for the apartment door, and Greave trotted after him. ”Hey, wait a minute, wait a minute. . . .”

THERE WERE A thousand books in the apartment, along with a rolled-up Oriental carpet tied with brown twine, and fifteen cardboard cartons from U-Haul, still flat. A harried middle-aged woman sat on a piano bench, a handkerchief around her head; her face was wind- and sunburned, like a gardener's, and was touched with grief. Charmagne Carter's daughter, Emily.

”. . . Soon as they said we could take it out. If we don't, we have to keep paying rent,” she told Greave. She looked around. ”I don't know what to do with the books. I'd like to keep them, but there're so many.”

Lucas had been looking at the books: American literature, poetry, essays, history. Works on feminism, arranged in a way that suggested they were a conscious collection rather than a reading selection. ”I could take some of them off your hands,” he said. ”I mean, if you'd like to name a price. I'd take the poetry.”

”Well, what do you think?” Carter asked, as Greave watched him curiously.

”There are . . .” He counted quickly. ”. . . thirty-seven volumes, mostly paper. I don't think any of them are particularly rare. How about a hundred bucks?”

”Let me look through them. I'll give you a call.”

”Sure.” He turned away from the books, more fully toward her. ”Was your mother depressed or anything?”

”If you're asking if she committed suicide, she didn't. She wouldn't give the Joyces the pleasure, for one thing. But basically, she liked her life,” Carter said. She became more animated as she remembered. ”We had dinner the night before and she was talking about this kid in her cla.s.s, black kid, she thinks he'll be a novelist but he needs encouragement . . . No way'd she kill herself. Besides, even if she wanted to, how'd she do it?”

”Yeah. That's a question,” Lucas said.

”The only thing wrong with Mom was her thyroid. She had a little thyroid problem; it was overactive and she had trouble keeping her weight up,” Carter said. ”And her insomnia. That might have been part of the thyroid problem.”

”She was actually ill, then?” Lucas glanced sideways at Greave.

”No. No, she really wasn't. Not even bad enough to take pills. She was just way too thin. She weighed ninety-nine pounds and she was five-six. That's below her ideal weight, but it's not emaciated or anything.”

”Okay.”

”Now that kid isn't gonna get help, the novelist,” Emily said, and a tear started down her cheek.

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