‘‘Well, because you’re here, obviously. And because there was something very cold and unpleasant about that young girl. It crossed my mind when we were setting up the funeral arrangements that she cared less for her father than she might for a clod of dirt. When she came to pick up the ashes—and she drove herself, by the way, and she was too young to have a license, I’m sure—I watched her from the window when she went back to the car. She opened the car door and tossed the box in the backseat like you might toss an old rag. There was something in the way she did it. I thought at that very moment that the ashes might never make it to the family farm. That they might not make it further than the nearest ditch.’’
‘‘But she was bawling about it, you said.’’
‘‘Oh, and very conveniently, with the sheriff.’’ The senior undertaker shook his head. ‘‘You see a lot of very strange things in this business, but that has stuck in my mind as one of the strangest. No. Not strange. Frightening. I locked the doors for the next few weeks. I would dream that the little girl was coming for me.’’
‘‘HE DIED OF A HEART ATTACK,’’ DR. STEPHEN LANDIS said. Landis was a roughneck fifty-five, with sparkling gold-rimmed glasses and heavy boots under his jeans. A stuffed mallard, just taking wing, hung from the wall of the reception room, while a nine-pound walleye was mounted over his desk in his private office. ‘‘He’d been having some problems—cardiac insufficiency—and he wouldn’t stop drinking or smoking. I told him if he didn’t stop, he was gonna have a heart attack. And one day he keeled over. Drink and cigarette in hand.’’
‘‘He was smoking when he went?’’ Sherrill said.
‘‘Still had the cigarette between his fingers,’’ Landis said.
‘‘But you didn’t do an autopsy?’’ Lucas asked.
Landis shrugged. ‘‘There didn’t seem to be a reason to do one. He’d been sick, it seemed apparent that it was the onset of a heart problem. And then he had a heart attack.’’
‘‘Aren’t you required to do an autopsy when the person didn’t die under a doctor’s immediate care?’’ Sherrill asked.
‘‘Not then. Back then, not everything was regulated by the legislature yet. You could use your judgment on occasion.’’
‘‘Did you ever treat Mrs. Lamb?’’ Lucas asked, injecting a slight chill into his voice.
Landis’s eyes drifted away from Lucas’s. ‘‘I may have seen her a time or two, but the Lambs moved away, you know . . .’’
‘‘Did you ever treat her for injuries that might have been inflicted by her husband?’’
‘‘No, I didn’t. Well—you probably heard this from somebody else, or you wouldn’t be asking the question. There were rumors that George used to knock her around. And I had her in one time, and she had some bruises that looked like they might have come from a beating. She said she fell down the stairs. I doubted that, but the bruises were old and . . . I let it go. Maybe I shouldn’t have, but she wasn’t interested in talking about it.’’
They sat in silence for a moment; then Lucas said, ‘‘No sign of anything but the symptoms of a heart attack.’’
‘‘Not that I could see.’’
‘‘And you examined the body carefully.’’
‘‘I examined it. Briefly.’’
‘‘No tissue cultures.’’
‘‘No.’’
‘‘You never came to suspect that anything unusual might have led to George Lamb’s sudden death.’’
‘‘No. He had heart trouble. If anything, I was expecting a heart attack.’’
Outside, Sherrill said, ‘‘I see what you mean—another case of remarkable memory. Lamb had a cigarette between his fingers when he died.’’
‘‘There’s something here,’’ Lucas said, turning to look back at the front of the clinic. ‘‘I have trouble thinking what it might be.’’
‘‘Maybe she’s some kind of town philanthropist and gives them money or something, so they protect her,’’
Sherrill suggested.
‘‘Have you seen her? She doesn’t look like she’d give a nickel to a starving man. And if it has been that, somebody would have mentioned it.’’
‘‘So what do you want to do?’’
‘‘Let’s go check into this motel. Get some dinner.’’
LUCAS ALWAYS EXPECTED A CERTAIN AMOUNT OF AWKWARDNESS when he and a new woman friend got around a bed, and the room at the Sugar Beet Inn was basically a queen-sized bed, a television set, and bathroom; along with the built-in scent of disinfectant. Sherrill wasn’t quite as inhibited: she pulled off her jacket, tossed it on the chair, jumped on the bed, giving it a bounce, then hopped off to check the TV. ‘‘I wonder if they have dirty movies?’’
‘‘Give me a break,’’ Lucas said. ‘‘Come on, let’s find a restaurant.’’
‘‘Too early. It’s barely five o’clock. I wanna take a shower and get the road off me,’’ she said. ‘‘You wanna take a shower?’’
‘‘If we take a shower, we’ll probably wind up on the bed, dealing with sexual issues,’’ he said, injecting a tone of disapproval into his voice. ‘‘We’re here on business.’’
‘‘Quit bustin’ my balls, Davenport,’’ she said. She pulled her sweatshirt over her head. ‘‘But if you want to sit out here and wait . . .’’
‘‘I suppose we’d save water if we both got in there.’’
‘‘And water is precious out here on the prairie.’’
‘‘Well, I mean, if it’s for the environment . . .’’
THE DESK CLERK AT THE SUGAR BEET TOLD THEM TWO restaurants would be open: Chuck’s Wagon, a diner, and the Oxford Supper Club, which had a liquor license. They drove down to the supper club and were met at the entrance by a cheerful, overweight woman with hair the same tone of orange as the county clerk’s, and a frilly apron. She took them to a red-vinyl booth and left them with glasses of water and menus.
‘‘That hair color must be a fashion out here. She looks like a pumpkin,’’ Sherrill whispered.
‘‘Mmm. Open-face roast beef sandwich with brown gravy, choice of potato, string beans, cheese balls as an appetizer, and pumpkin or mince pie with whipped cream, choice of drink, seven ninety-five,’’ Lucas said.
‘‘You ever hear of cholesterol?’’
‘‘Off my case. I’m starving.’’
Lucas ordered a martini, to be followed by the roast beef sandwich; Sherrill got the Traditional Meatloaf with a Miller Lite up front. They ate in easy companionship, talking about the day, talking about cases they’d worked together and what happened to who, afterwards. Touched lightly on Weather’s case. Lucas got a Leinenkugel’s and Sherrill got a second Miller Lite, to go with the pie. They were just finishing the pie when Lucas felt the khaki pants legs stepping up to the table. He looked up at two sheriff’s deputies, two men in their late twenties or thirties, one hard, lanky, the other thicker, like a high school tackle, with the beginning of a gut.
‘‘Are you the Porsche outside?’’ asked the one with the gut.
‘‘Yeah. That’s us,’’ Lucas said.
‘‘So you’re the guys from Minneapolis.’’
‘‘Yeah. What can we do for you?’’
‘‘We were just wondering if you’re done here,’’ said the lanky one. His voice was curt: his cop voice.
‘‘I don’t know,’’ Lucas said. He was just as curt. Across the table, Sherrill had swiveled slightly on her butt so that her back was to the wall, and her legs, still curled up, projected toward the deputies. Their attitude was wrong; and other patrons in the restaurant had noticed. ‘‘We didn’t get very far today. We weren’t getting a lot of cooperation.’’
‘‘We were just talking over at the office about how everybody was cooperating, and you were being pretty damn impolite about it,’’ said Gut.
‘‘Not trying to be impolite,’’ Lucas said. Swiveling a bit, as Sherrill had. ‘‘We’re trying to conduct an investigation.’’
‘‘Yeah. I bet you were investigating the hell ou
t of this chick up to the Sugar Beet,’’ Gut said.
Sherrill said, ‘‘Hey, you . . .’’ But Lucas held up a peremptory finger to silence her, and she stopped and looked at him; then Lucas said to Gut, ‘‘Fuck you, you fat hillbilly cocksucker.’’
Gut looked at the slender man, who stepped back a bit and said, ‘‘Let’s cool this off,’’ but Gut put his fists on the table and leaned toward Lucas and said, ‘‘If you said that outside, I’d drag your ass all over the goddamn parking lot.’’
‘‘Let’s go,’’ Lucas said. ‘‘I’m tired of this rinky-dink bullshit.’’
• • •
LUCAS TOSSED A TWENTY ON THE TABLE AND FOLLOWED Gut toward the entrance; the lanky man said, ‘‘Hey, whoa, whoa,’’ and Sherrill said, ‘‘Lucas, this is a bad idea . . .’’
But six feet outside the door, Gut took a slow, short step, feeling Lucas closing behind him, spun and threw a wild, looping right hand at Lucas’s head.
Lucas stepped left and hit the heavy man in the nose, staggering him, bringing blood. As Gut turned, bringing his hands up to his face, Lucas hooked him in the left-side short ribs with another right; when Gut pulled his arms down, Lucas hit him in the eye with a left, the other eye with a right, then took the right-side short ribs with a left, then crossed a right to the face. Gut was trying to fall, staggering backward, got his back wedged against a pickup truck, and Lucas beat him like a punching bag, face, face, gut, face, ribs, face, face, like a heavy workout in the gym.
Lucas felt it all flowing out: the frustration with Weather, the attacks on Weather and Elle, the uncertainty, the depression. And heard Sherrill screaming, flicked somebody’s arm off his shoulder, was hit from the left and turned, almost punched Sherrill in the forehead, felt another man moving behind him, spun, and saw the lanky man covering Gut, holding his hands in front of him, shouting something . . .
The world began to slow down, and Lucas backed up, hands up, Marcy pushing him, shouting. He could barely hear her. ‘‘Okay,’’ he said finally, through the roaring in his head. ‘‘Okay, I’m done.’’
Marcy faded in. ‘‘You’re done. Are you done?’’
‘‘I’m done . . .’’ He dropped his hands. They were dappled with blood, and blood from Gut’s nose was sprayed across his shirt. He said, ‘‘This shirt’s fucked.’’
Gut was stretched on the ground next to the pickup running board, groaning, the lanky man leaning over him, saying, ‘‘Breathe easy. Come on, you’re okay.’’
But he wasn’t okay. He said, ‘‘I can’t, I can’t, I can’t . . .’’ Every time he tried to sit up, he moaned, holding his sides; he was blowing streams of blood from his nose. ‘‘We better get an ambulance,’’ the lanky man said. ‘‘Get him over to the clinic.’’
‘‘Can you call from your car?’’ Sherrill asked.
‘‘Yeah, I can do that,’’ he said, as if the concept were new to him. He hurried to the squad car, parked at the edge of the lot, pushing through a narrow ring of spectators. As he went, Marcy asked, quietly, ‘‘Are you okay?’’
‘‘Yeah, yeah, he never touched me,’’ Lucas said.
‘‘That’s not what I meant.’’
He looked at her: ‘‘Yeah, I’m okay. I sorta let it all out, there.’’
‘‘I’d say.’’
The lanky deputy was back, said, ‘‘The ambulance’ll be here in a minute.’’ Then to Lucas, ‘‘I ain’t gonna try to take you in, ’cause we all got guns, but you’re under arrest.’’
‘‘Bullshit,’’ Lucas said. ‘‘You two came here to try to push us out of a murder investigation and he took the first swing. If I don’t get some answers, I’ll get the goddamn BCA up here and we’ll tear a new asshole for your department. You two are gonna be lucky to get out of this with your badges.’’
‘‘We’ll see,’’ the lanky man said. ‘‘Why don’t you go on down to the courthouse. I’m gonna get the sheriff in. And you’re not helping around here.’’
‘‘Why don’t you just come up to the Sugar Beet,’’ Lucas said. ‘‘We’ve got a big room.’’
A siren started down in the town, the ambulance. The lanky man looked at Sherrill and then at Lucas. ‘‘All right. We’ll see you up there.’’
‘‘THIS IS JUST FUCKIN’ AWFUL,’’ SHERRILL SAID, ON THE way back to the motel.
‘‘The fight?’’ That was odd; she’d always been one of the first to get in.
‘‘Not the fight. The way the fight turns me on. You could bend me over the front fender right now, in front of all those people, I swear to God. Whoo. But you sorta hung me up there, dude. I don’t think I coulda taken that skinny guy.’’ She was vibrating, talking a hundred miles an hour. ‘‘Maybe I could have slowed him down. Didn’t take you long with the fat guy, that’s for sure. Man, if the skinny guy had gone for his gun, though, I’d’ve had to do something, and we coulda wound up with dead people out there. Whoa, what a rush. Man, the fuckin’ adrenaline is coming on, now. It always comes about ten minutes too late.’’
Lucas grinned at her: ‘‘About once a year. It cleans out the system.’’
‘‘What’re you gonna tell the sheriff? I mean, we could be in some trouble.’’
Lucas shook his head. ‘‘There’s something going on. We know it, and now they know we know. I think we might learn something.’’
‘‘Jeez—I wish I hadn’t used you up before dinner. I’m serious here, Lucas, I could really use some help.’’
‘‘We might have a couple minutes.’’
‘‘It won’t take that long . . .’’
THE SHERIFF SHOWED UP A LITTLE MORE THAN AN hour later. Lucas was walking back from the Coke machine with a Diet and a regular Coke, his hair still wet from another shower, when they arrived in two cars; the sheriff, the older deputy named Jimmy, the young, lanky man from the restaurant, all in the sheriff’s squad car, and Dr. Stephen Landis in a two-year-old Buick.
Lucas continued to the room, pushed through the door, said, ‘‘They’re here.’’
Sherrill tucked her shirt in: she’d been worried the room would smell too much like sex, which she thought would seem perverted so close to the fight—which Lucas told her was perverted—so she’d turned up the shower full blast, cold water only, and sprayed it against the back wall of the shower stall. Now the room smelled faintly of chlorine, with a hint of feminine underarm deodorant. ‘‘We’re ready,’’ she said, looking around. ‘‘Put your gun over on the nightstand. That’ll look nice and grim. I’ll keep mine, but I’ll let them see it.’’ She was wearing her .357 in the small of her back.
He nodded: ‘‘You could be good at this.’’
She came over and stood on her tiptoes and kissed him on the lips. ‘‘Remember that,’’ she said.
The sheriff knocked a second later. Sherrill opened the door and let them in.
‘‘DAMN NEAR KILLED HIM,’’ THE SHERIFF SAID. HE WAS standing in front of the dresser, looking at Lucas, who was sitting on the bed, his back to the headboard. The other three men were standing near the door, while Sherrill stood at the head end of the bed, near Lucas. ‘‘He could still be in trouble.’’
‘‘Bullshit. I cracked his short ribs and busted his nose. He won’t be sneezing for a month or six weeks, that’s all,’’ Lucas said.
‘‘That’s a fairly clinical judgment,’’ Landis said. ‘‘You must’ve done this before.’’
‘‘I’ve had a few fights,’’ Lucas agreed.
‘‘In all my time as sheriff, I haven’t had a man hurt that bad, except one who was in a car accident,’’ the sheriff said. ‘‘We’re talking to the county attorney to see if an arrest would be appropriate. We don’t want you going anyplace.’’
‘‘We’re leaving tomorrow, I think,’’ Lucas said. ‘‘But we’ll be available down in Minneapolis. I’m gonna talk to a couple of friends over at the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, maybe a guy in the attorney general’s office. About coming up here and deposing you people on
the murder of George Lamb: to ask you why you’ve been covering it up all these years. Why you’d send a couple of cops to roust us, in the middle of a murder investigation that you’d been reading about in the Star-Trib.’’
The sheriff shook his head: ‘‘We didn’t send anybody to roust you. These idiots thought of it themselves.’’ He tipped his head toward the lanky man, who shrugged and looked at the curtains covering the single window.
‘‘The thing is, we can take care of Larry,’’ the older deputy drawled. ‘‘Cops get beat up from time to time. The real question I got—not the sheriff, just me—is whether you can be talked to. Or if you’re just some big-city asshole up here to kick the rubes.’’
‘‘I’ve got a cabin outside a town half this size, in Wisconsin. The sheriff’s a friend of mine, and he’s been bullshitting me about moving up to run for the office when he quits, and I’ve thought about it. I’ve worked with a halfdozen sheriffs all over this state and Wisconsin, and this is the first time I’ve had trouble,’’ Lucas said. ‘‘You want some references?’’
‘‘Already made some calls,’’ the older man said. After a few seconds’ silence, he said, ‘‘You want to talk, or do we do this all legal?’’
‘‘Talk,’’ Lucas said.
The sheriff looked at the older deputy and said, ‘‘You think?’’
‘‘Yeah, I think.’’
The sheriff nodded and said, ‘‘The thing is, we don’t know whether or not George Lamb was murdered. But he might have been.’’
‘‘There were some problems at the time, with the way the death happened,’’ the older man said. ‘‘Happened way too early in the morning. He got up early, for his job, but not in the middle of the night. It looked to us like he’d gotten sick the evening before, and they’d let him lay there until he died.’’
‘‘He came to see me twice in the month before he died. He was feeling sicker and sicker, and at first I thought it was the flu. He’d had some diarrhea, he’d had some episodes of vomiting, dizzy spells, and so on. We’d had some flu going around at the time, and it fit,’’ Landis said. He pulled a chair out from the dresser/desk and sat down. ‘‘I gave him some antibiotics for a lung infection he’d developed—nothing serious, he was coughing up some phlegm with pus in it. And we had an argument the second time he came in, and he never came back. Then he dropped dead. Could have been a heart attack.’’