Stolen Prey

was barely a farm anymore-forty acres were planted with a ragged cornfield, but the other forty were nothing but weeds and a scattering of saplings sprouted from windblown seed. A line of taller timber marked the north side, where the land started to fold as it dropped down to the river. The acreage didn’t border on the river itself, but was close. She could walk to a bridge….

She got to the farm as the sun was hovering above the horizon, turning the overhead clouds a gorgeous lavender-and-salmon. She pulled open the gate-the owner of the land had told her she could stop by anytime-and pulled in, closed the gate behind herself, and drove slowly along a thin track toward the timber.

She dug carefully, throwing the dirt onto the blue tarp. By the time she finished, it was nearly dark, the sun long gone; she put one of the plastic bags in the hole, filled it with boxes of gold, then cinched up the bag so it would be as waterproof as possible, then did the same with a second bag. She refilled the hole, replaced a few pieces of sod by flashlight, then threw her equipment back in the car. If anybody were to come by before the next rain, they might find themselves some gold. But that was unlikely: one in a million.

When she was done, she examined the site one last time with the flashlight, then drove carefully back across the field to the gate, drove through, replaced the gate, and drove home.

She missed Lucas by ten minutes.

19

The dimensions of the problem were now clear.

Lucas went back to the BCA offices, spoke briefly with Shaffer, who was directing a regional search for Martinez and the third shooter, talking to DEA officials and Mexican Federales, all of whom would love to get their hands on her. Shaffer could plainly see that if he got the bust, he’d be hero of the week; and even if he didn’t, he was getting the credit for breaking her out, and he was taking it.

Lucas no longer cared about her: now it was a matter of locating her, and whatever happened would happen. Most likely, he thought, it’d be a couple highway patrolmen, in their funny blue hats, chasing them down in rural Kansas, after they were spotted at a gas station. Lucas had his differences with various state highway patrols, based on what the Porsche management referred to as “spirited driving,” but conceded that when it came to the chase-and-shoot business, they were pretty good at it.

But: there remained the problem of the thieves who set off the whole episode, and most notably, Sanderson. If Albitis died, Sanderson would be a murderer, Lucas thought. That was not allowed in the state of Minnesota.

When he left Shaffer, he called Del: “I’ll be in my office. Come on up, we’ve got to do some plotting.”

Del showed up a half hour later. He was wearing a double-knit blue blazer, a white shirt with a red polyester necktie, gray slacks, and dress shoes. All of the clothing was slightly too large for him, his thin neck sticking out of the shirt collar like a turtle’s. Taken all together, he looked like a security guard at a movie theater.

“You going to court?”

“Just came back,” he said. He unclipped the necktie and put it in his pocket.

Lucas watched him do that, then said, “Let me see the tie for a minute.”

“Huh?”

“Let me see the tie.”

Del took it out of his pocket and passed it over. Lucas turned and dropped it in his wastebasket. “I’ll buy you a new one,” he said.

Del looked wistfully at the wastebasket and said, “I sorta liked that one.”

“I’m doing this for your own good. You remember Bertha Swenson? You remember what I did for you there?”

“Ahhhh…”

“This is the necktie equivalent of Bertha Swenson. Think about it.”

“She wouldn’t have shot me….”

They plotted:

“We need a way to get Sanderson out in the open. The way I read her, she’s a hippie, a little flaky, probably got dragged into it against her will, but in the end, she winds up whacking Albitis.”

“And you say Albitis is really the only thing we’ve got on the rest of the group?”

“Now that Turicek is dead,” Lucas said. “Sandy says every time there was a big gold sale at one of the dealers we were looking at, Albitis was getting off and on a plane. The DEA has followed the money trail to a supposedly Syrian company, and it was supposedly a Syrian woman who was buying the gold.”

“But you can’t tie Albitis to the Syrian woman-not directly.”

“No, and it doesn’t matter much, if Albitis dies. Actually, we’re probably better off if she dies, because we can build our case, and she won’t be around to deny it.”

“As long as a Syrian woman doesn’t show up.”

“That won’t happen,” Lucas said. “Albitis is the Syrian woman. I know it.”

“Then where’s the gold?”

“I don’t know. Maybe Sanderson’s got it.”

They worked around that question, and Del finally suggested that what they knew wasn’t adding up to much of a court case. “We’ve got Kline getting shot, and Sanderson was looked at, but they could be completely innocent. In fact, we’re the ones who sicced the Mexicans on them.”

“That’s true.”

“We may know they were involved in the theft, somehow, but all they have to do is deny it,” Del said. “If they get a decent lawyer, the lawyer will pin the theft on Turicek and Albitis. I mean, Turicek was apparently some kind of criminal over in Lithuania, and he brings in Albitis-we’re pretty sure of that.”

“Yeah.” Lucas spun around in his chair, looked out at the parking lot. Then, “Kline was involved. But he got shot, and that’s some kind of punishment. Maybe we let him go: work a deal, get Sanderson. She’s a killer, or close to it.”

“How do we cut him out?”

Kline had checked out of the hospital, in a rental wheelchair, and had gone back to his apartment. Lucas and Del arrived at ten o’clock the next morning, Lucas carrying a briefcase full of paper, including the murder book on the Brooks killings, as well as files on Pruess, the Polaris vice president who’d been thrown in the dumpster, on the killing of Rivera, and the shootings of Uno and Dos.

He planned to take the whole mass, as he told Del, sharpen it to a fine point, and shove it up Kline’s ass.

When they arrived at Kline’s apartment building, they could see, from the street, a light on in the bathroom through the new window. They went up and pounded on the door.

Nothing.

They pounded again, and then a weak, nervous answer: “Who is it?”

“Lucas Davenport, BCA. I spoke to you before.”

After a long pause, Kline called back, “How do I know it’s you?”

“You could look out the peephole,” Lucas said.

“But if it’s not really you, as soon as I look out the peephole, you could shoot me again.”

“Ah, for Christ’s sakes, Kline, it’s me,” Lucas said. “Call your building manager and ask her to come up and look.”

There was another long silence, then the peephole darkened, and finally a chain rattled on the inside. Kline, unshaven, white-faced, peeked out, saw Del, looked up and down the hall, and said, “All right.”

He’d been on his feet, and now he settled back, in the wheelchair, and rolled himself backward into the apartment. He’d been watching a morning talk show: a man stood behind a microphone, turned to a stunned- looking young man, and said, “Sean, you are … NOT … the father.” The crowd cheered, or jeered, and Kline clicked