There was a thread of laughter, and Sloan said dryly, 'He's losing it.'
'What the f f f… What's that supposed to mean?' the reporter sputtered. The TV cameraman behind him was laughing. TV people ranked radio people, so laughing was all right.
'What's 'fff' supposed to mean?' Lester asked. He turned away and pointed at a woman wearing glasses the size of compact discs. 'You.'
'What precautions should women in the Twin Cities take?' She had an improbably smooth delivery, with great round O's, as though she were reading for a play.
'Don't let anybody in your house that you're not sure of,' Lester said, struggling now. 'Keep your windows locked…'
'Who tipped Three, that's what I want to know,' another reporter shouted from the back of the room. Carly Bancroft yawned, tried not very hard to suppress a grin, then deliberately scratched her ribs.
When Daniel had scheduled the press conference, he'd expected the police reporters from the dailies and second-stringers from the television stations. With the Armistead killing, everything had changed. He'd passed the press conference to Lester, he said, in an attempt to diminish its importance. It hadn't worked: media trucks were double-parked in the street, providing direct feeds to the various stations. City Hall secretaries were gawking at the media stars, the media stars were checking their hairsprays, and the TV3 anchorman himself, tan, fit, with a touch of gray at the temples and a tie that matched his eyes, showed up to do some reaction shots against the conference. His station had the beat; he had nothing to do with it, but the glory was his, and his appearance gave weight to the proceedings.
The conference started angry and got angrier. Lester hadn't wanted to do it, and every reporter but one had been beaten on it. By the end, the Channel Eight reporter was standing on a chair, shouting at Lester. When she stood on the chair, the cops around her sat down; she wore a very short black leather skirt.
'I guess you gotta get what you can get,' Sloan said, laughing. Lester had fled, and Sloan, Lucas and Harmon Anderson walked together down the hall toward Homicide.
'Department full of fuckin' perverts,' Anderson said, adding, 'You could see the crack of her ass, if you sat just right.'
'Jesus Christ, Harmon, I think that's sexual abuse in the third degree,' Lucas said, laughing with Sloan.
'You know why they've got such great voices, the TV people?' Anderson asked, going off in a new direction. 'Because they reverberate in the space where most people have brains…'
Swanson came slouching down the hall toward them, heavyset, glittering gold-rimmed glasses. 'Did I miss it?'
'You missed it,' Sloan confirmed. 'Anderson got his first look at a woman's ass in twenty years.'
'How about Bekker?' Lucas asked.
'Not a thing. We got his ass in here first thing, asked him if he wanted a lawyer, he said no. He said he'd ask if he needed one. So we said, What'd you do? He said he spent the late afternoon working at home, and the evening watching television. We asked what he was watching, and he told us. He was, like, watching CNBC in the afternoon, some kind of stock market shows, and then the news… He went out around nine o'clock to get a bite to eat. We got that confirmed…'
'How about phone calls?'
'He talked to one guy on the phone, a guy from the hospital, but that was late, way after the killing.'
'Who called who?' Lucas asked. The four detectives circled around each other as Swanson talked.
'The other guy called in…' Swanson said.
'Could have a VCR, tape the shows,' Anderson suggested.
'He does have a VCR,' Swanson said. 'I don't know about taping the shows. Anyway, we got his statement, and shit, there was nothing to say. He didn't know Armistead, doesn't even know if he'd ever seen her on the stage… He was just… There wasn't anything there. We sent him home.'
'You believe him?' Lucas asked.
Swanson's forehead furrowed. 'I don't know. When you're leaning on a guy, like we been leaning on Bekker, scouting around his neighborhood, calling his neighbors, all that… and something happened that could clear him, you'd think he'd be peeing all over himself in a rush to prove he didn't do it. He wasn't like that. He was cool. Answered all the questions like he was reading off of file cards.'
'Keep up the pressure,' Anderson said.
Swanson shook his head. 'That ain't gonna work with this guy. I'm starting to think-he's an asshole, but he could be innocent.'
They were still talking about it when Jennifer Carey turned the corner.
'Lucas…' Her voice was feminine, clear, professional.
Lucas turned in instant recognition. Sloan, Anderson and Swanson turned with him, then moved away down the corridor, furtively watching, as Lucas walked toward her.
'Daniel said you'd be talking afterwards,' Jennifer said. She was slender and blonde, with a few thirties wrinkles on a well-kept face. She wore a pink silk blouse with a gray suit, and almost stopped his heart. She and Lucas had a two-year-old daughter but had never married. They'd been estranged ever since their daughter had been wounded.
'Yeah. Didn't see you at the conference.'
'I just got here. Where will you be talking? Down at the conference room?' She was all business, brisk, impersonal. There would be more to it than that, Lucas knew.
'Nah. I'll just be around… How are you?'
'I'm working with a new unit,' she said, ignoring the question. 'Could we get you outside, on the steps?'
'Sure. How've you been?' he persisted.
She shrugged and turned away, heading for the steps. 'About the same. Are you coming over Saturday afternoon?'
'I… don't think so,' he said, tagging along, hands in his pockets.
'Fine.'
'When are we going to talk?'
'I don't know,' she said over her shoulder.
'Soon?'
'I don't think so,' she threw back. 'Not soon.'
'Hey, wait a minute,' he said. He reached forward, hooked her arm and spun her around.
'Let the fuck go of me,' she said, jerking her arm away, angry.
Lucas had always worried that women feared him: that he was too rough, even when he didn't mean to be. But her tone cut. He put a hand against her chest and shoved, and she went back against the wall of the corridor, her head snapping back. 'Shut up…' he snarled.
'You fuck…' He thought she was going to swing, and stepped back, then realized that she was frightened and that her hand, coming up, was meant to block a punch. Her wrist looked thin and delicate, and he put up his hands, palms out.
'Just listen,' he said, his voice dragging out in a hoarse near-whisper. 'I'm tired of this shit. More than tired. I can't stand it anymore. In the past couple of days, I went through to the other side. So I'm telling you: I'm ready to quit. I'm ready to get out. You've been jerking me around for months and I can't deal with it and I won't deal with it. I'm not gone yet, but if you ever want to talk, you better decide soon, because I'll tell you what: You wait much longer and I ain't gonna be there to talk to.'
She shook her head, tears starting, but they were tears of anger, and he turned and walked down the corridor. A TV3 producer stepped out into the hallway and looked down toward Jennifer, still flattened against the wall, looked into Lucas' face as he went by, then looked back at Jennifer and said, 'Jen, you okay? Jen? What happened?'
As he went out on the steps to meet the cameras, Lucas heard Jennifer answer, 'Nothing happened.'
All five stations did quick interviews, Lucas standing on the City Hall steps for four of them, suppressing his anger with Jennifer, aware as he talked that it was slowly leaking away, leaving behind a cold hollowness. He did the fifth interview on the street, leaning against his Porsche. When the camera was done, Lucas stepped around the hood of the Porsche to get into the car, looking carefully for Jennifer, half hoping she'd be there, not believing she would be. She wasn't. Instead, a Star Tribune reporter came after him, a dark-haired, overweight man with a
