Halfway down the hall, Jones said, 'I'd like you to talk to John's father about this. When you're done with him. I don't think there's a legal problem, but if you could talk to him…'
'Sure,' Lucas said.
Rusty and Dusty were sitting at the conference table drinking coffee, Rusty with his feet on the table. They were both large, beefy, square-faced, white-toothed, with elaborately casual hairdos, Rusty a Chippewa, Dusty with the transparent pallor of a pure Swede. Rusty hastily pulled his feet off the table when Lucas and Jones walked in, leaving a ring of dirty water on the tabletop.
'Where's the kid?' Lucas asked.
'Back in his math class,' said Dusty.
'I'll get him,' Jones volunteered. He promptly disappeared down the hall, his heels echoing off the terrazzo.
Dusty wiped the water off the tabletop with his elbow and pushed a file at Lucas. 'Kid's name is John Mueller. We pulled his records. He's pretty much of an A-B student. Quiet. His father runs a taxidermy shop out on County N, his mother works at Grotek's Bakery.'
Lucas sat down, opened the file, started paging through it. 'What about this other kid? You said on the phone that another kid was murdered.'
Rusty nodded, taking it from Dusty. 'Jim Harper. He went to school here, seventh grade. He was killed around three months back,' Rusty said.
'October 20th,' said Dusty.
'What's the story?' Lucas asked.
'Strangled. First they thought it was an accident, but the doc had the body sent down to Milwaukee, and they figured he was strangled. Never caught anybody.'
'First murder of a local resident in fourteen years,' Rusty said.
'Jesus Christ, nobody told me,' Lucas said. He looked up at them.
Dusty shrugged. 'Well… I guess nobody thought about it. It's kind of embarrassing, really. We got nothing on the killing. Zero. Zilch. It's been three months now; I think people'd like to forget it.'
'And he went to this school, and he was in classes with the LaCourt girl… I mean, Jesus…'
Jones returned, ushering a young boy into the room. The kid was skinny and jug-eared, with hair the color of ripe wheat, big eyes, a thin nose and wide mouth. He wore a flannel shirt and faded jeans over off-brand gym shoes. He looked like an elf, Lucas thought.
'How are you? John? Is that right?' Lucas asked as Jones backed out of the room. 'I understand you have some information about Lisa.'
The kid nodded, slipped into the chair across the table from Lucas, turned a thumb to the other two deputies. 'I already talked to these guys,' he said.
'I know, but I'd like to hear it fresh, if that's okay,' Lucas said. He said it serious, as though he were talking to an adult. John nodded just as seriously. 'So: how'd you know Lisa?'
'We ride the bus together. I get off at County N and she goes on.'
'And did she say something?' Lucas asked.
'She was really scared,' John said intently. His ears reddened, sticking out from his head like small Frisbees. 'She had this picture, from school.'
'What was it?'
'It was from a newspaper,' John said. 'It was a picture of Jim Harper, the kid who got killed. You know about him?'
'I've heard.'
'Yeah, it was really like…' John looked away and swallowed, then back. 'He was naked on the bed and there was this naked man standing next to him with, you know, this, uh, I mean it was stickin' up.'
Lucas looked at him, and the kid peered solemnly back. 'He had an erection? The man?' Lucas asked.
'Yup,' John said earnestly.
'Where's the picture?' Lucas felt a tingle: this was something.
'Lisa took it home,' John said. 'She was going to show it to her mom.'
'When? What day?' Lucas asked. Rusty and Dusty watched the questioning, eyes shifting from Lucas to the kid and back.
'Last week. Thursday, 'cause that's store night and Mom works late, and when I got home Dad was cooking.'
'Do you know where she got the picture?' Lucas asked.
'She said she got it from some other kid,' John said, shrugging. 'I don't know who. It was all crinkled up, like it had been passed around.'
'What'd the man look like? Did you recognize him?'
'Nope. His head wasn't in the picture,' the boy said. 'I mean, it looked like the whole picture was there, but it cut off his head like somebody didn't aim the camera right.'
Dammit. 'So you could only see his body.'
'Yeah. And some stuff around him. The bed and stuff,' John said.
'Was the man big or small? His body?' Lucas asked.
'He was pretty big. Kind of fat.'
'What color was his hair?' asked Lucas.
John cocked his head, his eyes narrowing. 'I don't remember.'
'You didn't notice a lot of chest hair or stomach hair or hair around his crotch?' Lucas fished for a word the kid could relate to: 'I mean, like really kind of gross?'
'No. Nothing like that… but it was a black-and-white picture and it wasn't very good,' John said. 'You know those newspapers they have at the Super Valu…?'
'National Enquirer,' Rusty said.
'Yeah. The picture was like from that. Not very good.'
If the hair didn't strike him as gross, then the guy was probably a blond, Lucas thought. Black hair on cheap paper would blot. 'If it wasn't very good, could you be sure it was Jim?' Lucas asked.
The boy nodded. 'It was Jim, all right. You could see his face, smiling like Jim. And Jim lost a finger and you could see if you looked real close that the kid in the picture didn't have a finger. And he had an earring and Jim wore an earring. He was the first guy in the school to get one.'
'Mph. You say Lisa was scared? How do you know she was scared?'
'Because she showed it to me,' John said.
'What?' Lucas frowned, missing something.
'She's a girl. And the picture-you know…' John twisted in his chair. 'She wouldn't show something like that to a boy if she wasn't scared about it.'
'Okay.' Lucas ran over the questions one more time, probed the contents of the picture the boy had seen, but got nothing more. 'Is your dad out at his shop?'
'Sure-I guess,' the kid said, nodding.
'Did you tell him about the picture?'
'No.' John looked uncomfortable. 'I mean… how could I tell him about that?'
'Okay,' Lucas said. 'Let's ride out there and I'll tell him about you talking to us. Just so everything's okay. And I think we ought to keep it between us.'
'Sure. I'm not going to tell anybody else,' John said. 'Not about that,' he said earnestly, eyes big.
'Good,' Lucas said. He relaxed and smiled. 'Go get your stuff, and let's go out to your place.'
'Did we do good?' Rusty asked lazily when John had gone.
'Yeah, you did good,' Lucas said.
The two deputies slapped hands and Lucas said, 'You're all done with Lisa's friends?'
'Yeah, all done,' Rusty said.
'Great. Now do this other kid's friends. The Harper kid. Look for connections between Lisa and Harper,' Lucas said. 'And if this picture was passed around, find out who passed it.'
Lucas used a pay phone in the teachers' lounge to call the sheriff's office. 'You sound funny,' he said when Carr came on.
