murder?'
HART WALKED THEM BRISKLY back through the hospital to the administrators office and told Ross, 'We had something come up with Chase.'
He explained in a few words, and Ross said to Sloan, 'My assistant has all those numbers. Would you like her to call around down there? We could probably get you something before you're back home.'
'Sure,' Lucas said. 'And we need an address for this Mike West guy, the guy Pope used to hang with.'
They got the address, and on the way out, the administrator said to Sloan, 'This thing you did with Chase… You have a nice talent. Maybe you should have been a psychologist.'
Sloan almost blushed. 'Ah, it might all be bullshit.'
IT WASN'T
Ross called back when they were halfway to Minneapolis. Sloan took the call on his cell phone, listened for a minute, and then said, 'Let me take that down.' He took a pad and a mechanical pencil from his coat pocket, jotted down a name and number.
'Could you call him back? Tell him I'll get in touch in an hour or so-when I'm back in the office. Okay.'
He punched off and said to Lucas, 'A woman named Louise Samples, who worked in personnel at Hormel in the city of Albert Lea, was killed in her house in November of ninety-five. The cops say it looked like she walked in on a burglar. He hit her with a hammer and then raped her at least a couple of times, once anally. She was probably dead for most of it. They never got a break on the case.'
A car in front of them suddenly slowed for a left turn, and Lucas swung around it, a quick brake and a quicker acceleration. Then he looked at Sloan: 'How the fuck can you talk about quitting when you pull off something like this?'
'For all the good it did Louise Samples or anybody else,' Sloan said.
'Man, you gotta take a couple of aspirin and lie down,' Lucas said.'I'm really startin' to think you're losing it.'
'That's what I've been telling you, dickweed,' Sloan said. He looked the window as they crossed the river: 'When I get my bar, I'll want your list of songs. I'll put them on the jukebox.'
'No Beatles.'
'No Beatles. But how about a couple of Tom Joneses? 'Green Green Grass or something.'
'Sloan-you gotta get help.'
9
JUST OFF THE SOUTHWEST corner of the metro area, Lucas called his secretary and was told that he had two dozen phone messages, one each from Rose Marie Roux, the commissioner of public safety; from John McCord, the superintendent of the BCA; and from Neil Mitford, the governor's top political operator. The rest came from various members of the media asking for interviews and updates.
He answered the first three immediately: all three wanted updates, and he gave them a quick recap of the trip to St. John's.
To McCord: 'I got an address for a schizophrenic guy, a Mike West, that we need to talk to. He's an old pal of Pope's.'
'Shrake and Jenkins are sitting on their asses; I could send them,' McCord said.
'Okay, but for Christ's sake, tell them to take it easy.'
'We got a charge?'
'Just hold him for questioning; have them bring him in, we'll get him a public defender if we need to, and see if we can work something out,' Lucas said. 'But if we do find him just sitting around, then maybe he's clear. If he's gone, if he's skipped, that'd be a little more interesting.'
'I'll send them over,' McCord said.
'Tell them to leave their goddamn saps in their car, okay?'
'I don't know about any saps,' McCord said. 'Saps would be against policy.'
'Then tell them to follow policy.'
'All right. If you need anything else, let me know.'
'Mitford and Rose Marie called, and I told them I'd be doing another press conference this afternoon,' Lucas said. 'Same deal as yesterday, except we've probably made Pope for another murder.'
He explained, briefly, and McCord said, 'Put Sloan in the press conference. Spread the publicity around. We'll make some points with Minneapolis.'
The publicity cut two ways: by putting Sloan out front, some of the glory was reflected onto the Minneapolis police department; and if they didn't catch Pope fairly quickly some of the blame, as well.
'Press conferences are like fuckin' the neighbor lady,' Sloan said, as he dialed up his own chief after Lucas finished with McCord. 'Feels good at the time, but you're gonna have to pay in the end.'
THEY GOT BACK AT three-forty-five and went to Lucas's office, where Carol had piled up everything that had come in from Albert Lea and the Freeborn County sheriff on the Louise Samples killing. They read through it, looked at everything else they had on Pope, and then walked down to the conference room.
The press conference itself was the same routine: scraping chairs, posturing TV people. Ruffe Ignace was in the front row, but his story that morning had been anticipated by the TV news the night before. He was now behind in the cycle, had lost his edge, and wasn't happy: he snapped questions out at Lucas, thrashing around, looking for something, anything. Lucas was polite.
Lucas described how Sloan picked up on the Samples killing, out-lined what had happened, and what they believed. The Albert Lea cops vere going through the retained evidence from the case, he said, looking for anything that might have a dab of Pope's DNA on it. When he finished, the reporters gave Sloan an only moderately sarcastic round of applause. That was a first, ever.
Sloan said, 'It really was nothing much.' but Lucas said, 'It was amazing.'
WHEN THEY WERE FINISHED, they headed back to Lucas's office. Halfway back, they bumped into Shrake and Jenkins, the BCA's des-ignated thugs, who'd been sent to Mike West's designated halfway house to pick him up.
Jenkins was a square man who smoked too much; Shrake was tall and thin, and smoked more than Jenkins. They both wore sharp, shiny European-cut suits that had fallen off a truck somewhere; Shrake referred to them as quasi-Armanis.
'Fuckin' waste of time,' Jenkins said. He habitually walked around with his hands in the pockets of his jacket, so all his jackets had stretched-out pockets. 'The guy's been gone for a month. We talked to the administrator over there. He said West's meds were fogging him up so bad that he couldn't stand them. The house rules are that you have to take your meds-and since he couldn't stand doing that, he took off.'
'Any idea where he might be?'
'Doc says he's probably on the street. His parents live in Arizona- they're retired. We could check with the Scottsdale cops.'
'Do that,' Lucas said. 'See if they could have somebody stop by. And get a bulletin out to the local uniforms, get them to poke around. We really would like to talk to him.'
AT LUCAS'S OFFICE, they found a note from Carol: 'Dr. Grant called from St. John's and asked that you call him back. He's on his cellphone.'
'Grant was the shrink,' Sloan said.
