When the traffic had thinned, he reached into the passenger foot well and fumbled through his briefcase, looking for Ignace's transcript of the talk with Pope. Someplace, something in the document was not quite right. He wasn't sure what it was: just a vibration.
He found the transcript, pinned the paper into the center of the steering wheel with his thumb, and read it again. No vibration this time. But he'd picked something up the first time he'd read it…
He got on the cell phone and called Sloan at home: 'Pope called and said he's picked up a woman named Carlita Peterson from Northfield. He says he's taking her north.'
'Ah, no.' Cough. 'What'd he say exactly?'
Lucas read the transcript, flicking his eyes between the paper and the traffic he was knifing through. Sloan said, 'Find out… never mind. If the house listing was to a Carlita Peterson, that probably means she's single or divorced and lives alone. That's three single people. We know Rice went to bars looking for women, and Larson used to go into Chaps when she got off work. I bet he's picking them up in bars or some kind of social activity…'
LUCAS THOUGHT ABOUT IT: Northfield was a college town just off I-35 and not far from Faribault, where Adam Rice had spent time at the Rockyard. If Lucas had been told that a sexual predator had been hanging out in Faribault and asked to guess where he would next attack, he might have guessed Northfield. A couple of thousand college girls would provide easy prey, and the college town's mix of student and farm bars, cafes, and stores would provide plenty of camouflage through which to prowl.
'I'll buy that,' Lucas said to Sloan. 'Listen: Any chance that Larson was gay, or had gay contacts?'
'Nobody said anything. She had a boyfriend… What are you thinking?'
'I'm thinking about the second man-or the second woman,' Lucas said. 'What if she's picking them up and Pope just does the killing? Nobody would ever see him in a bar. If she drives, nobody would ever see him in a car.'
'Yeah, but you could make the same argument if it's a guy-he picks up women as a straight guy, or men as a gay.'
'But: nobody ever saw Larson hanging out with guys in Chaps,' Lucas said. 'That paper you gave me said she mostly went in to chat with me bartenders And a woman would be more inclined to walk outside, or get in a car, with another woman, than with a man.'
'Let me call around,' Sloan said. 'I'll get some guys asking questions.' 'We've now got two people connected to colleges. Both the women. One a student, one a teacher.'
After a moment of thought, Sloan said, 'I don't see much in that.'
'Neither do I, but think about it,' Lucas said. And, almost as an afterthought, 'How're you feeling?'
'Better. I get these coughing jags that make me think I'm gonna bust a rib, but I don't feel too bad. Maybe get out tomorrow…'
WHEN LUCAS RANG OFF, he realized that he'd become distracted, trying to read, talk on the phone, and drive all at once. He was speeding down a white line between two lanes, still running over a hundred. He guiltily moved back into the left lane; he hated to see other drivers on cell phones…
And goddamnit! What had he picked up in the transcript? Something had stuck in his mind like a gooey old song, and he couldn't stop thinking about it. Nothing obvious, something subtle…
He held the Lexus at a hundred; any faster and the truck felt unstable. As it was, he made it into Northfield in a little more than half an hour from his office. Following the GPS map off I-35 down Highway 19, he buzzed past the Malt-O-Meal plant, across the bridge and a long block up to Division, right on Division and left on Seventh, and up a long rising hill until he saw, on the left, two cop cars outside a small blue-gray clapboard house that stood in a copse of maples.
A couple of cops were leaning against a car and turned to look at his truck as he pulled to the curb. He killed the engine, pulled the flasher and tossed it on the passenger seat, and walked up the drive… A dilapidated detached garage sat just behind the house, and a stack of decorative birch firewood was piled next to aside door.
'Davenport?' one of the cops asked.
'Yeah- nothing?'
The cop shook his head. 'Nothing you don't know about. A dab of blood, a piece of rope. It don't look good.'
'Who all's inside?'
'Only our lead investigator, Jim Goode. The chief's down at the of-fice, coordinating. If you're going in, you should go in the back.'
LUCAS WALKED AROUND to the back of the house, climbed a short wooden stoop, and looked in through the screen door. Inside, a thin man in a plaid shirt and gray slacks was talking on a cell phone. He saw Lucas and said into the phone, 'Just a minute,' and then, to Lucas, 'Lucas Davenport?'
'Yeah.'
'I'm Jim Goode. If you hook the edge of the screen with your fingernails, you can pull the door open. The house is contaminated up to where I am.'
Lucas hooked the door open, carefully avoiding the door handle. He was in the kitchen, a small room with laminate cupboards and a narrow, U-shaped counter covered with plastic; a double porcelain sink, chipped and yellowed with age; and a floor of curling vinyl.
The walls were real plaster, and there were pots everywhere, several with flowers, geraniums and cut yellow roses. A small breakfast table, covered with an embroidered tablecloth, sat under a bright window, with two brilliant blue chairs, one on each side. The arrangement looked both tidy and lonely. The house probably dated to World War II, he thought, and had last been updated in the seventies.
THERE WAS A FOOT-LONG smear on the floor, the people-black color of blood. Somebody had stepped in it and smeared it. Not too much blood, Lucas thought: less than he'd lost when he was hit in the nose. On the other side of the kitchen was a curl of yellow plastic rope, the kind used to tie down tarpaulins. Goode was saying into the cell phone, 'I do think we have to get them farther out now. Uh-huh. At least that far. And Dakota has to push down this way… Okay. Maybe we could try the Highway Patrol… Uh-huh. Okay. Davenport's here now, I'll be back pretty quick.'
He rang off, put his hand out, and as Lucas shook it, he said, 'We've got everybody we can find out on country roads. If he's really going to hunt her down, and do it around here, he's got to be moving around. We downloaded pictures of Pope and Peterson, Xeroxed off a few hundred of them, and we've got students from St. Olaf and Carleton going out in their cars, leafleting everything inside of twenty miles.'
'Hope nobody stumbles on Pope.'
'They're out in groups of three, except where they're putting up public posters in stores and phone poles, and then they're in twos,' Goode said. 'Everybody's got cell phones.'
'Great,' Lucas said. And it was-somebody had been moving fast. 'What about this place?'
Goode pointed: 'The blood and the rope. That's all we've got-but it really is blood, it isn't chocolate syrup or anything. It's pretty dry, but not completely, so he probably got her this morning.' He was talking quickly, nervously, the words tumbling out. 'We checked the house to make sure there was nobody here. Other than the check, we've stayed out. We're hoping your crime-scene crew…'
'They might find signs of Pope or a second person with him, but they won't help us find Peterson,' Lucas said. 'We gotta be careful in here, but I want to go through her personal records. Credit-card bills, that sort of thing. Did you see anything like that?'
'There's a little office in the second bedroom.' Goode pointed down a hallway.
'Then that's where I'll be,' Lucas said. 'What about Peterson? Single or divorced? Kids?'
'Divorced two years. No kids. Ex-husband's a teacher at the high school.'
'Check him?'
'At the exact time that call got to your reporter up in Minneapolis, he was halfway through a physics class. It's not a copycat.'
