He threw it out again, then again, and on the third cast, a bass hit. He fought it in, unhooked it, dropped it back in the water. A twelve-incher, and fun; but he didn't eat bass.
He flipped the Moss Boss around the dock for twenty minutes, taking three small bass, tossing them all back, feeling his shoulders loosen up. Louise Clark was almost gone. After the last cast, he walked back up the sloping lawn to the cabin, got four cold Leinies out of the refrigerator, put them in a grocery sack, and had one foot out the door when the phone rang.
He stopped, thought about it, shook his head at his own foolishness, and went back.
'Yeah?'
'Sherrill. I'm down at the ME's. They're doing the autopsy on Louise Clark.'
'Anything, yet?'
'Yeah. She'd had sex shortly before she was killed. The semen hadn't been dissipated yet, and they got a pretty good sample. But to tell you the truth, I figure there's only one place it could have come from.'
'Man! I don't believe that,' Lucas said. He was shocked. 'What about Allen?'
'They haven't started on him, but I'll let you know. If you want to know.'
'Of course, I want to know…'
'Okay. And there's more stuff. We found the gun, just like you said. It's a Colt . 22 with a silencer. Stuffed inside a boot in the closet. And we found a couple hundred bucks worth of cocaine in the bedside table.
There's the connection to Rolo. Crime scene found some pubic hair in Allen's bed. In fact, they've got three different samples. Most of it comes from Allen, but some of it's blonde, and that'd be Carmel – but there's a third sample that's this mousy-brown color. We don't have the lab work yet, but I know it came from Clark. I know it.'
'All right. Call me back when they get to Allen. Keep pushing the ME, don't let them put anything off until tomorrow. We need it now…'
'You going fishing?'
'Actually, I was on my way out the door. A neighbor's gonna teach me to run a backhoe.'
'Speaking of backhoes…'
'What?'
'You never told me that special agent Malone of the FBI was a woman. And a woman with a sexy voice who wants to dance with you.'
'Didn't seem relevant,' Lucas grunted. 'Our relationship is purely professional.'
'She wants you to call her, in Wichita. I've got a number.'
Malone picked up the phone on the first ring. 'Hello, Lucas Davenport,' she said. 'I'm told you're off rusticating.'
'Fishing,' Lucas said.
'I wanted you to know that I'm moving up to Minneapolis with my group, and
Mallard is coming in from Washington. We're very interested in this
Louise Clark. Very interested.'
'There's something wrong with the whole thing. Did Sherrill tell you about the semen?'
'No, nothing…'
Lucas summarized his conversation with Sherrill and Malone said, 'If the semen checks out, if the DNA checks out… that's it.'
'Makes me feel weird,' Lucas said. 'It's not right. This Clark isn't a pro killer, not unless she was doing it for the fun of it. Because she didn't have any goddamn money.'
'Could have had it hidden away.'
'Bullshit,' Lucas said. 'She kills people, but hides it all away? The inside of her house looked like a cut-rate motel. She had a TV set that couldn't have been worth more than a couple hundred bucks, new. Everything in the place said she was a secretary, and struggling to keep her head above water.'
'All right. Well, I'm coming in tomorrow. Maybe, when you get back, you can take me out for a nice little foxtrot somewhere – some place where you won't spend all of your time dancing with the waitress.'
Lucas carried the sack of beer next door to the Marks' place. Lucy Marks was snipping the heads off played- out coneflowers as her husband maneuvered the
Kubota in and out of a shed. The shed showed splintered wood at the side of one of the doors, evidence of a recent impact.
'Role tells me you're gonna learn how to run the tractor/ she said, shaking her head. 'I'm glad I bought the quart-size bottle of peroxide.'
'Hey…'
'Lucas, you gotta encourage him to be careful. I'm afraid he'll roll it over on himself. He's like a kid.'
'He'll be all right,' Lucas said.
'That wouldn't be beer in that sack, would it?'
'Couple Leinies,' he said, guiltily.
'Yeah, well, I'll take the Leinies, you go figure out the tractor. When you get back, we'll fry some crappies and we can have the beer then.'
'Well…' She gave him a look and he handed her the bag.
The Kubota was… different. Running wasn't a problem, but maneuvering the joystick for the back-hoe took a little practice: 'I'll have you buttering your bread with this thing before we're finished,' Marks said, enthusiastically. 'I figure with a few hours practice, I could do all the driveways for this whole area, come winter.'
'Jesus Christ, Role, you make what, a half-million dollars a year selling stock?
And now you're gonna pick up an extra two hundred dollars a month doing driveways?'
When Lucas was checked out, Marks showed him where he was going to hide the key in his shed:
'Anytime I'm not up here, you're welcome to use it.'
'Maybe I could help you brush out a couple of those trails,' Lucas said; he liked the backhoe.
'Terrific'Then, as they walked back up toward the cabin, 'You gettin' any?'
Lucas could see Lucy Marks on the lake side of the house, cleaning up the grill.
'Overtime? I don't get overtime any more…'
'Pussy,' Marks said. 'Crumbcake. You know? It sorta looks like. ..'
'Yeah, yeah. As a matter of fact, I just took a call from a nice-looking forty ish FBI lady who's coming to Minneapolis and wants me to take her out to foxtrot.'
'Foxtrot? Foxtrot, my ass. If it was me, I'd drop about nine inches of the old
French-Canadian bratwurst on her,' said Marks, who talked big but was the most faithful man on earth. As they came around the corner of the house, he hollered at his wife: 'Lucas is gonna jump an FBI agent.'
'A female, I hope,' Lucy Marks said. She was spraying something on the grill, turning her face away from the coals.
'She wants to foxtrot with him,' Marks said. 'She called him up.'
'Sounds promising,' Lucy Marks said. 'How'd this happen?'
'I was down in Wichita, and we were in this bar and she didn't dance to rock music, so I was dancing with the owner…'
He trailed off, and after a few seconds, Lucy Marks said. 'Lucas? You still in there?'
'Excuse me,' Lucas said, 'But I gotta go. I'm sorry.'
He jogged away, across the lawn toward his own place, leaving the Marks at the grill, looking puzzled. At the cabin, he fumbled out the number Sherrill had given him for Malone, and dialed it. One of the FBI agents, a man, picked it up and said, 'John Shaw.' Lucas said, 'Let me speak to Malone.'
'She just left… I could try to catch her.'
'Catch her, goddamnit…'
The phone on the other end clattered on a desk and Lucas hung onto the receiver, eyes closed, rubbing his forehead. Could this be right?
Two minutes later, Malone picked up the phone and said, 'Malone.'
'This is Lucas. Did you get the composite of the shooter?'
'Yes. Pretty good.'
'Close your eyes, and think about the woman I danced with at that club in
