'Lucas Davenport. I'm in Duluth.' He was trying to shout calmly. 'I will be there in one hour. Call Rose Marie Roux, the commissioner of Public Safety. I will give you her home phone number and she will fill you in. I will be on my cell phone on the way up-here's the number…'
When he was off the phone, he tried his man's cell phone again, got nothing. He thought about calling Nadya, decided against it, didn't have time to pick up Reasons. He'd call him from the road. He clipped on his.45, picked up a jacket, and was at the door when the phone rang. 'Shit.' He went back, picked it up.
A woman's high-pitched voice asked, 'Is this Lucas Davenport?'
'Yes. What is it?' He assumed it was the front desk, and he had no time for it.
'Mary Wheaton, the lady who was murdered… she told me about it. She told me she saw the other man murder the Russian man, the story that was in the newspaper.'
The words confused him for a moment: Who the hell was this, and why was she bothering him? 'What?'
'She saw the murder of the Russian man. She told me about it, and I thought I should call.'
'Who is this?' A crank, he thought-but then, maybe not. There had been a second woman.
'I'm not going to tell you. For one thing, you sound mean.'
'I'm in a hurry,' Lucas said. 'Just tell me what she told you.'
'You really sound mean…'
The woman was frightened and, Lucas thought, he did sound mean. He took a breath, and said, 'I'm sorry. You caught me at a really bad moment. What did Mrs. Wheaton tell you?'
'She said she was down by the grain elevators, in some weeds, right by the lake. Watching the lake. She was drinking, she had a bottle, and she heard a man walking toward her so she stayed hidden. The men down there can be really tough. So she was hiding down there in the weeds, and she heard some shots. She thought they were shots, but they were quiet…'
'She was probably right, the gun may have had a sound suppressor on it,' Lucas said, as softly as he could, trying to be agreeable. He was still burning off the adrenaline from the cell-phone call. 'What did she see?'
'She said one man shot the other man, and she made a noise. When she made the noise, the man with the gun saw her, and she ran away, and he chased her. She thinks he shot his gun at her and missed, and then she fell down and he caught her, and he pointed his gun and tried to shoot her, but the gun didn't work. She had a knife and she slashed at him because she was afraid that he might try to strangle her or something. He ran away and got in his car and drove off.'
'Where was his car?'
There was a second of calculation, Lucas thought, and then: 'She said it was over by the street, over by the Goodwill store.'
'Do you know what she was drinking? What kind of bottle it was?'
More calculation: 'No, she didn't say, but I imagine it was an inexpensive wine. She didn't drink so much hard liquor.'
'I didn't even know she drank,' Lucas said. 'I thought she was more of a schizophrenic. I didn't think she had an alcohol problem.'
'Oh, she drank,' the woman said. 'Wine, mostly. Sometimes, when she was on her meds, it made her crazy. Crazier.'
'Did she tell you what the man looked like? The man with the gun?'
'He looked like a college boy, but he might have been older than that. It was dark, and she couldn't see him that well. He was blond and not really tall, but a little tall. Six feet. Strong-looking. She thought he was an American because before she cut him, he said, 'Shit,' in English, just like an American would.'
'She cut him,' Lucas said. 'Was she sure?'
'Pretty sure. Not positive.'
'Blond, strong, American. You didn't see the car, see what make it was?'
'No, uh, she didn't say anything about that.'
'Anything that you can think of that she said, that might be of more use? Anything about the guy? It's really important, because he's still out there and we think he's nuts.'
'She didn't say too much… just that thing about how the shots weren't too loud.'
'Did she say what she took off the body?'
'Nothing like that,' the woman said, and Lucas heard the lie in her voice.
'How did you find me?'
'I thought about where a state policeman would stay in Duluth, and called, and they switched me up to your room.'
Smart enough, Lucas thought. He took the shot: 'Listen, miss. We know that Mary Wheaton was killed by mistake. We know there was another woman down there. I mean, we know it was you. We would really like to talk to you. For your own protection. We found the place you were staying…'
She said, frightened, 'I'm going to hang up now.'
'No, no, no, wait, wait, wait. Tell me one thing. Please. Did you-did she-shit, however you want to say it, did somebody recover a computer from the dead man? And what happened to it? It could be critical.'
Another pause, then: 'She gave it to me. She was afraid to sell it in Duluth, because it was full of Russian. So I took it down to Minneapolis and I sold it. I needed money to get back to Los Angeles.'
'Who did you sell it to?'
'A man, a young man, a student, maybe, at the university.'
'What'd you do, just walk around asking people? Did you have a contact?'
'I had a contact. This is a man who… buys things.'
'Okay. Tell me this, then. Please. I'm really not mean, I'm just anxious, I don't want you to hang up before I can ask these questions…'
'You sound mean,' she said again. She said, 'I'm outa here. I'm going to LA. Don't bother to look for me.'
'I'm sorry, I'm sorry,' Lucas said urgently. 'Tell me, this young man, do you have a name? Can you tell me what he looks like?'
'His name is George. He is blond and he's good-looking. He has a square jaw and blue eyes and a short haircut; he puts gel in his hair. He was wearing one of those football jackets, you know, the kind that is wool with leather sleeves, red wool with white leather sleeves.'
'When did you sell the computer? How long has he had it?'
'Two days… I sold it to him the night before last.'
'Where?'
'At Moos Tower, the medical building. There's a cafeteria in the basement. He had a table. There are two or three guys who buy stuff there. Stolen stuff. In Moos Tower.'
'Can you…?'
'I'm going to hang up now. I'm afraid you're tracing this call.'
'No, no, please…'
But she was gone. And maybe, he thought, to LA, where they'd never find her.
'Ah, boy…'
Hoping she'd call back, Lucas left the room phone open, got on his cell phone and called the duty man at BCA offices in St. Paul. 'The call would have gone into the main desk, and they transferred it up to my room: see if you can pin it down. Where it came from-we need the number.'
Then he made another call, and a woman answered. 'Marcy? Lucas.'
She was happy to hear from him. 'Hey, man, you haven't called for weeks. What's going on?'
Lieutenant Marcy Sherrill was head of the Intelligence Unit for the Minneapolis police, and a protege. He sketched in quickly what had happened, and said, 'So I've got a problem. Is there any chance that you could put somebody over at the U, and see if you can figure out who this guy is? I'll come down and get him, but I need to get something started.'
'I'll put somebody over there right now-it's a little late, there may not be too many people to talk to, but I can have somebody there in twenty minutes.'
'Thanks, sweetie. How's the love life?'
'We gotta talk. Do you know Don Cary?'
'Yeah-but he was married the last time I checked.' Lucas looked at his watch. Time was running…
