any nearby tree wreckage, and cut down through the sandy ground, Grandpa urging him to work faster, Carl working as fast as he could, throwing dirt, fighting through the occasional root. When he was finished, he was covered with mud.
Together, they lifted the body from the back of the car and dropped it in the hole, and threw the duffel bag on top of it. They stood there for a minute, then Grandpa pulled the pistol out of his pocket and dropped it in the hole. Grandpa shifted the light away, and said, 'Fill it.'
Filling the hole took only five minutes. When it was done, they stomped around on top of it, and finally dragged a shredded aspen over the raw dirt. They'd been lucky with the rain, Grandpa said; the rain would take care of the rest of it. By morning, the grave site would be invisible.
The ride home was long, but not silent. Grandpa said, 'This is the worst. This is the worst night of your life, so you never have to worry about that anymore. This is one of the worst of my life, after the death of my son. But I tell you: this is the critical step that we needed to protect the families. And your father… your father was a ruined man, no good for anybody. No good for your mother, no good for you. He was a ruin. His life was already over.'
Carl started crying again, and said, 'But he was my dad.'
'I know, I know…'
And it went like that.
At Grandpa's, they both stripped down and threw their clothing into the washing machine, and Grandpa washed their shoes in the kitchen sink and patted them dry with kitchen towels and newspapers. 'They'll be fine by morning,' he said. They took their clothes out of the washer and put them in the dryer, and then Carl made a bed on the couch and Grandpa gave him two of Grandma's sleeping pills.
'You need the sleep before school,' Grandpa said. 'These are strong and will take you down for five hours. Try to sleep.'
Carl took the pills, and immediately on swallowing, was struck by the suspicion that he shouldn't have; was he part of Grandpa's plan? But the old man had turned away from him, said, 'Try to sleep; try to empty your mind. Try not to cry, because if you do, your eyes will be red. And remember tomorrow, if I forget to tell you, you must ask the girl on the date to homecoming. That's important: you have to go back to being a kid.'
'Okay, Grandpa. We had to do it, didn't we?'
'We had to,' Grandpa said.
Grandpa hit the lights and said good night, and then Grandma's pills came on, pulling Carl straight down into a pit of darkness.
As for Grandpa, for Burt Walther, for Sergey Vasilevich Botenkov, he slept quite well.
Chapter 25
Lucas and Nadya made their statements, and signed them. No perjury was committed, although an observer from Mars might have observed that not all possible questions had been asked.
There had been no way, the city attorney said, to completely avoid the question of a relationship between Nadya and Reasons, but the relationship had been disposed of with two questions and two short answers, which had dismissed the possibility that a personal relationship had in any way contributed to the murder.
Reasons, the attorney concluded, had been killed on the job when a professional assassin, armed with a silenced pistol, had gone to Nadya's room to kill her, and instead, had encountered Reasons, who'd died protecting Nadya. Several throats were cleared, briefcases were stuffed, and the lights turned out.
Andreno called from Hibbing, said there was no action at Walther's house, and Lucas ordered him back to Duluth to stay with Nadya overnight.
Kelly, the cop originally assigned to the murder of Mary Wheaton, stopped to chat with Lucas on the way out the door after the statements were given. Lucas mentioned that he was looking for a drunk named Roger Walther, but that Walther had never been arrested, and was no longer living at the house listed on his driver's license.
'I'll ask around,' Kelly said. 'Know anything else about him?'
'Not much… whacked his wife a couple times, no charges. He was the local hockey hero in Hibbing, played with UMD…'
'Well, shit, I know a guy named Reggie Carpenter who knows every single asshole who ever got ice time up there… He might be able to help you out.'
'Where's he live?'
'Actually, he plays piano at T-Bone Logan's Lakeside Lumber Emporium and Saloon. He oughta be there now.'
'Place with a name like that, you wouldn't see many tourists,' Lucas suggested.
Kelly snorted: 'There never was a T-Bone Logan, it's not on the lakeside, it was built six years ago by a doctor's group from Chicago outa fake logs, never had anything to do with lumber, and they charge nine bucks for a martini which, when they bring it to you, turns out to be purple, or maroon, or some fuckin' thing. What do you think?'
A gentle drizzle was falling as they drove.
'Feel the winter coming,' Kelly said.
'This isn't it, though,' Lucas said. 'Not yet.' Sometime in September, a bone-crunching cold front usually came through, pointing at snow, if not actually delivering any. This drizzle still contained a hint of warmth.
'You ski?'
'Ah, every once in a while. I've got a place over in Sawyer County, Hayward, I got a couple of sleds…'
They talked snow and cabins and snowmobiles until they pulled into the bar.
T-Bone Logan's was as Kelly said, a tourist trap with log walls and, inside, axes and saws and kerosene lanterns mounted overhead, and big photos of lumberjacks in old-timey logging camps. The tabletops were made out of split pine logs with clear finishes; the place smelled of wet-sauce ribs and beans.
Carpenter, the piano player, was a Dagwood-looking man, pale, slender, balding, with cheap false teeth that tended to clack when he talked, and a sprinkling of dandruff on his black sport coat. Lucas and Kelly got beer from the bar and carried it over to the piano and waited while Carpenter finished wending his way through an overfruited version of 'Stardust,' Carpenter signaling his friendship to Kelly with his eyebrows.
When he finished the song, he slid over to the side of the piano bench and said, 'How's it going, Officer Kelly?'
'How many telephones you got now, Reggie?'
'Just the one cell phone,' Carpenter said. 'Don't even have one in my house.'
'You're sure?'
'Absolutely,' Carpenter said, beaming at Kelly.
Kelly said to Lucas, 'Reggie used to take the occasional bet.'
'Ah.'
'In the month of November nineteen ninety-nine, he took bets on one thousand seven hundred and fifty-six occasions,' Kelly continued.
'I never would have suspected,' Lucas said.
'I was just… a little thoughtless,' Carpenter said. 'So what's going on?'
'UMD hockey,' Kelly said. 'Do you remember a guy named Roger Walther? Would have been a second-stringer, maybe… what? Twenty-some years ago?'
Carpenter frowned, tinkled the high C key a few times, then nodded, 'Yeah… I do. He played forward, but he was a little slow with the stick, and about six feet short getting down the ice. But he could play. What'd he do?'
'Have you seen him?' Lucas asked.
'No, not for years. I think-I think, but I'm not sure-that he once was selling cars at Landry's, but that would have been years ago.'
