When they'd gotten Carl to the hospital, an examination showed that a piece of the bullet jacket had fragmented off and had ripped into his sphincter muscle. That could have been serious, but a delicate operation had removed the remains of the bullet and had repaired the damage to the muscle.
'I talked to the doc about an hour ago-everything went fine. He won't be running for a while.'
'Thirty years, if you have anything to say about it.'
'The little asshole killed Jerry Reasons,' Lucas said. 'And the Russian. I have a hard time feeling any sympathy for him.'
'Good-looking guy, though,' Weather said. She turned back to her car. 'Would blue have been better?'
A few more days went by. Weather began driving the new BMW into the driveway at fifty miles an hour, and Del got surveillance on the McDonald's truck deliveries.
The St. Louis County attorney announced that the grand jury had indicted Carl Walther on charges of first- degree murder in the killings of both Rodion Oleshev and Jerry Reasons. The feds indicted Anthony Spivak on espionage charges, and the county attorney dropped charges of accessory to murder, saying that they were redundant in light of the federal charges. In fact, he seemed pleased to get out from under the Spivak case.
Lucas heard from Harmon, unofficially, that Janet Walther was willing to talk about the espionage ring if she could make a deal for Carl.
The deal would be a tough one, though: the Duluth cops were convinced that Carl had killed Jerry Reasons, and they wanted him put away. The only problem was that they had little evidence, other than Lucas's story of chasing a man up and down the hills, and some general descriptions from the women behind the hotel desk.
On the other hand, the blood from the switchblade definitely was Carl Walther's, and Carl had definitely gone to the emergency room the night Oleshev was murdered, within a couple of hours of the murder taking place.
Carl claimed that the cut on his arm had come from a broken window in Grandpa's basement. The feds, as it happened, had spotted and processed the window, and confirmed that the blood was in fact Carl's.
Still, if they could get the knife into evidence-not a sure thing-nobody believed that the blood-on-the-window alibi would hold up.
If Duluth couldn't get Carl for killing Reasons, they would be somewhat satisfied with a life sentence on the Oleshev murder.
Yet another complication: Roger Walther was still missing. The feds said that Janet Walther was now blaming everything on him.
'Just between you and me,' Harmon told Lucas, 'I think perhaps the best we can hope for is to identify this entire Soviet ring and debrief all the participants. I don't think there will be much jail time-too many lawyers involved now. The cooperation of Janet Walther is critical to that end.'
He was wheedling.
'That would be the best deal for you spooks,' Lucas agreed. 'For the rest of the world, including both Russia and the United States, the best deal would be to nail Carl Walther for murder. We've got to get him for something…'
Harmon was fifteen hundred miles away in Washington, but Lucas could almost hear the shrug. 'If we can.'
More time passed. Del nailed the McDonald's thefts, and Neil Mitford, the governor's aide, came down to shake his hand. 'Fuck a bunch of Russian agents, this McDonald's thing was important.'
'I oughta get a certificate or something,' Del said, cutting his eyes toward Lucas, who yawned.
'You should,' Mitford agreed. He took a dollar out of his pocket. 'Here. It's even signed by the secretary of the treasury.'
Four weeks after Carl was shot, Lucas got a note from Nadya.
'Thank you very much for your hospitality; I enjoyed my time working with you,' the note said. Blah-blah-blah. She sounded like an exchange student, Lucas thought. The laser-printed portion of the note seemed to have been written with the idea that carbon copies would be filed somewhere. The real meat came at the very end, handwritten in blue ink. 'My fellow bureaucrats were most impressed with my wounds, so I thank you also for the photograph. Love, Nadya.'
The note was signed Lt. Colonel Nadezhda Kalin.
'Our girl got a promotion,' Lucas told Weather. He went around all day feeling pleased, although he didn't exactly know why.
Six weeks after Carl was shot, Lucas was sitting in his office, feet on his desk, reading about a series of snipings in which the victims were horses.
Somebody-some nut-would shoot the animals in the stomach, often several times, with a.22, and even if the shooting didn't kill the animal, the horse would have to be put down by a veterinarian.
Nine horses had been killed in three counties, and horse lovers were in an uproar. The governor wanted it fixed, and quick. Mitford put it this way: 'In the whole universe of politically sensitive shootings, if Carl Walther and his shootings and a Russian spy ring is a three, then the horses are a nine. Right up there with the McDonald's heist.'
'Horses are more important than cops getting killed,' Lucas said.
'I wouldn't say so, but the fact is, cops get shot from time to time. Nothing you can do about it,' Mitford said. 'But don't fuck with horses. Or dogs. The voters'll rip your fuckin' heart out. I'll tell you, Lucas, if you can catch this guy, the governor would be really, really grateful…'
So he was sitting there, reading horse files, when the phone rang. He picked it up, and was told it was Kelly, the cop from Duluth.
'Guess what?'
'How many guesses?'
'Well, fuck it. I'll just tell you. The crime-scene guys finally unrolled that bubble-wrap mattress and found a fingerprint. Nice, neat, clear.'
Lucas sat up: 'No shit. Is there a name?'
'That's the interesting part. There is a name. Attached to a drunk-driving arrest there in St. Paul about nine years ago, a college student named Annabelle Ramford. We've looked her up, and she's apparently a lawyer there in St. Paul. Got a phone and everything.'
'A lawyer? She's supposed to be a bum.'
'Beats the shit out of me. I don't know what it means,' Kelly said.
'There's a John Ramford, he's like a really bigshot lawyer downtown…'
'I'd call him up and ask about Annabelle, then… and if you could do it, the Duluth Police Department will be in your debt.'
'Like I need that,' Lucas said.
But as soon as he was off the phone, he looked up the Ramford firm in the phone book, called, and asked for Annabelle Ramford. 'May I tell her who's calling?'
'Mmm… No.' He hung up and got his coat.
Ten minutes later, having dumped his car in one of the new parking ramps downtown, he was talking to the receptionist at the Ramford firm: 'I would like to see Annabelle Ramford.'
'May I tell her your name?'
'Just tell her it's the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension about the bubble wrap. She'll know.'
The receptionist asked him to take a seat. He took a seat, picked up a copy of Newsweek, and in two minutes read more than he wanted to know about the cell phone industry in Finland. The receptionist said, 'Ms. Ramford will see you now.'
The receptionist directed him to an oak-doored elevator, which operated between two floors only. He took it up one. A stylish young woman was leaning in a doorway, and when she saw him step out of the elevator, she said, 'Officer Bubble Wrap?'
'Yes.' He walked down toward her. She was wearing a pale green dress that was almost jade, but had a gray tone to it; a subtle color that set off her eyes. A single strand of pearls acted as a frame for her tanned, athletic face. 'My name is Lucas Davenport. I'm with the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.'
A skeptical look appeared on her face. 'You're not here to see me about the Quentin case, are you? I told Judge Martin that we would not deal on that…'
'I don't even know what the Quentin case is,' Lucas interrupted.
