time to load up a boat, he goes on board to supervise.' He pointed at a long metal pipe, a foot or two in diameter, that dangled from the side of the building. 'The grain comes down through that big pipe, outa the elevator and into the ship's hold. He'd just gotten done and walked over to the rail for a cigarette. He was standing right there.' Now he pointed to a spot in the empty air at the end of the slip. The Russian ship had been sent on its way a week earlier. 'That's when he saw the guy walking away from the body. He yelled at him and the guy runs. The guy was small, almost like a kid. He's not sure about that, because the perspective from up there is goofy-way high, looking down, in the dark. But he thought the guy was small.'
'How about the coat?'
'He said the guy was wearing a long coat. I checked with the weather service, they said the temperature down at lakeside that night was sixty-one degrees. It'd been a hot day. I wondered about the coat.'
'Kellogg never went after him, didn't try to find him.'
Reasons shook his head. 'No. He had to get help for the hurt guy, and all the cabins and the gangway and shit were all at the back of the boat, way back there…' He pointed again, to the far end of the slip. 'Besides, he was scared shitless after he saw the blood.'
'Have any thoughts?' Lucas had figured Reasons out during the ride between Duluth police headquarters and the grain terminal. Beneath an assumed cynicism, the muscleman was a fairly smart guy.
Reasons scratched his head, as though stirring up a few thoughts. 'Not many. There was… You know about the Minnesota Rangers?'
Lucas touched his nose with his index finger, thinking. He had: 'The militia guys?'
'Yeah. Skinheads. Some old Vietnam veterans, Gulf War veterans, bikers. They go around in long black coats, like in that Matrix movie. Even in the summer. Shave their heads. They think that America is a socialist hell and that we're all being turned into batteries.'
Lucas showed a little skepticism. 'You think one tried to prove his manhood by killing a Russian?'
Reasons shook his head: 'No. I don't. This was too cold for a fruitcake. You'd maybe take a trophy, cut off an ear or something, but open his pants up and search him? I don't think so. The killer was after something specific. But…' He turned his hands palms up, an I can't help myself gesture.
'What?'
'One of our intelligence guys heard a rumor that the Rangers were taking credit. You know, like the PLO takes credit when they blow something up? I went out to see Dick Worley, he's the leader out there at their war grounds. He said nobody he knew had heard anything. I put some bullshit on him, but he said that, honest to God, nobody knew anything about it. They hadn't even heard the rumor that they'd done it.'
'You believed him.'
Reasons nodded. 'Yeah, pretty much.'
'What are the war grounds?' Lucas asked.
'One of those paint-ball places. They play capture the flag, and all that. War games.'
Lucas looked up at the grain terminal. There was a tiny window at the top, with a man's face framed in it. He was looking down at them. 'Bummer.'
They mooched around the area again, and Lucas said, 'The idea of a chase… that's a little odd.'
'Maybe it never happened,' Reasons said. 'But that night, and the next morning, you could see where somebody had been beating through the weeds. Falling down a lot, too, or wrestling around. And it was fresh, like the weeds had just been broken. I think maybe they're connected. If somebody had another idea, though, I'd be happy to hear it.'
'I got nothing.' Lucas looked at his watch, took a last look around the murder scene, and then asked, 'You want to meet another Russian? The guy'll be here in an hour. Or you could haul my ass back to the station, and I'll go get him.'
'I'll go with you,' Reasons said.
'Maybe you'll hate him.'
'Probably. But I go back to the office, they're gonna have me chasing down bums.'
'Yeah?' They started back toward the car, which Reasons had parked next to the terminal.
'Somebody offed this old lady last night, street person, kinda crazy. You know. Schizo. Strangled her with a wire, we think. That's what the doc thinks, anyway. Cut her throat with it. We got four guys going around interviewing winos-not my idea of a good day.'
'Any leads?'
'Nothing. Her pushcart-she had a shopping cart-found it a block away, down the hill. It's possible that somebody tried to take it away from her.'
'Killed her for a cart full of junk?' Lucas eyebrows were up.
'Hey, if it was another wino… but we dunno. Found her on the sidewalk, head cut halfway off, big puddle of blood. Whoever did it was a strong motherfucker, is what the ME says.'
'You're a strong motherfucker,' Lucas observed.
Reasons's brown eyes snapped over at Lucas, and he grinned: 'Yeah, I am. Lift every day. It made me wonder… you know, if I know the guy. Wonder if he pumps a little iron?' He thought about it, then shook his head: 'Nah. Probably another wino.'
The track into the terminal was not much more than a long series of potholes and ruts. They bumped out of it, over a curb, and turned up toward the city.
The south end of Superior is shaped like a pocketknife blade, pointing down into Minnesota; the lake itself is sunken into the landscape, with steep hills and bluffs along the shore. On the east side of the tip of the knife point is Superior, Wisconsin; Duluth, Minnesota, is on the west side, built on the flats along the lake, up a long lakeside hill, and then onto the plateau west of the crest.
The main airport is on the west side, a twenty-minute drive from the lake. They took Garfield Avenue out of the terminal area, crossed the interstate, climbed the hill, and dodged traffic on the main east-west drag. Lucas knew a little about the town, but Reasons kept up a running commentary on the local attractions as he drove, and got Lucas oriented on the main business and governmental areas.
'Be a nice place if it wasn't so fuckin' cold,' Lucas said.
'Ah, it ain't bad. When it gets really bad in January, we can always run down to the Cities and get a little sun.'
'Very little sun,' Lucas said. 'The whole fuckin' state's a freezer.'
'I kind of like it,' Reasons said.
'Yeah, so do I.'
The airport terminal building was a concrete-and-red-brick wedge. They parked in an open lot and went inside, showed their ID to security so nobody would get excited about their guns, and figured out where the baggage would be coming in.
'I can't remember a case like this Russian,' Reasons said, as they walked to the baggage claim. 'Sixty percent of the time, you know who did it two minutes after you arrive. Twenty-five percent of the time, you figure it out in the next day or two. The rest of the time, you look at it and you say, shit-we ain't gonna solve this one. And you don't, except by accident.' He turned and stared out one of the windows, brooding a bit: 'This one's like a hybrid-a lot of dumb-fuck stuff, and the rest of it is 'Uh-oh, we ain't gonna solve it.' '
'Planned, cold, probably for business or political or money reasons-maybe even espionage reasons-but with an old gun and crappy ammo and he almost breaks a leg running off into the weeds,' Lucas said.
'Don't know it was an old gun,' Reasons said.
'Who'd put fifty-year-old ammo in a new gun?' Lucas asked. 'You pay four or five hundred dollars for a gun, and you're not gonna pay ten bucks for a box of nines?'
Reasons nodded: 'Won't argue with that.'
The Northwest flight was only ten minutes late. When they'd confirmed the arrival time, they wandered off, both bought copies of the Duluth News Tribune. Lucas turned to the sports to see what, if anything, had happened with the Twins. They'd lost to Baltimore, 6-1; the story didn't try to make the game sound exciting.
The front page was dominated by a hard-news story and a sidebar, a weeper, about the murdered street person:
Mary Wheaton was a thin, round-shouldered woman who pushed a shopping cart full of treasures she collected daily from the gutters and alleys of Duluth, a familiar figure to downtown store owners. They were
