bullshitting Nadya about dating in Russia, and then Reasons's phone rang. He listened, nodded, and said, 'Thanks.'
'We can go in. If we can get in.' A patrol car was rolling down the street toward them. 'I called for a hammer,' he said.
The patrol car pulled to the curb. A uniformed cop got out of the car, lifted a hand to Reasons, went around to the trunk, popped it, and lifted out a sledge. 'What do you need broke?' he asked.
The cop took three swings to break the padlocked latch off the door; even then, the door was jammed shut. The cop went back to his car, dug around in the trunk, and returned with an eighteen-inch-long screwdriver. 'When I started on the force, they called all that shit 'burglar's tools,' ' Reasons said.
'Yeah, but that was a hundred years ago,' the cop said.
He worked the blade of the screwdriver around the edge of the door, grunted, 'Warped,' and Reasons said, 'Well, Jesus, don't baby it-they're gonna tear the fucking thing down.'
Then the door popped, and they all clustered together and peered inside. They could see what looked like the remains of a camp: and a briefcase with paper scattered around.
'Think we can go in?' Reasons asked.
'I'm going,' Lucas said. 'Fuck a bunch of crime-scene weenies.'
The interior had an animal smell about it: the place had been inhabited, and recently, by somebody not fastidious. A flat pad made of bubble wrap was pushed against one wall, with an army blanket on top of it. A bed, Lucas thought.
Peeking from under the briefcase, he could see one half of what looked like a wallet. He stooped, took a pencil out of his pocket, and used the pencil to drag the wallet into the open.
'What do you see?' Nadya called.
Lucas got down on his knees and pushed his face close to the wallet. 'A wallet. A bunch of cards in Russian and an ID card in English that says, 'Oleg Moshalov.' '
'Sonofabitch,' Reasons said.
Chapter 6
When Reasons said, 'Sonofabitch,' Lucas stood up and backed out of the shed, slapped his hands together to get rid of the dust, and said, 'Better call your crime-scene guys.'
Crime-scene investigation had somehow become the flavor-of-the-month on TV shows, but Lucas could not remember the last time that crime-scene guys had actually broken a case. They gathered evidence-blood, semen, hair, fingerprints, firearms and shells, tool marks, clothing fibers-that could be used to pin a suspect after the cops found him, but the cops had to find him first.
In the one major case in which the crime-scene people were dominant, and in which Lucas had participated, if only from the sidelines, a hot assistant county attorney and her crime-scene buddies had proven beyond doubt, from crime-scene evidence alone, that a dope dealer named Rashid al-Balah had killed a gambler named Trick Bentoin. The evidence showed that Bentoin's body had been dumped in a peat bog in the Carlos Avery state wildlife-management area north of Minneapolis.
They'd had witnesses who recounted tension between Bentoin and al-Balah over a gambling debt, and threats made by al-Balah. They had blood from the trunk of al-Balah's car, they had seeds and soil from plants that grew nowhere else but Carlos Avery, and when it was all done, they put their man away.
Then, a year or so later, the dead man showed up. He'd been in Panama, playing high-stakes gin rummy. As the Russians would say, gavno; and as Lucas's pal Del had wondered, 'Who did Rashid kill and throw in a peat bog? Had to be somebody.'
The crime-scene crew arrived half an hour after Reasons called in.
Fifteen minutes before they got there, Chick Daniels from the News-Tribune hopped out of his car in the parking lot of the Goodwill store and Reasons said, 'Here comes the press,' and walked toward him. They met in the middle of the street, talked for a few minutes, then Reasons walked him across to the shed and said, 'We're gonna let him have a look inside, but deny we did it.'
Lucas nodded, and the reporter, a twenties-something guy with long brown hair and Labrador retriever eyes, stuck his head in the door of the shed, looked at the litter inside for a minute, then backed away and said, 'Can I look at this foundation thing?' Reasons walked him around back; they looked at the foundation. Lucas heard his name mentioned and then Nadya's, mentioned and spelled.
Nadya said, 'You always talk to the news before you know anything?'
Lucas nodded. 'Always. Especially before we know anything.'
'That seems operationally unsound.' She was very serious.
'It might be,' Lucas said cheerfully. 'But see this way, we get our pictures on television.'
'This is good?'
'Sure. It proves we exist.'
She still looked solemn, and a bit uncertain, so Lucas said, 'I'm pulling your leg. With this kind of thing, we've found that talking to the news media, especially the newspapers, doesn't hurt much. Especially if the reporter's decent. The news is gonna get out anyway, and it's better to have it accurate, than a bunch of rumors.'
'What is this leg-pulling?' she asked.
After the walk around, the reporter went back to the other side of the street and got on his cell phone. 'I told him he's gotta stay over there,' Reasons said. 'He's a pretty good guy. TV'll be here in a couple of minutes.'
Ten minutes before the crime-scene crew arrived, as Lucas was looking at the sole of his shoe, wondering about the brown stuff stuck on it, the no-name detective arrived, wearing knee shorts and a golf shirt. He was carrying a black milled-aluminum flashlight.
'Great knees,' Lucas said.
No-name was not in a mood for repartee. 'Fuck you. Let me look.'
He stood in the door of the shack and shined the flashlight across the floor. 'Somebody was living here, all right. You sure it was Wheaton?'
'I don't know. Sounds like her. We got a guy saw her every day. He's over there…' Reasons pointed across the street, where the Latino man was sitting on the hood of an eighties Plymouth. 'And for Christ's sake, don't ask for a green card until we've deposed him.'
The no-name detective glanced at the Latino, then continued playing his flashlight across the interior of the shed, methodically sweeping the dirty floor and walls. Now he said, 'Look at this,' and he stepped inside.
Lucas looked. Eight inches to the side of the door, at head height, a nail stuck out of the wood. In the light from the flash, Lucas could see a tiny swatch of fiber hanging from the head of the nail, like hair, or short, bristly spiderwebs.
'Green. Green wool, I think,' no-name said. 'That fuckin' army coat. That's weird.'
'What's weird?' Lucas asked.
'We know where she lived. We already turned the place over. What the hell was she doing down here?'
Five minutes before the crime-scene guys arrived, two TV trucks pulled up. Reasons went across the street and pushed them back fifty yards; and then, with a show of reluctance, made an on-air statement. 'See? He gets on TV,' Lucas told Nadya.
Then the crime-scene crew showed, two guys in golf shirts and jeans. Reasons walked over and asked, 'Where in the hell have you been? Playing golf?'
'Got here fast as we could,' one of the guys said. He counterattacked. 'None of you went inside, did you?'
'Of course not,' Reasons said.
Lucas and no-name shook their heads. 'We were waiting for you.'
When the photography was done, the crime-scene people began picking up the litter-with Lucas's urging, they started with the small paper, picking up each piece with forceps, bagging it, and passing it out the door. Most of it was cards, most of it in Russian.
There were several items of interest: an American Express platinum card under the name Zbigniew Riscin, a New York driver's license under the same name, and a receipt from the National car-rental agency at the Duluth
