"Good. But when I told Pokey we thought the same gun shot both men, do you remember what he said?"

  "Some kind of a put-down about that gun or a million others like it."

  "Right. Good old Pokey, he does enjoy his little jokes. So that’s what we want to know, did the same gun kill both men, or not? If yes, then Roger Carr's shooting must be in some way connected to the shooting of Wayne Asleson. But if no, if two different weapons were involved, we could just be picking up the pieces after two different fights."

  "Well, we got both bullets," Kevin said.

  "True. BCA dug the first bullet out of the door post of the truck, and we found the second one out there in the mattress yesterday. They're both badly beat up, but Megan seemed to think they might show enough lands and grooves, under a microscope, to at least show they could have come from the same gun. It would be a lot easier to prove that they did, if we found the casing of the second bullet. So, Darrell: your first job today is, go back out to Connie Carr's house, with a good big Streamlight with fresh batteries, and search every inch of that place. While you're at it, of course," I said, smiling at him, "my feelings won't be hurt if you find the gun itself."

  "How much time have I got?"

  "As much as you need. Stay at it till you're sure you've looked at everything. Ollie Green and Nick Kranz will be out there sometime this morning, to dust the whole place for prints. They may bring a few items back to fume in the tank. All you have to do for them is keep out of their way and don't touch anything without gloves on."

  "Gotcha."

  "Okay. It would be nice if we had Connie Carr here so we could get her prints the easy way. Otherwise we'll have to try to get some off an item we know is hers. Maybe she has a locker at work. That's the most troubling thing hanging fire right now: where is Connie Carr? I sure hope she's not the next body we find." I kept remembering how light and fragile her arm had felt when I held her up.

  "She's never shown up at her place, huh?" Frank asked.

  "No. I had squads check the house a couple of times an hour all night. I've called her several times. Nobody at her workplace has seen her. I'd like to turn the search for Connie Carr over to you, Rosie: put out an Attempt to Locate on her car and on her person. Her physical description is in the report I wrote of her interview, and the license number is the one for the Escort at the beginning of that report. Keep calling her. And you might try asking the people she works with if they know any names or phone numbers of friends or relations."

  "Right, right." Rosie scribbled.

  "What about the autopsy on this Carr?" Frank asked.

  "They're gonna let me know as soon as they schedule it," I told him. "Have you got enough now to keep the news people happy?"

  "I think so. Be good if one of you would loan a full set of these records to Lulu so she could make me a copy, in case they throw me a question I can't answer."

  "I'll do it, Chief," Rosie said.

  "By the way," Ray said, "is this right, the Roger Carr shooting's got a new ICR number?"

  "Well, yes," I said. "I can't treat it as an extension of Wayne’s case till we prove the two are connected. But we're going to have a helluva time deciding which new reports go where, because they're so closely related. In fact, you know what I think? Just copy everything you add to either file, and add it to the other one at the same time. We can always throw out some paper after the whole mess sorts itself out."

  Rosie looked at Frank and smiled. "Paper piles up fast in a homicide, doesn't it?"

  "Sure does," he said. He stood up and held the door open. She walked through it, and he followed her down the hall. "Is this Stacey Morse gonna fix that problem? Really, you think so?"

  "Count on it," I heard her saying as they walked away. "He’s going to make all this paper go away and—"

  "Rosie Doyle creates a profile," Kevin murmured.

  "She took on that pileashit job as a favor to me," I said. "So please don’t begrudge her if she finds a way to make a few points with it. Next question, Kevin: anything new come in overnight that we have to look after?"

  "Oh, sure." He shuffled through the dispatch reports that he'd brought in with him. "Car heist at Mohawk Mall. Purse-snatching downtown. Two break-ins: apartment on Southeast Twenty-third Street, house out Northwest in the Castle Heights section."

  "Can you and Ray take care of those between you?"

  "Sure." He slid a couple of report forms across the table to Ray.

  "Okay. Lou, you've got all your usual stuff, right?

  "Yup. Pile of stuff on my desk."

  "Okay. I'm gonna try to find out if there's still a desk and phone under that pile of trash in my office. Keep in touch, guys."

  I remembered seeing an old metal typewriter table buried under boxes of audio tapes in the supply room, so I went down there, made space on a shelf for the boxes, and rolled the table into my office. Parked by my desk, with its metal wings raised, it had just enough surface for four wire baskets. Quickly, so I wouldn't get discouraged, I began grabbing paper items off my desk and sorting them into the baskets, one basket each for messages, reports, and letters. The fourth got the miscellaneous brochures, reports, letters marked "box holder", all the paper trash that piles up on my desk as soon as my back is turned.

  When my desk was clear, I got a cup of coffee, called BCA, and asked for Trudy.

  "Hey, babe," she said, "the sun is shining."

  "That's what I called to say! It’s twenty-six degrees here, and rising. Definite warming trend for the weekend. Let’s make a plan."

  "Let’s open up the whole house, muck it out, do laundry."

  "That’s tomorrow. What about Sunday?"

  "Decide tomorrow. Maybe we’ll just want to stand in the yard watching icicles melt off the roof."

  "Oh, whee, I forgot about that game." She giggled. "You sound up. As if you got some sleep."

  "I stretched out on the cot in the women’s john for a little nap about seven o’clock last night. We never got a call all night, and I woke up at six-thirty this morning."

  "Wow. You must be ready to go three rounds with a bear."

  "At least. I was seriously dehydrated, but after I had a shower and about half a gallon of juice and coffee, I burst into song."

  "Beautiful. Come home to Mirium tonight and sing for me."

  "I can't wait. Early, I hope. Depends what happens. How are you doing? I understand you sent us another body last night."

  "Yup. It’s like they say on TV, opportunity abounds."

  "Cute. I’m gonna start wading through report forms and hope for the best."

  "Me too. See ya." I hung up and sat grinning at the phone, thinking that if Trudy came home early and still had plenty of energy, and if the weather kept on warming up, maybe dinner could be a Friday Night Special, one of those feasts where the celebrants wear fewer clothes with each course, and dessert is each other. I wrote on my notepad, "Buy wine," and waded into the message basket.

  Milo’s secretary asked, in a reverential tone, if she might say who was calling. I expected her to come back on and take another message, but Milo opened his line and said, "Jake? Thanks for calling me back."

  "Howsgoin', Milo?"

  "I just wanted to tell you I came back here to my office yesterday and called three county commissioners and demanded a meeting right away, and they all came in. I told them I wasn’t going into court one more time with a pile of shit like the brief that Berrigan kid laid on me yesterday. I said I was fed up with being worked to death and humiliated besides, and if they didn’t get me some emergency funds so I could put a decent staff together and get caught up on all the old cases clogging my schedule, they could take this job and shove it." He laughed out loud, a couple of happy barks, and added, "I actually said that! Just like the song!"

  "I’m proud of you, Milo. So are you out on your ass?"

  "Au contraire. They gave me ten thousand out of the contingency fund to use as I see fit right away, and we’re meeting next week to discuss a new budget. I’ve already fired Mickey Berrigan, and the most useless of the girls from the secretarial pool. I was going to get rid of the other one too, but she’s suddenly being so good to me I might marry her instead."

  "Careful, Milo. Remember what the Greeks said about hubris."

  "Is that the stuff that comes wrapped in grape leaves? Don’t worry," he said, "I’ve still gotta face Hang-’em-All Hanley this afternoon and ask for a second continuance on the guys who held up Murphy's Bar." The senior judge of the district court, not content with maximum sentences for defendants, also enjoys making the attorneys on both sides of the case look like jackasses.

  "I just wanted to thank you for being there for me when I needed you," Milo said, inducing a gag reflex on my part that ended the conversation abruptly. Wherever the hell "there" was, I knew I wasn't going there for Milo Nilssen. It was pleasant to think, though, that for a couple of hours he might get comfortable enough to stop looking at his watch and shooting his cuffs.

  I was picking the last pink slip out of the message basket when the phone rang. Les Miller said, "Jake, I think there's some mistake in the license number you put out on this Attempt to Locate." Les is the best field training officer in the department. When he talks, we all listen.

  "You talking about the request for Connie Carr?"

  "Well, yeah. You got any other ones out? This is the only one I saw."

  "Uh...Actually Rosie put that out."

  "I know. But when I called her, she said you had the original information, so she switched me over to you."

  "Hang on." I located the license number of Connie Carr’s Escort, and read it off to him.

  "Hmm. That’s what we’ve got here."

  "What’s the problem, Les?"

  "Well. I was just showing my trainee here how to look up the owner of a car using the license numbers. But when we put it in the laptop, it came back registered to Patricia Vickers. Your report says you’re trying to locate Connie Carr."

  Rosie Doyle appeared in my doorway, making frantic signs for attention. I said, "Hold on, Les, I’ll check it again," punched hold, and said, "What?"

  "I transferred that call in here to you, because I wanted you to hear it from Les Miller with your own ears. He’s saying that license number is registered to Patricia Vickers, right?"

  "That’s right."

  "Tell him the number is right. Tell him to keep looking for Connie Carr in an Escort with that license number, and hang up."

  "Rosie—"

  She made claws of her hands and held them up, one on each side of her head. Poised there like some furious freckled dinosaur she hissed, "Will you just once for Christ’s sake do what I ask you?"

  Watching her carefully, I got back on the phone and told Les Miller to keep looking for Connie Carr in an Escort with the license number I had given him. Rosie Doyle listened from the doorway, bouncing anxiously. When I put the phone down, she said, "I called Roseville yesterday like you asked me."

  I could not remember asking her to call Roseville ever. "And—?"

  "There were three winners on the day Wayne Asleson's numbers came up."

  "Oh. That call."

  "Yeah. That Roseville. Two of the three winners have already come in and completed the paperwork to claim their winnings; their checks will be sent to them in a couple of weeks. The third one is coming in sometime today."

  "Well, so—?"

  "So her name is Patricia Vickers."

  "What? What? What are you saying?"

  "I don't know what I'm saying! I mean I know what I'm saying, but I don't know what it means. How can this be?"

  "I don't know. Rosie, get me the number of that manager in Roseville right now." She ran to her office. I called Bo and said, "Come in my office. Bring Lou with you."

  When they walked in together, I said, "Something damned odd is going on. Just stick around here a minute." Rosie came back with the number. I dialed it, asking, "What's his name?"

  "Mizner. David Mizner."

  Mizner remembered his conversation with Rosie Doyle very well. He thought the strange coincidence between their winning numbers and our case was sure a funny thing. He didn't know what time Patricia Vickers was coming. "She asked me if some time in the late morning or early afternoon would be convenient for processing her claim, and I said that would be fine."

  "We just found another coincidence," I told him, "so we think her claim might be suspect. If it isn't, we should be able to clear up the confusion as soon as we talk to her. We're coming up there right now. If she arrives before us, can you arrange to slow everything down? We'd like to meet her without her knowing she's waiting for us."

  "Oh, sure." Mizner chuckled. "For a third of twenty-eight million, people don't make much of a fuss about a little wait."

  "What's happening?" Lou said when I hung up.

  "I'm not sure. But whatever it is, it's gonna happen fast. You two guys, go down and check out two cars and meet us at the front door. Leave your phones on voice mail, wear your weapons, be sure you've got good batteries in your beepers."

  "Shall we tell the desk—"

  "I'll do it. Go! Rosie, get a tape recorder and plenty of extra tape and meet me by the front door as soon as you can." I checked all of us out with the desk, put the case files for Wayne and Roger in my briefcase, and crammed my phone and camera in on top of them. On the way out, I ducked into the supply room for a couple of rolls of film, and ran down the wide front stairs, zipping them into an inside pocket. Rosie was right behind me.

  "You know the address, Rosie? Get in with Bo, then, you lead." Bo's vehicle was splashed all over with salty mud; his windshield wipers were turned on high, throwing filthy glass cleaner off the clearing semicircles on the glass. Rosie ducked behind the spray and jumped in. Lou was right behind Bo with all his windows open, dumping parking-garage air.

  "Leave 'em open a while, the air feels good today," I said. Rain gutters were awash with snowmelt on all the buildings downtown. Pedestrians were hopping warily across the intersections, dodging the slush thrown up by cars.

  "Nothing like a good old blizzard to make thirty-six feel like a heat wave," Lou said. Heavy breathing be damned, he still drove like a cop, and he was enjoying being out on the street, noticing everything around him.

  "Did Bo have to take the dirtiest car we own?" I asked him. "We don't have time to fool around."

  "We took the last two cars in the garage. Where are we going?"

  "Roseville."

  "So, what, north on Fifty-two—?"

  "Till you get to Ninety-four. Take that west to Thirty-five East and follow that north. Rosie's got directions from there."

  "What are we doin', by the way?"

  I told him as we rolled past snow-pillowed fields blazing with reflected sunshine, Minnesota winter countryside at its postcard best. While I talked, I loaded my camera, put fresh batteries in my beeper, and checked my weapon. Bo drove fast and steady, and Lou stayed right on his tail, not crowding but never dropping behind. When I saw Rosie pointing at an exit sign, I said, "Here we go." Lou moved into the lane behind Bo and did a close tail through the exit and along the busy streets beyond; we passed a Comfort Inn, and I saw a long building ahead of us, white with blue trim and dark glass. "That's it," I said, and we pulled in under the three flapping flags.

  We parked side by side and walked together silently, coats unbuttoned, holster flaps tucked out of the way. Mizner was waiting for us in the lobby. The claimant hadn't arrived, he said. He offered coffee and an office upstairs to wait in. I refused both those favors but asked if he had a newspaper I could borrow. We took four chairs at intervals around the room, with me nearest the door, and began to do what police do better than anybody: wait.

  At twelve-thirty a pale blue Chevy Caprice parked in the lot near our cars. A blond young woman in very high heels got out, said something to the driver, and closed her door. She wore dark glasses and carried a sling purse over the shoulder of her neatly tailored dark suit.

  The driver got out the other side and locked the car carefully, a pale young man with nervous gestures, wearing wrinkled slacks and a tattered Minnesota Vikings jacket. Something about the way he touched her arm as they walked together toward the building told me they didn’t know each other well.

  Rosie whispered, "Is it—?"

  "Can't tell," I said, "wait." I sheltered behind my newspaper as she came through the door. After her heels had tapped on by I lowered the paper and watched her walk past Rosie and Bo. When she was almost back to where Lou was leafing through a magazine, she turned her head to look up at the clock on the wall. I saw her profile then, and was sure.

  I walked up behind her quickly and bumped her hard. The dark glasses slid down on her nose, and the wig was knocked a little sideways. "Sorry!" I said. When she turned, I looked down into the brown eyes behind the glasses and said, "Well, hi there, Connie."

  The nervous young man clenched his fists and stepped toward me, but Lou and Bo were there on either side of him. He looked around at all of us and said, "I didn't have anything to do with the killing."

  ELEVEN

  "Help me out here," Frank said, "I'm a little mixed up."

  "Who isn't?" I said. "Just remember this: Connie Carr's the bad guy. Or the last one standing, anyway."

  "You're convinced of that, now? She killed her husband?"

  "Yes."

  "For the money."

  "Always the best reason."

  "And he killed his partner—"

  "For the same money. Well, not exactly." I stifled a yawn. It was only three o'clock, but I felt as if I'd been running a marathon all day. "It's kind of complicated. You wanna come in my office and listen while she tells it?"

  "Yes. Gimme two minutes to tell Lulu so she can cover my tracks."

  Rutherford doesn't have one of those fancy boxes with trick mikes and two-way glass like you see on TV. The jail has half a dozen open cubicles where we question juvenile miscreants and small-time dopeheads, but for serious stuff I take suspects in my office and close the door. Rosie had already brought Connie in there. They were sitting side by side in front of my desk. I went in and asked Connie, "Is there anything you need before we start this? Coffee? Water?" She said no to coffee, yes to water, and watched silently while Rosie brought it.

 

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