“Make sure you get all the way through the swing,” Virgil said. “Gotta fight that tendency to leave out to the right. And for God’s sakes, don’t hold your breath when you swing.”
Aaberg left it out to the right. Golf balls will do what you fear.
6
Next day.
Blue skies, as the song said, smilin’ at them. Warm, not hot, and dry as a potato chip.
Lucas parked a block over from the Lake of the Isles park, saw a familiar cream-colored Tahoe pull to the curb another block away, and waited until Virgil got out of his truck.
Virgil waved, took a sport coat off a back seat, pulled it on, and sauntered down the sidewalk. “What are we doing?”
“I don’t know exactly,” Lucas said, as they did the slap and knuckle-bump. “Henderson said something about consulting on the Doris Grandfelt murder. Were you around when that happened?”
“Still in the Army. I heard a lot about it when I got to the BCA,” Virgil said. He leaned forward, looking at Lucas’s face. “What happened to your lip? Weather bite you in a fit of blind passion?”
Lucas told him about busting the Bergstroms as they walked over to the lake, south of the Minneapolis downtown. They turned the corner toward a white house that looked like a wedding cake, three stories tall, each higher level set back from the one under it, crowned with a golden weather vane.
“That’s gotta be it,” Lucas said. “Henderson mentioned the weather vane.”
“I’m thinking seriously about quitting,” Virgil said, scuffing along. “The next book contract should be fairly large. Quitting money. I’ll find out this fall. If this turns out to be bullshit, it could be the perfect excuse.”
“You’d lose the state insurance,” Lucas said. “That’s like owning a gold mine when you have preschoolers. Those goddamn preschools are virus factories.”
“Yeah, you keep telling me. Still, I’m one disconsolate cop.” Virgil had twins, one of each.
“Big word for a shitkicker,” Lucas said, “If not for a famous novelist.”
—
Lucas was atall man, athletic, restless, heavy through the shoulders. Dark hair touched with gray, a businessman’s cut, blue eyes, a hawk-like nose. A thin white scar crossed from his forehead to the cheek below his left eye, the result of a fishing accident, a thin wire leader snapping out of a log, slapping his face like a whip. He was wearing a summer-weight wool suit from Brioni, and a blue-green Hermès necktie that chimed with both his eyes and the suit, but not the scar. Despite being a cop, he was a fashion plate. If he wasn’t quite handsome, women tended to like him.
He’d gotten a deputy U.S. Marshal’s badge through sheer political pull. If a U.S. senator of either party developed a law enforcement problem, Lucas would do what he could to help out. Important people owed him, and when not working for a politician, he was allowed free rein to chase the assholes of his choice.
Virgil was as tall as Lucas, when they were both barefoot, and a bit taller in his alligator cowboy boots. He was hay-bale muscular, lanky, his blond hair worn too long for a cop. In addition to his job as a BCA agent, he was a three-time thriller novelist. His second novel had made it to the bottom of theNew York Timespaperback bestseller list, and the third one had gone to number six on the hardcover list and had hung on for three weeks. As a new author, he was still naïve enough not to be especially grateful; he thought he deserved it.
Virgil lived on a farm near Mankato, Minnesota, eighty miles southwest of the Twin Cities. Although his territory was generally southern Minnesota, he was sometimes pulled into the St. Paul headquarters for special assignments. His clearance rate for major crimes was the best in the BCA, which was especially notable because of the twisted, not to say bizarre, peculiar, grotesque, or outlandish crimes that happened in rural Minnesota.
Virgil was wearing jeans, a lightweight blue fishing shirt, and a button-front tan canvas jacket that wasn’t quite a sport coat. The jacket had gaping pockets good for carrying notebooks and pens, and on occasion, a gun, though he didn’t like guns.
—
Together they climbedthe wedding cake’s exterior stairs, walked across a wide stone porch, where Lucas pressed a doorbell. As they waited, a slender man in a blue-striped seersucker summersuit climbed the stairs behind them, said, “Hey, guys,” and Lucas asked, “Are you in on this? What’s going on?”
“I don’t know. The senator didn’t tell me.” Neil Mitford, chief weasel for Elmer Henderson. Both Lucas and Virgil had worked with Mitford on other cases and had found him to be cheerfully untrustworthy. He was also absolutely loyal to Henderson and knew more about politics than any sane person should.
Virgil looked at Lucas and said, “He probably knows. He lies a lot.”
“True.”
“A key requirement in my job,” Mitford said. “Besides, if I didn’t lie to you, somebody else would. Might as well get it out of the way.”
“Also true,” Lucas said. The way of the world.
“Did you push the doorbell?” Mitford asked. He pushed it again, and the door popped open. A short, slightly heavy woman in a gray dress said, “Good, you’re here. I’m Marcia Wise, Lara’s personal assistant. Come in. The others are waiting.”
Virgil said, “Ah, man.”
