Broken Prey

them. Find out how much he left in his account . . . looks like he’s only got one account, checking. A month ago, he had . . . six thousand.”
    Nordwall went to make the call, and Lucas sat down at the desk and brought up the computer, a Dell tower. The computer wanted a password before it would work. Lucas shut it down.
    Sloan came in with a handful of paper: “He cut out newspaper stories on the killings.”
    “All right, all right, that’s good,” Lucas said. He thumbed through the stories—they’d been cut from a half dozen papers. They were rolling downhill now. “He was collecting them. Better and better.”
    The deputy came in: “There’s a gun safe in the back bedroom, in a closet. It was open. A rifle and two shotguns.”
    “There’s a reloading machine down in the basement,” Lucas said. “Run down and see what kinds of dies he has . . . see if there’s any brass lying around.”
    The deputy disappeared, and Sloan asked, “Anything in the bills?”
    “He buys all his gas in Mankato . . . he bought one tank in the Cities, in Bloomington, right down by the mall. So . . . that ain’t anything.”
    The deputy came back: “There’s brass for a .40 and a .45.”
    “So he’s got two pistols,” Sloan said.
     
    AND NORDWALL CAME BACK : “O’Donnell cleaned out his account yesterday afternoon. He took out five thousand, and later in the day, he hit his ATM for another five hundred.”
    “Do they know . . . ?”
    “It was him. Personally. They know him. Told the teller that he was buying a car, and he’d sell one next week and put it all back.”
    Sloan looked at Lucas and nodded.
    “I put out a pickup on the Acura, but just locally,” Nordwall said. “You want to go statewide?”
    Lucas looked around the house: they had the trophy news stories, and a spot of blood. A missing man, missing money, and some missing clothes. “Yeah. Let’s go everywhere,” he said.
     
    NORDWALL CALLED INTO his office, staying in touch. Lucas heard him say, “Well, Jesus Christ, just lie about it. Later we can say you hadn’t been clued in. Yeah, lie. And if they ask you if I told you to lie, lie about that.”
    “What the hell was that?”
    “A local reporter called and asked if we were looking at a staff member at St. John’s.”
    “Ah, Jesus,” Lucas said.
    “Wasn’t us,” Nordwall said. “It’s the goddamn hospital. That place leaks like a sieve.”
    Lucas thought about it for a minute, then said to Nordwall. “Let’s go take a walk around the yard.”
    Nordwall said, “What?”
     
    OUTSIDE, LUCAS SAID , “I didn’t want your deputy hearing this. I just don’t want to leave you hanging in the wind, you got that election coming up . . . So now you’re gonna be one of about seven people in the state who know it. You gotta keep your mouth shut. I mean, don’t tell your wife.”
    Nordwall looked at him with a bit of skepticism. “You know something that important?”
    Lucas said, “A few days ago, some fishermen pulled a body out of the Minnesota River up in Le Sueur County, by Kasota. It had been in the water a month or so.”
    “I heard about it. It’s right across the county line. You think O’Donnell did it?”
    “I’m sure our killer did it, O’Donnell or whoever,” Lucas said. He pivoted to face Nordwall. “The body was . . . Charlie Pope.”
    Nordwall’s mouth dropped open. After a few seconds, he said, “You gotta be shittin’ me,” and Lucas had to smile.
     
    LUCAS EXPLAINED. Going back in the door, Nordwall muttered, “You’re playing a dangerous game, Lucas. It’s the right thing, but if you don’t get this guy . . . the media are gonna scalp you.”
    “We’re gonna keep it quiet for just a couple more days,” Lucas said. “Let’s see if we can jump O’Donnell before he knows we’re looking for him. We’ll check and make sure we’ve got all his cars. We’ll get the tags for the MDX and mugs out to all the highway-patrol troopers here, down in Iowa, Wisconsin, and Illinois, out in the Dakotas. Check the airport and see if the MDX is there, and if we can spot a plane ticket. What else . . . ?”
    They worked out a program and started running it.

21
    AN HOUR AFTER Lucas got back to BCA headquarters, the cops at Minneapolis–St. Paul International called and said they had the MDX. “We haven’t opened it,” the cop said. “I can see what looks like a parking ticket on the floor—that’d give us an exact