Broken Prey

don’t have any political clout, but it could come from somewhere else, I suppose.”
    “How about a sense of moral obligation?” Sloan said.
    “Ah, you fuckin’ Republicans, nothing ever makes you happy.”
    “Fuck a bunch of Republicans,” Sloan said. “Anyway, I had Anderson send a whole book over to you by e-mail. You could have your secretary print it out for you before you get there. It’s everything we got, plus some medium-rez pictures from the Larson scene. You can have your co-op guys put it all in the database.”
    “All right. I’ll be over there by ten. Want to hook up, say ten-thirty?”
    “You got the case now?”
    “I’m giving it to myself,” Lucas said. “If they want to put somebody else on it, too, that’s okay.”
    “See you at ten-thirty,” Sloan said. “By the way, I got my papers.”
    Lucas didn’t immediately track the reference. “Huh?”
    “My retirement papers. I got them. I’m filling them out,” Sloan said.
    “Ah, for Christ’s sake, Sloan, you aren’t gonna quit.”
    “Yeah, I am. Talk to you at ten-thirty.”
     
    LUCAS CALLED HIS SECRETARY and told her to print out Sloan’s murder file, and get it to the co-op group. Then he dressed, went downstairs, into a silent house, sat at the bar in the kitchen, and ate cholesterol-free, fat-free, carbohydrate-free, salt-free, puffed oatmeal air with a splash of fat-free milk. Still hungry, he went, feeling furtive, even though Weather was six thousand miles away, into Weather’s home office, opened the file cabinet, picked up a stack of medical reports, found the gold box of Godiva birthday bonbons hidden under them, stole the two he figured would be least conspicuously missing, and let them melt in his mouth as he headed for the door.
    The second one had a maraschino cherry in the center: excellent. Feeling much better and hardly guilty at all, he wheeled out onto Mississippi River Boulevard, over to Cretin, and down to I-94, playing with the Porsche’s engine as he went.
     
    CAROL WAS POKING FRANTICALLY at her computer when Lucas arrived at the office. Lucas ran the BCA’s Office of Regional Research, a bullshit title invented by Rose Marie Roux created to cover up the fact that he did what he wanted, or what the governor wanted him to. A fixer, in some ways.
    He had two full-time investigators, and since the office was so small, Carol, technically a secretary, was effectively the office manager. She was a cheerful young woman with auburn hair and blue eyes and freckles, black plastic glasses, a little too heavy, and sometimes a little too loud. Despite her cheerful personality, she’d had a reputation around the Department of Public Safety for ruthless efficiency. Lucas had stolen her from the Highway Patrol, in a transfer arranged by Rose Marie Roux as a payoff for solving a series of horse shootings.
    She propped herself in the doorway as Lucas hung up his jacket: “You didn’t sign the overtime.”
    “You sign it,” he said. She’d have to forge his signature.
    “I did. I’m just saying. You gotta start signing it, or someday they’re gonna put me in jail. Also, Lanscombe called and said that Del put eight hundred miles on a state car last weekend.”
    “Ah, jeez, could you handle that? Make up some shit and tell him I said it.”
    “You want me to kick Del’s ass?”
    “Find out what he was doing, anyway. You get that stuff from Minneapolis?”
    “Yup.” She’d bound the paper into a blue report cover. “Photos are in the back. I borrowed the photo printer down in crime scene. You should buy one for us. You’re rich enough.”
    He ignored the suggestion. “Is Del coming in?”
    “He was in. He went back out on the Ransom thing. Dannie’s with him. Husband and wife.”
    “Christ, like Jack Sprat and his old lady.”
    She smiled, a white-tooth Wisconsin dairy smile as Lucas headed into his office: “But who’d suspect they were cops?” she called after him.
    Ransom was not a payoff. Ransom was a man who’d run a series of home-improvement scams with the help of a local lawyer and an outstate bank. Del and Dannie Carson were about to take out a second mortgage on a house they supposedly owned, to pay for a new roof, windows, garage door, and driveway, work that would never be done, even though the money had been paid. When the bank came around to foreclose on the mortgage, two or three months down the road, the governor would hold a press conference. Ransom would go to jail, the