Buried Prey

the lake, and a kayak was overturned and tied on top of the dock.
    Lucas got out of the car at the same time Childress did, and the deputy said, “I thought, God almighty, that can’t be a cop driving a Porsche. That explains the fast trip.” Childress checked out the car, then said, “You got lights.”
    “Don’t use them much, but they’ve been handy a time or two,” Lucas said. “Took a little heat from the highway patrol a couple of years ago.”
    “Yup, those guys are your eager beavers when it comes to spirited driving,” Childress said. Then he laughed, a short little bark, and said, “I heard that ‘spirited driving’ thing on that British car show.”
    “No sign of Hanson’s body?” Lucas asked.
    “Not yet. His daughter is at a motel down in Tower. I told her you were stopping by; she’s gonna come over, too. She’s interested in why you’re interested.”
    Lucas nodded. “Okay. The fact is, I’m running down a thin thread on the killing of an old friend of mine in Minneapolis, a detective named Marcy Sherrill.”
    “Read about that,” Childress said. “That’s . . . pretty awful. You think it’s connected here?”
    “I don’t know. Like I said, I’m running down a thread. Where’s Hanson’s boat?”
    “Here, in the garage. I got the key.” He jangled a ring of keys, and led the way to the garage door.
    The garage was no more than an old weathered shed, just big enough to keep snow off the boat and a collection of lawn care equipment, including a riding mower and a rototiller. There were axes and hoes and weed whips, a big block of wood, a chain saw sitting on a shelf; and it all smelled pleasantly of gasoline, oil, and grass.
    The boat was an ordinary, ten–or fifteen-year-old aluminum fishing boat, a Lund with a red stripe down the side, scratched up like most fishing boats, from banging into docks. It was small for the lake, but perfectly usable, especially for walleye fishing, which is mostly done sitting down. As Virgil had said, the motor was nothing you’d want to pee over, and the boat-bottom was curved enough that peeing over the side would also be fairly unsteady, especially with the motor running.
    As he was looking at the boat, Lucas gave Childress a brief explanation of Hanson’s connection to the Jones case. He concluded with, “We know that the Jones killer is still active, and that he killed Marcy. We know that Hanson died the day after the Jones girls’ bodies were found.”
    “That’s a pretty heavy coincidence,” Childress said.
    “Yes, it is. But it could be nothing but that,” Lucas said.
     
     
    THE BOAT HAD NOTHING for Lucas, except the feeling that falling out of that particular boat, on a quiet lake, would be stupid.
    “He got any fishing buddies around here?” Lucas asked.
    “Two guys . . .” Childress took a little paper notebook out of his pocket, thumbed it, and said, “A guy name Tony Cole and another guy named Bill Kushner. They’re golfing buddies of his, and they fish together. Couple of older guys, like him. They live out here . . . down the way.”
    “Ex-cops?”
    “I don’t think so. I don’t know about Kushner, except that he’s retired. Cole used to work at UPS out of Duluth. He’s retired, too.”
    “They think he fell out of the boat?”
    “They think it’s possible, but they don’t know,” Childress said.
    “You know if they’re up here?”
    “Yeah, they are. I can take you around after we get done here,” the deputy said.
    “I appreciate that,” Lucas said.
    As he spoke, they heard the crunch of a car’s tires on gravel, and Childress said, “That’s probably Miz Sedakis, that’s Hanson’s daughter.”
    “He got any other kids?”
    “Got a son. He was up here, I guess, I didn’t meet him.”
    They walked outside, and found a fortyish woman getting out of a gunmetal-gray Lexus RX350; she was tall, and fleshy, with blond-tinted hair and oversized sunglasses.
    “Clark,” she said. And to Lucas, “You’re Agent Davenport?”
    “Yes.” They shook hands, and she asked, “Why are you up here?”
    He told her, succinctly, about Hanson’s work on the Jones case, and then his disappearance the day after they were found. “It’s probably a coincidence, but it’s an odd coincidence. When we were doing the investigation, we had guys running all over the place, on the smallest pieces of information. On rumors. Anything. I wondered if maybe he talked to somebody, who might have