Hidden Prey

Carpenter said, beaming at Kelly.
    Kelly said to Lucas, “Reggie used to take the occasional bet.”
    “Ah.”
    “In the month of November nineteen ninety-nine, he took bets on one thousand seven hundred and fifty-six occasions,” Kelly continued.
    “I never would have suspected,” Lucas said.
    “I was just . . . a little thoughtless,” Carpenter said. “So what’s going on?”
    “UMD hockey,” Kelly said. “Do you remember a guy named RogerWalther? Would have been a second-stringer, maybe . . . what? Twenty-some years ago?”
    Carpenter frowned, tinkled the high C key a few times, then nodded, “Yeah . . . I do. He played forward, but he was a little slow with the stick, and about six feet short getting down the ice. But he could play. What’d he do?”
    “Have you seen him?” Lucas asked.
    “No, not for years. I think—I think, but I’m not sure—that he once was selling cars at Landry’s, but that would have been years ago.”
    “Not since.”
    “Nope. What’d he do?”
    “What’s he like, physically?” Lucas asked. “Fast? Big? Wide? Strong?”
    “About like you,” Carpenter said to Lucas. “Maybe an inch shorter, a couple of pounds heavier.”
    “You think he might be a runner?” Lucas asked. “Like to jog, and so on?”
    “I don’t know. He was a college-level jock. So probably. What’d he do, anyway?”
    “Thanks for your help,” Kelly said. “Stick with the one phone, huh?”
     
    T HEY HAD A few drinks, and Lucas eventually got back to the hotel and slept like a rock.
    The next morning, he was in the shower, feeling a little rocky from the alcohol, when the first call came in, from John Terry, the Virginia police chief.
    “We got a line on Roger Walther. He’s living with a woman named Kelly Harbinson just out west of town. I got an address . . .”
    Lucas took the address and said, “Thanks. I’ll check it out.”
     
    A NDRENO AND N ADYA came over for breakfast. The rain was still falling, and they all looked out over the lake as he told them about thecall; there were no boats visible at all, and no separation between lake and sky. “I’m getting pretty damned tired of driving back and forth,” Lucas said. “Everything is up on the Range—I’m gonna check out of here tomorrow morning and find a place up there.”
    “Me also,” Nadya said. “This process feels like it is coming to an end.”
    Andreno nodded. “Roger’ll give us something. Has to. Did you see the paper this morning?”
    “The Star Tribune ,” Lucas said.
    “The local paper has a story from Spivak’s lawyer. You’re gonna take some pressure at the preliminary hearing.”
    “We’ve got enough for the preliminary,” Lucas said.
    “Be a pretty fucked-up trial, though,” Andreno said.
    “Somebody’ll crack before we get to trial. I hope.”
     
    W ITH THE FOCUS on Roger Walther, they all rode to Virginia together. Lucas and Andreno chatted about another case they’d worked on, in St. Louis, and they compared promotion and salary practices with Nadya. Nadya’s salary was small by American standards, but she paid almost nothing for housing, medical care, insurance, or any of the other dozens of possibilities that Americans dealt with. The one problem, she said, was food. “We don’t eat so much in restaurants as you do; and the food in restaurants that I can afford is not so good anyway.”
    “And you don’t have so many signs,” Lucas said.
    She laughed, the first time Lucas had heard her laugh since Reasons was killed. “You are ridiculous here. When we stopped to buy gasoline, on one pump, there were twenty-two signs. On one pump!”
    “I saw you counting,” Lucas said.
    “Stickers,” Andreno said. “They’re called stickers.”
    “But they were signs. Only, small ones.”
     
    T HE RAIN HAD stopped, but everything was still damp and dripping when they arrived at Kelly Harbinson’s place outside Virginia.
    “What a dump,” Andreno said from the backseat. He’d taken his revolver out of its holster, and he put it in his jacket pocket. “Looks like something from a cotton plantation.”
    “Yeah, well . . . his ex-wife said he was like one step off the street,” Lucas said.
    “Wish we had vests,” Andreno said.
    They got out, and like Andreno, Lucas put his .45 in his jacket pocket, held it in his hand. They told Nadya to wait back off the porch, and then Lucas and Andreno trooped across the wooden stoop and knocked on the screen door. The