Hidden Prey

sleeve out of the closet. “Not a bad coat, either.”
    “Maybe he had a rain suit.”
     
    W HEN L UCAS PULLED the coat sleeve out of the closet, Nadya looked that way from across the room. She frowned, walked to the closet, squatted, and pushed the trench coat to one side.
    “What?” Lucas asked.
    “Look.” She pointed, and Lucas squatted beside her. A single blaze orange hunter’s glove was lying in the back of the closet.
    “Sonofabitch.”
     
    L UCAS CALLED A NDY H ARMON . “We’ve broken it down. The killer was a guy named Roger Walther. That’s the Walther family on thechart I gave you. We’ll send you the details on him, and we’ve got all the local cops looking for him, but it’s time you guys got in on the act. He’s running, and he’s got twelve hours on us, and he’s probably headed for Russia down the old spy route. Could be in Canada, so somebody’s got to talk to the Mounties.”
    “Got a picture?” the FBI man asked.
    “I’ll get one, and we’ll scan it and send it to you. We’ve got a driver’s-license photo that’s three years old, not too good, but I’m gonna hit his wife in a few minutes, assuming she’s still there and still alive, and I’ll get whatever I can and send it along.”
    “Excellent. Excellent job, Davenport. I’ll put it in my report.”
    Lucas hung up. “Fuckhead,” he said.
     
    “L ET ’ S GO ,” Lucas told Nadya. “Let’s go talk to Janet Walther.”
    Andreno went to get his jacket, and as he did, another car pulled off the road outside. A middle-aged woman got out with a plastic sack in her hand, and walked down toward the house and talked to a deputy parked on the road at the end of the walk.
    The deputy came to the house and said to Lucas, “It’s Harbinson’s stepsister. Corine Maples. She’s got a picture of Harbinson with Roger Walther.”
    “Bring her in.”
     
    T HE WOMAN , DRY - EYED but nervous, asked Lucas, “Is she still here?”
    “Yes. I’m afraid we can’t let you in.”
    “No, no, I don’t want to see her . . . But I have a funeral home, the name of the funeral home.”
    “See the guy over there?” Lucas asked, pointing to a deputy. “That’sMax Anderson; he’s the deputy in charge of the scene. Give it to him. She’ll be taken to the medical school first, for an autopsy, and then . . . Well, talk to Max.”
    “Okay,” she said. “I knew Roger was bad news, the first time I met him.”
    “You have a photograph?”
    She fumbled in her plastic bag and pulled out a photograph taken in a backyard with a wooden fence, a summer scene with a flower bed and, partly visible to one side, a plaster Virgin Mary with her hands spread over a pond the size of a garbage-can lid. Two people stood in the foreground, squinting into the sun and the camera.
    “We had a barbecue and they came,” Maples said.
    “Does he still look like this?”
    “Oh, yes. I saw them on the street two weeks ago. That picture is only two months old.”
    “He looks older than I expected. I thought he was right around forty.”
    She bobbed her head. “He is, but, he’s had a pretty hard life. He smokes and he drinks and he stays out all hours. You can’t drink two or three six-packs a day and not have it get to you.”
    “Doesn’t look fat.”
    “No, no, he’s never been fat. But he’s not healthy. We tried to tell him . . .”
    “We need to send this picture to the FBI,” Lucas said. “If you don’t mind . . .”
    “He’ll know it came from me,” Maples said nervously. “He’s still loose, with a gun.”
    “We’ll just use the head portion,” Lucas said. “And we think he’s running. It’s pretty unlikely that he’s still around here.”
    “Okay . . .” But nervous.
    “Do you know Janet Walther? Roger’s ex-wife?”
    “No. Roger wasn’t from here, he was from Hibbing. I never met the family.”
    “Okay. Let me introduce you to Max. He’ll fill you in . . .”
     
    O UT IN THE CAR , Lucas drove silently while Nadya and Andreno chatted. Andreno noticed after a while, and said, “What?”
    “That fuckin’ glove,” Lucas said.
    “What?”
    “The fuckin’ glove puts it on Walther. The shells in the bedroom could have been left behind by anyone, but that fuckin’ glove . . .”
    “That’s bad?”
    Lucas said, “I run three miles most days. I try to keep it at twenty-one minutes. Some days, I run five or six.”
    “You’re my hero,” Andreno said.
    “You see that picture of