Hidden Prey

and a nice house,” Nadya ventured.
    “Thank you, honey, for the ‘nice house,’ ” Reynolds said, looking around the kitchen. “Sometimes in the winter, when we get an ice storm, I feel like I’m living in a beer can . . . You guys want some carrot juice? I got some fresh.”
    “No, thanks,” Lucas said, grinning at her. “It’s made out of vegetables.”
    “I would like,” Nadya said. “The vegetables in your restaurants are not so good.”
    “Better in Russia?” Reynolds asked, interested.
    “I should say so,” Nadya said. “Also better in France, in Germany, in Scandinavia, in Italy, in Israel.”
    “I can believe that. Most of our vegetables are designed so they’re cheap to ship,” Reynolds said, as she took a blender pitcher from the refrigerator. “But these are fresh and old-fashioned, right out of the garden, fertilized with genuine horse shit.”
    Lucas brought up the photograph of Burt Walther. Walther was outside his house in Hibbing, looking toward the camera, but not at it. He seemed to be looking at a van driver, while the photo was taken from the back of the van. Lucas turned the computer toward Reynolds, who was pouring the juice. She handed a glass to Nadya, and they both looked at the photo over their glasses. Reynolds sipped and said, “Jeez, it kinda looks like him . . .”
    Lucas had the picture up in Photoshop Elements, and he put the zoom tool on the old man’s face and clicked a couple of times, enlarging it. Reynolds half crouched, looking straight at the screen, and finally said, “That’s the guy. That’s definitely him. Who is he?”
    “Rather not say right at the moment,” Lucas said. He turned the computer around and shut it down.
    “Okay. Spy stuff,” Reynolds said. “Is this the thing that’s gonna get me fired?”
    “We won’t tell if you don’t,” Lucas said.
    “This juice, it is excellent,” Nadya said. “From horse shit? I should try this when I get home. We have much horse shit in Moscow.”
     
    T HE W ALTHERS LIVED in a small house in a working-class neighborhood of Hibbing. Most of the neighbors had gone to vinyl siding, but the Walthers had stuck with the original gray-shingle siding, with white trim gone gray and flaky with age. The small lawn was neatly kept; a sparse foot-wide flower bed, with burgundy petunias, lay along the frontwall under the picture window. A detached garage leaned disconsolately away from the wind; an old bulk-oil tank stuck to the back of the house like a metal leech.
    Lucas had called Andreno as they rolled into town, and was told that he’d been down the street for twenty minutes. “The old man’s there—he went out to his mailbox.”
    When Lucas turned the corner, following the MDX’s navigation system through town, he saw the blue-painted mailbox and pulled to the curb beside it. He saw Andreno’s van parked up the street, where Andreno could see both Walther’s house and the garage behind it.
    “When I knock, stay behind me,” Lucas said.
    “Yes?” She said it with a question mark.
    “In case he’s a nutso Russian spy and comes up shooting. Knocking on doors is the most dangerous thing we do.”
    She stopped smiling when Lucas took his .45 out of its holster, racked a shell into the chamber, and, leaving it cocked, clicked on the safety before slipping it back in its holster.
    “Let’s go,” he said.
     
    B URT W ALTHER WAS standing in the picture window. Lucas saw him as they started up the walk and said out of the side of his mouth, “There he is.”
    Walther was wearing a generic gray sweatshirt and pleated khaki pants. He had his hands in his pockets as he watched them come up the walk, and as they approached the front door, he moved toward it, opening it as they came up to the stoop. Lucas had his ID in his left hand as the door opened. Walther stuck his head out, looked at them with blue-eyed uncertainty, and said with a question mark, as Nadya had, “Yes?”
    “Mr. Walther. My name is Lucas Davenport, and I’m an investigator with the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. We’reinvestigating the death of a Russian seaman in Duluth, and we need to talk to you about it.”
    “Duluth?” The old man—and Lucas could see he was very old—was uncertain, unfocused; his sweatshirt was worn and pilled around the neck, and his khakis were wrinkled and worn.
    “The killing of Rodion Oleshev, although he may have told you his name was Moshalov.”
    “His name?” The old