Invisible Prey

people wouldn’t have looked, and that the comely teenager had been asked (and agreed) to model white cotton thongs and a half-shell bra in a casino hotel in Mille Lacs. Ignace did not actually say that little pink nipples were peeking out, but you got the idea.
    Coombs moved to page seven.
     
    A MITY A NDERSON was charged with receiving stolen goods, but in Wentz’s opinion, nothing would hold up. “We don’t have any witnesses,” he complained. “They’re all dead.”
     
    T HE D ES M OINES prosecutor who had gotten a conviction in the Toms’ case said, “I’m still convinced that Mr. Child was involved in the murder,” but the tide was going out, and the state attorney general said the case would be revisited. Sandy spent a week in Iowa leading a staff attorney through the paper accumulated in Minnesota.
     
    T HE ESTATES of Claire Donaldson, Jacob Toms, and Constance Bucher sued the estates of Leslie and Jane Widdler for recovery of stolen antiques, for wrongful death, and for a laundry list of other offenses that guaranteed that all the Widdler assets would wind up in the hands of the heirs of Donaldson, Toms, and Bucher, et al., and an assortment of lawyers. The Widdler house on Minnehaha Creek was put up for sale, under the supervision of the Hennepin County District Court, as part of the consolidation of Widdler assets.
     
    L UCAS ASKED Flowers again, “Why in the hell did you shoot her in the foot?”
    Flowers shook his head. “I was aiming for center-of-mass.”
    “Jesus Christ, man, you gotta spend some time on the range,” Lucas said, his temper working up.
    “I don’t want to shoot anyone,” Flowers said. “If you manage things right, you shouldn’t have to.”
    “You believe in management?” Lucas asked, getting hot. “Fuckhead? You believe in management?”
    “I didn’t get my ass run over by a car,” Flowers snapped. “I managed that.”
    Del, who was there, said, “Let’s back this off.”
    Lucas, that night, said to Weather, “That fuckin’ Flowers.”
    She said, “Yeah, but you gotta admit, he’s got a nice ass.”
     
    A FTER A brief professional discussion, the museums that owned the Armstrong quilts decided that the sewing basket had probably been Armstrong’s and that the quilts were genuine.
    Coombs said, “They know that’s wrong.”
    Lucas said, “Shhh…” He was visiting, on the quiet, two weeks after the shooting of Widdler; they were sitting on the back patio, drinking rum lemonades with maraschino cherries.
    She said, “You know, I had time not to shoot her. I did it on purpose.”
    Lucas: “Even if I’d heard you say that, I’d ask, ‘Would you do it again if you thought you’d spend thirty years in prison?’”
    Coombs considered, then said, “I don’t know. Sitting there in jail, the…practicalities sort of set in. But the way it worked out, I’m not sorry I did it.”
    “You should go down to the cathedral and light a couple of candles,” Lucas said. “If there wasn’t an election coming, Wentz might have told everybody to go fuck themselves and you’d have a hard road to go.”
    “I’d have been convicted?”
    “Oh…probably not,” Lucas said, taking a sip of lemonade. “With Flowers and me testifying for you, you’d have skated it, I think. Probably would have had to give your house to an attorney, though.”
    She looked around her house, a pleasant place, mellow, redolent of the scent of candles and flowers and herbs of the smokable kind, and said, “I was hoping to leave it to Gabriella, when I was ninety and she was seventy.”
    “I’m sorry,” Lucas said. And he was, right down in his heart. “I’m so sorry.”
     
    A T THE END of the summer, a man named Porfirio Quique Ramírez, an illegal immigrant late of Piedras Negras, was cutting a new border around the lilac hedge on the Widdlers’ side yard, in preparation for the sale of the house. The tip of his spade clanged off something metallic a few inches below the surface. He brushed away the dirt and found a green metal cashbox.
    Porfirio, no fool, turned his back to the house as he lifted it out of the ground, popped open the top, looked inside for five seconds, slammed the lid, stuffed the box under his shirt, pinned it there with his elbow, and walked quickly out to his boss’s truck. All the way out, he was thinking, “Let them be real.”
    They were. Two weeks later, he crossed the Rio Grande again, headed south. All but three of the gold coins were