Invisible Prey

rang off, and dialed Miller, the woman he’d talked to at Oak Walk. The cops had been taking her inside when Lucas and Smith left for the raid.
    She came up on the phone: “This is Shelley…”
    “Shelley, this is Lucas. Anything?”
    “Lucas, I’m not sure. There’s just too much stuff lying around. God, it makes me want to cry. You know, my great-uncle is in one of the portraits with Connie’s husband’s father…” She sniffed. “But…Connie always liked to wear nice earrings and I think she probably kept those at her bedside. She had diamonds, emeralds, rubies, sapphires, pearls…uh, probably a couple of more things. They weren’t small. For the single-stone earrings, I’d say two or three carats each. Then she had some dangly ones, with smaller stones; and she always wore them. I’d see her out working on the lawn, grubbing around in the dirt, and she’d have very nice earrings on. She also had a blue singleton diamond, a wedding gift from her husband, that she always wore around her neck on a platinum chain, probably eight or ten carats, and her engagement ring, also blue, a fragment of the neck stone, I think, probably another five carats. I really doubt that she locked them up every night.”
    After digesting it for a moment, Lucas asked, “How much?”
    “Oh, I don’t know. I really don’t. It would depend so much on quality—but the Buchers wouldn’t get cheap stones. I wouldn’t be surprised if, huh. I don’t know. A half million?”
    “Holy shit.”
    “I thought you should know.”
     
    T HE CAFÉ’S OWNER, Karen Palm, came by, patted him on the shoulder. She was a nice-looking woman, big smile and dark hair on her shoulders, an old pal; as many St. Paul cops hung out at the café as Minneapolis cops hung out at Sloan’s place on the other side of the river.
    “Were you with the SWAT team?” she asked.
    “Yeah. You heard about the Bucher thing.”
    “Terrible. Did you get the guy?” she asked.
    “I don’t think so,” Lucas said. “He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time…”
    “Well, shoot…”
    They chatted for a minute, catching up, then Carol called and Palm went back to work. Carol said, “I’m switching you over to McMahon.”
    McMahon was a BCA investigator. He came on and said, “I looked at the people from the halfway house. I’ve run them all against the feds and our own records, and it’s, uh, difficult.”
    “What’s difficult?” Lucas asked.
    “These guys were cherry-picked for their good behavior. That’s the most famous halfway house in the Cities. If that place flies, nobody can complain about one in their neighborhood. So, what you’ve got is a bunch of third-time DUI arrests and low-weight pot dealers from the university. No heavy hitters.”
    “There can’t be nobody…”
    “Yes, there can,” McMahon said. “There’s not a single violent crime or sex crime against any of them. There’s not even a hit-and-run with the DUIs.”
    “Not a lot of help,” Lucas said.
    McMahon said, “The guy who runs the place is named Dan Westchester. He’s there every night until six. You could talk to him in person. I’ll run a few more levels on the records checks, but it doesn’t look like there’ll be much.”
     
    L UCAS DROPPED a five-dollar bill on the table, stretched, thought about it, then drove back to Brown’s house. Brown was in the back of a squad, his girlfriend and her daughter sitting on a glider on the front porch, the girlfriend looking glumly at the busted door.
    Smith was standing in the kitchen doorway and Lucas took him aside.
    “I’ve got a friend who knew Bucher. She says Bucher used to wear some diamonds, big ones…” Lucas said. He explained about Miller, and her thoughts about the jewelry. Smith said, “A half million? If it’s a half million, no wonder they didn’t take the ATM cards. A half million could be pros.”
    “Unless it was just a couple of dopers who got lucky,” Lucas said. “There could be some little dolly dancing on Hennepin Avenue with a ten-carat stone around her neck, thinking it’s glass.”
    “So…”
    “These guys take the game box, but not the games. They take diamonds and swoopy chairs and a painting, but they also take a roll of stamps and a DVD player and a printer and a laptop. It’s not adding up, John.”
    “Brown’s not adding up, either,” Smith said. “He’s an alcoholic, he’s on the bottle, really bad, and there’s a liquor cabinet full of the best