Secret Prey

not—’’
    ‘‘Yes, it is. They got fancy names, but I talked to a guy at the university, and brother . . .’’ He tossed them on Lucas’s desk. ‘‘. . . them’s opium poppies.’’
    ‘‘Aw, man.’’ Now Lucas was rubbing his face. Tired. Always tired now.
    ‘‘The hell with the old ladies,’’ Sloan said. ‘‘Let’s get out of here.’’
    ‘‘I’ll talk to you later,’’ Lucas said to Del. ‘‘In the meantime, find something dangerous to do, for Christ’s sake.’’
    LUCAS AND SLOAN TOOK LUCAS’S NEW CHEVY TAHOE: Kresge’s body, they’d been told, was off-road.
    ‘‘I’m not gonna push you about being fucked up,’’ Sloan said. ‘‘Just let me know if there’s anything I can do.’’
    ‘‘Yeah, I will,’’ Lucas said.
    ‘‘And you oughta think about medication . . .’’
    ‘‘Yeah, yeah, yeah . . .’’
    ‘‘Is . . . How’s Weather?’’
    ‘‘Still in therapy. She’s better without me, and gets worse when I’m around. And she’s making more friends that I’m cut off from. She’s putting together a new life and I’m out of it,’’ Lucas said.
    ‘‘Christ.’’
    ‘‘When she moved out,’’ Lucas said, ‘‘she left her dress in the closet. The green one, three thousand bucks. The wedding dress.’’
    ‘‘Maybe it means she’s coming back.’’
    ‘‘I don’t think so. I think she abandoned it.’’ Much of the trip north was made in gloomy silence, through the remnants of the autumn’s glorious color change; but the end was coming, the dead season.
    JACOB KRAUSE, THE GARFIELD COUNTY SHERIFF, WAS squatting next to the body, talking to an assistant medical examiner, when he saw Lucas and Sloan walking down the ridge toward them. They were accompanied by a fat man in a blaze-orange hunting coat and a uniformed deputy leading a German shepherd. The deputy pointed at Krause, and turned and went back toward the house.
    ‘‘Is this him?’’ Krause asked.
    The AME turned his head and said, ‘‘Yeah. Davenport’s the big guy. The guy in the tan coat is Sloan, he’s one of the heavyweights in Homicide. I don’t know the fat guy.’’
    ‘‘He’s one of ours,’’ the sheriff said. He had the mournful face of a blue-eyed bloodhound, and had a small brown mole, a beauty mark, on the right end of his upper lip. He sighed and added, ‘‘Unfortunately.’’
    A few feet away, two crime scene guys were packing up a case of lab samples; up the hill, two funeral home assistants waited with a gurney. The body would be taken to Hennepin County for autopsy. Krause looked a last time at Kresge’s paper-white face, then stood up and headed back up the path. He took it slowly, watching as Davenport and Sloan and the fat man dropped down the trail like Holmes and Watson on a Sunday stroll with Oliver Hardy. When they got closer, Krause noticed that Davenport was wearing loafers with tassels, that his socks were a black and white diamond pattern, and that the loafers matched his leather jacket. He sighed again, the quick judgment adding to his general irritation.
    ‘‘HELLO. I’M LUCAS DAVENPORT . . .’’ LUCAS STUCK OUT his hand and the sheriff took it, a little surprised at the heft and hardness of it; and the sadness in Davenport’s eyes. ‘‘And Detective Sloan,’’ the sheriff finished, shaking hands with Sloan. ‘‘I’m Jake Krause, the sheriff.’’ He looked past them at the fat man. ‘‘I see you’ve met Arne.’’
    ‘‘Back by the cars,’’ the fat man said. ‘‘What do we got, Jake?’’
    ‘‘Crime scene, Arne. I’d just as soon you don’t come up too close. We’re trying to minimize the damage to the immediate area.’’
    ‘‘Okay,’’ the fat man said. He craned his neck a little, down toward the orange-clad body, the AME hovering over it, the crime scene boys with their case.
    ‘‘Accident?’’ Lucas asked.
    Krause shrugged. ‘‘C’mon and take a look, give me an opinion. Arne, you better wait.’’
    ‘‘Sure thing . . .’’
    ON THE WAY DOWN TO THE BODY, LUCAS ASKED, ‘‘Arne’s a problem?’’
    ‘‘He’s the county commission chairman. He got the job because nobody trusted him to actually supervise a department or the budget,’’ Krause said. ‘‘He’s also a reserve deputy. He’s not a bad guy, just a pain in the ass. And he likes hanging around dead people.’’
    ‘‘I know guys like that,’’ Lucas said. He looked up at the tree stand as they approached the