Stolen Prey

will ask that you deport them. Illegal aliens.”
    Lucas said, “Huh.”
    Rivera smiled at him. “We don’t get rough with them.”
    “Good to hear it,” Lucas said. There was a little doubt in his voice.
    “We pull down their trousers, then we bring in the garbage disposal,” Rivera said. “They always talk. Mexican men are very adverse … adverse, correct? … adverse to having their personal parts placed in a garbage disposal. So, as we work to get it plugged in and operating … we always have to work at it, we invent problems, to invent time for them to watch the machine … drop some walnuts in, to test it … They start talking. We never have to get rough.”
    Lucas said, “Hmm.” Then, “We had three Mexican guys check into a hotel here a couple days ago, and then they took off.”
    Rivera was interested.
    A T THE B ROOKS HOUSE , Rivera wandered away from the driveway, to walk slowly around to the back of the house to look out at the lake. “This is very nice. I could retire here, on this lake.”
    “You’d freeze in the winter.”
    “So, I go to Argentina in the winter.” He looked at Lucas and added, “I speak Spanish.” He looked back at the lake. “In the summer, this would be very pleasant. Sit on the grass with a fishing pole, catch some fish, throw them back. Get a hammock, take a siesta. Drink some Cuba Libres. Many Cuba Libres.”
    Lucas let him talk, then followed him back around the house. Martínez, the assistant, was always three steps behind them.
    T HE DOORS of the house were closed against the summer heat, and when the Wayzata cop pushed the door open to let them in, they were hit by the odor, and by the cold. The odor was purely one of old blood and death, not decomposition—the inside temperature, Lucas thought, must be down in the fifties—but it stank anyway.
    The dead looked as though they’d been carved from wax, all the blood having drained to the bottom of the bodies, that blood that wasn’t soaked into the carpet around them. As they steppedinside, Martínez took some tissues from her purse and passed two to Rivera, who held them to his nose. Martínez did the same, and Lucas could smell the thin floral scent of perfumed bathroom tissues.
    Rivera and Martínez had some experience of mass murder: neither one of them flinched at the sight of the four dead. Lucas introduced Rivera to Shaffer, who said he was pleased to meet them, and then took the two of them around the room, to the individual bodies, working through the established murder sequence.
    When they were done, Rivera asked Martínez, “Criminales?”
    She nodded. “Yes, I believe so. That work that they did in Agua Prieta. That looked like this. Very exactly.” She pinched the tissue to her nose.
    “What was Agua Prieta?” Shaffer asked.
    “Agua Prieta is a city near the border,” she said. “There was another family killed like this. The Criminales learned, or thought they learned, that the family was spotting for another gang, and so they made an example of them.”
    “You have any names associated with that?”
    Rivera nodded. “Six names, although we think there were only three killers. We think it was three of the six, but we don’t know which three.”
    “You have photos? Mug shots?”
    “Of four, but we don’t know how many are correct,” Rivera said.
    “We’ll take them all, put them on TV,” Lucas said. “If anybody shows up to object, we apologize and deport them.”
    “That would be excellent,” Rivera said.
    R IVERA SPENT a half hour prowling through the murder scene, and watched when the ME’s people pried the bodies off the floor and bagged them. Martínez turned away from that and went outside. Lucas followed and said, “It’s ugly,” and then, because TV Mexicans usually added it to their affirmative sentences, he added, “No?”
    “Yes. I see so much. Inspector Rivera is called to many of these.”
    “How long have you worked together?” Lucas asked.
    “Well … four years. But we don’t work together. He works, I assist. I am good with the laptop and the iPad. He is the thinker.”
    “Are you a policewoman?” Lucas asked.
    “Technically. I am a sergeant, mm, how do you say it? First class, I think. But I do not arrest people. I have my iPad and a MacBook.”
    “Like a researcher.” Lucas thought of his researcher, Sandy, who had little interest in street work, or becoming a certified cop.
    “Yes.”
    “Inspector Rivera … sounds like he really has