Extreme Prey: A Novel Part 13

"Catch, h.e.l.l. We'll kill him," Stevens said. "One more thing. We believe Davenport is correct in his a.s.sessment about the need for investigators to push this. Robertson"-he jerked a thumb at Robertson-"tells me they've got a list of a hundred and eighty contacts to work through, who might identify these people. That'll take some time. We're a.s.signing four more men to it, to help. Any more than that and they'd start stumbling over each other. So we'll have five guys looking for these people, plus Davenport. I have to say, though, our information on this is thin. We don't even know for sure that the threat exists. We've jumped to some extreme conclusions based on Governor Henderson's momentary contact with these people."

Henderson: "We do have two murders in Mount Pleasant. And a car chase in Davenport."

"Yes. We do," Stevens said. "Those would seem to be validating incidents."

"Seem to be," Bowden said. She turned to Henderson: "You're not trying to run me out of the state?"

"No, of course not," Henderson said.

"You could be lying," Bowden said. "You lie well."

"Don't we all?" Henderson asked, with a smile.

Bowden turned away from him and said, "Okay. I think we have enough information. I will have my staff call everybody with my decision on what I'm going to do. I will have them call by . . ."

She looked at Clay, who said, "Five o'clock?"

"Five o'clock," Bowden said. "You can all go home to dinner. Now, I'd like a few minutes to speak privately with Governor Henderson, and Neil-how are you, Neil?-and Mr. Davenport and Norm and Sally. We'll open the room back up for coffee and cookies in a moment."

- THOSE NOT CHOSEN shuffled out of the room, and when they were gone, and the door closed, Bowden said, "Norm and Sally, I want you to start setting up two appearance tracks, one for here in Iowa, one for New Hamps.h.i.+re. We'll make the final decision on whether to go to the state fair, four days from now. If we decide to call off the state fair walk, we'll need a solid explanation, involving a security threat. Something that people will take seriously, so they'll know I didn't just blow them off. In the meantime, I'll want to be set to go to New Hamps.h.i.+re, if we do call it off here. Everybody got that?"

Everybody nodded and Lucas asked, "Are you going to tell the Iowa cops?"

She shook her head: "Not yet. We'll call them up, tell them I've decided to go to the fair. I want them to keep the pressure up. I expect you all to keep your mouths shut about that. n.o.body knows we're ready to call it off, until we do."

Everybody nodded again and Bowden said to Henderson, "Elmer, I greatly appreciate what you've done and we are now taking this with the utmost seriousness. Thank you." She looked at her cell phone. "Okay. We're good on time, but we've got to move along. Let's move along. Let's go."

- WHEN THEY WERE GONE, Henderson said to those who were left, "She's never had any trouble making decisions."

"How often are they the right ones?" Lucas asked.

Henderson flashed him his campaign smile. "That's always a key question, isn't it?"

"When a gun's involved, it is," Lucas said.

THIRTEEN.

After Bowden's departure, and when all the others had drifted back into the room, Lucas took Robertson aside and asked about the additional four investigators.

"It won't be in the next five minutes," Robertson said. "There'll be a meeting tomorrow in Des Moines and they'll decide who the four are, and then they'll work out what they're going to do . . . We might see one or two of them the day after tomorrow."

"That's how I had it figured," Lucas said. "Let's. .h.i.t the lists now. Stay in touch. If you get a likely possibility, call me. I can be anywhere you are in less than two hours, and I don't want you walking up to a bunch of killers on your own."

"You got that, for sure," Robertson said. "If I were you, I'd stick to the ones right here in Iowa City. There are a bunch of them. If we don't get anything from those, we'll be able to get at the scattered ones quicker, when we have help. I've got a cl.u.s.ter out along I-80 and I'll work on those."

"Good," Lucas said. "Every time you get to a place, message me, and every time you leave. All I need is the name and 'Arriving,' and then 'Leaving.' I'll do the same thing. That way, when you're shot to death and your body is dumped in the river, I'll know where it happened."

"You are the bluebird of f.u.c.kin' happiness, aren't you?"

- LUCAS CHECKED OUT with everyone: it was barely two-thirty, and he had eight names in Iowa City. He plugged an address into his truck's nav system and started knocking them down. By five-thirty he'd been at all eight; but since it was a workday, he'd only gotten five responses, and one of those was to tell him that the person he was looking for had moved-five years earlier.

Three of the other four followed a pattern.

- A WOMAN NAMED JUNE ELLIS answered the door at the second house he visited-he had no response at the first one. When she asked if he was a police officer, he said, "No," and she said she wouldn't violate anybody's privacy by speaking to him.

"If you send a police officer, I may or may not speak to him, but I'd want an attorney present."

"All I'm trying to do-"

"I know what you're trying to do, and frankly, I don't want to be part of it, in any way," she said. "What if I gave you a name and you took some police officers and went there and killed somebody?"

"We don't-"

"Yes, you do," she said through the crack in the slowly closing door. "Don't you even read the newspapers? The police kill innocent people all the time. I want no part of that."

Click.

Lucas walked away, because he had no choice. He had learned one thing: she wasn't the woman Henderson had seen; she was as tall and thin as a stork.

- AT THE THIRD HOUSE, another woman answered the door, but he wasn't looking for a woman, he was looking for a man named Lance R. Mitch.e.l.l. The woman who answered said she was Mitch.e.l.l's partner, which Lucas took to mean that they weren't married. She said, "Oh, for cripes sakes. Lance isn't a member of the PPPI. Those people are crazy."

"Can you tell me when he'll be home?" Lucas asked.

"His last seminar ends at five, he'll be home at twenty after," she said. "If you come back, you'll be wasting your time."

"He's a student?"

"No, he's a professor. Well, an adjunct professor."

- AT THE FOURTH HOUSE, he was told that Toby Hopkins had moved.

- AT THE FIFTH, Barry Wright told him that he really didn't know many of the party members by both first and last name, and he hadn't been a member long enough to know who had kids and who didn't. "I have to tell you, I'm really not happy with the idea of cooperating with an intelligence-gathering op."

"We're not an intelligence-gathering operation, we're looking for a woman who might present a real danger to Mrs. Bowden," Lucas said.

"Well, whatever you get from me will go into a file, won't it? That file will be shared all over the government intelligence agencies. Next thing I know, I'm on the no-fly list."

Lucas was getting p.i.s.sed: "You overestimate your importance. I'm a guy from Minnesota, trying to find a woman who belongs to the PPPI."

Wright was chewing on a stalk of celery and he didn't stop chewing while talking. "Well, whether or not you're telling the truth, that's what you'd say. I have to tell you, you've got the odor of federal intelligence about you."

"I was a cop in Minnesota, but I'm not even that anymore," Lucas said.

"A cop from Minnesota? In that suit? You need a better act, man."

Wright shut the door.

- n.o.bODY ANSWERED at the sixth house.

- At THE SEVENTH HOUSE, Cheryl Lane never gave him a chance to speak. She answered the door and said, "A friend of mine said you'd come snooping around. I don't believe anything about your story and so as soon as I saw your Mercedes stop outside, I called nine-one-one and reported you. The police will have a car here in a minute."

"Reported me for what?" Lucas asked.

"Prowling. What right do you have to come to my door and demand information?"

"Miz Lane, I haven't even had a chance to open my mouth . . ."

At that moment, a police car turned the corner a block away, and she said, looking over his shoulder, "Here they come. You're in trouble now, boy."

Lucas looked, then stepped back and called Bell Wood on his cell phone. Wood picked up and Lucas gave him a ten-second summary of the problem, and Wood laughed and said, "Don't run. You'll only look even more guilty. They might shoot you in the back."

"Can you help me out?" Lucas asked.

"Help's on the way, babe. I got the Iowa City chief on speed dial."

The cop car pulled up behind Lucas's truck and two cops got out and headed across the lawn to Lane's doorstep. She stepped out on the stoop with her arms crossed.

The younger of the two cops, who had a Ranger-style haircut, almost shaved on the side, a half-inch long on top, looked at Lucas and said, "Come down from there." He had his hand on his pistol and had flipped off the retainer strap.

Lucas stepped down and said, "You'll be getting a call from the Division of Criminal Investigation in the next couple of minutes."

"Yeah, right. a.s.sume the position. On the porch railing," the younger cop said.

"Ah, Jesus," Lucas said.

He turned and put his hands on the railing, and from above them, Lane said, "I believe his story is all a ruse. He's looking for women home alone. When he saw you coming, he called one of his accessories."

The younger of the two cops was giving Lucas a thorough rub, and then the older cop went to his phone, and a few seconds later said, "Knock it off, Rob."

"What?" The younger cop had a hand in Lucas's crotch and didn't stop.

"I said, KNOCK IT OFF."

"What're you talking about?" the younger cop asked, turning to his partner.

"It's the chief. One of the top people in the Division of Criminal Investigation called and said not to mess with this guy."

"You sure it's him they're talking about?"

The older cop held the phone out: "Here. It's the chief. Tell him you think he's full of s.h.i.+t."

"No, that's okay," the younger cop said.

"No, you talk to him," the older cop said. He spoke into the phone again. "Hey, Chief, Bud thinks you're full of s.h.i.+t about this, so I'm going to let you talk to him. Yeah. I'm giving him the phone now."

The older cop gave Bud the phone, and that got straightened out and Lane disappeared inside the house and the older cop asked Lucas, "You really think somebody's going to try to shoot Bowden?"

"I'm not sure what to think," Lucas said. "But that's what I'm afraid of."

"Jesus. Well, good luck, man. Sorry about all of this," he said.

Lucas nodded at him and said to the younger cop, "If you think that haircut makes you look like a Ranger, it doesn't. It makes you look like a f.u.c.kin' wh.o.r.ehouse doork.n.o.b."

"Yeah, well, f.u.c.k you, too," the younger cop said.

The older cop said, "Wh.o.r.ehouse doork.n.o.b? That's good. I'll have to remember that."

- THERE WAS NO RESPONSE at the eighth house, so Lucas circled back to the third house, Lance Mitch.e.l.l's, where Mitch.e.l.l was unloading a sack of groceries in the driveway. His partner came out to listen in, as Lucas explained what he was doing.

"Wait a minute-you're telling me that Joe Likely was murdered?" Mitch.e.l.l asked.

"Yes, last night, along with his girlfriend," Lucas said.

"Aw, s.h.i.+t." Mitch.e.l.l put the sack of groceries down on the driveway. "Aw, G.o.dd.a.m.nit." He looked at his partner and said, "There goes the book."

Lucas: "What book?"

Mitch.e.l.l said, "Look, uh, Luke, I'd actually give you whatever I know, but I don't know much about the general members.h.i.+p. I know about five people in the PPPI-I'm doing a book on radical Midwestern farm organizations and that's the only reason I'm on the members.h.i.+p list. To get access. I only talk to the leaders.h.i.+p and the real activists. I don't know about children or anything. I'd help if I could, I'm a Democrat and a Bowden supporter."

"You don't have any members.h.i.+p lists or anything?"

"No, but I could print out my ma.n.u.script for you, what there is of it," he said. "Probably seventy pages. There are some names in there. If you've been pus.h.i.+ng this, you'll already know most of them."

"If you could do that, I'd appreciate it," Lucas said.

"Come on in."

As they were going in, Mitch.e.l.l's partner said to him, "You know, this isn't the end of the book. You lose Likely as a source, but you gain a murder. A double murder. You were worried that the book was a little . . . dull. This could fix that. You could open with it. Or bookend it-open and close."

Mitch.e.l.l slapped his forehead. "You're right! I hadn't thought of that. Open and close!"

"If it bleeds, it leads," she said.

Yeah, that's really great, Lucas thought, as he followed them inside.

- THAT EVENING, before going back to the no-response houses, Lucas skimmed Mitch.e.l.l's ma.n.u.script. He noted three names that weren't on the PPPI members.h.i.+p list he'd gotten from Grace Lawrence, but that had a relations.h.i.+p with the party.

The most interesting part of the ma.n.u.script was the interview with Lawrence, who, when asked about the use of violence by radical members of the various farm movements, had asked, in return, "Do you think violence would be illegitimate if used, say, against Adolf Hitler? We were engaged in warfare against the ruling plutocracy, and I'm sad to say that, all in all, we lost."

From Mitch.e.l.l's ma.n.u.script: Ms. Lawrence was involved in the protests around the Lennett Valley Dairy controversy. She had been injured in a hiking accident a few days before the dairy was bombed, killing three people, and was not there when the bomb was detonated.