Extreme Prey: A Novel Part 14

"I'm sorry I wasn't there, maybe I could have helped in some way. I was horrified by what happened. Our protests had been largely peaceful, except when the police would intervene with their fascist military tactics, beating innocent, non-resisting protesters. Although I had nothing to do with the bomb-never would have had anything to do with a bomb-I understand the motives of the people who built it. I have to say, even after all these years, that the real tragedy was not that people died, but that they were the wrong people."

Ms. Lawrence said that from the present perspective, the bombing was both the peak of the farm protest movement and the beginning of the end. "That's the other tragedy. Farm families are peace-loving people. When that bomb went off, they began to withdraw from the protest movement. The bomb was an isolated incident, of no real importance when compared to the overall disaster of the economic collapse. It was apparently intended to galvanize the movement, but it had exactly the opposite effect: it killed it."

Lucas felt a tingle when he read the quote, because it suggested that some people were legitimate targets for terrorism, which was not an ordinary way of thinking; and Lawrence in some way thought the deaths of three people were "of no real importance." He closed his eyes and remembered the woman's face, and her garden, and a feeling of hippie coquettishness, and couldn't put that together with her comments. Had she fooled them, and had it been deliberate?

He went to his laptop and entered "Lennett Valley Dairy bomb" and found nothing but short references to stories in the Des Moines Register and other Iowa newspapers, but there were no links-he couldn't get at the stories themselves.

He sent an e-mail to Bell Wood, asking if he could call the Register and get the story e-mailed back to him, if it were available electronically.

Grace Lawrence.

Huh. Did she have children? Sons?

He went to Google Images, searching for Grace Lawrence, and found hundreds of Grace Lawrences. He scanned the images, and on the second page, toward the bottom, found a picture of his Grace Lawrence, a few years younger, with two other women, standing in a school gymnasium, getting citizens.h.i.+p awards.

He called Neil Mitford, who answered on the second ring: "Find them?"

"Not yet. I'm going to send you a photo, by e-mail. Right now. I want you to stick it in front of the governor's nose. Ask him if this is the woman who spoke to him."

"Send it."

Lucas sent it; four or five minutes later, he got an answer: "No. That's definitely not her. Not even close."

- HE HAD TWO MORE HOUSES to check on his Iowa City list. The first was still unoccupied, no lights, no sign of life, several bills and an advertising circular in the mailbox. Maybe on vacation. Or could be out stalking Bowden-no way to tell.

His last stop was with a Bert Hughes, who told Lucas that he hadn't been to a meeting in a few years and that he'd softened his earlier radicalism. "My folks were farmers and they had a terrible time back in the eighties. They didn't lose the farm, but they could have, and that would have killed them. They're all right now," he said. "I've decided that in a country this big, you're never going to get one big political lurch that will solve everything. The only way to move it is by working with the established organizations, so I'm a regular Democrat now."

"If you knew who this woman was, and her son, you'd give it to me?"

"Yeah. Though I might feel a little bad about it," Hughes said. "But I'll be working for Bowden, and I sure don't want anything to happen to her."

"What if Henderson gets the nomination?" Lucas asked.

"I'd love that! He's better than Bowden on the issues, but I don't see him getting the nomination. To get back to this woman, though, have you talked with Anson Palmer?"

"Yes. This morning," Lucas said.

"And he didn't know her?" Hughes asked.

"No. He says he doesn't."

"Then she's not a member of the PPPI. Anson was there at the creation and he's been to every meeting and every action. He's an old backslapper and gossip-he knows everybody. It's just that he's cracked on the whole Jewish thing."

- AT THE HOTEL, Lucas called Robertson, who was nearly back home to Des Moines after hitting PPPI members who lived along I-80. He'd gotten nothing from the seven people he'd contacted. "I'm beginning to wonder if we're barking up the wrong tree," he said. "Most of these people say they haven't been active in years. One of them who went to a meeting last year says there were only ten people there. Somebody brought in a couple of pies, and there was enough for everyone."

"Yeah, but Likely got murdered," Lucas said.

"If it turns out that it's unrelated-Ford thinks it is-then the PPPI is a wild-goose chase. Maybe we should be looking at other geese."

"I can't believe it's unrelated-but I worry about the possibility," Lucas said. "G.o.dd.a.m.nit, we p.i.s.sed away a whole day."

- THAT NIGHT IN THE MOTEL, after talking with Weather, he lay on the bed, watching a ball game, and thought about the day. Despite the frustration, he was enjoying the hunt, he realized. Operating without a badge was annoying, though, and even more annoying was operating without bureaucratic backup: there was no clerk or a.s.sistant to call, to demand that research be done. He was living off crumbs from the Iowa agencies, and if he got annoying, they might just tell him to f.u.c.k off.

They'd live to regret it, though, he thought. The more he worked around the PPPI, the more he got the feeling that he was onto something. People were lying to him, misdirecting him. He couldn't exactly put a finger on why he thought that, but he'd learned the hard way not to ignore even unsupported intuition.

Maybe he'd circle back to Anson Palmer in the morning, he thought. Put some pressure on him. See if he squeaked.

He drank a caffeine-free Diet c.o.ke and went to bed.

FOURTEEN.

At eight o'clock the next morning, about an hour before Lucas planned to get up, Bell Wood called from Des Moines.

"Why are you dredging up the Lennett Valley Dairy bomb?" he asked.

Lucas explained about the ma.n.u.script fragment he'd read the night before, and the odd vibration he'd gotten from Grace Lawrence's comment.

"How old is Lawrence?"

"I don't know," Lucas said. "I'd guess early sixties. Why?"

"I really don't have to send you that article on Lennett Valley-I can tell you what happened myself. In detail."

He did. The Lennett Valley Dairy had been foreclosed in 1987 after a long struggle to make mortgage payments.

"A particularly brutal case, for a lot of people. Not only were three people killed, a whole bunch of people, all from that area, were ruined financially," Wood said. "The dairy was set up as a small corporation with all the stock locally owned. The corporation had borrowed money to get the dairy going, during the good days, but then the recession came and prices went to h.e.l.l. They got behind in payments to the Lennett Valley bank, so the bank restructured the loan, basically lowering the payments but stretching them out longer than was normally allowed. Part of the deal was that the bank would get to audit the dairy's progress, and if it looked like the dairy was faltering, they could call the loan at any time. Well, the dairy looked like it was digging itself out of that hole, when the bank failed."

"The bank."

Wood explained that when a bank fails, its a.s.sets are usually taken over by another bank, as directed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. The failed bank's stockholders are wiped out-and the new bank has no responsibility for the old bank's debts.

"The new bank came out of Council Bluffs, and it called the loan on the dairy. The dairy didn't have the money to pay the loan, so the bank foreclosed, as they had the legal right to. Wiped out the dairy's stockholders, too, some of the same people who were wiped out as the bank's shareholders."

The dairy operators made an argument that the dairy was only a year or so from becoming very profitable, but the new bank didn't want to hear it, Wood said. "The dairy wasn't very old, and had a lot of equipment and young stock, cows, and any money the bank got was pure profit. Anyway, they foreclosed and scheduled a land and equipment sale. A whole bunch of people showed up for the sale, including quite a few protesters, because the whole thing was so unfair. Partway through the auction, a bomb exploded in the barn. Three people were killed, all from the same family, a father and his two sons. We never identified the bombers. The whole thing plagues us to this day."

"And that made you wonder about Grace Lawrence?" Lucas asked.

"Yeah. There's a motel in Amazing Grace, the town, not the song, which isn't far from Lennett Valley, maybe fifteen miles. Two unknown couples checked in there, two rooms, one couple in each room, paid cash. The motel owner said they looked scruffy-the men both had beards and the women had long hippie hair, no makeup. They weren't local and they weren't apparently in Amazing Grace for anything in particular. The night before the auction, they were out late-the owner lived in the motel and said they came back at four o'clock in the morning. There's nothing open at four o'clock in the morning in Amazing Grace, or anywhere close. They left the next morning before eight o'clock and were never seen again. Never could track any of the names they checked in with."

"You looked for them?"

"Not me personally, but you bet the DCI did," Wood said. "That's where it gets interesting. When we got the tip-by we, I mean the investigators on the case, I was still in high school-we sent in our fingerprint guy. Guess what, number one? They'd wiped the rooms. Either that or they were housekeeping freaks."

"Interesting."

"Yeah. But guess what, number two? We found traces of a waxy substance on the carpet in one of the rooms. Not much, but enough to match it to a kind of leak-proofing used on dynamite. Unsealed dynamite tends to weep nitroglycerin, so the manufacturer puts the coating on to help contain it."

"That put dynamite in the room," Lucas said.

"And guess what, number three? The man and the woman in that room had s.e.x sometime during their stay. We found traces of s.e.m.e.n and a couple dots of menstrual fluid on the sheets."

"Really," Lucas said. "This being Iowa, where everybody is thrifty and sanitary, you naturally sent those sheets right out to the local laundry so they could be dry-cleaned and reused."

"Au contraire, mon cher," Wood said. "We actually sealed them up in a plastic evidence bag, then threw the bag in the back of the evidence room. I drove down here without shaving to see if we still have it. We do. Never been processed for DNA, but that doesn't mean that we can't do that right now."

"You'll have to get some DNA from Lawrence," Lucas said.

"Do you have any reason to go back there? I mean, get invited in?"

"I could do that," Lucas said. "She's only ten miles from here."

"Then ask if you can take a leak before you go," Wood said. "You'll find some hair in the bathroom . . . Bring it in, we'll run it. If it matches, we'll find some reason to do a formal search."

"If I were in the United States of America, a federal court would say what I'm about to do is an illegal search and everything that comes out of it would be inadmissible," Lucas said. "You guys must have some interesting laws down here in Iowegia."

"Wrong. Wrong even for the federal courts, even in Minnesota. Lucas, you forget, you're not a cop anymore. You're not even working for us, you're working for Henderson. You are invited into her house and take a few strands of hair, that's not the government violating her rights. You're a private citizen. You can get away with all kinds of s.h.i.+t that we can't."

"Huh. You could be right."

"Really. Get the hair," Wood said.

"Okay, but I've got other things to do," Lucas said. "You guys are supposed to put some more people on the Bowden thing. If you could hook one up with me, I could pa.s.s the hair on to him."

"We'll do that," Wood said. "Lucas, if you solve the Lennett Valley case . . . I mean, this is a pretty G.o.dd.a.m.n big deal in Iowa."

"Big as it would be if Bowden is shot?" Lucas asked.

"Well . . . no, probably not. But right up there."

"Then I'll stick with Bowden, and let you worry about the bombing. At least for the time being."

"After you get me the hair," Wood said.

"Yeah. After I get the hair," Lucas said.

- LUCAS HAD TWELVE more people to interview, all of them now outside Iowa City-a few to the east, but more to the south and west, and south of the group that Robertson was looking at. None were in Hills, other than Grace Lawrence, but he decided to start with her. He had some legitimate questions for her and he could collect a hair sample at the same time.

He called ahead and Lawrence told him that she was due at the elementary school at eleven o'clock for cafeteria and recess supervision, so he'd have to come out before then.

"I'll be there by ten."

"I'll be out in the garden."

"See you then," Lucas said.

- LUCAS ATE BREAKFAST in a hurry, then drove over to Anson Palmer's house. He parked in the street, walked up the driveway, and through a window saw Palmer poking at his computer keyboard. Palmer saw Lucas, too, and met him at the door.

"I'm not going to invite you in," he said.

"Wanted to tell you that I've spoken to a bunch of people from the PPPI, and they've told me that you know everybody-so you were lying to me the other day," Lucas said. "That makes you part of the conspiracy, Anson. A guy your age, you'll have trouble in a federal prison."

"I wasn't lying to you! I never said a thing that wasn't true!" Palmer shouted, spittle flying at the screen door. "You're accusing me because of my book, aren't you? Who are you really working for?"

Lucas shuffled backward, away from the spit, and said, "All I want from you are a few names of women who might resemble the person I'm looking for."

"I don't know that person! I don't know her!" Palmer shouted. "You know what I do know? I looked up English surnames for Jews, and you know what I found on the lists? Davenport! Davenport! Who are you working for, Davenport?"

Lucas couldn't think of what to say, so what he said was, "Ah, f.u.c.k it. Go to prison."

On the way out to Lawrence's, he thought about Palmer's wild reaction. Was there a little fear there? Hard to tell, with all the other possibilities-anger, bigotry, psychosis.

- HE GOT TO LAWRENCE'S PLACE ten minutes early. She was already out in her garden, wearing a straw sun bonnet and a faded, long-sleeved peasant's blouse against the sun. "Come on inside," she said, getting off her knees. "I've got a pitcher of raspberry Kool-Aid."

"Gotta be kiddin' me," Lucas said. "I haven't had Kool-Aid since grade school."

They went inside and she got the pitcher of icy Kool-Aid out of the refrigerator. As she poured a gla.s.sful and pushed it across the kitchen table to Lucas, she asked, "So . . . what else can I tell you?"

"I know Mrs. Bowden's politics aren't the same as yours, but I'm really desperate to find these people who might be trying to harm her. The people who probably killed Joe Likely and his girlfriend . . ." He took a sip and the Kool-Aid was improbably good on his tongue.

"You said all that in the last visit," Lawrence said, pulling out a kitchen chair and sitting down with her own gla.s.s.

"Yeah, but what I'm going to ask you . . . this is important stuff, Grace. I interviewed a bunch of people yesterday, all party members from the list. Some of them simply refused to talk, even after I told them what was going on. They felt no responsibility for . . . for . . . helping me out. For stopping what could be a tragedy."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, so you're about to ask me to betray somebody, right?" Her eyes were cool and sharp behind the gla.s.s.

"See, there you go," Lucas said. He took another long sip of the Kool-Aid, peered into the gla.s.s and said, "You know, this is the best Kool-Aid I've ever had. What'd you do to it?"

"Used two packages. It's a big secret, don't tell anyone."

"Huh. Okay. Now. One thing I did find out was that Anson Palmer knows everybody, knows everything that's ever happened with the party. He must know these people, if they're in the party. He says he doesn't. I'm asking you-would he lie to me, even if Mrs. Bowden's life was on the line? I know about the anti-Semitic stuff he's written, but . . . how nuts is he? Could he be part of a conspiracy? If I go back to him and really squeeze him, will he tell me the truth? Or is he telling me the truth already?"

She shrugged. "I don't know what he'd do if you put enough pressure on him. He can be a stubborn old goat. Whoever told you that Anson knows everybody in the party, that's pretty close to the truth. I'm not sure he'd know about everybody's kids, though."

Lucas nodded and said, "What about you? You're the secretary, you must know about everybody . . ."

"Mostly on paper," she said. She leaned across the table and added, "Here's the thing, Lucas, what I believe-if there really is an a.s.sa.s.sination conspiracy out there, and if it involves a party member, it probably isn't one of the core members. That's why you can't find them. It might be somebody who knew Joe Likely from years ago, and went to him to see if they could get help. Joe wouldn't kill anybody. He wouldn't cooperate in killing anyone. He just wouldn't."

Lucas said, "You think it might be somebody who knew Joe as a radical, thought he might help them, and when he wouldn't . . ."

"They killed him."