Extreme Prey: A Novel Part 16

"I'm not threatening, I'm articulating," Palmer said.

"d.a.m.n you . . ." He'd swiveled toward her, and now she stepped around him to his desk. He had a rock on his desk, round and speckled, a little smaller than a softball, with some lettering carved into it. She picked it up in one hand and when he swiveled to see what she was doing, she smashed him on the top of the head with it.

She actually felt his skull break, almost like feeling an eggsh.e.l.l crack when you hit it on the side of a cup. She hit him again, and again, and then backed away as he toppled onto the floor.

"Oh, my G.o.d," she said.

His head was misshapen, but he was still breathing. She looked around, saw a sport coat hanging on a doork.n.o.b, still in the plastic bag from a dry cleaner's. She reached toward it, thought, Fingerprints. Still with the rock in her hand, she hurried back into the kitchen, saw the paper towel roll. She dropped the rock in the kitchen sink, unrolled some towels, carried the towels into the office, pulled the plastic sack off the sport coat, pinching the plastic between the towels and her fingers.

Palmer was still breathing, blood draining out of his ears. She knelt next to him and pulled the bag over his head, careful not to touch anything but the protective towels, and knotted it around his neck.

Still breathing.

She went back to the kitchen, washed the rock with soap, and then left it there.

Back in the office, she looked at Palmer.

No more breathing. She put her knuckles against his chest. No heartbeat. She collected all the paper towels and stuffed them under her blouse.

At the back door, she peered out, saw no one. Had to go.

She went, hair up under her hat, ambling down the street, her face covered with a cold sweat. Two blocks away, she climbed into her car.

"Please G.o.d, don't let them find me," she prayed, though she'd never been a believer. "Please, please, please."

- LUCAS SPENT THE DAY walking up to small houses in small towns, getting nowhere perceptible. At two o'clock, he'd taken a break at a cafe in Oskaloosa, one of the towns from which Henderson had gotten an e-mail. An investigator named Perry Means, from the Division of Criminal Investigation, was waiting for him at the cafe. Lucas handed over the sample of Lawrence's hair, which Means put in a plastic evidence envelope.

"Bell Wood called me up and said a hairball was waiting for me in Oskaloosa. I said, 'Story of my life,' and he said, 'No, no, a real hairball,'" Means said, over the remnants of a grilled cheese sandwich. "I gotta tell you, if this turns out to be something, I plan to take full credit for driving it to Des Moines."

"I'd hoped to get half-credit for driving it this far," Lucas said.

"Uh-uh, not the way it works," Means said. He was a fleshy man, with nicotine-stained teeth and drooping cheeks. And, "Say, didn't you work for Virgil Flowers for a while, up in Minnesota?"

Lucas laughed and said, "Yeah, I guess I did. Does everybody in Iowa know Virgil?"

"We've traded quite a bit of information over the years," Means said. "I worked out of Mason City for six years, so we got to know each other. He's sort of a hound when it comes to women."

"Not sort of," Lucas said. "He's the f.u.c.kin' Hound of the Baskervilles when it comes to women. Every time he gets around my daughter, I make sure I've got my gun."

Means headed for Des Moines with the hair sample and Lucas called Robertson, who was working north of I-80. "I got nothing, nothing, and nothing. I thought I had something for a minute, but it turned out to be nothing," he said.

"More'n I got," Lucas said. "I never even thought I had something. What'd you think you had?"

Robertson said, "I pulled into this farmyard-Hendrick Fischer on your list-and there was this older lady in the yard, chubby with white curls. Turned out she was a neighbor, picking up some farm-fresh eggs. Or as Fischer put it, aigs. I checked and she was who she said she was. Never heard of the PPPI."

"Too bad . . ."

"Yeah. I'm doing two more, then I'm heading home, with my farm-fresh aigs," Robertson said. "I'll stay in touch."

- LUCAS'S NEXT STOP was in the town of What Cheer, where he spoke to Tom and Mary Moller. Tom Moller said, "Wait, wait . . . Joe Likely was murdered?"

"You hadn't heard?"

"No . . . we haven't talked to Joe in five years, I guess," Tom Moller said. "Somebody should have called us. Is it on the Internet?"

"Probably," Lucas said.

Mary asked her husband, "I wonder if Marlys knows? They were pretty tight at one time."

"Long time ago," he said.

"Who's Marlys?" Lucas asked. He knew without looking that there was n.o.body named Marlys on the list.

"She's an old party member, lives over in Pella," Mary said. "She was always real active with the party."

"Got curly white hair? A little on the heavy side?"

"Haven't seen her in years," Mary said. "Hair could be white, by now. Wasn't that heavy, maybe carried a few extra pounds. Like most of us."

"I'd like to talk to her, if I could," Lucas said. "Where exactly is she?"

- THEY DIDN'T KNOW exactly where Marlys Purdy lived, though they knew it was somewhere near the town of Pella. Lucas checked the geography on his iPhone, cut across country to Pella, and at Pella, made inquiries at the city hall. n.o.body knew her there, but it was a slow day and a clerk called to the county courthouse in Knoxville, got an address out in the rural countryside. With that, she called the county land a.s.sessor's office, asked them to look at their plat map. They did, and the clerk drew a turn-by-turn map to the Purdy place from downtown Pella.

Lucas followed the map out to the Purdy place, knowing that Marlys might have white hair and that she had a son.

- MARLYS HAD LIED to Jesse: "Cole might be in some trouble. He went to Davenport a couple days ago to protest at the Bowden rally and he threw a rock at her car. The thing is, it broke the gla.s.s on the door. The Bowden security people are looking for him, and one of them has a list of names from the party. He might be coming here."

"What? Why here?"

"Because the party people have been protesting, and the Bowden people know who we are, and they got a list from somewhere," Marlys lied. "Like I've told you, they watch us. All this guy's got is a description-gray eyes, long hair. If you run into him, let him see your eyes and don't mention a brother and then get out of here. You got that?"

"For Christ's sakes, Mom, what are you guys doing?" Jesse asked. "You can't go throwing rocks at politicians. Not in Iowa. They catch him, they'll put his a.s.s in prison. I don't think Cole would do real good in prison."

"You don't think I'm worried? That's why I'm telling you this," Marlys said. "Cole's gone over to the golf course. He'll stay there until it's dark, and he'll work there tomorrow until we know whether this guy is going to show up or not."

"Ah, G.o.d, I knew your politics would get us in trouble, sooner or later," Jesse said.

"Look, I'm not asking you to go along with hiding him-let the guy see you, and I'll do all the lyin' from there."

Jesse looked her over for a moment, then said, "Yeah. You're good at it."

- JESSE HAD an early farmers' market in Cedar Rapids the next day, taking in a couple hundred ears of perfect sweet corn, which had to be picked and cleaned up. He got gunnysacks out of the shed and walked down to the cornfield and started picking.

He kept an old mattress in the back of his truck for corn deliveries, to keep the ears from bruising as he drove up to I-80 on the back roads, and had just dropped the second sack on the mattress when a black Mercedes SUV nosed into the driveway. Jesse stood watching it, and the truck pulled up to him and a tough-looking dark-haired guy ran the window down and asked, "Is this the Purdy place?"

Jesse said, "Yeah. Who're you?"

"I'm looking for Marlys Purdy."

"That's my mom," Jesse said. "She's in the house." He tipped his head toward the side door.

- LUCAS LOOKED AT JESSE, taking in the blue eyes and the short hair, which, though short, was ragged, and hadn't been recently cut. Not the guy who ran from him in Davenport-and his truck wasn't the truck they'd seen. "We're looking for some people who've been talking with Governor Henderson . . ."

"Don't know nothing about politics, but Mom does," the man said. "I think she's for Bowden. Or maybe Henderson. One of them. I just sell the corn around here. You better talk to her."

As he said it, he was backing away from Lucas's Mercedes, the last gunnysack in his hands. Lucas said, "Okay," and got out of the truck as Jesse walked down the slope to the sweet corn field.

- LIKE MOST OF the other members of the PPPI, Marlys Purdy didn't like cops and wasn't afraid to say so. "What I want to know is, where were the cops when the banks were robbing us of our farms? How come Wall Street is making billions and not a single big-time banker went to prison after they tore down the whole d.a.m.n economy in '08? Have you even read The Big Short? Where were you cops then? That's what I want to know."

"That would be worth knowing," Lucas said, "but that's not what I'm looking into. I'm trying to find a woman who has made some implicit threats aimed at Mrs. Bowden and may be involved in the murder of Joseph Likely."

Something seemed to retract in her eyes, and she said, "Joe Likely? Joe Likely was murdered?"

"And his girlfriend with him," Lucas said.

They'd been standing in the kitchen, where the eyegla.s.ses-free Purdy had been was.h.i.+ng apples. Now she took a chair and said, "I haven't seen him for a while, but the last time I did, he was happy, he didn't seem threatened. If he felt threatened, I think he would have told us."

"Was there anybody who you think might have been . . . angry with him? Or opposed to him? Anybody who might have confided in him and then decided they'd made a mistake?"

She shook her head. "Nothing like that. The PPPI doesn't hurt people."

"What about Anson Palmer?" Lucas asked.

"Anson wouldn't hurt anyone. I promise you that."

"He seems a little . . . off balance."

"You mean because of the Jew thing? His book?"

"That, and his general att.i.tude toward police. It's like he's almost eager to get up in their faces . . . I'm not a cop anymore, but he got up in mine, because I used to be," Lucas said.

"He's got his reasons," Marlys said. She ma.s.saged her forehead with her fingers, and Lucas took in the brown hair with the white streaks. Her hair was shortish, but not the curly white lamb-like hair described by Henderson. She said, "I hate to give up anybody who's done good work, but I don't want anything to happen to Mike Bowden, either. Have you ever heard of a group called Prairie Storm?"

"As a matter of fact, I have-I ran into their leader the other day, over in Atlantic." He touched his black eye, which was still tender.

"Really? He did that? Did you get back at him?" Marlys asked.

"I handled it," Lucas said. "He won't be breathing easy for a couple of months."

"You beat him up?"

"I defended myself," Lucas said.

She took him in, a moment of silent appraisal, then she said, "I believe that. I don't intend to be rude, Mr. Davenport, but you look kinda mean."

- LUCAS LEFT TEN MINUTES later. Marlys Purdy fit the bill in some ways, and in more ways, did not. He was thinking about checking her with the neighbors, when Bell Wood called.

"I haven't found them," he said, without saying h.e.l.lo. "I'm down in the town of Pella, heading your way."

"You might want to turn around," Wood said. "Your friends on the Iowa City police force called. Somebody murdered a guy named Anson Palmer."

SIXTEEN.

Lucas was starting to feel like a yo-yo, and Iowa City was the finger.

When he got back, off I-80, he threaded his way through town to Anson Palmer's house and found a half-dozen cop cars coagulated in the street outside. Randy Ford's state sedan was among them.

He had Ford's number on his cell phone, called it, and Ford said, "Yeah?"

"I'm outside."

"Come on in," Ford said.

- FORD WAS STANDING in Palmer's living room, looking disgusted. "I don't know," he said, when Lucas appeared in the doorway. "It's like amateur night at the slaughterhouse, but we can't find the G.o.dd.a.m.n amateur who's doing the killing."

"You're sure it's a murder . . ."

"Unless he hit himself on the head about three times with a rock, and after crus.h.i.+ng his own skull, put the rock in a sink, washed it, and then tied a plastic bag around his head."

"Okay. When do you think it happened?"

One of the crime-scene people said, "No scientific estimate, but looking at the blood when we got here . . . we're thinking maybe between one and two o'clock, give or take."

- LUCAS WENT TO LOOK. Two crime-scene technicians were working Palmer's office, collecting samples of everything the killer might have touched. One of them was working over a visitor's chair with tape, pulling off any residue.

Lucas had once gone to a murder scene at a fis.h.i.+ng cabin in northern Minnesota where a man had been beaten to death with a souvenir cribbage board, which had been shaped like a short canoe paddle. The heavy oaken board had been swung edge-on, like an ax, a half-dozen times, and the victim's skull had been crushed.

Anson Palmer was lying facedown in his home office, his head c.o.c.ked back, propped against the bottom drawer of a filing cabinet. His bladder had released as he was dying, and the room still stank of urine. His head was wrapped with a transparent plastic bag, but was misshapen in the same way the cribbage-board victim's had been. The bag had been tied around his neck and a pint of blood had collected below his chin.

No sign of a weapon near the body.

"You said he was. .h.i.t with a rock?"

"We think so," Ford said. "There's a rock in the kitchen sink, it's been washed with soap. But some of the victim's hair, with a couple flakes of scalp, were caught in the sink drainer. The killer didn't notice."

Lucas went to look. The bun-shaped chunk of speckled granite was a bit larger than a baseball, but smaller than a softball, and had a laser-cut slogan carved in the surface: Molon Labe.

"Come and take it," Lucas said.

"Yeah, I looked it up on the Internet, it's pretty famous," Ford said. "A lot of the pro-gun guys use it and radical political groups. The Texans used it during the Texas revolution. The Greeks supposedly said that to the Persians before a battle when the Persians told them to surrender."