Buried Prey

After a year, he let it go.

NOW

10

Lucas shook himself out of his Jones girl reverie—was that the right word?—and called his researcher, and told her to find the girls’ parents. He gave her what he had about them, then spent ten minutes reviewing a series of proposed statements from the governor, concerning crime, and generally taking credit for its decline. He initialed them as he read, and dropped them with his secretary.

The researcher came back with names and addresses for the Jones girls’ parents, whose names were George and Gloria—he’d forgotten them—and he called Marcy Sherrill at Minneapolis.

He gave her the names and asked, “Are you going to call them, or have somebody else do it?”

“I’ll have a chaplain do it,” she said. “John Kling. He’s got a really nice manner and he was around back when the girls were killed. I already talked to him.”

“It’s gonna be on TV pretty quick,” Lucas said.

“He’s standing by—I’ll have him call right now. You still pretty bummed?”

“Ah, you know. Another day in the life.”

HE COULDN’T GET AWAY from the Jones girls all afternoon. He went to a long meeting, filled with lawyers, about the prospect of taking DNA samples from every person arrested in Minnesota, for crimes other than routine traffic offenses. Civil libertarians argued that it was a further intrusion into the privacy of the citizenry; those in favor argued that it was no different from taking a mug shot and fingerprints, which were routinely done on arrest.

Lucas’s position was supine: that is, whenever he heard people arguing about it, he wanted to lie down and take a nap.

Still mulling over the discovery of the bodies, he told the story during dinner, which started a long, tangled discussion of forensics. In the evening, a banker named Bone stopped over with his wife, and they ate cookies and talked about portfolios and the stock market, and about fishing.

Lucas’s wife, Weather, a surgeon, was working the next morning, and went to bed shortly after the Bones left.

Lucas went for a walk around his neighborhood, chatted with a couple of dog walkers, spent some time at the computer when he got back, and finally went to bed and dreamed about the Jones girls.

Weather was sound asleep when he woke up at four o’clock, the dream popping like a bubble, gone forever. He tried to get it back for a moment, then gave up, opened his eyes, and rolled toward Weather. She’d thrown off the sheet and lay with her legs wrapped around a long, soft pillow, which propped up her distended abdomen. She was pregnant again, six months down the road, and the ultrasounds suggested they’d be getting a sister, rather than a brother, for their three-year-old Sam and fifteen-year-old Letty.

A Gabrielle rather than a Gabriel.

Lucas was as excited by the prospect as Weather: the idea of another daughter. Girls are always good. More girls are even better. Lucas already had one natural daughter, whom he saw only once or twice a month, for a few hours at a time, as she was settled in with her mother and a terrific second family; and he loved her to death.

And there was Letty, whom he and Weather had adopted. Letty was a handful, but Lucas loved her as much as he would any natural daughter; and was confident that she loved him back, despite her tendency to terrorize him.

Lucas turned toward Weather, watched her for a moment, her hip high on the pillow, her small body twisted toward the corner of the bed. She hadn’t been sleeping well, but she’d had a similar sleepless stretch in her first pregnancy, from about five and a half months, to about seven. Stress, anxiety, whatever . . . he hadn’t been able to help much, and he was pleased to see her sleeping so soundly this morning. He worried about her: neither one of them was a kid, with Weather edging into her forties, Lucas looking at fifty.

He closed his eyes, and dozed, and his dream seeped back: he was a young man again, driving around in a squad with Fred Carter. Carter’s grumpy disposition, his tendency to avoid conflict . . .

Lucas had seen him a few months before, working as a security guard at the Capitol, no longer youngish, still carrying a gun on his hip. Carter was generally happy with the work, but straining toward retirement, now only a year or so away.

“The thing is,” he’d told Lucas, “you can never tell where the terrorists will hit next. What if they decide on a big city, but one out of the limelight? One that no one expects?”

“Like Minneapolis or St. Paul,” Lucas had suggested.

“Yeah. And what would they hit? The Capitol.” Carter had looked up. “That big fuckin’ dome. Man, I can see it: I’m two days from retirement and some fuckin’ raghead with a dynamite belt drops the dome on my head.”

“Well, at least your wife would collect your retirement,” Lucas had said.

Carter waved his index finger like a windshield wiper: “Don’t even joke about that, man. Don’t even joke about it.”