“Let me look . . . There’s a Comfort Inn and a Holiday Inn Express, both on Lake Michigan. Then there are a couple local places, it looks like.”
“See if you can get me a room in whatever looks best . . . and find me the fastest route into Jeanne d’Arc.”
? ? ?
A WHILE LATER, remembering his stop at the bookstore in Hayward, with Letty, he called Shrake back and told him to see if there was a cadaver dog in Minnesota. “A what?”
“A cadaver dog. I was just reading about them—about how they can sniff out even small traces of blood. Even after somebody’s been dead for a while. If there’s a bloody club buried somewhere . . .”
“You want us to go back up to Cross Lake?”
“We gotta try. If you find a cadaver dog, you can go play golf while the dog works,” Lucas said. “And if you find one, check around Merion’s house, too.”
Shrake still sounded doubtful: “I suppose we could try. We’re not getting much talking to these computer-chip guys.”
? ? ?
LUCAS PULLED INTO Jeanne d’Arc a few minutes after four o’clock and followed the highway along the Lake Michigan waterfront to Main Street. Letty had said that the county courthouse was on Main, several blocks back from the water.
Lucas turned up a shallow hill, between Main’s double line of early-twentieth-century two-story brick buildings, and found the courthouse above a narrow green lawn six blocks from the lake. A newer building, of metallic-looking purple brick, with a steel roof, the courthouse was half wrapped by a parking lot. Lucas found an empty slot, parked, and went inside.
A guard was sitting at a desk in the lobby, doing nothing, although he seemed content. He nodded and Lucas said, “I’m an investigator with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. Can you tell me where the sheriff’s office is?”
“Yup. You go all the way to the end of the lobby, take a left, go down that hall. You’ll see the door. Roman’s in there, because I just saw him come back from Pat’s with a sandwich and a soda.”
“Pat’s is decent?” Lucas asked.
“The best around here, if you just want a sandwich,” the guard said.
Lucas thanked him for the tip and walked down the lobby past the county clerk’s window—the clerk was sitting on a stool, doing nothing, and said, “Hi, there,” as he walked by. He nodded at her, turned the corner, and found the door to the sheriff’s office at the back of the building.
Inside the door, he found himself in a small room with an empty desk, two closed doors apparently going back to other offices, two paintings of fish, one of ducks, and a DARE poster. Not exactly sure what to do, he waited, and a minute or so later, an older lady came bustling through, stopped when she saw him, and said, “Oh! I didn’t know there was anybody here.”
Lucas identified himself and said, “I’d like to talk to Sheriff Laurent if he has a minute.”
“I think he’s over at Pat’s.”
“The guard at the door said he just came back.”
“Oh!” Surprised again. “Just a second, then.” She went to one of the closed doors, opened it, stuck her head through, and called, “Hey, Rome? You back there?”
“Yeah, I’m here.”
“You got a fellow here to see you. He’s an investigator from Minnesota,” she said.
“Minnesota?”
“That’s what he says.”
“Well, send him on back.”
? ? ?
ROMAN LAURENT WAS a tall, thin man with steel-colored hair, gray eyes, and high cheekbones; he looked like he might run marathons. He was wearing a tan sheriff’s uniform, and when he stood up to shake hands, Lucas noticed that while he was wearing a holster, it was empty.
“Sit down, sit down. You don’t mind if I finish a late lunch? Or early dinner?” Laurent asked.
“Go ahead. I might stop over there myself,” Lucas said, as he took a visitor’s chair. “Did you get a call from the state police this morning? About what I’m doing?”
Laurent paused in mid-chew and shook his head. “The state police don’t call me about anything. We could have an asteroid about to hit the town and the state police wouldn’t call me.”
“Ah, jeez. Well, I got some news for you, then. You’ve got a crazy killer on his way, with a whole bunch of assistant killers, if they’re not already here.”
Laurent stopped eating as Lucas explained about Pilate, about the probable murders in Los Angeles, the for-sure murders in South Dakota and Wisconsin, and the peculiar findings in Baudette, Minnesota.
He concluded by saying, “We heard they were headed here for the Juggalo Gathering. Then, when we pinged the one guy whose phone we knew, we spotted him in Ironwood and a while later, in Bessemer, so he was coming this way.”
“Pretty interesting,” Laurent said. He ate the final chunk of his sandwich, balled up the wrapper, bounced it off the wall and into a wastebasket. He sighed and said, “You know, I believe every word you’ve said, but I don’t need this. I’ve got six officers working for me full-time, plus four reserve deputies and a dog, and the dog got his feet cut up on broken glass yesterday and he’s out of it for a week. That means two guys for busy shifts, one guy for others. The dog has the most experience. Not counting the part-timers, he might even be the smartest. I include myself in that. I’ve never investigated anything more complicated than mailbox theft.”
“How about the city cops?” Lucas asked.
“About the same, except dumber than the dog, for sure.”
They stared at each for a few seconds, then Lucas asked, “No offense . . . but how’d you get to be sheriff?”