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“There’s no way.”
“We’ll talk to the judge Monday,” the county attorney said.
“I’m told that this gentleman”—Harper’s attorney nodded at Lucas—“and Gene Climpt have already beat up my client on one occasion—and this is more harassment.”
“Russ Harper’s not the most reliable source, and we’re talking about child pornography here,” the county attorney said. But he looked at Lucas and Climpt. “And I’m prepared to guarantee that Mr. Harper will be perfectly safe in jail over the weekend. If he’s not, somebody else will be sitting in there with him.”
“He’s safe enough,” said Lacey, who’d joined them. “Nobody’ll lay a finger on him.”
Carr was in his office, looking perceptibly brighter.
“Get some sleep?” Lucas asked. “You’re looking better.”
“Three, four hours. Henry talked me into it,” he said, a ribbon of guilt and pleasure ru
“He’s inside,” Lucas said.
“Good. Wa
Dan Jones was the perfect double of the junior high principal. “We’re twin brothers,” he said. “He went into education, I went into journalism.”
“Dan was all-state baseball, Bob was all-state football. I remember when you boys were tearing the place up,” Carr said, his face animated. And Lucas thought: He does like it, the good-old-boy political schmoozing.
“Glory days,” said Dan. To Lucas: “Did you play?”
“Hockey,” Lucas said.
“Yeah, typical Mi
Carr filled Jones in about Harper, and Jones took notes on a reporter’s pad. “We don’t want to mislead you,” Carr said, just slightly formal. “We’re not saying Russ killed the LaCourts—in fact, we know he didn’t. But as background, so you won’t go astray, we want you to know that we developed the information about the porno ring out of the murder investigation.”
“So you think the two are related?”
“It’s very possible . . . if you sort of leaned that way, you’d be okay,” Carr said.
“To be frank—no bullshit—we want the story out to put pressure on the other members of this child-molester group, whoever they are. We need to break something open, but we don’t want you to say that,” Lucas said. “We think there’s a chance that Harper’ll try to deal. Go for immunity or reduced charges. That could be significant. But we’d like to have it reported as rumor,” Lucas said.
Climpt was digging around on his desk, found the porno magazine from Milwaukee, said, “You can refer to this, but you can’t say directly what’s in it,” and passed it across to the newspaper editor.
Jones recoiled. “Jesus H. Christ on a crutch,” he said. Then he remembered, and glanced up at Carr: “Sorry, Shelly.”
“Well, I know what you mean,” Carr said lamely.
“Horseshit reproduction,” Jones said, turning the paper in his hand. “This is like toilet paper.”
“In more ways than one,” Carr said. “What about the story? Can you do something with it?”
Jones was on his feet. “Oh, hell yes! The Russ Harper arrest is big. The AP’ll want that, and I can string it down to Milwaukee and St. Paul. Sure. People are so freaked out I’ve been talking to old man Donohue . . .”
Climpt said to Lucas, “Donohue owns the paper.”
“ . . . about putting out an extra. With Joh
“Got them right here,” Carr said, passing him some Xeroxed copies of the arrest log.
“Thanks. Whether or not Donohue goes with the extra, we’ll have it on the radio in half an hour. It’ll be all over town in an hour.”
When Jones had gone, Carr leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes, and said, “Think we’ll shake something loose?”
“Something,” Lucas said.
CHAPTER
16
Weather Karki
She laughed at herself: she hadn’t felt so alive in years. Lucas had been an energetic lover, but also, at times, strangely soft, as though he were afraid he might hurt her. The combination was irresistible. She thought about the tub again as she dried off with one of the rough hospital towels: that was the most contrived entrance she’d ever engineered. The bottle of wine, the robe slipping off . . .
She laughed aloud, her laughter echoing off the tiles of the surgeons’ locker room.
She left, hurrying: almost six-thirty. Lucas said he’d be done with Harper by six or seven. Maybe they could drive over to Hayward for di
As she left the locker room, she stopped at the nurses’ station to get the final list for the morning. Civilians sometimes thought surgeons worked every week or two, after an exhaustive study of the patient. More often, they worked every day, and sometimes two or three times a day, with little interaction with the patient at all. Weather was building a reputation in the North Woods, and now had referrals from all the adjoining counties. Sometimes she thought it was a conspiracy by the referring docs to keep her busy, to pin her down.
“ . . . Charlie De
As they went through it, she was aware that the charge nurse kept checking her, a small smile on her face. Everybody knew that Lucas was staying at her house in some capacity, and Weather suspected that a few of the nurses had, during the day, figured out the capacity. She didn’t care.
“ . . . probably go
The charge nurse’s family had been friends of her family, though the nurse was ten years older. Still, they were friends, and when Weather finished with the work list, she started for the door, then turned and said, “Is it that obvious?”
“Pretty obvious,” the nurse said. “The other girls say he’s a well-set-up man, the ones who have seen him.”
Weather laughed. “My God—small towns, I love ’em.” She started away again. The nurse called, “Don’t wear him out, Doctor,” and as she went out the door, Weather was still laughing.
Her escort was a surly, heavyset deputy named Arne Bruun. He’d been two years behind her in high school. He’d been president of the Young Republicans Club and allegedly had now drifted so far to the right that the Republicans wouldn’t have him. He stood up when she walked into the lobby, rolled a copy of Guns and Ammo, and stuck it in his coat pocket.
“Ready to roll?” He was pleasant enough but had the strong jaw-muscle complex of a marginal paranoid.
“Ready to roll,” she said.
He went through the door first, looked around, waved her on, and they walked together to the parking lot. The days were begi
Bruun unlocked the passenger door of the Suburban, let her climb up, shut it behind her, and walked around the nose of the truck. The hospital was on the south edge of town; Weather lived on the north side. The quickest route to her home was down the frontage road along Highway 77 to Buhler’s Road, and across the highway at the light, avoiding the traffic of Main Street.