“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 sex sometime during their stay. We found traces of semen 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 shit 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 pass 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 goddamn 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, fuck 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 glassful 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 glass.
“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 glass.
“See, there you go,” Lucas said. He took another long sip of the Kool-Aid, peered into the glass 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 everybo
dy . . .”
“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 assassination 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.”
After a moment of thought, Lucas said, “I could almost buy that, except that he was murdered the night I visited him.”
“So what?”
“The coincidence . . .”
“It wasn’t a coincidence, dummy. Look, I put that a little wrong. They didn’t come for his help and kill him right then, on the spot. They came for his help some other time, and he turned them away. After you visited, he called them. Either to warn them or to try to talk them out of doing anything—to tell them that the cops were hot on their trail. Then they came over and killed him. It’s exactly the way you told me you thought it happened, but instead of being somebody in the core party, it was somebody out on the edge.”
“Huh. That’s a possibility, I guess.”
“You want more Kool-Aid?” she asked.
“One more would be good,” he said.
—
THEY SAT AND CHATTED for a couple more minutes, as Lucas finished the second glass, and then he said, “You know, Grace, I do like you. I hope that you’re not involved in this thing, in any little way. Because if it’s real, it doesn’t matter whether they shoot Mrs. Bowden or not, they’re all going to prison. Or worse, if they kill Mrs. Bowden or anyone else. The feds still have the needle, and they use it.”
“I would tell you if I knew anything,” Lawrence insisted. “Look, Lucas. I don’t particularly care for Mike Bowden’s politics, it’s the same old bullshit we’ve been fed for fifty years now. But Republican politics are even worse, from my point of view, and Bowden does have one strong thing going for her—she’s a woman. I want a woman to be elected president. I really do. It almost makes up for the bullshit she’s shoveling us.”
“Okay.”
“It seems to me that if there really is a plot, it’s probably one person, holding it really tight. Us radicals . . . we leak like crazy. We can’t organize a picnic without somebody leaking to somebody who didn’t get invited. The plotter—if there is one—is holding it pretty tight. You know it’s not me, because the plotter killed Joe Likely, and like I told you the first time you were here, I was at parents’ night at the school. I assume you checked that . . .”
“No, actually, I believed you.”
“Hmm. I’d appreciate it if you’d check, because it makes me nervous not to be cleared,” she said.
“Okay. Maybe I will—but I do believe you. I’ve still got to think about Anson, though,” Lucas said.
She nodded. “Of course you do. Because, you know, you’re a cop.”
“Not really. Not anymore,” Lucas said.
“Yeah, you are. Still.”
—
LUCAS GOT UP TO GO, told her that he’d had a Diet Coke on the way out. “With this Kool-Aid . . . if I could use your bathroom for a second.”
She pointed him to it. He went in, closed the door, flipped the toilet lid up, and spotted a hairbrush on the back of the sink. He peed, flushed, and under the cover of the noise by the toilet, pulled a couple of pieces of toilet paper off the roll, pinched some hair in toilet paper, being careful not to touch it, folded it over several times, and put it in his pocket.
He felt a little guilty about it, because he liked her, but he did it anyway.
—
WHEN LUCAS HAD PULLED away from her house, Lawrence showered, changed clothes, and walked to the school, looking for out-of-place vehicles. She didn’t see any, but then, she thought, she probably wouldn’t. If they were tracking her, they’d be good at it.
After her spell of volunteer work, she walked back to her house, got into her car, and drove to Iowa City. The road in from Hills was long and almost empty and she didn’t see anyone trailing her. After poking around for a while in town, she found an actual pay phone at a 76 gas station.
“Hello?”
“Is this Marlys Purdy?” Lawrence asked.
“Yes, who is this?”
“A friend of yours. Let’s not use names. We spoke at a meeting in June, about our gardens and rhubarb pies. You know who I am?”
“Yes. What happened?”
“Nothing, yet. That man from the Henderson campaign, Lucas Davenport, is going to find you. Maybe today or maybe tomorrow, but soon,” she said. “All he knows is that you have a son with distinctive gray eyes and that you have curly white hair. I would suggest that you get your hair colored and straightened. Right away. If you have a gray-eyed son, get him out of sight.”
“Okay,” Marlys said.
“When he does find you, you have to be very careful. He is smart, good-looking, and very charming. And, I suspect, treacherous. So . . .”
Silence. Then Marlys said, “Thank you. Take care of yourself. With all these cops around.”
“The cops aren’t interested in me. They’re only interested in you,” Lawrence said.
“Iowa cops will always be interested in the Lennett Valley thing,” Marlys said.
Lawrence was stunned: “Lennett Valley? Why would I be worried about Lennett Valley?”
“Anson told me you would be,” Marlys said. “He was pretty . . . definite about it.”
“Anson! That man is such a fantasist. And a gossip! I . . .” She trailed away, struggling with the thought. She had no idea that Anson suspected anything about Lennett Valley.
“Take care of yourself,” Marlys said.
—
WHEN SHE’D BROKEN OFF the call with Marlys, Lawrence walked back to her car, thinking about Anson Palmer and the question that Davenport had asked about him: about whether Palmer might crack under pressure.
He would. He was a radical, a rabid anti-Semite, and at the same time, a man who wouldn’t go to jail if there was any way to avoid it. Any way at all. Davenport was clearly a man hard enough and smart enough to crack a twit like Palmer.
After the bomb went off, her group had learned that they had a problem. They’d been more than a hundred miles away, eating breakfast in their favorite diner, where they’d be recognized and remembered for at least a few days, when the bomb exploded. They hadn’t intended to kill anyone, and so had hidden the bomb, with its timing device, in the empty barn, while the auction itself would be going on out in the dairy parking lot.
They’d been scared to death when they found out what had happened, and had followed the stories in the papers, which had gone on for weeks. It was from news reports that they’d learned that the motel where they’d stayed had been searched by the police and apparently some evidence had been found.
They’d been careful about fingerprints, but who knew what might have been found? They had no way to ask, so the four of them had spent their lives being careful, avoiding anything where a fingerprint might be sought or required. Her former boyfriend told her years later that he’d never again smoked dope, in case he should be caught and printed.
Lawrence thought about all of that as she sat in her car, then did an illegal U-turn and headed for Palmer’s house.
FIFTEEN
Marlys punched End on her cell phone and walked out to the barn, where Cole was running a grinder, sparks flying from the iron piece he was working; the place stank of burning metal. The grinder was loud and he didn’t hear her coming and he jumped when she touched his arm.
He shut the grinder down
and said through his face mask, “Jesus, you scared the shit out of me. Don’t do that.”
“We gotta talk. Let’s go back in the house.”
—
WHEN SHE TOLD HIM about the call from Lawrence, Cole said, “We’re so close. How did this happen?”
“Don’t know. Grace said Davenport was poking at a bunch of different radical groups, but when Joe was killed, that convinced him he was on the right track.”
“Told you at the time—”
“Well, we don’t know what Joe would have done. I think he would have turned on us, so we had no choice,” Marlys said. “Anyway, Grace thinks Davenport is going to find us soon. I’m going into town to get my hair colored. The way Grace was talking, he’s interviewing a lot of people, so he might not even get here today. He might not find us at all.”
“I could keep working for another hour, then, and if some strange car pulls into the yard, go out the back.”
Marlys considered for a moment, then asked, “How much more do you have to do?”
“In an hour, I’ll be fitting it together. Or I’ll be close to that. Then I got to paint it.”
“That can wait a bit, though, the paint. Okay. All they know about you is that you’ve got gray eyes. Distinctive gray eyes, which you do. I don’t want them to see you, but it’d be nice if they got a look at Jesse, with his blue eyes.”
“Where is he?” Cole asked.
“Half-day farmers’ market in Des Moines,” Marlys said. “He should be back by two o’clock.”
“Jesse could let something out,” Cole said. “I hate to say it about my own brother, but we can’t trust him.”
“I know that,” Marlys said. “I worry about it. You do what you can with your grinding and be ready to run for it. I’m going to call Jean Mint and get my hair done.”