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Authors: John Sandford
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has to identify the killer and the killer has got to give us Bekker on a plea bargain.”
“I hate to let it go,” Daniel said. “Our fuckin’ clearance rate . . .”
“So we get the TV people in here,” Lucas said.
“Let’s give it another twenty-four hours,” Daniel said. “We can talk again tomorrow night.”
Lucas shook his head. “No. You need to think about itovernight, ’cause if we’re going to do it, we got to do it quick. Tomorrow’d be best, early enough for the early evening news. Before this boyfriend, whoever he is, gets his head set in concrete. You should say flatly that we don’t believe the boyfriend did the killing, that we need all the help we can get. That we need him to come in, that we’ll get him a lawyer. That if he didn’t murder the woman, we’ll offer him immunity—maybe you can get the county attorney in on this angle. And that if he still doesn’t think he can come in, we need him to communicate with us somehow. Send us letters with more detail. Cut out pictures from magazines, people who most look like the killer. Do drawings, if he can. Maybe we can get the papers to print identikit drawings, have him pick the best ones, change them until they’re more like the killer.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“And we watch Bekker. If we make a heavy-duty appeal to the boyfriend and if Bekker really did buy the hit, he’ll get nervous. Maybe he’ll give us a break,” Lucas said.
“All right. I’ll think about it. See me tomorrow.”
“We gotta move,” Lucas urged, but Daniel waved him off.
“We’ll talk again tomorrow,” he said.
Lucas turned back to Jimmy Carter and inspected the former president’s tweed jacket. “If it’s Bekker who did it, or hired it, if he’s the iceman Sloan thinks he is . . .”
“Yeah?” Daniel was fiddling with his cigar, watching him from behind the desk.
“We better find Loverboy before Bekker does,” Lucas said.
CHAPTER
5
The evening sky shaded from crimson to ultramarine and finally to a flat gray; Lucas lived in the middle of the metro area, and the sky never quite got dark. Across the street, joggers came and went on the river path, stylish in their phosphorescent workout suits, flashing Day-Glo green and pink. Some wore headsets, running to rock. Beyond them, on the other side of the Mississippi, the orange sodium-vapor streetlights winked on as a grid set, followed by a sprinkling of bluer house lights.
When the lights came on across the river, Lucas pulled the window shade and forced himself back to the game. He worked doggedly, without inspiration, laying out the story for the programmer. A long ribbon of computer paper flowed across the library table, in and out of the puddle of light around his hands. With a flowchart template and a number-two pencil, he blocked out the branches of Druid’s Pursuit. He had once thought that he might learn to program, himself. Had, in fact, taken a community college course in Pascal and even dipped into C. But programming bored him, so he hired a kid to do it. He laid down the stories with the myriad jumps and branches, and the kid wrote the code.
The kid programmer had no obvious computer-freak personality flaws. He wore a letter jacket with a letter and told Lucas simply that he’d gotten it in wrestling. He could do chin-ups with his index fingers and sometimes brought a girlfriend along to help him.
Lucas, tongue in cheek, thought to ask him, Help you do what?, but he didn’t. Both kids came from Catholic colleges in the neighborhood and needed a cheap, private space. Lucas tried to leave them alone.
And maybe she was helping him. The work got done.
Lucas wrote games. Historical simulations played on boards, to begin with. Then, for the money, he began writing role-playing quest games of the Dungeons & Dragons genre.
One of his simulations, a Gettysburg, had become so complicated that he’d bought an IBM personal computer to figure times, points and military
“I hate to let it go,” Daniel said. “Our fuckin’ clearance rate . . .”
“So we get the TV people in here,” Lucas said.
“Let’s give it another twenty-four hours,” Daniel said. “We can talk again tomorrow night.”
Lucas shook his head. “No. You need to think about itovernight, ’cause if we’re going to do it, we got to do it quick. Tomorrow’d be best, early enough for the early evening news. Before this boyfriend, whoever he is, gets his head set in concrete. You should say flatly that we don’t believe the boyfriend did the killing, that we need all the help we can get. That we need him to come in, that we’ll get him a lawyer. That if he didn’t murder the woman, we’ll offer him immunity—maybe you can get the county attorney in on this angle. And that if he still doesn’t think he can come in, we need him to communicate with us somehow. Send us letters with more detail. Cut out pictures from magazines, people who most look like the killer. Do drawings, if he can. Maybe we can get the papers to print identikit drawings, have him pick the best ones, change them until they’re more like the killer.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“And we watch Bekker. If we make a heavy-duty appeal to the boyfriend and if Bekker really did buy the hit, he’ll get nervous. Maybe he’ll give us a break,” Lucas said.
“All right. I’ll think about it. See me tomorrow.”
“We gotta move,” Lucas urged, but Daniel waved him off.
“We’ll talk again tomorrow,” he said.
Lucas turned back to Jimmy Carter and inspected the former president’s tweed jacket. “If it’s Bekker who did it, or hired it, if he’s the iceman Sloan thinks he is . . .”
“Yeah?” Daniel was fiddling with his cigar, watching him from behind the desk.
“We better find Loverboy before Bekker does,” Lucas said.
CHAPTER
5
The evening sky shaded from crimson to ultramarine and finally to a flat gray; Lucas lived in the middle of the metro area, and the sky never quite got dark. Across the street, joggers came and went on the river path, stylish in their phosphorescent workout suits, flashing Day-Glo green and pink. Some wore headsets, running to rock. Beyond them, on the other side of the Mississippi, the orange sodium-vapor streetlights winked on as a grid set, followed by a sprinkling of bluer house lights.
When the lights came on across the river, Lucas pulled the window shade and forced himself back to the game. He worked doggedly, without inspiration, laying out the story for the programmer. A long ribbon of computer paper flowed across the library table, in and out of the puddle of light around his hands. With a flowchart template and a number-two pencil, he blocked out the branches of Druid’s Pursuit. He had once thought that he might learn to program, himself. Had, in fact, taken a community college course in Pascal and even dipped into C. But programming bored him, so he hired a kid to do it. He laid down the stories with the myriad jumps and branches, and the kid wrote the code.
The kid programmer had no obvious computer-freak personality flaws. He wore a letter jacket with a letter and told Lucas simply that he’d gotten it in wrestling. He could do chin-ups with his index fingers and sometimes brought a girlfriend along to help him.
Lucas, tongue in cheek, thought to ask him, Help you do what?, but he didn’t. Both kids came from Catholic colleges in the neighborhood and needed a cheap, private space. Lucas tried to leave them alone.
And maybe she was helping him. The work got done.
Lucas wrote games. Historical simulations played on boards, to begin with. Then, for the money, he began writing role-playing quest games of the Dungeons & Dragons genre.
One of his simulations, a Gettysburg, had become so complicated that he’d bought an IBM personal computer to figure times, points and military
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