Extreme Prey Page 12

  “That’s the guy we need to talk to,” Lucas told Robertson. “I’m heading back to Iowa City.”

  —

  BUT NOT ALONE.

  When they told Ford about it, he said, “I’m all for you digging this guy out, but I want Jerry to go with you. He’s got the badge. We’ll finish up and get the bodies off to the medical examiner and I’ll interview whatever friends of Likely I can find. I’ll call up everybody in his cell phone directory.”

  “Ask everybody about the party,” Lucas said.

  “I will,” Ford said. “Hell, if this is really all about Bowden, I could get a book out of it. ‘I Saved Bowden’s Butt,’ the true story of how a humble Iowa police officer saved the president’s life, and she made him the director of the FBI.”

  They all laughed, for what the joke was worth, which wasn’t much, and then a woman’s voice from the other room, the voice of the crime-scene tech, said, “I don’t think laughter is appropriate.”

  “Suck on it,” Robertson muttered under his breath. Then, calling brightly, “You’re right, Katie. Sorry. We lost track of where we were.”

  They all looked down at Baker’s body, and Lucas said to Robertson, “You’re following me up? Let’s go.”

  “I got lights,” Robertson said. “If you follow me, we can go at a hundred miles an hour. With a siren.”

  “Lead the way,” Lucas said.

  ELEVEN

  As they were walking out to their vehicles, Lucas asked Robertson if he had access to a researcher at the Division of Criminal Investigation. Robertson said, “We’ve got the group assistant, she can do some research if we need it.”

  “It can be anybody, but it’d be nice if somebody could look up publishers in Iowa City, and call us, so we’d have a list when we get there.”

  “She could do that,” Robertson said.

  —

  IOWA CITY.

  Their first stop was at New Nexus Press, which occupied half of the second floor of a house on North Linn Street, on the edge of the downtown area. Lucas led the way up the stairs, to a landing and short hallway leading to two office doors. One belonged to an architect, the other to New Nexus. The New Nexus door was standing open, and a woman was working at a desk inside, tapping on a keyboard.

  She looked up as they walked in, and Robertson showed her his ID and said, “We’re working on a murder investigation. The murder happened down in Mount Pleasant, and the murdered man had a writer friend we’re trying to find . . . but we don’t know his name. Supposedly he has a very, very long political book, something like three thousand pages, that he keeps trying to get published up here.”

  The woman had thick plastic glasses and looked up at them, eyes large as eggs behind the lenses, and asked, “Jeez, who got murdered?”

  “There were actually two people murdered,” Robertson said. “They were involved in a progressive political group.”

  “You think the writer did it?” she asked.

  “No, we’re trying to find out who the other members of the party were, who the victim’s friends were, and we’re having trouble getting that done,” Robertson said.

  The woman leaned back in her chair and shouted, “Barney? Barney?”

  A man yelled from a side room, “Yeah?”

  “What’s the name of that goofy guy with the big book about the evil Jews?”

  The man shouted back, “Anson Palmer. Is he here?”

  “No. The police are here and they’re asking about him.”

  A short wide man dressed in jeans and a kayaking T-shirt, with his red hair pulled back in a bun, came out of the side room, carrying a sheath of paper, looked at them and said, “Who’d he kill?”

  “Not funny, Barney. There’s been a murder,” the woman said.

  “Ah, jeez. I’m sorry. Anson did it?”

  “Not that we know of,” Robertson said. “We’re contacting the victim’s friends, to see if anybody might know anything.”

  “Any reason to think Palmer might have done it?” Lucas asked.

  “No, not really,” the red-haired man said. “I can’t say he’s harmless because he’s a rabid anti-Semite, but I’ve got no reason to think he’d murder anyone. If anything, I’d say he’s another ineffectual kook.”

  “But he’s a local guy?”

  “Yeah, he lives here in town,” Barney said. “I see him hanging at the Prairie Lights bookstore in the evening. Try to avoid him, when I can. We should have an address or a phone number in our files, if that’ll help.”

  “That would,” Robertson said. And, “This might be the first time I had a list of people to talk to, and the very first person knew the guy I was looking for.”

  “Would have been the same with whatever publisher you went to,” the red-haired man said. “He’s been to all of us. Repeatedly.” He was thumbing through an old-style paper Rolodex, and then pulled a card. “Here we go. Anson Palmer. No address, but a phone number, if that helps.”

  —

  IT DID. Robertson had an assistant in Des Moines track the number down, and get the billing address. Palmer lived in an older neighborhood of pastel ranch houses and mature trees, not far from the high school. And he was home.

  “Murdered? Somebody murdered him?” Palmer was agog. A thin, soft man with a pitted nose and a bald, bumpy egg-shaped head dotted with dime-sized freckles, he was wearing jeans and a T-shirt that said, “NSA, Our Customer Service Pledge: You Talk, We Listen.”

  “Murdered both Mr. Likely and his lady friend,” Lucas said. They were in Palmer’s living room. “We have reason to believe it’s related to members of the Progressive People’s Party, which is why we need to talk to you.”

  “I . . . I . . . When were they murdered?” Palmer took three steps backward and sank into a well-used red crushed-velvet-covered easy chair.

  “Last night, sometime before eleven o’clock,” Robertson said.

  “I was down at the bookstore until it closed, I’m sure people will remember,” Palmer said. “I had a long debate with—”

  “We don’t actually suspect anyone in particular of killing Mr. Likely,” Lucas interrupted. “We’re trying to get together a list of people who might know some other people we’re trying to reach.”

  Palmer was willing to cooperate.

  The party, he said, had originally consisted of political radicals who had gathered around the university, but had eventually drifted away from the academic radicals to land-based activism.

  “Since we’re a farm state, a lot of the concerned people here . . . well, some of them, anyway . . . began to go in different directions during the farm crisis back in the eighties,” he said. “Away from concentrating on civil rights and the peace movement. Quite a few party members came from farm families themselves. This is when Willie Nelson’s Farm Aid thing started . . . the benefit concerts. Everything was going to hell out in the countryside.”

  He trailed away, thinking, then continued: “A lot of the members were couples. Then we all got old and more of the men died than women, so now the party’s more women than men, I guess. We still talk politics, but there hasn’t been a march in years. We sometimes leaflet for sympathetic candidates.”

  “We’re particularly interested in the women members,” Lucas said. “A middle-aged woman, a bit heavyset, chubby, I guess, with curly white hair. She wears rimless glasses and may have an adult son. The son’s in his late twenties or early thirties, we think, with distinctive gray eyes.”

  Palmer considered for a moment, then shook his head and said, “I couldn’t tell you who that might be. Some of the women might know. Most of the members had children and we were all about the same age, give or take a few years, because we were at the university. The kids, you know, started coming along about then. Nineteen eighty-five was the heart of the farm troubles and that was thirty years ago, now. So that’s how old the
kids will be, give or take a few years.”

  “How many members did the party have?”

  “Well, the core membership, maybe a couple of hundred back at the beginning,” Palmer said. “Joe used to say eight thousand or some number like that, but that included everybody who came to events, or marched, or even showed up at concerts and so on. Most of those people were never official members. So, maybe two hundred, at the peak. Now . . . maybe thirty or forty who would really call themselves members.”

  “Would you have a membership list?” Robertson asked.

  “No. I’m sure there is one, though, because we get e-mails about items of interest—political events, position papers, and so on. Grace Lawrence has been the secretary for years. She lives in Hills, south of town. She puts all that stuff on the Net—I’m pretty sure she’d have a current list.”

  Lucas said, “Mr. Palmer, we understand that you’re working on a book whose central feature is Jewish involvement in politics—”

  “Not just politics! Everything! They run everything!” His eyes were alight now. He looked back and forth between Lucas and Robertson and said, “Are you Jews?”

  They both shook their heads and Lucas said, “We thought the woman might be closer to you than to Mr. Likely, because she seems to share some of your . . . concerns . . . about Jews.”

  “We all share my concerns! We all do! I mean, I’ve fully documented . . .” Palmer set off on a rant about Jewish conspiracy unlike anything Lucas had ever heard. They managed to slow him down after two minutes of it and get an address for Grace Lawrence, the party secretary.

  Palmer was still talking when they walked out, to himself, his voice rising even as they left. On the sidewalk, Robertson looked back and said, “Jesus, that guy needs to be in the fuckin’ loony bin. You know, we may be dealing with a whole collection of fruitcakes here. People who could pull a trigger.”

  “Let’s go see Grace Lawrence,” Lucas said.

  —

  PALMER HAD A BRASS POT on the floor next to the bedroom radiator, into which he threw unused coins at the end of every day. When Lucas and Robertson were gone, he fished a handful of quarters out of the pot, pulled on a sport coat, drove as fast as he safely could to the university, found a parking spot, hurried down the hill to the student union, went to a pay phone, and called Marlys Purdy.

  When Marlys answered, he demanded, “Goddamnit, did you and your boys kill Joe Likely and his girlfriend?”

  “What? What are you talking about?” Marlys was so startled by the question that her reply sounded phony even to her own ears. “Are you calling me on your cell?”

  “Goddamnit, you did,” Palmer said. “And of course not, I’m calling you on a pay phone.”

  “Small favors . . .”

  “Oh, boy. Listen, I don’t want you coming around here trying to kill me,” Palmer said. “If you come around here, I’ll be shooting back. I’ve got a gun.”

  “Anson, I have no idea of what you’re talking about,” Marlys said, still with the phony note. She was in the kitchen and the kitchen window was open, and through the screen she could hear Cole pounding on something in the barn.

  “Yes, you do. I can hear it in your voice, Marlys,” Palmer said. “Now listen, I’m on your side here. Two cops came to interrogate me. They say they’re not Jews, but I’m not so sure. They know you’re gunning for Bowden and they are hot on your trail. They’ve got a good description of you and your gray-eyed boy and sooner or later, they’ll be coming around. I sent them over to see Grace Lawrence. I’ll call Grace and warn her and she’ll cover for you. I’ll tell her to give them a list, but to leave you off.”

  Five seconds of silence, then: “I’d appreciate it,” Marlys said. Good as a confession.

  “And don’t mess with me,” Palmer said.

  “We won’t. Anson, I can’t tell you how much we . . . appreciate this. We’ll be done in a couple of days, we have to keep them off our backs that long.”

  “I’ll call Grace,” Palmer said.

  “You think we can trust her?” Marlys asked.

  “Oh, yeah. We can trust her.” Then, “I gotta tell you, Marlys, this has really got me pumped. I never thought this would happen—we finally move from bullshit to direct action. We’ve needed to do that for years. Good on you! Good on you! Grace will feel the same way. I know some people already suspect this, but I’m sure of it, and you’re the first person I’ve told—Grace was behind the Lennett Valley Dairy bomb. She’ll be with you, on direct action. I can tell you that, for sure.”

  “I had no idea that she was involved with that,” Marlys said, thinking back to the Lennett Valley disaster. She asked, “How long you think we’ve got?”

  “I’ve no idea. The people who talked to me claimed they were an Iowa state cop and a guy from Minnesota who used to be a cop, named Davenport, like the city. He seems to be the one who’s driving the hunt, but it was my real impression that they’re not state agents at all. They come from somewhere higher up in the federal government. God only knows what kind of operation they’re really running. Anyway, I’ve got to go. I’ve got to call Grace. You’ve got to figure out your next move and do it right quick.”

  —

  HIS HEART STILL POUNDING with adrenaline, Palmer called Lawrence, who was monitoring lunch hour at Hills Elementary School as a volunteer. He gave her a quick summary and said, “Marlys is going to direct action. Best you don’t know what, for the time being, but it’s big. It’s huge. We’ve been talking about something like this for years and now it’s moving. She only needs a few days. If you could cut her name off the roll, that would help.”

  “How long before they get here? The police?” Lawrence asked.

  “Could be anytime—they left here fifteen minutes ago. If they don’t stop anywhere . . .”

  “I’ll have to move,” she said.

  “Go.”

  “I never did like Joe,” she said. “You think he would have talked?”

  “Yeah, he would have given them up, sooner or later,” Palmer said. “He was a talker, not an actor, and he never did like the idea of direct action. Hey, listen, I’m calling you from a pay phone. If you need to call me about anything, find a pay phone so they can’t connect cell phone calls. These guys claim to be state agents, but they’re not. They’re from one of the federal alphabets, or I’ll eat my shorts.”

  “Smart about the phone,” she said. “Gotta run.”

  —

  LAWRENCE WALKED OUT of the lunchroom, past the office, told the secretary that she was feeling ill, and then scurried home, on foot, two blocks down the street. She lived in an old house, built in 1927, and not well maintained; but she was sixty-two and had suffered from three episodes of breast cancer. She’d only need the house, she often thought, for a few more years.

  A bay window, looking out at an arbor thickly covered with Concord grapes, served as her home office. There’d once been a semicircular seat in the bay area, but she’d had a local carpenter replace it with a work surface, with four file cabinets fitted beneath the wooden surface. A laptop, a Canon printer, and a box with miscellaneous office supplies sat on top of it.

  Anson said the cops had left fifteen minutes before his call, so that was now twenty-five minutes: she had little time. She turned on the laptop and as she waited for it to come up, dug a thumb drive from the office supply box. She plugged the drive into the side of the computer, went to look out the front windows, saw no unfamiliar cars, went back to the party mailing list, rolled through it to “Purdy,” and deleted the entry for Marlys. She had another list on paper, but they’d have to turn the house over to find that one.

  She was about to save the edited list, but then thought for a second, rolled farther down, and deleted the name Betsy Skira.

  That done, she saved the edited list, brought it back up to make sure that the references to “Purdy” and �
��Skira” were truly gone, shut down the computer, pulled the thumb drive and dropped it back in the box.

  She checked the front windows again and, still moving quickly, went to the back door, picked up a wicker basket, pushed through the door, and walked out to the side-yard garden, where she hurriedly cut free a cabbage, peeled off the outer leaves, and dropped the head in the basket. Moving to the cucumber patch, she pawed through the wide green leaves and found three good cucumbers, picked them, dropped them in the basket; pulled some carrots, which were getting old and woody but looked and smelled good. In fact, all of it looked and smelled good: she could live out her life growing fresh vegetables.

  Then she waited, pulling weeds. Nobody showed. She walked to the back door, got a hat, put it on, went back to the weeds.

  Marlys Purdy was going to a direct action. Lawrence wouldn’t have seen that coming, though she’d known that Purdy bore an unflinching anger toward America’s wealthy overlords, the banks, the military, the media, and all the rest. Something that they shared. She was intensely curious about what Purdy was going to do. Anson said it was huge . . .

  She was still pulling weeds when two unfamiliar vehicles, a sedan and an SUV, pulled up to the house.

  —

  LUCAS AND ROBERTSON had stopped at a sandwich shop before heading out to Hills. Following Lucas’s navigation system, they’d come into Hills on a back road, over a narrow bridge, and were at Lawrence’s house a minute later. Lucas knocked on the door, got no response, so Robertson leaned in and knocked harder, and they were turning away when a woman called, “Hello?” They turned and saw an older woman in a wide straw hat, watching them from a sprawling side-yard vegetable garden.

  “Miz Lawrence?” Lucas called back.

  “Yes? Who are you?”

  —

  LAWRENCE WAS ONCE a very good-looking woman, Lucas thought: brown-eyed, still shapely into her sixties, with an engaging smile and a still-dark ponytail threaded with silver hair. She was shocked by the murders: “Joe was such a great man! Everybody liked him. I can’t imagine any party members are involved.”