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“Yeah. Don’t regret it, but I had to come back,” Lucas said.
“You’re addicted to the hunt. I’m not. I’ll be ready to let go.”
“Weather talked to Frankie,” Lucas said. “Frankie said you’ve been looking at a cabin up north.”
“I am. Made a bid on one, we should hear in the next few days. Decent lake. Small, but deep. Muskies, walleyes. I don’t have the big bucks, like you, but... it’s a good place, the kind I always wanted.”
—
In college andafterward, Lucas had written role-playing games with the help of friends, and several had been published, enough to buy a second-hand Porsche 911.
Pushed out of the Minneapolis Police Department—eluding a possible charge of brutality for beating up a man who’d church-keyed one of his informants—he’d written a series of computer simulations to be used in training 9-1-1 operators.
A college friend who’d majored in computer science had helped him transfer the simulations to PCs, and another friend helped him form a company to market the simulations. The company had donewell but bored him nearly senseless; he’d sold out at the very peak of the Internet bubble.
With the earlier brutality charge effectively covered up, he’d gotten a political appointment that placed him back on the Minneapolis police force. Several years later, he’d moved to the BCA and started working with Virgil.
Lucas said, “You’re different from me. If you let go, you won’t be back.”
“No, but I’ll always be available to give you much-needed advice.”
—
Barnes and BlueInvestment Services had a floor on an older, but extensively renovated, red-stone building overlooking Mears Park in St. Paul’s Lowertown.
They lucked into a parking place across the park from the building, fed the parking meter—Virgil put his BCA placard on the dash in case the interview ran long—and strolled over. The park was pleasant, green gone to tan, a good day: cold, clear, a mild leaf-shedding breeze carrying the faint odor of barbeque from a nearby restaurant.
They took the elevator to the third floor, spoke to a receptionist, who made a call, and a moment later, a young blond woman in a green dress came to lead them to Burston’s office.
Burston worked out of a spacious cubicle with two wooden walls hung with certificates and art photographs, and two glass walls, one looking out at the park and the other inward toward the office.
He was a tall man, strikingly handsome, the right size to fit thekiller; Lucas had the impression that he was heavier than the killer, but the killer had been wearing that rain suit, so it was impossible to tell for sure. He had dark hair, well-trimmed and groomed, dark eyes, and a fashionable three-day beard on a square chin, as carefully trimmed as his hair. He was wearing a dark suit with a purple silk tie.
He’d been looking at a computer when they arrived at his door, and he stood, waved them in, and told the woman, “Close the door, would you, Barb?”
She did and they shook hands, and Virgil and Lucas took chairs in front of his desk, while he sat behind it. He looked, Virgil thought, exactly like a late-thirties’ tennis player should: cool, smooth, tanned, and a bit slick.
He started: “Well. I know this is about Alex, but nothing else. I’ve already been interviewed by St. Paul police and an agent from the BCA. What can I do for you?”
Virgil said, “We’re interviewing a lot of people around Alex Sand. You probably know from the other interviews that the killer was caught on camera outside their house. You fit that physical profile.”
Burston look interested but unperturbed. He leaned forward, knitted his fingers on the desktop and asked, “How so?”
Virgil shrugged: “Same size and general shape, same shoe size. That’s what first caught our eye. We also noticed that your emails with Sand were becoming contentious, for a financial advisor-client relationship. We were wondering why that was.”
Burston nodded: “You might think it is, but that’s not an exactly novel observation. Both the St. Paul detective and the BCA agent asked about that. And it’s true: there was some contention. Alex didn’t pay me to be kind, or slap his back, he paid me to tell him thetruth. The truth is, he was about to dump a bunch of money into... might not exactly be a scam, but something that wasn’t entirely real. Not what it said it was.”
“The homeless housing,” Lucas said.
“Yes.”
“Margaret Cooper said that Alex accepted that he was really involved in a charity thing...”
Burston smiled, showing teeth, that changed his aspect from smooth and slightly slick to wolfish. “When you build housing, whether it’s done privately or by a community group, large sums of money get paid out and effectively disappear. You understand what I’m saying?”
Lucas nodded and Virgil said, “Yes.”
“Check the history of Heart/Twin Cities. That charity has made sizable amounts of money disappear. Alex was sure that as a federal judge he’d seen almost everything, and as a lawyer who’d dealt with all kinds of business interests, he’d seen the rest of it. He didn’t believe he could be conned. You know who makes the best mark for a con man? People who believe they can’t be conned.”
