Free Extreme Prey by John Sandford

as he walked up to the bar and asked, “You lost?”
    “Not if this is Winn’s,” Lucas said.
    “Then you’re not lost,” the bartender said. “What can I do you for?”
    “I was told that Dave Leonard might be here,” Lucas said.
    “Why you looking for Dave?”
    “I’m doing some campaign research for Governor Henderson and I was hoping Mr. Leonard could help me out,” Lucas said.
    A man in a booth said, “I’m Dave Leonard.”
    —
    LEONARD WAS A THICK, dark-haired man, Lucas’s height but heavier, both in the arms and the gut. He was wearing a plaid shirt, jeans, and yellow work boots. The scars around his pale, suspicious eyes and a withered nose made him into a brawler.
    He was sitting in a booth across from two other men, one tall and thin in matching gray work shirt and pants, with a clump of brown hair on top of his head, while the sides were shaved bare; and the other shorter and fat, wearing an orange sweatshirt with cut-off sleeves that said, on the chest, “Party Patrol.” A mostly empty pitcher of beer sat in the middle of the table.
    “Who told you I was here?” Leonard asked. He slurred some of the words, and Lucas realized he’d been drinking for a while.
    “Guy in town,” Lucas said. None of the men had gray eyes. “I’d like to talk to you privately, if I could.”
    “About what?”
    “Prairie Storm . . . and some people who might belong to it,” Lucas said.
    “You smell like a cop,” Leonard said. “Not a campaign aide.”
    “Used to be a cop, but I quit,” Lucas said. “You got a minute?”
    Leonard looked at the other two men, then said, “These guys are my friends. We can talk right here.”
    “Okay.” Lucas dragged a chair over from a nearby table, satdown at the end of the booth, and looked at Leonard. “Governor Henderson has gotten letters from anonymous people down here in Iowa that seem to threaten Mrs. Bowden. We’re taking them seriously. We’re looking for an older woman and a younger guy, who might be a family, mother and son. The only thing I can tell you is that the son has pretty distinctive gray eyes. I have a photo . . .”
    Lucas began fishing his cell phone out of his pocket, but Leonard broke in to say, “You’re not a cop anymore, but you’re doing cop work. Investigating.”
    “Well, I’m checking on these people, to see if they’re serious and we need to be worried, or if they’re bullshitters and we don’t need to worry,” Lucas said.
    “What does that have to do with me?” Leonard asked.
    “The letters use certain kinds of language and talk about certain kinds of political positions that are like the ones in Prairie Storm literature. We’re not suggesting that you have anything to do with it, but we thought you might know these people,” Lucas said. He scanned the few pictures he had saved in his cell phone, found the one taken by Alice Green, and turned it to Leonard. “This is one of the guys . . . not too good a picture.”
    Leonard glanced at it, for no more than a fraction of a second, and said, “Never seen him.”
    “You’re sure?”
    “Positive.”
    Lucas peered at him for a moment, then said, “Look, you’ve got to take this seriously, man. If anything were to happen to one ofthe candidates and it turned out the shooter was a member of Prairie Storm . . . you could find yourself in big trouble, even if you had nothing to do with it.”
    “That sounds like a threat,” Leonard drawled.
    “Not a threat, it’s the reality of a bad situation,” Lucas said.
    “We don’t much take to threats,” Leonard said.
    He’d included his two friends with the “We,” but neither the thin man nor the fat man looked like they were much interested in a fight.
    “Look, I don’t want a hassle, I’m just trying to track down these two—”
    “For what? For saying what they think?” Leonard asked.
    “I don’t care what they
think
, but I’d like to find out what they mean when they talk about, you know,