Chosen Prey

by John Sandford

  “Not yet. There’s no point, if you don’t want to go along.”

  “All right.” He was satisfied—clear on the lesbian front. He could hear the rope in his pants pocket, calling to them. “You know, I can see why somebody like you might be interested. But I . . .” He sighed and stopped.

  “Tough day?” she asked.

  “Oh . . . with Mom gone . . . I mean, with the medical examiner and everybody looking at her. They’re saying that the cause of death is undetermined, which I don’t know—it means they might think it’s not natural.”

  “James,” she said, “when we left the medical examiner’s the other day . . . we went shopping and that kind of freaked me out. I mean, it seemed almost like you’d forgotten her somehow.”

  “What?” His forehead wrinkled. “Ellen, that’s just what I do when I’m upset. You know I like to shop, and I was just very upset and I . . .”

  His words were coming faster and faster, and finally she held up her hand and said, “Okay, I’m sorry.” She wrapped her arms around her knees. “I just, I don’t know. I’ve been reading about this gravedigger guy, and he seems so . . . cruel. I thought you seemed a little cruel.”

  He heard the false note again. He was a historian and a critic, and he could pick up a false note as quickly as anyone. He said, “You’re comparing me to this gravedigger person?”

  “No, no. I just want people not to be cruel.” Then she smiled at him and her hand wandered to his groin. “Well, maybe a little cruel sometimes,” she said. “Have you been thinking about my call?”

  His mind was clicking over now: She was interrogating him. But was she doing it on her own, or was there somebody with her? Could somebody hear them? For Christ’s sakes, could somebody see them? He didn’t dare look. He said, “I thought this afternoon, because of my mother . . . something gentle. Something that takes a long time.”

  She seemed disappointed, and that was, in his mind, confirmation. Something was going on, and he didn’t know what it was. “Why don’t we do something excessively oral?” He slipped his fingers between her legs. “I haven’t been in here yet.”

  “HE SORTA WALKED away from that question,” Del said.

  “Doesn’t look like she’ll be asking any more for a while,” said Gibson.

  “Goddamnit,” Marshall said to Gibson. “Somebody ought to kick your ass for you.”

  “Take it easy, pal,” Gibson said. “When we get finished with this, you wanna take it outside, I’ll go with you.”

  “Nobody’s taking it outside,” Lucas said. To Gibson he said, “Another comment about Barstad and you’ll be directing traffic at a construction site.” And to Marshall: “You keep your problems to yourself or I’ll ship your ass back to Dunn County.” And to both of them: “Everybody know where I’m coming from?”

  LATER, WHEN THEY finished with a second round, Barstad asked, “What do you think of the gravedigger?”

  “Well, I guess I think what everybody thinks,” he said. “He’s a crazy man. He needs care.”

  “I think they just ought to take him out and dump him in a hole somewhere, and cover it up and not tell anybody where he is,” she declared. “That would teach him.”

  “That would,” he said. “You’re right.” Qatar stood up and gathered his clothes. “Everything’s getting wrinkled,” he said fussily. “Let me go hang them up.”

  “The rack in the bedroom,” she said lazily. “Hurry back.”

  “You are far too young for me, m’dear,” he said.

  Qatar was in a panic. She’d mentioned asphyxiation sex twice; she’d mentioned the gravedigger three times—she was interrogating him, he thought, but then . . .

  Was it possible that it was all a symptom of her craziness, with her whole sexual experimentation regime? Was it possible that the gravedigger turned her on? That all of this was innocent?

  Then why the false notes? And they were false, clanging like a leaden bell. And now some of her smiles seemed false, and her sexual commentary too dramatic.

  The biggest problem, he thought, was that he’d stupidly brought his rope. If there were police around, if they were watching him, they would hang him with it. He didn’t know the details of DNA, but he had a general idea of how it worked. And the rope looked dense: It must have soaked up blood—there had been blood almost every time—and skin, and who knows what else.

  In the bedroom, he looked around quickly, but there seemed no place to hide anything. He carefully hung his clothes on the rack, then took the rope out of his pants pocket, coiled it tightly, and stepped out of the bedroom and into the bathroom. She had a large rack of towels, washcloths, and other bathroom equipment on a stainless-steel kitchen rack, pushed against one wall. He turned on the water, then slipped the rope under the bottom pile of towels. He washed himself, dried, and went back to the front room.

  A camera? Who knew? It might even excite him if he knew. . . .

  She was waiting and asked, “What next? You don’t want to try the necktie thing?”

  “Some other time,” he said. “It really makes me nervous, thinking about it.”

  Again the shadow of disappointment—but exactly how was she disappointed? Because a conspiracy was failing, or because she wanted a loop around her neck?

  “James, you can be such a pill,” she said.

  A little after three o’clock, Qatar left.

  “I thought we were gonna go wine shopping,” Barstad complained. “I got some money out, I got a book on it—”

  “Ellen, you have absolutely destroyed me. I couldn’t go wine shopping today without risking a stroke. Next time, we’ll go wine shopping before we start the sex. Honestly, you’re a little bit . . . over the top.”

  “A pill,” she said. “You really can be.”

  “NOTHING HERE,” DEL said, as they watched him leave.

  Marshall said, “But I think that little girl could use treatment.”

  Lucas said to Gibson, “I want the tapes—I’ll take them with me. I don’t want any copies made, I don’t want any editing. I’ll tell you guys, we’re all playing with our jobs on this. If it turns out that Qatar is innocent, and he believes we set him up to make this tape . . . our gooses could be cooked.”

  “Hey, I just did what you told me,” Gibson said.

  “I know. But you’d be cooked anyway. That’s why I’m taking the tapes. They’re going in a safe, and if we don’t need them in this case, I’ll burn the sonsofbitches.” He shook his head. “Little Miss Muffin may have fucked us up.”

  THEY STOOD BY the silvered window and watched Qatar walk across the parking lot and get into his car. He seemed a little beaten, and Lucas almost sympathized with him: Barstad was definitely, distinctly, too much. Lucas collected the tapes, and said to Del and Marshall, “We’re back to Randy.”

  25

  LUCAS BROUGHT IN the intelligence cops to watch Qatar. Since Qatar didn’t know he was being watched, only one man was assigned at a time: one man to watch the car, get him to work, monitor the classroom, and his travels during the day. “If he gets erratic, we’ll get you help,” Lucas told the first guy up. “Basically, at this point, it’s baby-sitting.”

  The baby-sitter took Qatar through the night and then to work; a new guy picked him up at work, took him out of his office to a classroom, out to lunch, shopping, a visit to a funeral home, back to his office.

  Lucas stayed in touch all day, but focused on the problem with Randy. He finally decided the best way to handle it was with Marcy. “He relates to women. He may relate to your getting shot.”

  “You want me to show him the bullet hole?”

  She didn’t have a bullet hole; she had a scar that looked like the star shape made when a pebble falls in mud, with a string leading out of it, which was the surgeon’s entry cut. She was being tough, and Lucas recognized it: “If you think it’ll help. You’ve got to read him.”

  Lucas applied some pressure on Randy’s attorney by calling the public defender and explaining the
deal. The PD went to Lansing and told him to take it, and to talk to Randy about it. The bureaucratic hassling took all of the morning and a piece of the afternoon, and finally an assistant county attorney got back to Lucas.

  “We’ve been talking with the Ramsey county attorney and the Ramsey PD, and this is the deal: If Whitcomb can positively identify the picture, and give us details surrounding his contacts with the suspect . . .”

  “Qatar.”

  “Yeah, Qatar. If he can do that, Ramsey’ll reduce the ag assault to simple assault and drop the drug charge down to misdemeanor possession—and he takes a six-month to two-year sentence, which he spends in the hospital, because that’s how long the docs think rehab will take. In other words, he takes an easy fall and we pay for medical.”

  “We’d have to pay it anyway, one way or another,” Lucas said. “So the deal is done?”

  “Everybody’s agreed but Randy. The idea is, you show up with the pictures and see if you can get him to move.”

  “I’m sending Marcy Sherrill in to talk to him. He has a personal problem with me.”

  “Whatever you think. We need him if we’re gonna have a chance with Qatar.”

  LUCAS AND MARCY drove to Regions together, and talked about approaches. “He’s a pimp,” Lucas said. “You oughta show a little street balls, like a hooker, but basically back off when he comes on to you. Gonna have to play him.”

  “That’s the bullshit I don’t like,” she said. “That’s why I never was a good decoy. I always wanted to go straight for the throat.”

  “Aim a little lower this time,” Lucas said. “If you can get a grip on his dick, we can put Qatar away this afternoon.”

  Lansing was waiting outside Randy’s hospital room. Lansing looked at Marcy and asked Lucas, “Who’s this?”

  “Why don’t you ask me? I’m standing right here,” Marcy said.

  Lansing stepped back. “All right. Who’re you?”

  “I’m a Minneapolis police sergeant and I’m a little fuckin’ cranky this afternoon, so if you don’t want me to pull your nose off, I’d suggest you be polite. I’m the one who talks to Whitcomb.”

  Lansing looked at Lucas, who shrugged. “ I’malways polite with her.”

  Lansing nodded abruptly, as if he’d had enough of the Minneapolis police show. “All right. I’ll tell Mr. Whitcomb why we’re here, and then you can make your pitch. It’s all fine with us, if he goes for it—but he’s pretty angry.”

  “I can relate,” Marcy said.

  Lucas waited in the hall, holding the door open just enough to hear. Lansing started the introductions, and Randy said, “Get her out of here. Get her the fuck out of here.”

  He sounded like he was trying to scream, but his voice was a cross between a whisper and a croak, as though he’d been shouting in whispers all day.

  Marcy said, “I know what you’re feeling, Randy. I got shot myself last year. I’m still in rehab.”

  “Tell somebody who cares, you fuckin’ cunt,” Randy croaked. “I wish they’d hit you in the fuckin’ head.”

  Lansing said, “Randy, you’ve got to listen to this. This is a deal that’s the best you could hope for, this is—”

  “Fuck you. You’re fired. I want another attorney. I got no fuckin’ legs. . . . You hear this?” Lucas heard a whacking sound and peeked through the door. Randy was flat on his back but flailing at his legs with one free hand. “Nothing here, nothing here . . .”

  Lansing tried to grab his arm, said, “C’mon, stop it, Randy, gotta stop, you’re hurting yourself.”

  A nurse burst past Lucas and into the room and shouted, “What’s going on here? What’s going on?”

  Randy subsided, looked at the nurse, and said weakly, “Get them the fuck outa here. Get them the fuck out.”

  “NEVER HAD A chance,” Marcy said, as they left the hospital. “Never let me get going.”

  “He was a little excited,” Lucas said.

  “Ah, man. I felt sorry for the guy,” Marcy said. “Makes me think . . . I got lucky last year. A couple inches to the left, and I’m just like that.”

  “Nah.” Lucas shook his head.

  “Sure I would’ve been.”

  “Nah. A couple inches to the left with that rifle, and you would’ve been deader’n a mackerel,” he said.

  She stopped. “I’m not riding back with you if you’re gonna pout about this.”

  “Who’s pouting?” He looked back at the hospital. “Miserable little shit.”

  AFTER QATAR LEFT Barstad’s apartment, he’d driven home and buried himself in his bed, sick with apprehension. But nothing had happened. Was it simply paranoia?

  He relived every moment of the afternoon’s sexual seizure with Barstad—it had been more like a seizure than play, he thought—and as he worked through it, eyes closed, in the silence of his bedroom.

  The false notes were there. Everything she’d done had been dramatized. In their other meetings, she’d been the sexual technician: do this, do that, do the other. This time, she’d been a movie star: a bad actress.

  He was worried about his rope. If she looked in the closet, she’d find it. She was sure to come across it sooner or later. He had to get it back, and hide it someplace where it would never be found. If the police were on him . . .

  If the police were on him. That was the question.

  He pushed himself up, steeled himself, got a drink of water, took a couple of aspirins, and went out to his car. He had an hour of light, he thought. If the police were there . . . He thought about it for a few minutes, then headed over to the Minneapolis Museum of Art. The museum was a reasonable destination for an art historian; even better, most people parked along the narrow streets, around the museum, and finding a space wasn’t all that easy.

  As he drove, he watched his rearview mirror. He assumed that any police car would not be right on his tail, so he tried to look three or four cars back. By the time he got to the museum, he was watching a gray American car. The car was a few years old and completely nondescript. He cruised up to the museum and slowed, looking for a space; stopped when he found one, a small one, tried to maneuver into it. Got it wrong, deliberately, and pulled back into the street.

  The gray car, as far as he could tell, had disappeared from view. He tried again, messed it up, then gave up and drove past the museum, around the corner, around another corner, down the back of the museum, moving quickly now. As he reached the next corner, the gray car appeared in his rearview, and his heart jumped.

  He was right: They were onto him.

  He turned the corner, found another parking space halfway down the block, between the museum and a park. He began maneuvering into it, and with his arm over the backseat of the car, saw the gray car stop at the corner before coming around it. He was sure the man inside was looking at him. He got the car into the space, locked it, and, never looking back, walked around the corner and down the block to the museum entrance.

  He visited the Impressionists and post-Impressionists. Forced himself to take some time. Looked long and hard at a van Gogh, but saw nothing in it. Walked slowly around the gallery, and the paintings might as well have been Snoopy cartoons. A few people wandered past, but none of them met his eye or seemed interested in him. After a half hour, he could stand it no longer, and headed for the exit. He still had some light.

  He maneuvered the car out of the parking space and headed home; never saw the gray car, could never find a car that seemed to be tracking him. Had he been wrong? He stopped at a grocery store, bought some sliced turkey and bread, more milk and cereal, finished the drive home. Nothing. Where were they?

  By early evening, he was exhausted and bored at the same time. He had convinced himself again that he was being watched, and was afraid to leave the house in the night. He ate cereal again, munching through three bowls of the stuff, and lurched away from the table with a sugar high. He tried television, tried music, tried reading. Nothing worked, but the hours passed.

  At midnight, h
e went to bed. Couldn’t sleep, got up and took a pill. Still couldn’t sleep, got up and took another one. And slept, but poorly.

  But the next morning, on the way to work, he found them again.

  “There you are, moron—there you are,” he said, as the gray car nosed around a corner two blocks back. They weren’t staying tight, but seemed content to follow at a distance. Was it possible that they had put a tracking device on the car? It was possible, he guessed. He went to work, taught a class, went to lunch; went to Marten’s Funeral Home to talk about caskets for his mother. The funeral home would arrange to retrieve her body from the medical examiner.

  He did it all on remote control. Most of his mind was busy worrying about the rope.