Naked Prey ld-14

by John Sandford

  Lucas followed him back to a big wood-paneled office with a blue high-pile carpet, seven-foot mahogany desk and a wall full of photographs. The sheriff with local politicians, his wife, his children, other sheriffs, cops. A computer sat on a side-table with an Aeron chair in front of it. Lucas dropped into the chair, brought up the computer, slipped the CD into the CD tray, and called up a Qwest connection. Ten seconds later, the best of the stitched photos was on its way to St. Paul; a minute later, another was on its way. Six deputies were crowded into the office now, and Lucas thought about the other BCA crew. He punched in Dickerson's number.

  "Dickerson… "

  "This is Davenport. Where are you?"

  "Just outside of Armstrong. Thinking about heading home."

  "We got a name. We're down at the sheriff's office. If the name is good, it ties together a lot of stuff. The money, the cell in the basement."

  "What's the name?"

  "Hale Sorrell."

  Long pause. "Oh, shit."

  "Hale Sorrell?" Anderson demanded when Lucas rang off. "You mean the Rochester guy?"

  Lucas nodded, leaned back in the chair, crossed his legs. "Daughter was kidnapped last month and never came back," he said. "We're not sure yet, but it's a possibility."

  "You got pictures of him?" one of the deputies asked.

  "We've got these pictures," Lucas said, tapping a photograph on the monitor screen. "They're not good, but they might be good enough. Once we get a solid maybe, and some DNA returns back from the medical examiner, then we'll know."

  "That means his kid is out at… might have been at… her… "

  "She might still be out there, somewhere, at the house," Lucas said.

  "Did you know Sorrell was from up here, originally?" one of the deputies asked. "I mean, not right here, but down to Red Lake Falls? His father still lives down there, somewhere. He's in a nursing home or something."

  Lucas said: "That's interesting. Maybe somebody around here set him up?"

  "Could be, I guess."

  Another deputy said, "Maybe he was fooling around with somebody. Red Lake Falls is pretty much known for its beautiful women."

  "That's always a useful piece of information."

  Lucas's cell phone rang and the governor was there. "Lucas. Neil brought me up to date on this Hale Sorrell thing. I know him pretty well, I looked at the pictures."

  "What do you think?"

  "Neil and I agree. It sure looks like him. Not positive, but boy, it sure looks like him."

  "We have a lot of DNA, sir. If we can get somebody to officially point the finger, we could get a warrant for some DNA samples and settle it."

  "The devil's gonna be in the details. We don't want to be wrong. If we had to, is there any way you could hang this on the sheriff up there?"

  "The sheriff's a pretty sharp guy, sir," Lucas said, looking up at Anderson, who appeared confused, and mouthed at Lucas, Who is it? Lucas went back to the phone. "I think we could probably work something out, if we had to-but before we do anything official, I'd like to get some good photos of Sorrell, put them in a photo spread and show them to a woman up here who actually talked to him. If she IDs him, we'd be on solid ground asking for the DNA."

  "That sounds good. I'll get McCord on it right now. There've got to be some publicity shots around. He's served on committees and so forth. Can we transmit them up to you?"

  "I think so. You'll have to talk to the local people, I don't know exactly what the printing facilities are here… hang on." He took the phone down and asked, "Do we have a photo printer of some kind?"

  One of the deputies said, "Sure. We've got two or three different kinds. Standard stuff."

  Back to the phone: "We're good, sir. When your guys find a photo, send it up here to the sheriff's department."

  "We can do that," Henderson said. "Man, you moved fast-this is exactly what I wanted. That asshole Washington hasn't even gotten out of Grand Forks yet. He's supposedly going up to the hanging tree to make a speech."

  "Sir, we can't let that happen. It's really a bleak place-it looks like it was invented for a hanging. The image'll be so strong that nothing else will make any difference, nothing we say. Maybe we could keep him out of there on the grounds that it's a crime scene."

  "Can we blame that on the sheriff, too?"

  "I think it could be worked out, sir."

  "Is he right there, listening?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Let me talk to him. Say something that would lead to me talking to him."

  Lucas nodded. "I think you should talk to Sheriff Anderson about that, sir."

  "Good. Give him the phone."

  Lucas passed the phone to Anderson, saying, "The governor. He needs to speak with you."

  Anderson took the phone. "Uh, Governor Henderson… "

  As Anderson talked, Lucas said to the group of deputies, "Is there somebody here who usually handles photo spreads? We'll need a half-dozen pictures of white men with dark hair, probably in business suits, looking charming. Like a political picture." He looked around at the pictures on the walls. "Like these. Like that one." He pointed a finger at a smiling head.

  One of the deputies said, "We got that."

  The rest of it took an hour and a half. Lucas was in a semi-frenzy, driven by the momentum of the day, and Dickerson arrived, running hot with lights and siren, wanting to be there if it all cracked open. Forty minutes after Lucas talked to the governor, the sheriff's ID division took the transmission of two recent photos of Hale Sorrell, one a formal portrait, the other taken at a press conference after the disappearance of his daughter.

  A deputy put together two different photo spreads: one of dark-haired white men in informal situations, another of dark-haired white men in formal poses. Then he retransmitted all the dummy photos to himself, so they'd be printed on the same paper and have the same general look.

  Hoffman was still on the job at the casino. Small Bear was on the floor, he said, pushing her change cart.

  "Keep her there," Lucas said. "We're on the way."

  Lucas, Del, and Dickerson went with Anderson in a sheriff's truck, a comfortable GMC Yukon XL with a big heater. At the casino, Hoffman met them at the door. "Small Bear's upstairs," he said. "How're we doing?"

  "Gonna find out," Lucas said.

  Small Bear was sitting at a table in a conference room, her hands folded in front of her, looking a little frightened. Lucas explained quickly: "We have two sets of photos. We're gonna show you one set, then ask if you see the man who was here last night, and then we'll show you the other set. Okay?"

  She nodded. Lucas spread the informal photos in front of her. She looked at them, slowly, slowly, pushing one after another away from her, until finally she was left only with Sorrell's. "I think this might be him. Not a very good picture."

  "Okay." Lucas scooped up the deck of photos, put them back in the brown envelope they came in, opened a second envelope, and took out the formal shots. This time, Small Bear didn't hesitate.

  "I'm pretty sure this is him," she said, tapping the photograph of Sorrell.

  They all stood in silence, nobody moving, nothing audible but some breathing, and then Anderson groaned, "Jiminy," and Lucas turned and looked at Del.

  Del nodded. "Got him."

  8

  Margery Singleton looked like a green heron-a sharp-billed stalking bird with a mouth like a rip in a piece of rawhide, an arrowhead nose, rattlesnake eyes; her eyebrows plucked naked and redrawn with a green pencil. She worked the first shift at Elysian Manor, pushing patients to and fro, cleaning up after them, rolling pills when a registered nurse wasn't available. Her best friend, Flo Anderson, was a registered nurse, having put in her two years at Fargo, and they'd worked out a system where, if somebody needed a shot or to get blood taken, Margery could do it and Flo could sign. The patients, most of whom had Alzheimer's, didn't know one way or the other.

  Margery heard about the hanging of Warr and Cash from a breathless young nurse's ai
de who came back from lunch bright eyed with a tale she'd heard from a sheriff's deputy at the minimart.

  "They're hanging down there, naked as jaybirds, all purple and frozen. The woman's tongue was sticking out like this: " She tilted her head, hung her tongue out of the side of her mouth and crossed her eyes. Straightening, she added in a lower voice, "They said that the black guy had a penis that was about ten inches long."

  "That's bullshit," Margery said, her rattlesnake eyes fixing the young woman. "I seen two thousand dicks since I been in this place and there ain't been one of them more than seven."

  "How many black men have been in here?" the nurse asked, an eyebrow going up. Had the old bat there.

  "Hanged in a tree?"

  "That's what they say. Do you think Loren might know more about it?"

  "I'll find out," Margery said. She looked at her watch. She had another two hours before she could get off.

  A supervisor named Burt stuck his head into the station where they were talking. "Old man Barrows got shit all over the couch. Clean it up, okay?"

  Burt continued down the hall and Margery muttered, "Clean it up yourself, asshole." But she went to get her spray bottle and sponge, and the nurse's aide said, as she left, "If you hear anything from Loren, let me know. I mean, jeez."

  Loren Singleton finally rolled out of bed at two o'clock. He'd been unable to sleep much, dozing off only to see, in his dreams, Deon and Jane hanging from a tree. He stretched, scratched, went into the bathroom. As he shaved, looking in the mirror, he started thinking about his latest Cadillac restoration. The car was at Calb's, and that could be inconvenient. The more he shaved, the more inconvenient it seemed. He finished shaving, showered, brushed his teeth, got dressed, and called Gene Calb.

  Calb came on the phone and said, "Katina said you'd heard."

  "Woke me up on the clock radio this morning," Singleton said. "I thought it might be a good idea to move the Caddy outa there, you know, until things quiet down."

  Calb nodded. "Yes. Right away. Where do you want it?"

  "My garage. You got somebody who could drive it down for me? I'll drive them back."

  "I'll get Sherm, he isn't doing anything. So-what do you think?"

  Singleton shook his head. "I don't know. I wonder if it has anything to do with Joe? You think they were fighting? I mean, Deon never said anything."

  "I'm completely confused," Calb said. "If you told me shit was Shinola, I'd just nod my head and agree."

  "Same with me. When can you move the car?"

  "Right now. We're closing everything down, moving everything out. Sherm'll be there in fifteen minutes."

  "I'll be outside waiting."

  "Listen, Loren-we're really counting on you. You gotta keep an eye out. This is why you got the job."

  "I understand. You can count on me."

  The car shuffle took forty minutes. When it was done, Singleton went downtown, probed for information, got small pieces, and one essential fact: nobody knew anything. He called Calb, told him that. At three-thirty, he was back home. As he always did, when he first got home, he checked his money. He kept it in the basement, inside the holes in a row of concrete blocks. Maybe, he thought, he ought to move it. Get a bank box far away, maybe in Minot, or somewhere. If anybody looked at him seriously, the BCA people, they'd find the money and then the cat would be out of the bag.

  The money. He didn't know what to do with it. He'd bought some expensive boots, another old Caddy, some good breather gear for painting his cars.

  When he got his first lump-sum payment from Calb, he'd made the mistake of showing it to his mom. She'd claimed it, most of it, and had come back every week since, demanding more. Then he'd introduced her to Jane, and they'd gotten their heads together, and when the big money came in, she'd taken most of that.

  Singleton had stood up to her-a little bit, anyway-and claimed fifty thousand. Fifty thousand would almost get him a small shop somewhere. A Morton building, maybe, with space to work on a couple of Caddys at once, and maybe even space to rig up a paint booth.

  Big dreams…

  Wham!

  The back door banged open. Only one person entered like that, without warning. Singleton had a few hundred dollars in his hand, and he hastily shoved it into his pocket, pulled the string on the overhead light, and headed up the stairs.

  Margery was waiting in the kitchen. She was a small, thin, wrinkled woman; a woman who was to other women what a raisin was to a grape. Her eyes were pale blue, and her hair, once blond, looked gray at first glance, but was actually almost colorless, translucent, like ice on a window. Her lips were thin, her chin was pointed; Katina called her the Witch.

  "What the hell have you been doing?" she demanded. "Why'n the hell didn't you call me about Deon and Jane?" She turned her nose up, sniffed, stepped close to him. "You've had that whore in here, haven't you? I can smell her juice."

  "Not a whore, Mom… "

  She slapped him, hard, a full-handed slap. "She's a whore if I say she's a whore," she shouted. "She's a whore."

  Singleton stepped away from her, a hand to his face, furiously angry. His mom had a thin neck, and sometimes he thought about snapping it. Take that goddamn little cornstalk neck and snap it off. He bared his teeth at her, ground them, felt his heart pumping.

  Margery hadn't forgotten about the bathtub. She stepped farther away, took the tone down. "Whoever did this, they might be coming for us," she said. "That fuckin' nigger would sell us for a quarter, and you know it."

  "Mom, what can I do?" He heard the plaintive whine in his voice. He didn't hate the whine, only because it had always been there when he was dealing with Mom and he didn't recognize it.

  "You coulda called me," she shouted. "But you were up here with your whore when you coulda been callin' me. I gotta think about this." She looked around, eyes narrowing. "What're you doing here, anyway? You oughta be downtown, seeing what you can see."

  "I was already down there for a while, and I didn't hear hardly anything. The cops found Deon's money. It was stuffed away in his house, somewhere. They got it all."

  "Goddamnit,"Margery said. "They got it all? Goddamnit."

  "That's what I heard. There're state cops in town, and they're supposed to be really good. I think we better lie low."

  "Nothing they can connect to us."

  "Not unless… I mean, what if they've got Joe?"

  "Joe's dead," Margery said. "We all agree."

  "But what if he's not?"

  "Then we are," she said. She pointed a trembling finger at him. "You get back down there, you find out what's going on. And you call me. Dumb shit."

  They both turned to the sound of a car in the driveway. Singleton looked. "Katina," he said.

  "I'm getting out of here," Margery said. "I'm not talking to that whore."

  Margery and Katina met at the door, and Margery went on by with a sideways glance and not a single word. Katina, on the other hand, smiled and said, "Hi, Mom."

  When she was inside, with the door closed, she asked, "What'd the Witch want?"

  "Borrow money," Singleton said. That was always good for an excuse, because his mother genuinely did love money.

  Katina bustled around, getting some coffee together. "What's the word on Deon and Jane?" she asked.

  "Nobody knows what happened, but the BCA guys found a big pile of money and a bunch of dope up in Deon's bedroom," Singleton said. "They're gonna be all over the dope angle."

  "Sheriff Anderson's out? Completely out?"

  Singleton dipped his head. "He's out. He's smart enough to know that he was over his head-and if he wasn't smart enough, half the county commission went over to his office to tell him. Harvey Benschneider stood right over him while he made the call to St. Paul."

  "Ah, boy," Katina said. She pulled off her gloves, parka, and ski hat, shook her hair out. "I can't believe they're dead. Gene's going crazy. You talk to him?"

  "Yeah. He thinks maybe Jane was dealing cocaine at the casino," S
ingleton said. "Could they be that stupid?"

  "Deon was a stupid man, and Jane wasn't much smarter," Katina said. She took cups out of a dish rack in the sink. "My question is, what do we tell the police?"

  "Youdon't tell them anything," Singleton said. "Let Gene do the talking. No reason for any of us to get involved. Deon worked for Gene, not for us. If Gene's smart, he'll point the state cops at the casino. There's so much shit going on up there, they could investigate the place for the rest of their lives and not get to the bottom of it."

  "Only one problem with that idea," Katina said.

  "What?"

  "Joe. Where's Joe? Jane told me that all of his stuff was still in the house. If Joe's dead, then it wasn't the casino."

  "Could be. Could be if it's coke they were dealing. Can't tell with dopers. The other thing is-what if Joe came back and did this? What if he was looking for that money?"

  "Hmm." They sat silently for a moment as Katina struggled with all the conflicting possibilities. Finally, she looked up at him and said, "Whatever happened to all three, we've really got to worry about our own positions."

  "That's right. We all ought to stay away. If the state guys find one string, and pull it hard enough, the whole sweater's gonna unravel."

  They talked for a while over their coffee, a middle-aged couple who got along. Singleton wasn't like the men she'd met in the Cities, Katina thought. He had some steel in him, some flint. Some Ugly.

  She liked it-a man who'd stand up.

  She just didn't know.

  The party at the West house started when two newspaper reporters, accompanied by two photographers, showed up at the front door and asked for interviews. Letty was pleased to do it, though Martha was a bit embarrassed by the mess the house was in. That didn't seem to bother the photographers, who got a couple of shots of Letty sitting in her mother's old rocker. Then the first TV truck showed up. The newspaper people were okay, but compared to the TV people, they were mongrels at a dog show. The TV people were stars- Letty'd even seen some of them on her own TV.

  The TV people agreed on one set of lights, and set them up around the living room, while Martha scurried around moving all of her best furniture into place, moving the worst of it into the kitchen. A guy came in with a couple of sacks of black-corn chips, cheese dip, and Coke, and then somebody else brought in a twelve-pack of Bud Light. They asked Letty to get some traps, and she did, and they put them on the floor by her feet, and some of the cameramen crawled in close to get a shot of the traps, using the lights on top of their cameras. Somebody else challenged the cameramen to snap their fingers in the traps, and being cameramen, they did, although none of the on-air talent would do it. Then somebody else asked Martha about her singing career, and she got out her guitar and sang an old Pete Seeger song called "Where Have All the Flowers Gone," and then the main lights came up, and were adjusted, and the first interviewer, a blonde with a foxy face and feathery crimson scarf, said, "Letty, tell me about yesterday."