Naked Prey ld-14

by John Sandford

  At the motel, they went to their separate rooms, and though he was tired, Lucas turned on the television, found a movie channel, and watched James Woods, Bruce Dern, and Lou Gossett get wry with each other in Diggstown. Forty-five minutes later, Weather called.

  "We've got her on the ground," she said. "The hand is not good, but it's fixable. Gonna take a while to heal. Do you know if she has insurance? She doesn't seem to think so."

  "She doesn't," Lucas said. "I'm buying."

  "Is this a Roman Catholic guilt thing that I've got to be psychologically careful about?"

  "Yeah."

  "Okay. Call me tomorrow. I want all the details. She seems like an interesting child. She's scared."

  "She jumped out a window, got shot, got stalked in the dark, shot a guy, saw her house burned down, and her mother's dead. She doesn't know about her mother for sure, yet. I'm going to try to get somebody up here to fly down and tell her. Somebody she knows."

  "Aw, jeez… All right. I'll stay with her. Call me."

  Sleep would be tough-coming up to five o'clock in the morning, but he was still too cranked. He clicked around the TV channels, found nothing that he wanted to watch. Eventually, he put on his shoes and walked down to the motel office.

  "That black guy from Chicago still here?" he asked the clerk.

  "Yup. Said he's checking out tomorrow morning."

  "What's the room?"

  "Two-oh-eight. Is he gonna be a problem?"

  "Naw. I called Chicago, and they say he's gonna win the Nobel Prize for reporting. I just wanted to shake his hand."

  Way too early for this, he thought, but what the hell, reporters fucked with him often enough. He knocked on 208, waited, knocked again, and then a man croaked, "What time is it?"

  "Five in the morning," Lucas said. "Check-out time."

  "What?"

  A crack of light appeared between the curtains in the room window, and a moment later, Mark Johnson peered out the door over the safety chain. "Davenport?"

  "So, what're you doing?" Lucas asked.

  "Trying to sleep."

  "You're so young, too," Lucas said.

  Johnson took the chain off and opened the door and yawned and asked, "What's going on?"

  "Somebody just burned down the West house, murdered Martha West, and shot and wounded Letty. She's been taken to the Twin Cities for surgery."

  Johnson stared, then looked back at his bed, then back to Lucas. "You're shitting me."

  "I shit you not."

  "Come on in. Let me get my pants on. Jesus… What happened?"

  "I talked to Deke, and he said you'd be marginally okay to talk to."

  "Yeah, margin my ass."

  "So the deal is, I tell you what you want to know, and you got it from an informed source. And I've got a lot of stuff that nobody else has picked up."

  "Like what?"

  Lucas told him, and when he was done, Johnson stared down at his laptop and said, "I can see this as a story. It'll take some work."

  "Christ, the best story of his life is handed to him on a platter, and he says it'll take some work," Lucas said.

  "The no-attribution is the hard part," Johnson said.

  "That's the deal-but I'll tell you what. You come around tomorrow, wearing your sport jacket, and I'll talk for attribution, but I'll also refuse to comment on some of the other stuff, like the locket. You can ask the FBI about that. They'll be up here tomorrow, looking for the kids' bodies."

  "That's great. They're like the world's worst media connections. They won't tell me anything."

  "They might. Their media training's improved a lot, the last two or three years. And I'll put in a word for you."

  "Appreciate it… Look, on my side of the deal, I sorta got a name for you." He slapped a group of keys on the laptop, saving his notes and changing programs, then reached into his briefcase for a pen and paper, scribbled on it, and handed it to Lucas.

  A name, Tom Block, and a phone number in an unfamiliar area code.

  "This is another guy Deke put me onto, maybe a year ago, down in Kansas City. He's sort of Kansas City's Lucas Davenport, although he's younger and better-looking."

  "Could be younger," Lucas admitted. "What's he do?"

  "Wanders around town. But he knows a lot about the Cash family and what that whole group does down there. You might want to chat. He told me a couple of things that I can't use, because of libel problems, but it wouldn't be a problem for you."

  "Like tell me one thing."

  "Like the whole Cash family-it's really more like a clan, with aunts and uncles and nephews and all that-they started out in drugs, and then, when crack came in and all the killing started, they got out. Went into other stuff. Tom says some of the brothers down there went to business school at the University of Missouri, then came back to KC and diversified."

  "Yeah?"

  "Yeah. One of their things now is that they steal a lot of cars. That's the rumor. Low risk, high profit. And since Calb's body shop up there is involved in this thing… "

  "You think Calb's is a chop shop?"

  "I don't know. Doesn't make sense, really. They could chop cars down there, no problem. I don't know what Calb could do out here that they couldn't do."

  "Hmmp." Lucas stood up and stretched. He thought he might be able to sleep. "All right. I'll probably see you around tomorrow, one place or another. You still checking out?"

  "Shit, no."

  "The desk clerk thinks you're up to something. Being black, and all."

  "I encourage him to think that," Johnson said. "Sometimes I can't help myself."

  LUCAS SLEPT LIKE a baby.

  For almost five hours, until Del called. Lucas rolled over and picked up the phone, and Del said, "I can't lay down anymore."

  "Try harder," Lucas said. Then: "I'll get up."

  "I'll come over in fifteen minutes. We'll go down to the Bird and get breakfast."

  Lucas brushed his teeth and skipped shaving so he could stand in the shower for a few extra minutes. He was just pulling on a shirt when Del knocked. He let Del in, then sat on the bed and put on his shoes and socks, got his coat, tossed the car keys to Del. "You drive. I've got some calls to make."

  He started by calling the sheriff's comm center, where he got the phone number for the church in Broderick. He called the church, and asked for Ruth Lewis.

  "I'm calling to ask you to do something for me," he said, when she came on.

  Wary: "What?"

  "I would like you to go down to the Cities and tell Letty that her mother's dead. She knows it, but nobody's come right out and said it, yet. You know her, and she likes you. It would be good if you could tell her."

  "Oh, God," Lewis said. Then, after a moment, "I could go this afternoon."

  "Thanks. She's at Hennepin General, and I'll call down to make sure they let you through. If you go pretty soon, you could talk to her this evening."

  The next call went to Weather's cell phone. She answered, after a moment: "I'm in the locker room cleaning up. I sat in on the operation-pretty neat stuff. The guy knows how to tie a square knot."

  "Yeah, yeah. How is she?"

  "She's gonna be pretty dopey the rest of the day, and they're gonna put a cage around her hand."

  "The hand gonna work?"

  "She'll probably need more surgery, you know, to release the scar tissue as it builds up, but yes-she should be okay. She won't be playing the piano for a while."

  "How about her leg? How about the bullet wound?"

  "The bullet wound isn't a problem. The guys up there cleaned it up, and should be okay-just took some skin off her rib cage and the inside of her arm. Her ankle is sprained, but it's not too bad. Since it's on the other side from the cast, she should be able to use a crutch for a couple of days, if she needs it."

  "Nothing broken."

  "Nothing broken."

  "How's Sam?"

  "He is just such a cutey. He's so cheerful. And it's pretty apparent that he's really brig
ht… no, I'm serious, he's really bright. I don't think… "

  She got Lucas laughing, all the more because she was sincere. "Talk to you later."

  He told Del about Letty's progress as he dialed a third number. A woman answered: "St. Anne's, Department of Psychology."

  "My name is Lucas Davenport. I'm a police officer and I need to talk with Sister Mary Joseph."

  "Just a minute, please."

  Elle Kruger came on a second later. "How's the baby?" she asked.

  "Probably the most intelligent kid in the Twin Cities, if not the entire Midwest," Lucas said. "I've got a question for you. Sort of a semiofficial question."

  "Go ahead," she said cheerfully. She'd given Lucas advice on other cases.

  "You know a woman named Ruth Lewis, right? Used to be a nun? Sat in on a couple of games with us?"

  He sensed a hesitation, then: "I know Ruth."

  "What's going on with her?"

  "What's going on with you?"

  Lucas was dumbfounded. Elle was his oldest, closest friend, and he was feeling resistance. That hadn't happened before.

  "I'm trying to figure out the Sorrell kidnapping. A little girl was shot last night, almost had her hand cut off, and her mother was murdered, and then she had her house burned down around her. Lewis lives just a few blocks down the highway, and she knows something she's not telling me. I can feel it. This guy, the guy who's doing the killing-he's not gonna stop if he thinks he's in danger."

  Another moment of hesitation, then: "Lucas, are you on your cell phone?"

  "Yes."

  "Let me call you back."

  "Elle? What the hell's going on?"

  "I'll probably tell you, but I want to talk to Ruth first. I want to make sure there's no possibility that she's involved with your case. She won't be involved directly, but I want to make sure that there are no… ramifications from her job, that might create some, mmm, involvement."

  Lucas was getting angry. "Elle, you're bullshitting me."

  "No, I'm not. You've just got me stuck. If I tell you why, you'll understand, but I've got to talk to Ruth first."

  "C'mon."

  "I'll call you back, Lucas, I promise. I will tell you something about Ruth, though. She wasn't a very good nun because she was… too much. She demanded perfection, and she was the one who'd define what that was. The people she most admired were all martyrs. So… "

  "She's nuts."

  "No. She's not crazy, but she will do what she will do. And you won't stop her. Nobody will stop her. If she winds up martyred because of it, that wouldn't faze her. Wouldn't slow her down. In some ways, she's a throwback."

  "To what, the fifties?"

  "I was thinking of the crusades," Elle said. "Anyway, I'll call you back."

  They were coming up to the Bird when Lucas got off the phone, now as puzzled as he was angry. Del asked, "What was that all about?"

  "I'm getting stonewalled by Elle. She knows Lewis and she knows what's going on, but she won't tell me."

  "I don't know, man," Del said. "That's weird."

  "I even told her about Letty," Lucas said.

  "Now we know one thing-something's going on and it probably ain't legal. What are the chances of two big illegal things going on in a town the size of Broderick, that aren't connected somehow?"

  "Slim and none," Lucas said. "She's gonna call me back."

  She called back as Lucas was in the middle of a low-voiced rant about the scrambled eggs. "How in the fuck can you screw up eggs? You just scramble them in a bowl with a little milk, and then pour them in a pan. These things are like burned yellow rubber. They even smell like burned yellow rubber. Where'd they get the fucking eggs, from a Firestone factory? Don't even get me started on the goddamned danish. This feels like a piece of skin. Is that a prune? That looks like… "

  "Don't say it. I'm gonna eat it," Del said.

  The phone rang and Lucas dug it out of his shirt pocket. "Davenport."

  "Lucas, it's Elle. Ruth is up at that church, or whatever it is. She wants to talk to you now."

  "Elle, what the hell is going on?"

  "I don't know the details, I only am… aware… of the outline of what she's doing. But I promised her that you were going in as a citizen, and not exactly as a cop-that your conversation would be off the record. I don't know if you'll be able to go along with it, but that's what I told her."

  "Oh, boy. They're smuggling grass, right? They're using the money to regild the dome on the cathedral."

  Another odd hesitation, and then Elle said, "Talk to her. I don't know what she'll say."

  They gave up on the breakfast and headed for Broderick, Del still driving. On the way out of town, they got hung up in a four-car traffic jam behind a lift truck taking down Christmas lights. For the first time since they'd come to town, there were cracks in the clouds, and hints of sunshine. The car thermometer said it was six below zero, and the air was almost still. Wherever a house was burning wood, the smoke from the chimney went straight up for fifty feet before fading away.

  On the way, Lucas dialed the Kansas City number that Mark Johnson had given him early that morning. The answer was fumbled, and Lucas recognized it as a cell phone, being answered by somebody who was standing on a street corner. "Block."

  "Yeah, my name is Lucas Davenport, I'm with the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension up in Minnesota-"

  "Mark Johnson said you might call. He said you were the Tom Block of Minnesota. But better looking."

  "That's true," Lucas said.

  Block laughed and asked, "So he told me what's going on, with the lynching and the kidnapping."

  "Not a lynching."

  "If it was down here, it wouldn't be a lynching, either. In Minnesota, it's a lynching. Anyway, you think the Cashes are chopping cars up there?"

  "No, I don't," Lucas said. "The place we're looking at-it's called Calb's-doesn't look like a chop shop. It looks like what they say it is, car body and truck rehab."

  "See any Toyota trucks up there? I mean, connected to this place?"

  Lucas thought-and he'd seen one. "One," he said. "Land Cruiser."

  "Now we're talking. The thing is, we know the Cashes are moving hot cars. We've even caught their boys in a couple, but those were going to chop shops down here. There's a rumor that they steal new Toyota trucks. Only new Toyotas. And then the Toyotas disappear, and they're never found again. Ever. They're gone. Never get in wrecks, never sold to wrecking services. I've got some numbers of insurance companies that are interested, if you want to talk to them, but I'd say we're talking anywhere from seventy-five to a hundred trucks a year, from all over the Midwest and the plains, far east as Cleveland and far west as Denver."

  "That's a lot of trucks."

  "We figure about five million worth. We had one guy across the river in Kansas City, Kansas, who bought a new Land Cruiser, sixty thousand dollars, got it stolen, got his insurance check, bought another one, and they stole that, the second night he had it."

  "Hmm."

  "Listen, I gotta get a bus. If you want to talk, come down, or call me this afternoon, I'll have some open time. I can tell you all about the Cashes. I grew up with them."

  "ANything good?" DEL asked.

  "That was a Toyota Land Cruiser those women were hauling coffee in, right? Last night?"

  "Yeah, I think."

  "They're driving for Calb for $100 a week and they drive a sixty-thousand-dollar Land Cruiser. That'll cause you to think."

  "Oh, boy. Tell me about it."

  Lucas told him. And as they came up to Broderick, he said, "Go on through. Let's see if there's anything going at Letty's."

  As they went past Deon Cash's place, they noticed a half-dozen cars in the driveway and yard. "FBI has landed," Del said.

  "Talk to them later."

  There wasn't much at Letty's house: one deputy sheriff's car and one state fire marshal's car sat next to the hole that used to be the house. The deputy was in his car, writing on a clipboard, and waved
at Lucas. Another man was digging carefully through the basement.

  When Lucas identified himself, the man climbed out on a stepladder. He was wearing rubberized coveralls, and his face was smudged with charcoal. "George Puckett," he said.

  "Figure anything out?"

  "Not a thing," he admitted. "I don't see any signs of accelerant. The sheriff's deputies say the fire was deliberate, but I couldn't prove it."

  "That's not nothing," Lucas said. "That means that the guy probably didn't come here to burn it down. Probably did it on the spur of the moment."

  "Might not be nothing, but it isn't much," Puckett said. "Wish I could help more."

  Lucas and Del walked around the scene a few minutes longer, found a patch of blood where Letty had huddled in the snow. No blood between that spot and the window, as far as they could tell, although the remaining snow was covered with soot and debris from the fire.

  "Church?" Del asked.

  "I guess. What else is there?"

  The motherly woman met them at the door, looked hard at both of them, and without a word took them back to the kitchen, where Lewis was again working at the table. When they came in, she stood up, looked at Del, and said, "I'd like to talk privately with Lucas."

  Del shrugged, looked at Lucas, and said, "I'll be out in the TV room."

  When he was gone, Lewis said, "Sit down." Lucas pulled out the kitchen chair opposite her. She asked, "Want a cup of coffee?"

  "No, I'm fine. So. What's the story?"

  "I wasn't surprised to hear from Sister Mary Joseph. I'd been more or less expecting it." She paused, but Lucas kept his mouth shut. "Anyway," she continued, "we all talked about it, and several of our sisters have left in the past two days-people not yet too involved, so if you decide to bust us, they can pick it up later."

  He kept his mouth shut.

  She said, "So we talked about it, and not one of us could figure out how we could be involved in anything that had to do with the girls. We couldn't see any possible connection."