Ruffe Ignace stood on the corner, talking to himself-nothing in particular, snatches of old songs, possible story leads, bits of internal dialogue, comments on the passing cars and the women inside them. He bounced on his toes like a boxer, and talked to himself, all the time, like humming, or buzzing. He called the ongoing dialogue Ruffe’s Radio, and he played it all the time.
Boy in a Bubble, maybe there’s something there; Mmm, Lexus GX470, you old fart; hey, look that, look at that ass. Yes, Pat, there he is, Ruffe Ignace, supposedly the richest man in America. He was with the Special Forces before that, you know, a war hero, in Afghanistan, killed twenty-four Afghanis with a Bowie knife. He’s got more money and had more supermodel pussy than any other six guys in the country. Say, I’d like to get that jacket-that’s a good-looking coat. .
Like that.
All the time.
A co-worker once complained that sitting next to Ignace was like sitting next to a bad-tempered bee. Ignace ignored her; and now he stood on the corner, bouncing, waiting, and buzzing.
Hubbard came down the other side of the street, bright blue double-knit blazer from JCPenney, gray slacks, brown shoes. From a hundred yards away, he held Ignace’s eyes, then turned and went into the front doors of the public library. Ignace waited through another light, then followed him.
Ruffe Ignace hated his name. Both first and last, but especially Ruffe. Ruffe-Roo-Fay-came from a French word meaning “red haired.” Since he was red haired, and since his parents had been French, he could hardly deny the truth of it. The newsroom people learned early in his career that Ruffe hated being called Rufus, which also meant red haired, so they called him that at every opportunity. A few people even tried Iggy, but that drew a response so violent and poisonous that they decided to leave it alone.
Ignace barely tolerated the Star-Tribune, which he considered next of kin to a suburban shopper. He looked forward to his career at the New York Times, where virtually all reporters had weird names, and where Ruffe Ignace would be considered distinguished, rather than an occasion for jokes.
To get there, he had to do something good. To do something really good, you needed luck and talent.
Ignace had the talent. In addition to his writing ability, he had a nice sense of drama and, more important, knew how to suck when he needed to. As a member of the paper’s Public Safety Team, he applied the suck liberally around the Minneapolis Police Department.
A part-time homicide cop named Bob Hubbard was Ignace’s best inside source. Hubbard wanted a full-time homicide desk, instead of being shuffled off to Sex or Property Crimes whenever they needed more people. Ignace promised, and delivered, attention to Hubbard’s crime-solving talent. Hubbard delivered the goods from the inside.
Luck was an entirely different matter. Luck either kissed you on the ass, or it didn’t. Not much you could do about it but get ready in case it happened.
Ignace slipped into the library two minutes behind Hubbard. They met at the library because Hubbard had never seen a cop there, and back in the Female-Problems stacks, you might go decades without seeing one.
Hubbard was peering into a book called The Vaginal Perspective when Ruffe turned the corner. The cop slipped the book back on the shelf and asked, shocked, “You ever see what’s in these things?”
Ruffe looked at the ranks of books and shuddered. “No.” To Hubbard: “Whatcha got, Bob? I got that thing on the Mikasa shop and the Mini-Cooper. .”
“This ain’t funny,” Hubbard said urgently, pitching his voice to a near-whisper. He was a blond, fleshy man with pink cheeks made rosier by booze. He was holding a manila envelope. “You gotta, gotta, gotta cover for me. Honest to God, I don’t even think I oughta be here.”
Now Ruffe was interested. Hubbard was sweating.
“So whattya got?”
“You owe me big for this one,” Hubbard said.
“What is it?” Ruffe pressed.
“You owe me, and you’re gonna pay,” Hubbard said. “I get to name a story.”
“Whoa, man. That’d depend. What story you want. . what story you got.”
“The story I want is just a nice story for a lady I know. The story I got. .”
“What?”
“We got a serial killer,” Hubbard said. “You know Sloan?”
“Yeah.” They were close enough that Ignace could smell the afternoon martinis on Hubbard’s breath, and maybe something else-peanut-butter cheese crackers? With martinis? “He thinks I’m an asshole.”
“You are an asshole, Ruffe.”
“Yeah, yeah. .” Ignace didn’t mind what the small-towners thought, if it got him to the Times; he made a keep-rolling motion with his finger.
“Sloan caught this killing a couple of weeks back,” Hubbard whispered. “It was really fuckin’ ugly, but everybody chilled on it, because we don’t want a lot of shit from the TV stations.”
Ignace thought for a second, his eyes narrowing: “Angela Larson, from Chicago. Everybody thinks it’s a boyfriend problem.”
“Well, it wasn’t. It never was. She was tortured, raped, and displayed. . you know what displayed is?”
“Yeah.” Ignace was hooked now. He could feel Lady Luck puckering up. “But how do you know it was serial?”
“Because this morning, this old buddy of Sloan’s from the BCA calls him up, and they haul ass down to Mankato. The word is-and the word is good-that it’s an identical killing, except for one thing. The victim was tortured and raped, just like Larson. Only it was a guy. Then they were both killed the same way: their throats were cut.”
“Throats?” Ignace whispered. They both turned and looked up and down the stacks. “You mean, like with a razor?”
“Just like with a razor,” Hubbard said. “To top it off, the killer also killed the second victim’s child. Swatted him like a fly. Killed the kid, then went ahead and raped and killed the father.”
Ruffe was impressed. “Jesus. You got something from the scene?”
“Not from that one-but I got the inside shit from the Larson case, what they never told anybody. And I got a Xerox of a crime-scene photograph. You can’t use the picture. In fact, I’m not even gonna give it to you, come to think of it. I’ll let you look at it.”
Ignace wet his lips. “I promise you I wouldn’t put it in the paper. Especially not if it was a Xerox.”
“Uh-uh. I can’t take the chance,” Hubbard said, shaking his head. “The thing is, what I’m giving you could have come from lots of people, but the picture had to come from Homicide. They’ll know it was me. You can look at it so you can write up the crime scene. I figured you’d want to do that.”
“Bob. .”
“You swear to God you’ll cover me.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let me see the goddamn thing. And who do I talk to for on-the-record?”
“Okay. The sheriff down in Blue Earth County. His name is Nordwall. And Sloan, I guess. I’d stay away from the BCA guy, his name is Lucas Davenport. He’s got better sources at the Star-Tribune than you do. He’d find out in two minutes who you were talking to.”
“He couldn’t, because I’ve never told anybody. I never will,” Ignace said. “I only use you for the tips.”
“Some of the guys have noticed I get a little print on my cases.” He was carefully holding the manila envelope out of reach.
“Well, tough shit. You can either have it or not,” Ignace said. “Let me see the fuckin’ photograph. Give me a couple names. . I can always pin it on somebody else.”
“You owe me a story,” Hubbard repeated.
“Yeah, yeah. .”
Hubbard shook the xerox out of the envelope and passed it over. Ignace looked at it for a moment: the photograph was harshly lit, in the night, giving it a garish vibe. The woman looked like she’d been crucified in the dirt, her body bright white against the short spring foliage. He said, “Huh. Horseshit photo.”
“It wasn’t a goddamn portrait studio,” Hubbard rasped.
“I can tell. F
ocused right on her pussy. Photo guy probably peddled it out to the Internet.”
“Rufus. .”
“Fuck you, Bob,” Ignace said. He pulled a narrow reporter’s notebook out of his back pocket, looked at the photo for a few more seconds, then made some rapid notes in perfect Gregg shorthand. When he was done, he said, “Give me some names. I need to start at the bottom and confirm some of this shit from outsiders, before I go to Sloan.”
Hubbard nodded. “Okay: the new victim’s name was Adam Rice, the kid’s name was Josh, and Adam’s mom’s name is Laurina Rice. She’s listed. .”
“What about a wife?”
“I heard she died a while back, but I don’t know the details. .”
They talked for another two minutes, and then Ignace folded the notebook and said, “Bob, I owe you. I truly do.”
“Well, I’ll tell you what I want. Write this down in your fuckin’ notebook. There’s a new restaurant named Funny Capers in Uptown. I want a story about it. A good story. What a happenin’ place it is. Like that. They got music on Friday and Saturday nights.”
“Girlfriend? Or investment?” He’d opened the notebook again and was taking it down.
“A friend of mine,” Hubbard said. His eyes flicked away.
“If I need some last-minute comments on the place, can I call you at home?”
Hubbard flinched. “Jesus Christ, don’t do that.”
Ignace said, “One more thing. We got no art for this murder. Suppose we went with a graphic of a straight razor. I mean, would that be fucked up? Are they saying razor, or could it be a box cutter or something?”
“Fuck, I don’t know, I guess a razor would be all right,” Hubbard said. He ducked down a bit, to look through a bookshelf, looking for anyone who might know him. “Do what you want-and give me that Xerox.” He took the Xerox back, stuffed it into his jacket pocket. “Wait five minutes before you come out. Read something, or something.”
“It’s a library, Bob, they might get suspicious.”
“Okay, go look at blow jobs on the Internet. Just give me five minutes.”
Ruffe’s radio was running hard on the way back to the paper: I shall not be moved; that’s what Ignace said, just before he led the attack on the hijackers. Tragically. . Is that a cashmere sweater? It’s eighty degrees out here. . Wonder if alpaca comes from alpacas? Four-wheel drift; could you do that in a Jeep?. .
He took the elevator up to the newsroom, bustled back to his desk. Most reporters dreaded calling survivors in a murder or tragic accident. Ignace didn’t mind. He called Laurina Rice first, got a sober, cold-voiced woman, and asked, “Laurina?”
“Laurina is. . indisposed,” the cold-voiced woman said. Ignace recognized her immediately: the officious neighbor or relative who was “protecting” somebody the media might want to talk to. “May I tell her who called?”
“I just heard about Adam and Josh, and I really need to talk to her,” Ignace said. Then he pulled out a reporter’s cold-call trick, an implication of intimacy with the target. “Is this Florence?”
“No, no, uh, just a minute.”
Most people involved in tragedies want to talk, Ignace had found, if only you could get through to them. He waited ten seconds, and then had Laurina on the line: “Laurina: I’m terribly sorry about Adam and Josh. .”
“Oh, my God, oh, my God, they wouldn’t even let me see them. .”
“Do they know when it happened?” Ignace asked.
“They think yesterday. . uh, who is this?”
“Ruffe Ignace from the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. We’re alerting people around the state that we have this monster loose. .”
“He is! He is! He’s a monster.”
She began sobbing and Ignace noted in Gregg, “Weeping, sobbing, disconsolate. .”
“People tell me that Adam and Josh were wonderful people, no bother to anyone,” Ignace said. “They can’t figure out who would do this. Do the police think anyone he knows. .?”
“No, they told me this man is a monster, that he killed a woman in the Twin Cities. .”
“A beautiful young girl named Angela Larson from Chicago,” Ignace said. “She was just trying to work her way through college.”
“Oh, God. And with Adam, after the tragedy last year. .”
“Tragedy? The police didn’t tell me about a tragedy.” A disapproving tone, as though secrets had been withheld.
“His wife was killed in an awful, awful accident,” Rice said. “Adam was a widower and poor little Josh lost his mother. .”
“Did little Josh ever talk to you about her?”
“You know, just last Christmas, he said that he would give up every gift he had if he could have Mommy back. He was so sweet, and smart! He was my only grandchild, I’ll never have a grandchild now.”
She was rolling. Once you got an interviewee rolling, you tried not to interrupt. With an occasional prompt, or short sympathetic question, Ignace had pumped her dry in twenty minutes. He even had the detail about the tire swing hanging from the oak tree out on the lawn.
“But they didn’t let you see them. .”
“Only their faces. The sheriff told me I didn’t want to, but they came out with him in that black bag and I marched right up and I said, ‘I want to see my grandson!’ I wouldn’t take ‘No.’ So they unzipped it and let me look at his face. .”
“What did you think when you saw his face? What was your reaction?”
“Oh my God. .” The bawling started again, and Ignace took it down in Gregg. .
He was buzzing when he hung up, Ruffe’s Radio: There you go, Ooo, the thing about Ignace is, he’s smarter than any reporter in the Twin Cities. You know he used to be an Olympic acrobat. . Wait, do they have acrobats in the Olympics? Maybe it’s gymnastics. Some hot chick with the big boobs on ESPN: Tell me, Lord Ignace, how does it feel to be knighted by the queen. .?
He was buzzing because he had the story. Whatever else might happen, he had the basic facts, he had the color. He didn’t even need the cops, but he’d have to call them anyway. Because Sloan thought he was an asshole, and Hubbard had warned him away from Davenport, he started with the sheriff.
Nordwall didn’t want to talk, but Ignace said, “First of all, Sheriff, this is public record, the basic facts. You really do have an obligation to warn people about this guy.”
That got him the basics. Then he said, “The stuff that I got from the survivors, let me just give it to you quick, just to make sure there isn’t anything terribly wrong. I want this to be accurate-you don’t even have to tell me anything else, but just if this is right.”
He then gave Nordwall everything that Hubbard had given him, plus everything that Laurina Rice had given to him, plus some bullshit that he made up. That got the sheriff rolling, and when they were done, he had a front-page story nailed down.
He talked to his team leader, who in olden says would have been called an assistant city editor, and she talked to the metro editor, and then the team leader came back and told him they would take everything he had, don’t worry about length.
A photographer was dispatched to Mankato to get a shot of an empty tire swing, and a graphics artist starting pulling up Internet images of straight razors. Ignace spread his notes over his desk, marked some of them with a red felt-tip.
Hubbard: he owed him. No question about it.
He couldn’t find Sloan. He had stolen an internal police department phone book, with home phone numbers for all the cops, but nobody answered when he called Sloan’s home. He left a message with the answering service, said briefly what he wanted, and hung up. He toyed with the idea of calling Davenport, thought about Hubbard’s warning, and decided against it.
Besides, there was an old newspaper maxim that he was happy to honor: too many facts could ruin a perfectly good story. Nobody could complain that he hadn’t done the work-he’d talked to the principal law-enforcement officer of the county where the murder happened, he had talked earlier in the week to Sloan about the Ang
ela Larson murder, he had comments from survivors. He didn’t need Davenport.
He settled in behind his computer, webbed his fingers together, cracked his knuckles, and started typing.
A serial killer is loose in Minnesota, a sexual predator armed with a razor, a man who tortures his victims before raping them, male and female alike, and cutting their throats. .
Another reporter passed by Ignace’s cubicle as he passed a thousand words, and thought, Jesus: the guy really does buzz.
And while Ignace was buzzing, Millie Lincoln was. .
Well.
Millie Lincoln was short and blond and liked men; always had. She liked her father, she liked her uncles, she liked all four of her brothers, and they liked her back.
Men liked her back.
Millie gave up her virginity when she was sixteen, fumbling around in her boyfriend’s parents’ bed. By twenty-two, she’d had four additional lovers. She spent her senior year in high school with the second one, after the fumbler, and then messed around with a college kid, an affair begun with another freshman during the first long Mankato winter, then got into a more serious thing that lasted almost two years.
Then, finally, Mihovil Draskovic.
Mihovil was seven years older than she. A strong, ropy man, slightly mysterious; and a doctor.
Mihovil had made his way from his native Serbia to the United States as a fifteen-year-old, had enlisted in the marines when he was seventeen, became a medic, got out of the crotch, as he called it, went to med school on a marine corps scholarship. He had marine tattoos and now wore his hair long and loose over his wide shoulders, like Jesus. He always had a smile on his face, he was a man perpetually amused, a man with Gypsy eyes. . a man of slightly fractured English, a crazy mixture of broken grammar and cutting-edge slang.
Mihovil had spent much of his young life in a refugee camp, where the children slept on one side of the hovel and the parents made love behind an army blanket that hung from the ceiling. Since they didn’t have a TV, they were behind the blanket almost every night, and the activity was almost uncommented-upon. Natural.
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