Night Prey ld-6

by John Sandford

  CHAPTER

  15

  Sara Jensen worked at Raider-Garrote, a stockbrokerage in the Exchange Building. The office entry was glass, and on the other side of the glass was a seating area where investors could sit and watch the numbers from the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ scroll across a scoreboard. Few people actually went inside. Most of them-thin white guys with glasses, briefcases, gray suits, and thinning hair-stood mouth-open in the skyway until their number came up, then scurried away, muttering.

  Koop loitered with them, hands in pockets, his look changing daily. One day it was jeans, white T-shirt, sneakers, and a ball cap; the next day it was long-sleeved shirt, khakis, and loafers.

  Through the window, over the heads of the few people in the display area, past the rows of white-shirted men and well-dressed women who sat peering at computer terminals and talking on telephones, in a separate large office, Jensen worked alone.

  Her office door was usually open, but few people went in. She wore a telephone headset most of the day. She often talked and read a newspaper at the same time. A half-dozen different computer terminals lined a shelf behind her desk, and every once in a while she’d poke one, watch the screen; occasionally, she’d rip paper out of a computer printer, look at it, or stuff it in her briefcase.

  Koop had no idea what she was doing. At first, he thought she might be some kind of super secretary. But she never fetched anything, nobody ever gave her what appeared to be an order. Then he noticed that when one of the white shirts wanted to talk to her, the shirt was distinctly deferential. Not a secretary.

  As he watched, he began to suspect that she was involved in something very complicated, something that wore her down. By the end of the day, she was haggard. When the white shirts and conservative dresses were standing up, stretching, laughing, talking, she was still working her headset. When she finally left, her leather briefcase was always stuffed with paper.

  On this day, she left a bit earlier than usual. He followed her through the skyway to the parking ramp, walked past her, face averted, in a crowd. At the elevator, he joined the short queue, feeling the tension in the back of his neck. He’d not done this before. He’d never been this close…

  He felt her arrive behind him, kept his back to her, his face turned away. She’d ride up to the sixth floor, if she remembered where she left her car. Sometimes she forgot, and wandered through the ramp, lugging the briefcase, looking for it. He’d seen her do it. Today her car was on six, just across from the doors.

  The elevator arrived and he stepped inside, turned left, pushed seven, stepped to the back. A half-dozen other people got on with her, and he maneuvered until he was directly behind her, not eight inches away. The smell of her perfume staggered him. A small tuft of hair hung down on the back of her neck; she had a mole behind her ear-but he’d seen that before.

  The smell was the thing. The Opium…

  The elevator started up and a guy at the front lost his balance, took a half-step back into her. She tried to back up, her butt bumping Koop in the groin. He stood his ground and the guy in front muttered “Sorry,” and she half-turned to Koop at the same time, not looking at him, and said, “Sorry,” and then they were at six.

  Koop’s eyes were closed, holding on. He could still feel her. She’d pressed, he thought.

  She’d apparently noticed him, noticed his body under the chameleon’s shirt, and had been attracted. She’d pressed. He could still feel her ass.

  Koop got off at seven, stunned, realized he was sweating, had a ferocious hard-on. She’d done it on purpose. She knew… Or did she?

  Koop hurried to his truck. If he came up beside her, maybe she’d give him a signal. She was a high-class woman, she wouldn’t just come on to him. She’d do something different, none of this “Wanna fuck?” stuff. Koop fired up the truck, rolled down the ramp, around and around, making himself dizzy, the truck’s wheels screeching down the spiral. Had to stay with her.

  At the exit, there were three cars ahead of him. Jensen hadn’t come down yet… The first and second cars went quickly. The third was driven by an older woman, who said something to the ticket taker. The ticket taker stuck his head out the window and pointed left, then right. The woman said something else.

  A car came up from behind Koop, stopped. Not her. Then another car, lights on, down the last ramp, breaking left into the monthly-parker exit line. Jensen had an exit card. He caught a glimpse of her face as she punched the card into the automatic gate. The gate rose and she rolled past him on the left.

  “Motherfucker, what’s wrong? What’re you doing?” Koop poked his horn.

  The woman in the car ahead of him took ten seconds to turn and look behind her, then shrugged and started digging into her purse. She took forever, then finally passed a bill to the ticket taker. The ticket taker said something, and she dug into the purse again, finally producing the parking ticket. He took the ticket, gave her change, and then she said something else…

  Koop beeped again, and the woman looked into her rearview mirror, finally started forward, stopped at the curb, took a slow left. Koop thrust his money and ticket at the ticket taker.

  “Keep the change,” he said.

  “Can’t do that.” The ticket taker was an idiot, some kind of goddamned faggot. Koop felt the anger crawling up his neck. In another minute…

  “I’m in a fuckin’ hurry,” Koop said.

  “Only take a second,” the ticket man said. He screwed around with the cash register and held out two quarters. “Here you go, in-a-fuckin’-hurry.”

  The gate went up and Koop, cursing, pushed into the street. Jensen usually took the same route home. He started after her, pushing hard, making lights.

  “C’mon, Sara,” he said to his steering wheel. “C’mon, where are you?” He caught her a mile out. Fell in behind.

  Should he pull up beside her? Would she give him a signal?

  She might.

  He was thinking about it when she slowed, took a right into a drugstore parking lot. Koop followed, parked at the edge of the lot. She sat inside her car for a minute, then two, looking for something in her purse. Then she swung her legs out, disappeared into the store. He thought about following, but the last time, he’d run into that kid. It was hard to watch somebody in a store unobtrusively, with all the anti-shoplifting mirrors around.

  So he waited. She was ten minutes, came out with a small bag. At her car, she fumbled in her purse, fumbled some more. Koop sat up. What?

  She couldn’t find her keys. She started back toward the store, stopped, turned and looked thoughtfully at the car, and walked slowly back. She stooped, looked inside, then straightened, angry, talking to herself.

  Keys. She’d locked her keys in the car.

  He could talk to her: “What’s the problem, little lady?”

  But as he watched, she looked quickly around, walked to the rear of the car, bent, and ran her hand under the bumper. After a moment of groping, she came up with a black box. Spare key.

  Koop stiffened. When people put spare keys on their car, they usually put in a spare house key, just in case. And if she had-and if she’d changed them since she changed her locks…

  He’d have to look.

  Koop went to the roof as soon as it was dark. Jensen had changed to a robe, and he watched as she read, listened to a stereo, and checked the cable movies. He was becoming familiar with her personal patterns: she never watched talk shows, never watched sitcoms. She sometimes watched game shows. She watched the news rerun on public television, late at night.

  She liked ice cream, and ate it slowly, with a lot of tongue-on-the-spoon action. When she was puzzled about something, trying to make up her mind, she’d reach back and scratch the top of her ass. Sometimes she’d lie in bed with her feet straight up in the air, apparently looking past them for no reason. She’d do the same thing when she put on panty hose-she’d drop onto her back in bed, get her toes into the feet of the hose, then lift her legs over her head and pull
them on. Sometimes she’d wander around the apartment while she was flossing.

  Once, she apparently caught sight of her reflection in the glass of her balcony’s sliding doors, and dropped into a series of poses, as though she were posing for the cover of Cosmo. She was so close, so clear, that Koop felt she was posing for him.

  She went to bed at midnight, every working night. Two women friends had come around, and once, before Koop began following her home, she hadn’t shown up at all until midnight. A date? The idea pissed him off, and he pushed it away.

  When she went to bed-a minute of near nakedness, large breasts bobbling in the fishbowl-Koop left her, bought a bottle of Jim Beam at a liquor store, and drove home.

  He barely lived in his house, a suburban ranch-style nonentity he’d rented furnished. A garden service mowed the lawn. Koop didn’t cook, didn’t clean, didn’t do much except sleep there, watch some television, and wash his clothes. The place smelled like dust with a little bourbon on top of it. Oh, yes, he’d brought in Wannemaker. But only for an hour or two, in the basement; you could hardly smell that anymore…

  The next morning, Koop was downtown before ten o’clock. He didn’t like the daylight hours, but this was important. He called her at her office.

  “This is Sara Jensen… Hello? Hello?”

  Her voice was pitched higher than he’d expected, with an edge to it. When he didn’t answer her second hello, she promptly hung up, and he was left listening to a dial tone. So she was working.

  He headed for the parking ramp, spiraled up through the floors. She was usually on five, six, or seven, depending on how early she got in. Today, it was six again. He had to go to eight to find a parking place. He walked back down, checked under the bumper of her car, found the key box. He opened it as he walked away. Inside was a car key and a newly minted door key.

  Shazam.

  He felt like victory, going back in. Like a conqueror. Like he was home, with his woman.

  Koop spent half the day at her apartment.

  As soon as he got in, he opened a tool chest in front of the television. If somebody showed up, a cleaning woman, he could say he’d just finished fixing it… but nobody showed up.

  He ate cereal from one of her bowls, washed the bowl, and put it back. He lounged in her front room with his shoes off, watching television. He stripped off his clothes, pulled back the bedcovers, and rolled in her slick cool sheets. Masturbated into her Kleenex.

  Sat on her toilet. Took a shower with her soap. Dabbed some of her perfume on his chest, where he could smell it. Posed in her mirror, his blond, nearly hairless body corded with muscle.

  This, he thought, she’d love: he threw the mirror a quarter-profile, arms flexed, butt tight, chin down.

  He went through her chest of drawers, found some letters from a man. He read them, but the content was disappointing: had a good time, hope you had a good time. He checked a file cabinet in a small second bedroom-office, found a file labeled “Divorce.” Nothing much in it. Jensen was her married name-her maiden name was Rose.

  He went back to the bedroom, lay down, rubbed his body with the sheets, turned himself on again…

  By five, he was exhausted and exhilarated. He saw the time on her dresser clock, and got up to dress and make the bed: she’d just about be leaving her office.

  Sara Jensen got home a few minutes before six, carrying a sack full of vegetables under one arm, a bottle of wine and her purse in the opposite hand. The wet smell of radishes and carrots covered Koop’s scent for the first few steps inside the door, to the kitchen counter, but when she’d dropped her sacks and stepped back to shut the door, she stopped, frowned, looked around.

  Something wasn’t right. She could smell him, but only faintly, subconsciously. A finger of fear poked into her heart.

  “Hello?” she called.

  Not a peep. Paranoid.

  She tilted her head back, sniffing. There was something… She shook her head. Nothing identifiable. Nervous, she left the hallway door open, walked quickly to the bedroom door, and poked her head inside. Called out: “Hello?” Silence.

  Still leaving the door open, she checked the second bedroom-office, then ventured into the bathroom, even jerking open the door to the shower stall. The apartment was empty except for her.

  She went to the outer door and closed it, still spooked. Nothing she could put her finger on. She started unpacking her grocery sacks, stowing the vegetables in the refrigerator.

  And stopped again. She tiptoed back to the bedroom. Looked to her right. A closet door was open just a crack. A closet she didn’t use. She turned away, hurried to the hall door, opened it, stopped. Turned back. “Hello?”

  The silence spoke of emptiness. She edged toward the bedroom, looked in. The closet door was just as it had been. She took a breath, walked to the closet. “Hello?” Her voice quieter. She took the knob in her hand, and feeling the fright of a child opening the basement door for the first time, jerked the closet door open.

  Nobody there, Sara.

  “You’re nuttier’n a fruitcake,” she said aloud. Her voice sounded good, broke the tension. She smiled and pushed the closet door shut with her foot, and started back to the living room. Stopped and looked at the bed.

  There was just the vaguest body-shape there, as though somebody had dropped back on the bedspread. Had she done that? She sometimes did that in the morning when she was putting on her panty hose.

  But had she gotten dressed first that morning, or made the bed first?

  Had her head hit the pillow like that?

  Spooked again, she patted the bed. The thought crossed her mind that she should look under it.

  But if there were a monster under there…

  “I’m going out to dinner,” she said aloud. “If there’s a monster under the bed, you better get out while I’m gone.”

  Silence and more silence.

  “I’m going,” she said, leaving the room, looking back. Did the bed tremble?

  She went.

  CHAPTER

  16

  The Carren County courthouse was a turn-of-the-century sandstone building, set in the middle of the town square. A decaying bandstand stood on the east side of the building, facing a street of weary clapboard buildings. A bronze statue of a Union soldier, covered with pigeon droppings, guarded the west side with a trapdoor rifle. On the front lawn, three old men, all wearing jackets and hats, sat alone on separate wooden benches.

  A squirrel ignored them, and Lucas and Connell walked past them, the old men as unmoving, unblinking as the Union soldier.

  George Beneteau’s office was in the back, off a parking lot sheltered by tall, spreading oaks. Lucas and Connell were passed through a steel security door and led by a secretary through a warren of fabric partitions to Beneteau’s corner office.

  Beneteau was a lanky man in his middle thirties, wearing a gray suit with a string tie under a large Adam’s apple, and a pair of steel-rimmed aviator sunglasses. He had a prominent nose and small hairline scars under his eyes: old sparring cuts. A tan Stetson sat on his desk in-basket. He showed even, white teeth in a formal smile.

  “Miz Connell, Chief Davenport,” he said. He stood to shake hands with Lucas. “That was a mess over in Lincoln County last winter.”

  The observation sounded like a question. “We’re not looking for trouble,” Lucas said. He touched the scar on his throat. “We just want to talk to Joe Hillerod.”

  Beneteau sat down and steepled his fingers. Connell was wearing sunglasses that matched his. “We know that Joe Hillerod crossed paths with our killer. At least crossed paths.”

  Beneteau peered at her from behind the steeple. “You’re saying that he might be the guy?”

  “That’s a possibility.”

  “Huh.” He sat forward, picked up a pencil, tapped the pointed end on his desk pad. “He’s a mean sonofagun, Joe is. He might kill a woman if he thought he had reason… but he might need a reason.”

  Lucas said, “You don
’t think he’s nuts.”

  “Oh, he’s nuts all right,” Beneteau said, tapping the pencil. “Maybe not nuts like your man is. But who knows? There might be something in him that likes to do it.”

  “You’re sure he’s around?” Lucas asked.

  “Yes. But we’re not sure exactly where,” Beneteau said. His eyes drifted up to a county road map pinned to one wall. “His truck’s been sitting in the same slot since you called yesterday, down at his brother’s place. We’ve been doing some drive-bys.”

  Lucas groaned inwardly. If they’d been seen…

  Beneteau picked up his thought and shook his head, did his thin dry smile. “The boys did it in their private cars, only two of them, a couple of hours apart. Their handsets are scrambled. We’re okay.”

  Lucas nodded, relieved. “Good.”

  “On the phone last night, you mentioned those. 50-caliber barrels you found in that fire. The Hillerods have some machine tools down in that junkyard,” Beneteau said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.” Beneteau stood up, looked at a poster for a missing girl, then turned back to Lucas. “I thought we oughta take along a little artillery. Just in case.”

  They went in a caravan, two sheriff’s cars and an unmarked panel truck, snaking along a series of blacktop and gravel roads, past rough backwoods farms. Mangy cud-chewing cows, standing in patchy pastures marked by weather-bleached tree stumps, turned their white faces to watch the caravan pass.

  “They call it a salvage yard, but the local rednecks say it’s really a distribution center for stolen Harley-Davidson parts,” Beneteau said. He was driving, his wrist draped casually over the top of the steering wheel. “Supposedly, a guy rips off a good clean bike down in the Cities or over in Milwaukee or even Chicago, rides it up here overnight. They strip it down in an hour or so, get rid of anything identifiable, and drop the biker up at the Duluth bus station. Proving that would be a lot of trouble. But you hear about midnight bikers coming through here, and the bikes never going back out.”

  “Where do they sell the parts?” Connell asked from the backseat.