John Sandford - Prey 01 - Rules of Prey

by Rules of Prey

  "You should have told us," Lucas said.

  "I was scared. Mr. McCarthy said..." They both turned and looked at McCarthy.

  "It was too much all at once. You were grilling him, everybody was running around yelling, we had to cool out or we could make a mistake," McCarthy said.

  "Well, we sure made a mistake doing it this way," Smithe said. "My family knew I was gay, my parents and my brothers and sisters and a few friends back home, but most people in my high school didn't, most of the people around the home place..."

  He suddenly sat down and started to sob. "Now they all know. You know how hard it'll be to go back to the farm? My home?"

  McCarthy stood up and kicked his chair.

  ***

  In the lobby of the detention center, Lucas stopped at a phone and made a single call.

  "Lucas Davenport," he said. "Can you meet me someplace discreet? Quickly?"

  "Sure," she said. "Name the place."

  He named a used-book store on the north side of the loop. When she arrived, he thought how out-of-place she looked. With her perfect hair and faultless makeup, she wandered through the stacks like Alice in Wonderland, stunned by the presence of so many baffling artifacts. Annie McGowan. Pride of Channel Eight, the Now Report.

  "Lucas," she whispered when she saw him.

  "Annie." He stepped toward her and she reached out with both hands, as though she expected Lucas to take her in his arms. He instead took her hands and pulled her close to his chest.

  "What I'm going to tell you now must be kept a secret. You must give me journalistic immunity or I can't tell you," he said, glancing back over his shoulder. Introduction to Method Acting 1043, two credits.

  "Yes, of course," she blurted. Her breath smelled like cinnamon and spice.

  "This gay fellow arrested for the maddog murders? He didn't do it," Lucas whispered. "He has two excellent alibis that are being checked out even as we speak. He should be released late this afternoon. No one, but no one, knows this outside the police department, except you. If you wait until three-thirty or so, you can probably catch his attorney-you know McCarthy, the public defender?"

  "Yes, I know him," she said breathlessly.

  "You can catch him outside the detention center, signing Smithe out. Better stake the place out around three o'clock. I don't think it could happen earlier than that."

  "Oh, Lucas, this is enormous."

  "Yeah. If you can keep it exclusive. And I'll give you another tip, but this also has to come from 'an informed source.'"

  "What?"

  "These women were supposedly raped, but nobody ever found any semen. They think the killer may be using some kind of... foreign object because he's impotent."

  "Oh, jeez. Poor guy."

  "Uh, yeah."

  "What kind of object?"

  "Uh, well, we don't know exactly."

  "You mean like one of those huge rubber cocks?" The words came tripping out of her perfect mouth so incongruously that Lucas felt his chin drop.

  "Uh, well, we don't know. Something. Anyway, if you handle this right and protect me, I'll have more exclusive tips for you. But right now I've got to get out of here. We can't be seen together."

  "Not yet, anyway," she said. She turned to go, and then stepped back.

  "Listen, when you call me at the station, they'll know who my source is if you keep leaving your name. I mean, if you can't get me."

  "Yeah?"

  "So maybe we should use a code name."

  "Good idea," Lucas said, dumbfounded. He took a card from his wallet, wrote his home phone number on the back of it. "You can call me at the office or at home. I'll be one place or the other when I call you. When I call, I'll say 'Message for McGowan: Call Red Horse.'"

  "Red Horse," she whispered, her lips moving as she memorized the phrase. "Red Horse. Like the horse in chess?"

  More like the fish, the red horse sucker, Lucas thought. McGowan stepped forward another step and kissed him on the lips, then with a flash of black eyes and fashionable wool coat was gone down the stacks.

  The store owner, an unromantic fat man who collected early editions of Mark Twain's Life on the Mississippi, appeared in the dim aisle and said, "Jesus, Lucas, what're you doing back there, squeezin' the weasel?"

  ***

  Lucas stopped at Daniel's office and outlined Smithe's alibis. Together they went to the homicide division and outlined them to Lester and Anderson.

  "I want everybody off everything else, I want this checked right now," Daniel said. "You can start by going over to the welfare office, see about this in-service training. That'll give us a quick read. Then look at these tickets, make a few calls. If it all checks, and I bet it will, we'll set up a meeting with the prosecutor's office. For like one o'clock, two o'clock. Decide what to do."

  "You mean drop the charges," Lester said.

  "Yeah. Probably."

  "The press'll eat us alive," Anderson said.

  "Not if we play it right. We tell them that Davenport was the only guy Smithe would trust, told him the stories, Davenport came to us, and we realized our mistake."

  "Sounds like a lead balloon to me," Lester said.

  "It's all we got," Daniel said. "It's better than having McCarthy shove it down our throats."

  "Christ." Lester's face was gray. "I made the call. They're going to be all over me. The fuckin' TV."

  "Could be worse," Daniel said philosophically.

  "How?"

  "Could be me."

  Lucas and Anderson started laughing, then Daniel, and finally Lester smiled.

  "Yeah, that'd be un-fuckin'-thinkable," Lester said.

  ***

  Lucas spent the rest of the morning in his office, talking to contacts around the Cities. Nothing much was moving. There were rumors that somebody had been killed at a high-stakes poker game on the northeast side, but he'd heard a similar rumor three weeks earlier and it was beginning to sound apocryphal. Several hundred Visa blanks had hit the Cities and were working through the discount stores and shopping centers; some heavy-hitting retailers were upset and were talking to the mayor. There was a rumor about guns, automatic weapons going out-country through landing strips in the Red River Valley. That was a weird one and needed checking. And a strip-joint owner complained that a neighboring bar was putting on young talent: "It ain't fair, these girls ain't old enough to have hair on their pussy. Nobody else is gettin' any business, everybody's down at Frankie's." Lucas told him he'd look into it.

  ***

  "It all checks," Daniel said. "We faxed a photo out to New York, had the cops run it over to the hotel, and the bellhop remembers him and remembers the rat. He couldn't remember the exact date, but he remembers the week it was in. It's the right week."

  "How about the in-service?"

  "Checks out. That's the clincher, because there isn't any question about it. As soon as we asked the question, word was all over welfare that we fucked up. It'll be all over the courthouse by tonight."

  "And?"

  "We've got a meeting with the prosecutor and the public defender at two o'clock," Daniel said. "We're going to recommend that all charges be dismissed. We'll have a press conference this evening."

  "He's going to sue our butts," Anderson said.

  "We'll ask for a waiver," Daniel said.

  "No chance," said Lucas. "The guy is freaked." He looked at the chief. "I don't think I ought to show at the press conference."

  "That might be best."

  "If anybody asks, you can tell them I'm on vacation. I'm going to take a couple of days off and go up north."

  ***

  Lucas left City Hall at three and wandered down to the detention center, stopping only to pick up a box of popcorn. Annie McGowan and a cameraman were outside the center, waiting. Lucas sat on a bus bench a block away, and a half-hour later saw McCarthy walk out of the center with Smithe right behind. They were with two older people, a man and a woman, whom Lucas recognized as Smithe's parents from the photos
in his house. McGowan was on them in a flash, and after a bit of milling around, they apparently agreed to a brief on-camera interview. Lucas balled up the empty popcorn bag, tossed it under the bench, and smiled.

  ***

  "Press conference at seven," Anderson said, spotting Lucas in the hall.

  "I've got something going tonight," Lucas said. "And I'm trying to hide out for a while."

  Before leaving, he made arrangements for backup with the patrol division and headed home in time for the six-o'clock news. McGowan looked wonderful as she delivered her scoop. After two minutes of videotaped interview outside the detention center, the cameras cut back to McGowan in the studio.

  "Now Report Eight has also learned that police believe the real killer is sexually impotent and the women may actually have been raped using some kind of blunt object because he is incapable of raping them himself."

  She turned to the anchorman and smiled. "Fred?"

  "Thanks for that exclusive report, Annie..."

  Lucas turned to Channel Four. The last story of the broadcast was a recap of McGowan's, obviously stolen: "We have just learned that Jimmy Smithe, who was arrested in the investigation of the multiple murders of three Twin Cities women, has been released and that police apparently now believe him to be innocent of the crimes..."

  Jennifer was on the phone five minutes later.

  "Lucas, did you feed her that?"

  "Feed who what?" Lucas asked innocently.

  "Feed McGowan the Smithe release?"

  "Has he been released?"

  "You jerk, you better be wearing your steel jockstrap the next time I'm over, because I'm bringing a knife."

  ***

  Late that evening, he cruised Lake Street in an unmarked departmental pool car, watching the night walkers, the drinkers, the hookers, looking for any one of a dozen faces. He found one just before ten.

  "Harold. Get in the car."

  "Aw, lieutenant..."

  "Get in the fuckin' car, Harold." Harold, a dealer in free-market pharmaceuticals, got in the car.

  "Harold, you owe me," Lucas said. Harold weighed a hundred and thirty pounds and was lost in his olive-drab field jacket.

  "What do y' want, man?" he whined. "I haven't been talking to anybody..."

  "What I want is for you to go into Frankie's and do some light drinking. On me. But light. Wine, beer. I don't want you hammered."

  "What's the bad part?" Harold asked, suddenly looking perkier.

  "They're going to put some young puss up on the bar. Real young. When they do, I want you to walk out and tell me. I'll be up the block. You come out as soon as she starts, hear? Not two minutes later, just as soon as she starts." He handed Harold a ten.

  "Ten? You want me to stay in there drinkin' on ten?" he complained.

  Lucas gripped the front of Harold's field jacket and shook him once. "Listen, Harold, you're lucky I don't charge you for the privilege, okay? Now, get your lame ass in there or I'm going to rip your fuckin' face off."

  "Jesus, lieutenant..." Harold got out, and Lucas slumped in the seat, watching the passersby. Most were drinking or already drunk. A few drug cases walked by. A pimp and one of his string; Lucas knew him, and put his head down further, his hand up to block a view of his face. The pimp never looked toward him. A pusher, a pusher, a fat-faced boy who might just have come in from the country, and a drunk salesman. He watched the parade for a half-hour before Harold eased up to the car.

  "There's one on and she's real young," he whispered.

  "Okay. Take off." Harold vanished. Lucas used the radio to make a prearranged call for patrol backup, pulled on a tweed shooting hat and a pair of windowpane glasses, got out of the car, locked it, and headed down the street to Frankie's.

  Frankie's smelled of old beer and cheap wine. The front room, next to the street, was empty except for two unhappy-looking women sitting across from each other in a red leatherette booth. The bartender was wiping glasses and casually watched Lucas pick his way through the empty tables to the entry arch into the back room.

  The back room was jammed, thirty or forty men and a half-dozen women in a cloud of cigarette smoke, clapping to the rock music that poured out of a jukebox. The girl was dancing on the bar, stripped down to a tiny brassiere and a pair of translucent blue underpants. Lucas shouldered his way through the crowd and spotted Frankie himself behind the bar, pushing out plastic glasses of beer as fast as the tap would pour them. Lucas tilted his head up at the girl. Eleven? Twelve? She did a bump and reached behind her back with one hand, her teeth biting her lower lip in a semiprofessional grin. She was feeding off the crowd's enthusiasm. With another bump, she popped the brassiere and slowly peeled it off, carefully covering her tiny breasts with her forearms as she did it. After a few more bumps she tossed the brassiere behind the bar and switched into a new dance, her exposed breasts bobbling in the flashing ceiling lights.

  "Bottoms, bottoms, bottoms," the crowd was chanting, and the girl hooked her thumbs in the top of the pants and after coyly pulling them down an inch here and an inch there, turning, bending, peering out between her legs, she stood and slid them off, her back to the audience, and then turned to finish the dance.

  And the bartender from the front screamed, "There're cops outside."

  "Take off," yelled Frankie. As the crowd broke for the two doors, he reached up and grabbed the nude girl by the ankle. Lucas lurched forward and got his gun out, his elbows on the bar, and poked the muzzle of the weapon into Frankie's cheek.

  "Don't make me have an accident, Frank," he said. "This weapon has a very light trigger pull." Frankie froze. Three uniformed cops ran in from the front, pressing customers to the wall as they passed. A dozen Ziploc bags of cocaine and crack hit the floor. Lucas looked up at the girl. "Get down," he said.

  She leaned over and carefully spat in his face.

  ***

  "So what happened to her?" Carla asked.

  They sat on the edge of the dock, their feet hanging over the water. It was an hour before sunset and they had just walked down to the dock from the firing range in the woods. The afternoon was cool and quiet, the violet hue of the sky reflected in the water. Three hundred feet out, a musky fisherman was working a surface lure around the edges of a submerged island. The water was as flat as a tabletop and they could hear the paddle-wheel chop-chop-chop of the lure as the fisherman retrieved it.

  "We dropped her off with child protection," Lucas said. "They'll try to figure out who her parents are, get her back there. Two weeks from now she'll run away again and start hooking or dancing or whatever. At her age, it's the only kind of job she can get."

  "What about Frankie?"

  "We wrote him up for everything we could think of. We'll get him on some of them, felonies. He'll do some time, lose his liquor license."

  "Good. They ought to... I don't know. A twelve-year-old."

  Lucas shrugged. "The average age of the hookers out on the street is probably fourteen. By sixteen they're getting too old. The younger they are, the more money they make; it's what the Johns want. Young stuff."

  "Men are such perverts," Carla said, and Lucas laughed.

  "What do you want to do, go fishing or go inside and fool around?" he asked.

  "I've already been fishing," she said, wrinkling her nose at him.

  CHAPTER

  13

  The maddog's secretary served as the office's rumor-central. That might have helped him in office politics-if he had taken part in office politics-but he did not relate well to his secretary. He dealt with her with his eyes averted. He was aware of the habit and struggled to correct it, to look straight at her. He was unsuccessful and had taken to staring at the bridge of her nose. She knew that he was not looking into her eyes.

  The situation was made more difficult by her appearance. She was far too pretty for the maddog. She had made it clear soon after his arrival that she would not welcome an approach. In his own way, he was grateful. If she had snared him, if she had be
en Chosen, she would have to die and that would violate one of the principal rules: Never kill anyone you know.

  When he came into the office, three other women were clustered around her, talking.

  "Did you hear, Louis?" One of the women in the cluster was speaking to him. Margaret Wilson was her name. She was an attorney who specialized in personal-injury law, and though she was not yet thirty, was rumored to be one of the best-paid attorneys in the office. She had hazel eyes, large breasts, and heavy thighs. She laughed too much, the maddog thought; actually, she frightened him a bit. He stopped.