"We're already playing a dangerous game," Lucas said. "The maddog's not giving us any choice."
***
Lucas spent the afternoon on the street, touching informants, friends, contacts, letting them know he was alive. A Colombian had been in town, supposedly to negotiate a four-way cocaine wholesaling net to cover the metro area. It would be run by three men and a woman, each with separate territories and responsibilities. If any of them tried to make a move on somebody else's territory, the Colombian would cut off the troublemaker's supply.
Lucas was interested. Most of the cocaine in the Twin Cities was in weights of three ounces or less, bought on the subwholesale level from Detroit and Chicago, and, to a lesser extent, Los Angeles. There had been rumors of direct Colombian connections before, but they never materialized. This had a different feel to it. He pushed his informants for names, promising money and immunity in return.
There were more rumors of gang activity, recruitments of local chapters out of Chicago and Los Angeles. Gang growth was slow in the Cities. Members were systematically harassed by the gang squads in both towns and were sent to prison so often, and for so long, that any kid with an IQ above ninety stayed away from them.
Indians on Franklin Avenue were talking about a woman who either jumped or was thrown off the Franklin Avenue bridge. No body had shown up. Lucas made a note to call the sheriff's river patrol.
He was back at his desk late in the afternoon when McGowan called.
"Lucas? Isn't it wonderful?" she bubbled.
"What?"
"You know about this thing with the maddog? They're setting up surveillance around me?"
"Yeah, I knew the chief was going to get in touch."
"Well, I agreed to the surveillance, but only if we could tape parts of it. You know, we'll cooperate and everything, but once in a while, when it's natural, we'll get a camera in the house and get some tape of me cooking or sewing or something. They're going to set up a surveillance post across the street and another one behind the house. They'll let a camera come up and shoot the cops watching my house with their binoculars and stuff." She was more than excited, Lucas thought. She was ecstatic.
"Jesus, Annie, this isn't a sporting event. You'll be covered, of course, but this guy is a maniac."
"I don't care," she said firmly. "If he comes after me, the story will go network. I'll be on every network news show in the country, and I'll tell you what-if I get a chance like that and I handle it right, I'll be out of here. I'll be in New York in six weeks."
"It's a nice idea, but death would be a nasty setback," Lucas said.
"Won't happen," she said confidently. "I've got eight cops, twenty-four hours a day. No way he'll get to me."
Or if he got to her, there was no way he'd escape, Lucas thought. "I hope they're setting you up with some sort of emergency alarm."
"Oh, sure. We're working that out right now. It's like a beeper and I wear it on my belt. I never take it off. As soon as I hit it, everybody comes running."
"Don't get overconfident. Carla Ruiz never saw him coming, you know. If she hadn't been worried about going out on the street alone and if she hadn't been carrying that Mace, she'd be dead."
"Don't worry, Lucas. I'll be fine." McGowan's voice dropped a notch. "I'd like to see you, you know, outside of work. I was going to mention something, but now, with twenty-four-hour surveillance..."
"Sure," he said hastily. "It wouldn't be good if the chief or even your people found out how close we are."
"Great," she said. "I'll see you, good old Red Horse."
"Take care of yourself."
***
Detectives from narcotics, vice, and sex set up the direct surveillance, backed by out-of-uniform patrolmen who were assigned unmarked cars on streets adjacent to McGowan's. Lucas stayed away the first night, when the posts were established. Too many cops, too much coming and going, would draw attention from the neighborhood. The second night he went out with a vice cop named Henley.
"You ever seen her place?" Henley asked.
"No. Pretty nice?"
"Not bad. Small older house across the street from Minnehaha Creek. Two stories. Lot and a half. There's a big side yard on the east with a couple of apple trees in it. There's another house on the west, maybe thirty feet between them, all open. Must have set her back a hundred thou."
"She's got some bucks," Lucas said.
"Face like hers on TV, I believe it."
"She said you're on both sides?"
"Yeah. We've got a place directly across the street in front and one across the alley in back," Henley said. "We're watching from the attics in both places."
"We renting?"
"The guy on the Minnehaha side didn't want any money, said he'd be happy to do it. We told him we could be there a couple months, he said no problem."
"Nice guy."
"Old guy. Retired architect. I think he likes the company. Lets us put stuff in the refrigerator, use the kitchen."
"How about in back?"
"That's an old couple. They were going to give us the space, but they looked like they were hurting for money, so we rented. Couple hundred bucks a month, gave them two months. They were happy to get it."
"Funny. That's a pretty rich neighborhood," Lucas said.
"I was talking to them, they're not doing so good. The old man said they lived too long. They retired back in the sixties, both had pensions, they figured they were set for life. Then the inflation came along. Everything went up. Taxes, everything. They're barely keeping their heads above water."
"Hmmp. Which one are we going to?"
"The architect's. We park on the other side of the creek and walk across a bridge. We come up behind a row of houses along the water, then into the back of his house. Keeps us off the street in front of the place."
The architect's house was large and well-kept, polished wood and Oriental rugs, artifacts of steel and bronze, beautifully executed black-and-white etchings and drypoints hung on the eggshell walls. The vice cop led the way up four flights of stairs into a dimly lit, unfinished attic space. Two cops sat on soft chairs, a telephone by their feet, binoculars and a spotting scope between them. A mattress lay on the floor to one side of the room. Beside it, a boombox played easy-listening music.
"How you doing?" one of the cops asked. The other one nodded.
"Anything going on?" Lucas asked.
"Guy walked his dog."
Lucas walked up to the window and looked out. The window had been covered from the inside with a thin, shiny plastic film. From the street, the window would appear to be transparent, the space behind it unoccupied.
"She home?"
"Not yet. She does the ten-o'clock news, cleans up, usually goes out for something to eat. Then she comes home, unless she has a date. For the next couple of weeks, she's coming straight home."
Lucas sat down on the mattress. "I think-I'm not sure-but I think if he hits her, he'll come after dark but before midnight. He's careful. He won't want to walk around at a time when people will notice him, but he'll want the dark to hide his face. I expect he'll try to get in the house while she's gone and jump her when she comes back. That's the way he did it with Ruiz. The other possibility would be to catch her right at the door as she's going in. Sap her, push her right inside. If he did it right, it would look like he was meeting her at the door."
"We thought he might try some kind of con," said one of the surveillance cops. "You know, go up to the door, say he's a messenger from the station or something. Get her to open the door."
"It's a possibility," Lucas said. "I still like the idea-"
"Here she comes," said the cop at the window.
Lucas got up and half-crawled, half-walked to the window and looked out. A red Toyota sports car pulled up to the curb directly in front of McGowan's house, and a moment later she got out, carrying a shopping bag. She self-consciously didn't look around and marched stiffly up to the house, unlocked the door, and went inside.
"In," said the first surveillance cop. The second shone a miniature flashlight on his wristwatch and counted. Thirty seconds. A minute. A minute and a half. A minute forty-five.
The phone rang and the first surveillance cop picked it up.
"Miss McGowan? Okay? Good. But keep the beeper on until you go to bed, okay? Have a good night."
***
"You coming up every night?" Henley asked casually.
"Most nights, midweek. For three hours or so, nine to midnight or one o'clock, like that," Lucas said.
"You do it for too long, you wind up brain dead."
"And if the surveillance doesn't do it, this fuckin' elevator music will," Lucas said. The easy-listening music still oozed from the boombox.
One of the surveillance cops grinned and nodded at his partner. "Compromise," he said. "I like rock, he can't stand it. He likes country and I won't listen to all that hayseed hillbilly tub-thumping. So we compromised."
"Could be worse," Henley chipped in.
"Not possible," Lucas said.
"Ever listen to New Age?"
"You win," Lucas conceded. "It could be worse."
***
"Oh, God damn, folks, she's doing it again."
"What?" Lucas crawled off the mattress toward the window.
"We thought maybe she didn't realize there's a crack in the curtains," the cop said. His partner had his binoculars fixed on McGowan's house and said, "C'mon, babee." Lucas nudged the first cop away from the spotting scope and peered through it. The scope was focused on a space in the curtains on a second-story window. There was nothing to see at first, then McGowan walked through a shaft of light coming from what Lucas supposed was a bathroom. She was brushing her hair, her arms crossed behind her head. She was wearing a pair of white cotton underpants. Nothing else.
"Look at that," whispered the cop with the binoculars.
"Give me the fuckin' things," said Henley, trying to wrench them away.
"Goddamn one-hundred-percent all-American TV-reporter pussy," the surveillance cop said reverently, passing the binoculars to the vice cop. "You think she knows we're watching?"
She knows, Lucas thought, watching her face. It was flushed. Annie McGowan was turned on. "Probably not," he said aloud.
***
Five days of surveillance produced nothing. No suspicious cars checked her home, no approaches on the street. Nothing but falling leaves and cold winds rattling the tiles on the architect's roof. The curtain never closed.
***
"Red Horse?" It was midday and Lucas was calling from his home.
"Yeah, Annie. This is no hot tip, but I was out in the neighborhoods and noticed something you might be interested in. One of the women's business clubs is going to hear a lecture from a university shrink about-I'm reading this from a flier-'the relationship between sexual-social inadequacy and antisocial activity, with comments about the serial killer now terrorizing the Twin Cities.' That sounds like it could be good. Maybe you'd want to get a camera over to see this guy before he gives his speech."
"That sounds pretty relevant. What's the name?"
***
"Lucas?" It was Jennifer, a little breathless.
"Jennifer. I was going to call. How are you feeling?"
"I'm getting a little queasy in the morning."
"Have you seen a doctor?"
"Jesus, Lucas, I'm okay. It's only morning sickness. I just hope it doesn't get much worse. I almost lost my breakfast."
"With the breakfasts you eat, I believe it. You've got to get off that eggs-and-sausage and butter-toast bullshit. It'll kill you even if it doesn't give you morning sickness. Your cholesterol is probably six hundred and eight. Buy some oatmeal or some Malt-O-Meal. Get some vitamins. I can't figure out why you don't weigh two hundred pounds. For Christ's sakes, will you-?"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah. Listen, I didn't call you for culinary advice. This is an official call. I've been hearing strange rumors. That something heavy is happening with the maddog. That you know who he is and that you're watching him."
"Absolutely wrong," Lucas said flatly. "I can't prove it, obviously, but it's not true."
"I won't ask you for Boys Scout's honor, because that's personal and this is an official call."
"Okay, listen, as the woman who is carrying my kid, I don't want you to run around and get exhausted, okay? So on a purely personal basis, I tell you, Boy Scout's honor, we've got no idea who he is."
"But you're doing something?"
"That's an official question. I can start lying again."
Jennifer laughed and Lucas felt cheered. "I read you like an open book," she said. "I bet I find out what's going on within, say, a week."
"Good luck, fat lady."
***
Anderson and Lucas were talking in Lucas' office when Daniel edged in. He had never seen Lucas' office before. "Not bad," he said. "It's almost as big as my closet."
"There's a trick wall and it opens into a full-size executive suite, but I only do it when I'm alone," Lucas said. "Don't want to make the peons jealous."
"We were going over the case," Anderson said, looking up at the chief. "It's been ten days since the maddog's last hit. If the shrinks are right, he should be coming up on another one. Probably next week."
"Christ, we gotta do something," Daniel said. He was wringing his hands and Lucas thought he had lost weight. His hair was uncharacteristically mussed, as though he had forgotten to brush it before he left home. The maddog was bearing him down.
"Nothing on the McGowan thing?" he asked.
"Nope."
"Lucas. Tell me something."
"I don't have anything specific. We might be able to cool the media. I'm thinking that we should release some information about him. Something that would make it harder for him to pick up his victims."
Daniel paused. "Like what?"
"A flier listing the type of woman he goes after-dark hair, dark eyes, young to middle-aged, attractive. Then maybe a few hints about him. That he's light-complected, dark-haired, a little heavy, maybe recently moved in from the Southwest. That he dressed like a farmer at least once, but that we believe him to be a white-collar worker. Appeal to women who fit the type, and who feel approaches from men like that, and ask them to call us."
"Christ, you know how many calls we'd get?" Anderson asked.
"Can't be helped," Lucas said. "But we're not getting anywhere, and if he takes another one next week... We'd be better off if the press thought we were doing something about it."
Daniel pursed his lips, staring blankly at the pebbled plaster on Lucas' office wall. Eventually he nodded. "Yes. Let's do it. At least we're doing something."
"And maybe call an alert for next week," Lucas suggested. "Put a lot of extra cops on the street. Let the media know about it, but ask them not to publish. They won't, and it'll make them feel like they're in on something."
"Not bad," Daniel admitted with a wintry smile. "And after it's over, we can all go on television and debate media ethics, whether they should have cooperated with the cops."
"You got it," said Lucas. "They love that shit."
***
Lucas called her from a street phone.
"Red Horse?"
"Listen, Annie, Daniel has ordered Anderson-you know, from robbery-homicide?-he's ordered him to make up a list of characteristics for both the victims and the maddog killer and release it to the media. Probably sometime this afternoon. Some of them are already well-known, but some of them were confidential up to this time."
"If I can get it in ten minutes, I can make the noon report."
"I can't give you all of it, but we think he's fairly new to the area. We don't think he's been here more than a few years and that he moved in from the Southwest."
"You mean like Worthington, Marshall, down there?"
"No, no, not southwest Minnesota, the southwestern United States. Texas, probably. Maybe New Mexico. Like that. Daniel will make it official that he was seen
in farmer clothes, just like you had it. But now they think it might be a disguise and that he's really white-collar."
"Great. Really great, Red Horse. What else?"
"There'll be more on the list, but that's the best stuff. And listen, before you put it on the air, call Anderson and ask him about it. He'll tell you. He's in his office now." He gave her Anderson's direct line. "Thanks. I'll see you on the air in fifteen minutes."
***
John Sandford - Prey 01 - Rules of Prey Page 24