Buried Prey

16

Lucas dropped the hammer on the Lexus, burning down Rice Street, blowing through a red light at Arlington, with barely a hesitation. Berg, cuffed in the backseat, called, “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” and Del, holding on to an overhead hand grip, said, “I wonder what those crazy fucks have done this time?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know why they wouldn’t tell me,” Lucas said. “Why wouldn’t they tell me?”

Maryland wasn’t far. “Maryland? What’s at Maryland?” Del asked. “Was there something going on there?”

“Not as far as I know,” Lucas said. “They were working those home invasions down in South St. Paul…”

Shrake and Jenkins had many sterling qualities, but discretion wasn’t one of them: to hear them freaked and screaming for lights and sirens meant something bad was happening or about to happen. “Something bad, man, something really bad,” Lucas said.

Del put his feet on the dash and dug his pistol out and checked it. From the back, Berg cried, “What’s happening? What’s happening?” and Del said, “Shut up, asshole.”

Three blocks ahead, they saw Jenkins’s personal Crown Vic slew across the intersection and then disappear into what must be the parking lot.

They were there in ten seconds, saw Jenkins and Shrake standing outside the Crown Vic looking up the street at them, and Del said, “They’re just standing there,” and he reholstered his pistol, and then Lucas put the truck into the parking lot, bouncing to a stop next to the two big agents.

He and Del were out, and Jenkins pointed at Berg through the back window of the Lexus and asked, “Who’s he?”

Lucas asked, “Jesus, what’s going on? What’s going on?”

“Who’s the guy?” Jenkins asked again.

His voice carried a peculiar intensity that made Lucas stop, and answer: “We’re transporting him down to Ramsey on assault.”

Jenkins said to Shrake, “Get him out of there,” and to Lucas: “We’ll take him.”

Shrake went around and jerked open the back door. Lucas said, “Jenkins, goddamnit-”

“Marcy Sherrill’s been shot,” Jenkins said. “She was over at that Barker chick’s house, and somebody came crashing in and shot the place up. Three people hit, the shooter’s maybe hit, it’s all confused, it’s all fucked up.”

Lucas grabbed Jenkins’s arm: “How bad? Where’re they taking her? Where’re they taking her?”

Jenkins shook his head: “They’re not transporting her.”

Lucas’s mind froze for a minute, then: “What?”

“They’re not transporting, man.” Jenkins moved up and threw an arm around Lucas’s shoulder. “She’s gone, man. That’s what they’re telling us.”

Lucas stared at him for a moment, and then Del said, his voice shaking, “We’re going. Get that fucker out of there…” gesturing at Berg. Shrake yanked the thin man out of the back of the truck and slammed the door.

Del ran around to the driver’s side, and Lucas said, “No, I got it,” and Del said, “Bullshit, I’m driving. Get in. Get the fuck in the car.”

Del drove fast, but not crazy, as Lucas would have, all the way across town, with Lucas yelling suggestions at him, onto I-94, off I-94 at Cretin Avenue, south down Cretin at sixty miles an hour, then across the bridge and past the airport and the Mall of America and down into Bloomington’s suburban maze.

And all the way, with the sick feeling of doom in his gut, Lucas was yelling out reasons why it couldn’t be right: one of the best hospitals in the metro area was five minutes from the Barkers’ house; they would have transported her no matter what, there was a lot of confusion, that fuckin’ Jenkins had it wrong.

Del just drove and once in a while, shook his head. Jenkins, he believed, wouldn’t make that kind of mistake. He was a thug, but a smart one, and not insensitive. He didn’t say it, kept his foot down and shook his head as Lucas shouted out possibilities.

There were Bloomington cops all over the place, and the street down to Barker’s house was blocked off. Del rolled the Lexus past the blocking black-and-white, hanging his BCA credentials out the window, and put the truck in a vacant spot a halfblock from the Barker house.

They climbed down and jogged past a half-dozen uniformed Bloomington cops coming and going, cutting across a couple of yards, swerving around a loop of crime-scene tape to a detective standing out in the yard. He looked up as Lucas and Del came up and said, “I know you-”

“Davenport and Capslock, with the BCA,” Lucas said. “We heard that Marcy Sherrill was down. Is she…?”

The cop shook his head: “You were with Minneapolis, right?”

“Yeah, we both were. We’re close friends of hers.”

“I’m John Rimes, I’m running the scene right now. I’ll let you go in,” he said. “But you might not want to… have to go around to the side door.”

“Man, she’s…” Lucas held his hands out, palms up, pleading.

Rimes nodded. “She’s gone. We got two more down, another cop named Buster Hill, and Todd Barker, the husband here-”

“Aw, man.” Lucas stopped, put his hand to his forehead. Del put a hand on his shoulder. “Aw… can’t be right.”

“I’m sorry,” Rimes said.

“I interviewed them a couple days ago; this is part of the Jones investigation,” Lucas said, as they walked around to the side of the house. A kind of black dread was enveloping his brain. “I talked to Marcy a couple times today.”

Del said, “Easy…”

Lucas shook him off. “I’m okay.”

Rimes said, “Hill got off a couple of shots and it looks like he hit the guy-we’ve got a blood trail going around the side of the house over to the next street. Not much, but it’s a trail.”

Del asked, as they went through the side door, “Anybody get the tags?”

“No, but a guy down the street said it was a white cargo van…. Of course, there are only about thirty thousand of those.”

Lucas said to Del, “It’s him. It’s the van. It’s the guy.”

Rimes asked, “Who?” but Lucas shook his head.

Then they were crossing a kitchen toward a crowd of people in the living room, and Rimes said, “Make a hole,” and people stepped back and Lucas looked down and suddenly, shockingly, saw Marcy, eyes still open, faceup on the living room rug, only a small hole under her chin, but a big puddle of blood under her neck. She was wearing a white silky blouse with bloody handprints down the front, where somebody had tried to tend to her. Her eyes were blank as the sky.

“Aw, Christ,” he said, and he began to shake.

Around her, the house was a shambles, overturned chairs and blood tracks on the carpet, telling the story.

“This Hill guy was hit in the leg. He started screaming for an ambulance, but she was gone,” Rimes said. “He said he knew she was gone the minute he looked at the wound. Hill’s gonna be okay, the husband’s hurt bad, but he’ll make it. He took two in the chest and one in the shoulder… Sherrill was hit right under the chin.”

“Took out her spinal cord,” said a crime-scene guy. “Instantaneous. Like she was decapitated.”

Rimes shook his head at the guy and said, “Thank you,” and the guy looked at Lucas’s face and went away.

Rimes said, “The woman, this Kelly Barker, she wasn’t hurt. She said the shooter was a big fat guy with a black beard. We’re gonna get DNA on him, so he’s toast if we can put our hands on him.”

Rimes’s voice was quiet, but intense, a recitation of what he’d learned since he took over the scene. He asked Lucas, “You need to sit down?”

Lucas turned toward Del but he couldn’t find his voice, couldn’t even find any spit in his mouth, not enough moisture to force out a word, and he shook his head and went back through the kitchen and out to the backyard and sat down on the grass.

Del was on his cell phone when he came out a minute later. He clicked off, squatted next to Lucas, and said, “Come on, these guys are pros. They’ll get it done. Let’s get you home.”

“Got to tell her folks,” Lucas said, finding a few words. Tears started streaming down his face. “Somebody’s-”

“Somebody does, but not you,” Del said. “Come on. I’m taking you home.”

Lucas didn’t fight him. He sat in the passenger seat, couldn’t stop the tears. Del said, “This is the worst goddamn thing. It’s the worst goddamn thing.”

Weather called on Lucas’s cell and asked, “Where are you?”

“Coming home. I’ll be there in ten minutes,” he said.

“Are you driving?”

“No. Del is.”

“Ten minutes,” she said.

Weather and Letty were in the driveway when they got to Lucas’s home. Del pulled in, and said, “I’ll go downtown and take care of the paper on Berg-I wish we’d never talked to that fool.”

Lucas nodded and climbed out of the truck, and Weather came and took him around the waist and said, “Shrake called, and Del. Lucas, I’m so sorry.”

Lucas nodded and Letty asked, “What’re you going to do?”

“I don’t know. I’ve got to think about it. I’m so freaked out I can’t think right now. This was like a freak shot, the guy was spraying the house. He shot the husband three times from four feet and didn’t kill him, but he hits Marcy once from forty feet and she’s gone. Ah, Jesus…”

Letty said, “You’ve got to find the guy who did it and take care of him. Personally.”

Weather said, “Letty, let it go.”

Letty said to Weather, “I’m not letting it go.” And to Lucas: “If you don’t settle this, get a hand in it, you’re going to be screwed up for a long time. First the Jones girls and now Marcy. Dad-”

Weather said, “Letty, shut up. Look: just shut up for now. We can talk about it later. Lucas, let’s go sit down.”

“I need to talk to the guys at Minneapolis,” Lucas said. “I need to talk to her partner, find out what happened. I’ve got enough to find this guy, and now we’ve got DNA on him.”

“You’re not going to do any of that tonight,” Weather said. “Come on. I’ve got some hot dogs hidden away. We’ll get something to eat.. you need to think.”

“All right,” he said. “Gotta think.” He put his arms around the shoulders of both women, and they walked into the house.

Time passed; it always does, and the dead don’t come back, and their death becomes more real.

Lucas sat in his darkened den while Letty and Weather bustled around the kitchen with the housekeeper. He could hear them banging around, like the distant sad/cheery sounds of Christmas to a bum on the street. And he could hear them snarling at each other from time to time.

Letty and Weather were close, but had radically different worldviews. Weather, as a surgeon, was imbued with the medical profession’s “care” mentality. Letty, their adopted daughter, had grown up in a harsh rural countryside without a father, and with a half-crazed, alcoholic mother: her attitude was, Hit first, and if necessary, hit again. If you made a mistake, you could apologize later. Her mentality was stark: take care of yourself, and your family and friends.

Weather would argue that the system would take care of Marcy’s killer. That Lucas would only get in trouble if he made it personal. Letty’s attitude was that Lucas would never sleep right if he didn’t hunt the killer down, and finish him.

Lucas had never loved another woman as he loved Weather-but his attitude was closer to Letty’s. He could feel the murder of Marcy Sherrill sitting like a cold chunk of iron in his heart and gut. It wouldn’t go away; it’d only grow harder and colder.

The anguish and regret never faded, but the anger came on, and it grew.

Marcy had meant a lot to him: he’d known her from her first days on the police force, just out of the academy, a dewy young thing working as a decoy in both prostitution and drug investigations. She’d been hot: terrific in a short skirt and high heels, with a soft clinging blouse: Weather habitually referred to her as Titsy.

She and Lucas ran into each other when Marcy made detective. They hadn’t worked out as sexual partners because, in some ways, they were simply too much alike: competitive, argumentative, manipulative, cynical. Both of them wanted to be on top; so they needed a little distance between them.

And while they were alike in their attitudes, they didn’t always-or even often-see eye to eye on investigations. Marcy had always been a leader: on an important case, she would put together an investigative crew, as big as she could get, and methodically grind through it until the perpetrator was turned up. With Marcy, an investigation was almost a social event.

Lucas, on the other hand, was a poor leader. He simply wasn’t interested in what he considered the time-wasting elements of operating in a bureaucracy. He was intuitive, harshly judgmental, and would occasionally wander into illegalities in the pursuit of what he saw as justice. In doing that, he preferred to work with one or two close friends who knew how to keep their mouths shut, didn’t mind the occasional perjury in a good cause, and knew when to blow him off, if he got too manic and started shouting; and would shout back. Lucas’s cops were outsiders, for the most part. The strange cops.

He didn’t think about all that, sitting in the den: he mostly just saw Marcy’s face on the floor in Bloomington, the postmortem lividity already showing as reddish streaks in her pale skin, and the eyes. He had to see that to know in his heart that she was dead, but now wished he hadn’t.

Weather came in, and they talked quietly, some about Marcy, and the times they’d been together; and about Letty at school and Sam at preschool. Then the housekeeper came and said Sam was ready for bed, and Weather went to put him down. Letty came in and pulled a chair around to face him.

“You’re responsible for a lot of people,” she said. “You gotta take care of this, but whatever you do, it can’t be crazy. You’ve got to plan it out.”

“I don’t know if I’m going to do anything,” Lucas said.

Letty said, “Please,” like they do in New York, meaning, “Don’t bullshit me,” and then, “What I’m saying is, you can’t go to jail and you can’t lose your job. You’ve got to think. So think. Don’t just start smashing people.”

He showed a little smile: “Thanks for the advice. Maybe you should go do your homework.”

“It’s summer vacation,” she said, and he said, “Great Expectations? All read?” and she said, “Fuck a bunch of homework. I’m serious here. I think you gotta do it, but you gotta think about it.”

“I will,” he promised.

“So where are you going to start?”

He closed his eyes and thought: “I’ve got to talk to Kelly Barker. Like right away. Tonight.”

“What else?”

“We know the guy lives here. He’s been here the whole time. He watches TV here. People know him, and we’ll have processed the DNA in a couple of days… All we have to do is identify him, and we’ve got him. The Bloomington cops have called all the ERs, so we’ll know if any gunshot wounds come in. The guy’s hurt… he’s gotta make a move. It’ll all be done pretty quick.”

“Can you live with it if somebody else takes him down?”

Lucas thought for a few more seconds, then said, “Yes. I can. I’d rather do it myself, I’ll kill him if I can, but if the Bloomington cops get him… I can live with it.”

Letty leaned forward out of her chair and said, “Get with Del. If you wind up putting him down, Del’s the guy you want with you.”

Lucas nodded. “Of course.” And, a few seconds later, “I don’t think you need to review this conversation with your mom.”

Letty said, “She’s so smart-she knows what we’re talking about. That’s why she’s upstairs with Sam, to get out of the way.”

“Yeah, probably.”

“So stop sitting there like a robot,” Letty said. “Call people on the phone. Get Del over here. Get it going.”

Lucas stared at her for a moment, unblinking; she didn’t flinch. And he thought, She’s way too young to think like this. But then, given her history, she really hadn’t been young since she was nine; that had been the last year of her childhood.