Mortal Prey

6

Before they left Cancun, Lucas asked Malone if she could either lend him a copy of the Rinker file he'd scanned in the plane coming down, or make a copy and send it to him in Minneapolis. She shook her head: "A lot of that stuff is speculation. We're not even supposed to show it to you the first time."

"You mean it's classified or something?"

"Like that."

"Like if it got out, Rinker could sue you?"

"Like if it got out, there are about a hundred people who could sue us. They wouldn't, but they'd be calling up their friends in Congress, who'd be pissing and moaning about violations of privacy and human rights and the way we spend our budget."

"If I can't copy it, could I read it overnight? Spend some time with it?"

"Sure." She said it without thinking, because she didn't actually know him very well. "Give it back to me in the morning."

The blue palms didn't have a business center, but the Hilton did.

In the evening, after dinner, Lucas told Mallard he felt like a walk. The heavy food and all. He strolled six blocks down to the Hilton and talked to the concierge about the business center. He was a writer from Los Angeles, he said, and he needed access to a xerox machine very late in the evening, as soon as he finished compiling his research. Would it be possible to rent one of the Hilton's machines for a couple of hours?

That courtesy was not usually extended outside the hotel, the concierge said. He would have to think about it-and after thinking about it, he decided that it would be a generous thing to do, and would help the Hilton's image with traveling businessmen. At one in the morning, Lucas walked back with the file, met the concierge, and took care of the rental and courtesy fees. By two-thirty, he'd finished copying the file, and by three o'clock, was safely back in bed, the copy snugged away with his shirts.

The next morning, they gathered in the lobby to check out, and Lucas gave Mallard a look. Mallard turned away. There'd been no moment with Malone, Lucas thought. He muttered "Chicken," and Malone asked, "What?"

"Nothing."

Lucas held on to Malone's copy of the Rinker file until they got to Houston, where they split up. "If there's anything I can do, call me," Lucas said. He handed the file back to her. "Sorry I wasn't more help in Cancun. If I think of anything from the file, I'll call."

"You helped," Mallard said. "Between us, we gave old man Mejia, ummm, a clearer view of the situation. There are things that Malone and I just can't say."

Lucas nodded. "Whatever. I'll be watching you guys. When are you going to St. Louis?"

"We're already moving our setup crew in. Malone and I will be there as soon as there's any hint that she's there," Mallard said. "Given her whole psychology, the way she was abused from the time she was a kid, then her true love getting shot, and losing the baby… can you think of any more likely place than St. Louis to pull her in?"

Lucas shook his head. "Nope. If I were her, I'd be there."

Malone smiled at him, her nasty lawyer's smile. "That's another reason we asked you. You two think alike."

Lucas was back in Minneapolis by midafternoon, having unexpectedly survived both flights. He stopped first at the new house, counted six guys working on it, talked to the foreman, and was told that the cable and telephone wiring was going in the next day. He collected a sample pad of parquet blocks that the designer was proposing for the library floor, and headed downtown.

Marcy Sherrill was sitting at her desk, staring at a computer screen, when Lucas walked in. "How's Cancun?" she asked, looking up.

"Hot and humid. Full of foreigners," Lucas said. He yawned: already a long day. "Anything new?"

"Ummm… Bob Cline croaked yesterday-did you know him?"

"Yeah, vaguely." Cline was an aging radio talk show host known for his unwavering support of the police department, no matter who had done what. "How'd he die?"

"Heart attack, I guess. He was at a Saints game and he was on his way home when he pulled over to the side of the road and died. Called 911 on the car phone but never said a word."

"Not a bad way to go… Anything else?"

"Rose Marie wants you to come by. She called twice. The homicide guys-Sloan, basically-got the name of a kid in that bus-stop drive-by on Thirty-third. They say he's the one, but they can't find him. His family says he went to New York, which probably means we oughta look in L.A."

"That's it?"

"That's it."

"All right. I'll go talk to Rose Marie." He yawned again. "What're you doing?"

She yawned back, picking it up from him. "Vacation and comp time report."

"Okay." He opened his briefcase, took out the copy of the FBI report, which he'd transferred from his suitcase, and handed it to her. "I sneaked a copy-this is illegal. Read it and tell me what you think."

"How was Malone?" She asked the question with a tone.

"Be nice," Lucas said. "She's dating a paperhanger or something."

"You mean like Hitler?"

"What?" She'd lost him.

"Hitler was supposed to be a wallpaper guy, or something. Before he became a dictator."

"Oh. Well, he's not exactly like Hitler, I don't think. I'll ask her next time I see her… Read the file. Mallard's in love with her. With Malone."

Marcy perked up. "Which one told you that? Or did you just perceive it?"

"Mallard told me. I told him to grab her ass, but he didn't."

"Jesus, Lucas, grab her ass?" She was appalled.

"You know what I mean. Make a move. "

"Grab her ass," Sherrill said, shaking her head. "He told him to grab her ass."

"Not exactly that…" Then he had to explain, but it was too late. As soon as the word ass had come out of his mouth, he'd fulfilled all female expectations of insensitivity, and nothing more was necessary. He finally gave up trying to explain and went to see Rose Marie Roux, the chief of police.

Lucas sometimes suspected that the chief was a self-switching manic-depressive, willing herself into periods of gloom or frenzy as an antidote to the emotional control required of her chiefdom. When he walked into her office, and found her smoking one cigarette while another one burned in an ashtray on the windowsill, he realized that she'd pushed herself into the manic.

"You're gonna get busted someday on the cigarettes," he grunted, waving a hand through the layered smoke. Her office smelled like a seventies bowling alley, and indoor smoking was prohibited in Minneapolis.

"I'm down fifteen pounds since I started smoking again," she said. "When I get down twenty, I'll go on a program to maintain the weight, and then quit again. I just didn't quit the right way, last time."

"That's the stupidest thing you've ever said," Lucas said, irritably. "In the meantime, you've got two cigarettes going."

"Yeah, yeah." She snuffed out both butts, dug through a pile of paper on her desk, and said, "Sherrill got the top score."

Lucas smiled, dropped into her guest chair. "Excellent. I thought she might."

"Which means that if we can get Pellegrino to retire, I can slip her into that slot as a temporary replacement. She'd have to wear a uniform for a month or so, but then Leman will go in September, and I can move her into his slot, and she'd be set. It's a regular lieutenant's job."

"She'll be good at it," Lucas said.

"Not only that, she'll owe us," Rose Marie said.

"So what about Pellegrino?"

"I'm talking to him. He's at the max percentage for his retirement, so his only reason to stay here is to pick up any pay raises that come along. But if he moves over to the state, he's in a whole different retirement plan, so he gets a double dip. There's a slot in the public information office that's empty, and he'd be perfect for it."

"Is he gonna take it?" Lucas asked.

"Yes. His wife's nervous, but she's coming around."

"What about the governor? Unless he commits to you publicly…"

"He's making the announcement Friday. I'll take over as of November 1. I'll leave here October 15, and you can leave anytime you want. You probably wouldn't actually get pushed until the new guy comes in, and that might not be until the first of the year."

"I'm gonna go when you go," Lucas said. "But Jesus, two and a half months. If we're gonna swap Marcy for Pellegrino, we gotta get him out of here quick."

"He'll put in his papers next week."

They talked about the personnel maneuvers for another ten minutes. The mayor was not running for reelection, and none of the leading candidates would reappoint Rose Marie as chief: She'd made too many bureaucratic enemies during her tenure. So she was out.

But as a former longtime state senator, she had solid political connections and loyalties. When the governor, Elmer Henderson, had gone looking for a new director for the department of public safety, a group of her political pals had had a quiet word with him, and she'd been anointed.

As soon as the deal was done, she'd begun shuffling members of her city management team into protected job slots-Marcy Sherrill would be the new head of Intelligence-and slipping old departmental enemies into jobs where they would be lethally exposed. The new mayor might not be willing to appoint Rose Marie to a third term as chief, but he was going to get her team whether he liked it or not.

With a few exceptions.

Lucas was a pure political appointee, with no civil-service protection at all, and his job would expire with hers. Rather than try to find a protected slot, he'd agreed to follow her to the state, where he would head a new special investigations team with the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.

Del Capslock would leave Minneapolis at the same time, to join Lucas's team. Lucas had also quietly offered a job to his old friend Sloan, but Sloan had decided to stay with the city: He was nonpolitical, liked what he was doing, didn't need the double dip, and suspected that the state job would take him out of town too much.

When they finished the personnel talk, Rose Marie leaned back in her chair, lit a cigarette with a blue plastic Bic, and asked, "Was it Rinker?"

"Yes. They think she's headed up to St. Louis. Gonna kill a few assholes."

Rose Marie shrugged and said, "Part of the overhead."

Lucas agreed. If you went into organized crime, sooner or later you'd get the bill. "Yeah. For Rinker, too. They're gonna try to trap her. They're already papering the motels and hotels and bars with the old photographs and the composites. They're moving a big special team in, all hush-hush. They've mostly cut out the St. Louis cops."

"Are you going back down?"

"If they ask, I guess," Lucas said. "It's an interesting situation-a top killer turning on her own people, with all her special knowledge. With her record of successful hits, the knuckleheads gotta be pretty freaked out."

"And no matter what happens, the FBI wins," Rose Marie said, peering at the ceiling. "If she kills a few people, they can squeeze the rest of the assholes with protection deals. If they catch her, they can squeeze her with the death penalty."

"Yeah-and she's out for revenge, too, so if the feebs get their hands on her, they've got that going. Another reason for her to talk. Not much downside."

Rose Marie puffed on the cigarette, exhaled, smiled, and said, "The governor liked that shit we did with Qatar." Qatar was a recently deceased serial killer. "If we could squeeze a little more good PR out of St. Louis, it'd be worth doing. Elmer got elected on his family money, and everybody considered him a pencil-necked geek. He likes the idea of having his own goon squad. Makes his testicles swell up."

"I thought it was idealism," Lucas said.

Rose Marie snorted. "Let me know when anything happens."

On the way out of the building, an old-timer cop sidled toward him and Lucas said, "Ah, Jesus, Hempsted, go away."

"I just got a business tip for you," the cop protested. "You heard about the big Pillsbury merger, right?"

"Something about it," Lucas admitted.

"Well, after everything was said and done, Pillsbury wound up owing the Trojan company."

"What?"

"Yeah. They're coming up with a self-rising condom."

"Get away from me, dickweed."

"You're laughing to yourself, Davenport," Hempsted called after him. "I can always tell."

Weather Karkinnen was sitting at her desk in her office at Hennepin General, peering into a computer monitor. Lucas caught her unaware, and leaned in the doorway, watching her face. She'd put on weight with the pregnancy, had gone rounder and softer. She'd always been a sailor, the girl on the foredeck hauling on the spinnaker, wide shoulders and crooked nose, the sun-bleached hair and windburned cheekbones. The softness and weight was so different-he'd seen her, just out of bed in the morning, standing naked in front of a door-mounted mirror, measuring the changes in herself.

She moaned about the weight, about the changes in her figure. But it all sounded to Lucas like the war stories he'd heard from other women who'd gone through childbirth, stories akin to male basic-training tales, but female, a bunch of women sitting around talking about water weight and stretch marks and ultrasounds and episiotomies.

"You look terrific,"he said, and she jumped.

"God, don't do that," she said, smiling, blue eyes crinkling at the corners. She stood up, stretched, and came around the desk, put her arms around his waist, and stood on tiptoe to kiss him.

"I mean it," he said. He had her hands on her waist, his thumbs near her navel, the growing part of her. "You make my heart feel funny when I look at you."

"That kind of talk could get you somewhere," she said. "When did you get back?"

"Just a few minutes ago," Lucas said. "Talked to Rose Marie-the conspiracy is flourishing. She'll quit Minneapolis in the middle of October and move over to the state on November first."

"That'll be the busy season, with the baby coming."

Lucas nodded. "I don't have to be there the exact minute she is. I'm thinking, I could quit Minneapolis when she does, but not move over to the state until December or January. Have a couple of months off to get the house together and you and the kid set up."

She tapped him on the chest. "That's the best idea you've had in weeks."

"So we'll do that," he said.

"How about Rinker? Was it her? Are you going to be involved?"

"Maybe. The feebs think she's headed for St. Louis. As soon as something happens, they'll let me know what they want to do."

But nothing happened. A week went by. Lucas and Weather spent one Sunday sailing in a regatta on Lake Minnetonka, and Lucas took two days to work on his Wisconsin cabin, never far from the cell phone.

Finally, he called Mallard. "What's up?"

"Malone's been out in L.A., squeezing the brother. Not getting much."

"He probably doesn't know much, if that file was right."

"It's a little more than that… He's borderline mentally impaired. Not dumb, exactly, but not quite right. The public defender is giving us a hard time about holding him, but we're gonna hang on anyway. We figure we can keep him for a couple of months before we have to go to trial."

"How about Clara?"

"Nothing. She's gone," Mallard said.

"You still think…?"

"Doesn't matter what I think. St. Louis is what I've got, and that's what I'm sticking with."