Night Prey

CHAPTER
4

Lucas's office was fifteen feet square, no window, with a door that opened directly to a hallway. He had a wooden desk and chair, three visitor's chairs, two file cabinets, a bookcase, a computer, and a three-button phone. A map of the Twin Cities metro area covered most of one wall, a cork bulletin board another. He hung his jacket on a wooden hanger and the wooden hanger on a wall hook, sat down, pulled open the bottom desk drawer with his toe, put his feet on it, and picked up the telephone and dialed. A woman answered.

"Weather Karkinnen, please." He didn't recognize all the nurses' voices yet.

"Doctor Karkinnen is in the operating room… Is this Lucas?"

"Yes. Could you tell her I called? I might be late getting home. I'll try her there later."

He punched in another number, got a secretary. "Lucas Davenport for Sister Mary Joseph."

"Lucas, she's in Rome. I thought you knew."

"Shit… Oh, jeez, excuse me." The secretary was a novice nun.

"Lucas…" Feigned exasperation.

"I forgot. When is she back?"

"Two weeks yet. She's going on some kind of dig."

"Goddamnit… Oh, jeez, excuse me."

Sister Mary Joseph-Elle Kruger when they had gone to elementary school together-was an old friend and a shrink, with an interest in murder. She'd helped him out on other cases. Rome. Lucas shook his head and opened the file that Connell had put together.

The first page was a list of names and dates. The next eight pages were wound photos done during autopsies. Lucas worked through them. They were not identical, but there were inescapable similarities.

The wound photos were followed by crime-scene shots. The bodies had been dumped in a variety of locations, some urban, some rural. A couple were in roadside ditches, one in a doorway, one under a bridge. One had been simply rolled under a van in a residential neighborhood. There was little effort to hide them. In the background of several, he could see shreds of plastic garbage bags.

Going back and forth from each report to the relevant photographs, Lucas picked up a thread that seemed to tie them together in his mind. The women had been… littered. They'd been thrown away like used Kleenex. Not with desperation, or fear, or guilt, but with some discretion, as though the killer had been afraid of being caught littering.

The autopsy reports also showed up differences.

Rippedwas a subjective description, and some of the wounds looked more like frantic knife strikes than deliberate ripping. Some of the women had been beaten, some had not. Still, taken together, there was a feel about the killings. The feel was generated almost as much by the absence of fact as by the presence of it.

Nobody saw the women when they were picked up. Nobody saw the man who picked them up, or his car, although he must have been among them. There were no fingerprints, vaginal smears turned up no semen, although signs of semen had been found on the clothing of one of the women. Not enough for a blood or DNA type, apparently; none was listed.

When he finished the first reading, he skipped through the reports again, quickly, looking at the small stuff. He'd have to read them again, several times. There were too many details for a single reading, or even two or three. But he'd learned when he looked back from other murders that the files often pointed at the killer way before he was brought down. Truth was in the details…

His rummaging was interrupted by a knock. "Yeah. Come in."

Connell stepped through, flustered, but still pale as a ghost. "I was in town. I thought I'd come by, instead of calling."

"Come in. Sit down," Lucas said.

Connell's close-cropped hair was disconcerting; it lent a punkish air to a woman who was anything but a punk. She had a serious, square face, with a short, Irish nose and a square chin. She was still wearing the blue suit she'd worn that morning, with a darker stripe of what might have been garbage juice on the front of it. An incongruous black leather hip pack was buckled around her hips, the bag itself perched just below her navel: a rip-down holster for a large gun. She could take a big gun: she had large hands, and she stuck one of them out and Lucas half-rose to shake it.

She'd opted for peace, Lucas thought; but her hand was cold. "I read your file," he said. "That's nice work."

"The possession of a vagina doesn't necessarily indicate stupidity," Connell said. She was still standing.

"Take it easy," Lucas said, his forehead wrinkling as he sat down again. "That was a compliment."

"Just want things clear," Connell said crisply. She looked at the vacant chair, still didn't sit. "And you think there is something?"

Lucas stared at her for another moment, but she neither flinched nor sat down. Holding her eyes, he said, "I think so. They're all too… not alike, but they have the feeling of a single man."

"There's something else," Connell said. "It's hard to see it in the files, but you see it when you talk to the friends of these women."

"Which is?"

"They're all the same woman."

"Ah. Tell me. And sit down, for Christ's sakes."

She sat, reluctantly, as if she were giving up the high ground. "One here in the Cities, one in Duluth, now this one, if this latest one is his. One in Madison, one in Thunder Bay, one in Des Moines, one in Sioux Falls. They were all single, late twenties to early forties. They were all somewhat shy, somewhat lonely, somewhat intellectual, somewhat religious or at least involved in some kind of spirituality. They'd go out to bookstores or galleries or plays or concerts at night, like other people'd go out to bars. Anyway, they were all like that. And then these shy, quiet women turn up ripped…"

"Nasty word," Lucas said casually. "Ripped."

Connell shuddered, and her naturally pale complexion went paper-white. "I dream about the woman up at Carlos Avery. I was worse up there than I was today. I went out, took a look, started puking. I got puke all over my radio."

"Well, first time," Lucas said.

"No. I've seen a lot of dead people," Connell said. She was pitched forward in her chair, hands clasped. "This is way different. Joan Smits wants vengeance. Or justice. I can hear her calling from the other side-I know that sounds like schizophrenia, but I can hear her, and I can feel the other ones. All of them. I've been to every one of those places, where the murders happened, on my own time. Talked to witnesses, talked to cops. It's one guy, and he's the devil."

There was a hard, crystalline conviction in her voice and eyes, the taste and bite of psychosis, that made Lucas turn his head away. "What about the sequence you've got here?" Lucas asked, trying to escape her intensity. "He was putting a year between most of them. But then he skipped a couple-once, twenty-one months, another time, twenty-three. You think you're missing a couple?"

"Only if he completely changed his MO," Connell said. "If he shot them. My data search concentrated on stabbings. Or maybe he took the time to bury them and they were never found. That wouldn't be typical of him, though. But there are so many missing people out there, it's impossible to tell for sure."

"Maybe he went someplace else-L. A. or Miami, or the bodies were just never found."

She shrugged. "I don't think so. He tends to stay close to home. I think he drives to the killing scene. He picks his ground ahead of time, and goes by car. I plotted all the places where these women were taken from, and except for the one in Thunder Bay, they all disappeared within ten minutes of an interstate that runs through the Cities. And the one in Thunder Bay was off Highway 61. So maybe he went out to L.A.-but it doesn't feel right."

"I understand that you think it could be a cop."

She leaned forward again, the intensity returning. "There are still a couple of things we need to look at. The cop thing is the only hard clue we have: that one woman talking to her daughter…"

"I read your file on it," Lucas said.

"Okay. And you saw the thing about the PPP?"

"Mmm. No. I don't remember."

"It's in an early police interview with a guy named Price, who was convicted of killing the Madison woman."

"Oh, yeah, I saw the transcript. I haven't had time to read it."

"He says he didn't do it. I believe him. I'm planning to go over and talk to him if nothing else comes up. He was in the bookstore where the victim was picked up, and he says there was a bearded man with PPP tattooed on his hand. Right on the web between his index finger and thumb."

"So we're looking for a cop with PPP on his hand?"

"I don't know. Nobody else saw the tattoo, and they never found anybody with PPP on his hand. A computer search doesn't show PPP as an identifying mark anywhere. But the thing is, Price had been in jail, and he said the tattoo was a prison tattoo. You know, like they make with ballpoint ink and pins."

"Well," Lucas said. "It's something."

Connell was discouraged. "But not much."

"Not unless we find the killer-then it might help confirm the ID," Lucas said. He picked up the file and paged through it until he found the list of murders and dates. "Do you have any theories about why the killings are so scattered around?"

"I've been looking for patterns," she said. "I don't know…"

"Until the body you found last winter, he never had two killings in the same state. And the last one here was almost nine years ago."

"Yes. That's right."

Lucas closed the file and tossed it back on his desk. "Yeah. That means different reporting jurisdictions. Iowa doesn't know what we're doing, and Wisconsin doesn't know what Iowa's doing, and nobody knows what South Dakota's doing. And Canada sure as hell is out of it."

"You're saying he's figured on that," Connell said. "So it is a cop."

"Maybe," said Lucas. "But maybe it's an ex-con. A smart guy. Maybe the reason for the two gaps is, he was inside. Some small-timer who gets slammed for drugs or burglary, and he's out of circulation."

Connell leaned back, regarding him gravely. "When you crawled into the Dumpster this morning, you were cold. I couldn't be that cold; I never would have seen that tobacco on her."

"I'm used to it," Lucas said.

"No, no, it was… impressive," she said. "I need that kind of distance. When I said we only had one fact about him, the cop thing, I was wrong. You came up with a bunch of them: he was strong, he smokes-"

"Unfiltered Camels," Lucas said.

"Yeah? Well, it's interesting. And now these ideas… I haven't had anybody bouncing ideas off me. Are you gonna let me work with you?"

He nodded. "If you want."

"Will we get along?"

"Maybe. Maybe not," he said. "What does that have to do with anything?"

She regarded him without humor. "Exactly my attitude," she said. "So. What are we doing?"

"We're checking bookstores."

Connell looked down at herself. "I've got to change clothes. I've got them in my car…"

While Connell went to change, Lucas called Anderson for a reading on homicide's preliminary work on the Wannemaker killing. "We just got started," Anderson said. "Skoorag called in a few minutes ago. He said a friend of Wannemaker's definitely thinks she was going to a bookstore. But if you look at the file when she was reported missing, somebody else said she might have been going to the galleries over on First Avenue."

"We're hitting the bookstores. Maybe your guys could take the galleries."

"If we've got time. Lester's got people running around like rats," Anderson said. "Oh-that Junky Doog guy. I got lots of hits, but the last one was three years ago. He was living in a flop on Franklin Avenue. Chances of him being there are slim and none, and slim is outa town."

"Give me the address," Lucas said.

When he finished with Anderson, Lucas carried his phone book down the hall, Xeroxed the Books section of the Yellow Pages, and went back to his office for his jacket. He had bought the jacket in New York; the thought was mildly embarrassing. He was pulling on the jacket when there was a knock at the door. "Yeah?"

A fleshy, pink-cheeked thirties-something man in a loose green suit and moussed blond hair poked his head inside, smiled like an encyclopedia salesman, and said, "Hey. Davenport. I'm Bob Greave. I'm supposed to report to you."

"I remember you," Lucas said as they shook hands.

"From my Officer Friendly stuff?" Greave was cheerful, unconsciously rumpled. But his green eyes matched his Italian-cut suit a little too perfectly, and he wore a fashionable two days' stubble on his chin.

"Yeah, there was a poster down at my kid's preschool," Lucas said.

Greave grinned. "Yup, that's me."

"Nice jump, up to homicide," Lucas said.

"Yeah, bullshit." Greave's smile fell away, and he dropped into the chair Connell had vacated, looked up. "I suppose you've heard about me."

"I haven't, uh…"

"Greave the fuckup?"

"Don't bullshit me, Davenport." Greave studied him for a minute, then said, "That's what they call me. Greave-the-fuckup, one word. The only goddamned reason I'm in homicide is that my wife is the mayor's niece. She got tired of me being Officer Friendly. Not enough drama. Didn't give her enough to gossip about."

"Well…"

"So now I'm doing something I can't fuckin' do and I'm stuck between my old lady and the other guys on the job."

"What do you want from me?"

"Advice."

Lucas spread his hands and shrugged. "If you liked being an Officer Friendly…"

Greave waved him off. "Not that kind of advice. I can't go back to Officer Friendly, my old lady'd nag my ears off. She doesn't like me being a cop in the first place. Homicide just makes it a little okay. And she makes me wear these fuckin' Italian fruit suits and only lets me shave on Wednesdays and Saturdays."

"Sounds like you gotta make a decision about her," Lucas said.

"I love her," Greave said.

Lucas grinned. "Then you've got a problem."

"Yeah." Greave rubbed the stubble on his chin. "Anyway, the guys in homicide don't do nothing but fuck with me. They figure I'm not pulling my load, and they're right. Whenever there's a really horseshit case, I get it. I got one right now. Everybody in homicide is laughing about it. That's what I need your advice on."

"What happened?"

"We don't know," Greave said. "We've got it pegged as a homicide and we know who did it, but we can't figure out how."

"Never heard of anything like that," Lucas admitted.

"Sure you have," Greave said. "All the time."

"What?" Lucas was puzzled.

"It's a goddamned locked-room mystery, like one of them old-lady English things. It's driving me crazy."

Connell pushed through the door. She was wearing a navy suit with matching low heels, a white blouse with wine-colored tie, and carried a purse the size of a buffalo. She looked at Greave, then Lucas, and said, "Ready."

"Bob Greave, Meagan Connell," Lucas said.

"Yeah, we sorta met," Greave said. "A few weeks ago."

A little tension there. Lucas scooped Connell's file from his desk, handed it to Greave. "Meagan and I are going out to the bookstores. Read the file. We'll talk tomorrow morning."

"What time?"

"Not too early," Lucas said. "How about here, at eleven o'clock?"

"What about my case?" Greave asked.

"We'll talk tomorrow," Lucas said.

As Lucas and Connell walked out of the building, Connell said, "Greave's a jerk. He's got the Hollywood stubble and the Miami Vice suits, but he couldn't find his shoes in a goddamn clothes closet."

Lucas shook his head, irritated. "Cut him a little slack. You don't known him that well."

"Some people are an open book," Connell snorted. "He's a fuckin' comic."

Connell continued to irritate him; their styles were different. Lucas liked to drift into conversation, to schmooze a little, to remember common friends. Connell was an interrogator: just the facts, sir.

Not that it made much difference. Nobody in the half-dozen downtown bookstores knew Wannemaker. They picked up a taste of her at the suburban Smart Book. "She used to come to readings," the store owner said. He nibbled at his lip as he peered at the photograph. "She didn't buy much, but we'd have these wine-and-cheese things for authors coming through town, and she'd show up maybe half the time. Maybe more than that."

"Did you have a reading last Friday?"

"No, but there were some."

"Where?"

"Hell, I don't know." He threw up his hands. "Goddamn authors are like cockroaches. There're hundreds of them. There's always readings somewhere. Especially at the end of the week."

"How do I find out where?"

"Call the Star-Trib. There'd be somebody who could tell you."

Lucas called from a corner phone, another number from memory. "I wondered if you'd call." The woman's voice was hushed. "Are you bringing up your net?"

"I'm doing that now. There're lots of holes."

"I'm in."

"Thanks, I appreciate it. How about the readings?"

"There was poetry at the Startled Crane, something called Prairie Woman at The Saint-I don't know how I missed that one-Gynostic at Wild Lily Press, and the Pillar of Manhood at Crosby's. The Pillar of Manhood was a male-only night. If you'd called last week, I probably could have gotten you in."

"Too late," Lucas said. "My drum's broke."

"Darn. You had a nice drum, too."

"Yeah, well, thanks, Shirlene." To Connell: "We can scratch Crosby's off the list."

The owner of the Startled Crane grinned at Lucas and said, "Cheese it, the heat… How you been, Lucas?" They shook hands, and the store owner nodded at Connell, who stared at him like a snake at a bird.

"Not bad, Ned," Lucas said. "How's the old lady?"

Ned's eyebrows went up. "Pregnant again. You just wave it at her, and she's knocked up."

"Everybody's pregnant. I gotta friend, I just heard his wife's pregnant. How many is that for you? Six?"

"Seven… what's happening?"

Connell, who had been listening impatiently to the chitchat, thrust the photos at him. "Was this woman here Friday night?"

Lucas, softer, said, "We're trying to track down the last days of a woman who was killed last week. We thought she might've been at your poetry reading."

Ned shuffled through the photos. "Yeah, I know her. Harriet something, right? I don't think she was here. There were about twenty people, but I don't think she was with them."

"But you see her around?"

"Yeah. She's a semiregular. I saw the TV stuff on Nooner. I thought that might be her."

"Ask around, will you?"

"Sure."

"What's Nooner?" Connell asked.

"TV3's new noon news," Ned said. "But I didn't see her Friday. I wouldn't be surprised if she was somewhere else, though."

"Thanks, Ned."

"Sure. And stop in. I've been fleshing out the poetry section."

Back on the street, Connell said, "You've got a lot of bookstore friends?"

"A few," Lucas said. "Ned used to deal a little grass. I leaned on him and he quit."

"Huh," she said, thinking it over. Then, "Why'd he tell you about poetry?"

"I read poetry," Lucas said.

"Bullshit."

Lucas shrugged and started toward the car.

"Say a poem."

"Fuck you, Connell," Lucas said.

"No, c'mon," she said, catching him, facing him. "Say a poem."

Lucas thought for a second then said, "The heart asks pleasure first/And then excuse from pain/and then those little anodynes/that deaden suffering. And then to go to sleep/and then if it should be/the will of its inquisitor/the privilege to die."

Connell, already pale, seemed to go a shade paler, and Lucas, remembering, thought, Oh, shit.

"Who wrote that?"

"Emily Dickinson."

"Roux told you I have cancer?"

"Yes, but I wasn't thinking about that…"

Connell, studying him, suddenly showed a tiny smile. "I was kind of hoping you were. I was thinking, Jesus Christ, what a shot in the mouth."

"Well…?"

"The Wild Lily Press over on the West Bank."

He shook his head. "I doubt it. That's a feminist store. He'd be pretty noticeable."

"Then The Saint, over in St. Paul."

On the way to St. Paul, Connell said, "I'm in a hurry on this, Davenport. I'm gonna die in three or four months, six at the outside. Right now I'm in remission, and I don't feel too bad. I'm out of chemo for the time being, I'm getting my strength back. But it won't last. A couple weeks, three, and it'll come creeping up on me again. I want to get him before I go."

"We can try."

"We gotta do better than that," she said. "I owe some people."

"All right."

"I don't mean to scare you," she said.

"You're doing it."

The owner of The Saint recognized Wannemaker immediately. "Yes, she was here," he said. His voice was cool, soft. He looked at Lucas over the top of his gold-rimmed John Lennon specs. "Killed? My God, she wasn't the kind to get killed."

"What kind was she?" Lucas asked.

"Well, you know." He gestured. "Meek. A wallflower. She did ask a question when Margaret finished the reading, but I think it was because nobody was asking questions and she was embarrassed. That kind of person."

"Did she leave with anyone?"

"Nope. She left alone. I remember, 'cause it was abrupt. Most readings, she'd hang around; she'd be the last to leave, like she had nothing else to do. But I remember, she headed out maybe fifteen minutes after we broke things up. There were still quite a few people in the store. I thought maybe she didn't like Margaret."

"Was she in a hurry?"

The store owner scratched his head, looked out his window at the street. "Yeah. Now that you mention it, she did sort of seem like she was going somewhere."

Lucas looked at Connell, who was showing just the faintest color.

The store owner, frowning, said, "You know, when I think about it, the question she asked was made up, like maybe she was dragging things out. I was sort of rolling my eyes, mentally, anyway. Then she leaves in a hurry…"

"Like something happened while she was in the store?" Connell prompted.

"I hate to say it, but yes."

"That's interesting," Lucas said. "We'll need a list of everybody you know was here."

The store owner looked away, embarrassed. "Hmm. "I think, uh, a lot of my clients would see that as an invasion of privacy,“ he said.

"Would you like to see the pictures of Wannemaker?" Lucas asked gently. "The guy ripped her stomach open and all her intestines came out. And we think he might be hanging around bookstores."

The store owner looked at him for a moment, then nodded. "I'll get a list going," he said.

Lucas used the store phone to call Anderson, and told him about the identification. "She left here at nine o'clock."

"We got her car fifteen minutes ago," Anderson said. "It was in the impound lot, towed out of downtown St. Paul. Hang on a minute…" Anderson spoke to somebody else, then came back. "It was towed off a hill on Sixth. I'm told that's next to Dayton's."

"So she must have been headed somewhere."

"Unless she already was somewhere, and walked back to the store."

"I don't think so. That'd be eight or ten blocks. There's a lot of parking around here. She would have driven."

"Is there anything around Dayton's at nine? Was the store open?"

"There's a bar up there-Harp's. On the corner. Connell and I'll stop in."

"Okay. St. Paul'll process the car," Anderson said. "I'll pass on what you found out at this bookstore. You're getting a list of names?"

"Yeah. But it might not be much."

"Get me the names and I'll run 'em."

Lucas hung up and turned around. Connell was marching toward him from the back of the store, where the owner had gone to talk with one of his clerks about people at the reading.

"One of the men here was a cop," she said fiercely. "A St. Paul patrolman named Carl Erdrich."

"Damnit," Lucas said. He picked up the phone and called Anderson back, gave him the name.

"What?" Connell wanted to know when he got off the phone.

"We'll check the bar," Lucas said. "There'll have to be some negotiations before we can get a mug of Erdrich."

Connell spun around and planted herself in front of him. "What the fuck is this?" she asked.

"It's called the Usual Bullshit," he said. "And calm down. We're talking about an hour or two, not forever."

But she was angry, heels pounding as they walked back to Lucas's Porsche. "Why do you drive this piece of crap? You ought to buy something decent," she snapped.

Lucas said, "Shut the fuck up."

"What?" She goggled at him.

"I said shut the fuck up. You don't shut the fuck up, you can take the bus back to Minneapolis."

Connell, still angry, trailed him into Harp's and muttered, "Oh, Lord" when she saw the bartender. The bartender was a dark-haired pixieish woman with large black eyes, too much makeup, and a bee-stung lower lip. She wore a slippery low-cut silk pullover without a bra, and a black string tie with a turquoise clasp at her throat. "Cops?" she asked, but she was smiling.

"Yeah." Lucas nodded, grinned, and tried to meet her eyes. "We need to talk to somebody who was here Friday night."

"I was," she said, dropping her elbows on the bar and leaning toward Lucas, glancing at Connell. The bartender smelled lightly of cinnamon, like a dream; she had a soft freckled cleavage. "What do you need?"

Lucas rolled out the photo of Wannemaker. "Was she here?"

The bartender watched his eyes, and, satisfied with her effect, picked up the photo and studied it. "She look like this?"

"Pretty much," Lucas said, steadfastly holding her eyes.

"What'd she do?" the bartender asked.

"Was she here?" Lucas asked again.

"Meanie," she said. "You don't want to tell me." The bartender frowned, pushed out her lower lip, studied the picture, and slowly shook her head. "No, I don't think she was. In fact, I'm sure she wasn't, if she dressed like this. Our crowd's into black. Black shirts, black pants, black dresses, black hats, black combat boots. I'd have noticed her."

"Big crowd?"

"In St. Paul?" She picked up her bar rag and scrubbed at a spot on the bar.

"Okay…"

As they started out, the bartender called after them, "What'd she do?"

"It was done to her," Connell said, speaking for the first time. She made it sound like a punishment.

"Yeah?"

"She was killed."

The bartender recoiled. "Like, murdered? How?"

"Let's go," said Lucas, touching Connell's coat sleeve.

"Stabbed," said Connell.

"Let's go," Lucas repeated.

" 'Do not wait for the last judgment. It takes place every day,' " the bartender said solemnly, in a quotation voice.

Now Lucas stopped. "Who was that?" he asked.

"Some dead French dude," the bartender said.

"That was disgusting," Connell fumed.

"What?"

"The way she was throwing it at you."

"What?"

"You know."

Lucas looked back at the bar, then at Connell, a look of utter astonishment on his face. "You think she was coming on to me?"

"Kiss my ass, Davenport," she said, and stalked off toward the car.

Lucas called Anderson again. "Roux's still talking to St. Paul," Anderson said. "She wants you back here, ASAP."

"What for?"

"I don't know. But she wants you back."

Connell complained most of the way back. They had something, she said. They should stay with it. Lucas, tired of it, offered to drop her at the St. Paul police headquarters. She declined. Roux was up to something, she said. When they walked into the chief's outer office, the bony secretary flipped a thumb toward the chief's door and they went through.

Roux was smoking furiously. She glanced at Connell, then nodded. "I guess you better stay and hear this."

"What's going on?" Lucas asked.

Roux shrugged. "We're outa here, is what's going on. No crime committed in Minneapolis. You just proved it. Wannemaker goes to that bookstore in St. Paul, gets dumped in Hudson. Let them fight about it."

"Wait a minute," said Connell.

Roux shook her head. "Meagan, I promised to help you and I did. But we've got lots of trouble right now, and this is St. Paul's killing. Your killing, up in Carlos Avery, is either Anoka County's or Duluth's. Not ours. We're putting out a press release that says our investigation concludes the murder was not committed here, that we'll cooperate with the investigating authorities, and so on."

"WAIT A FUCKING MINUTE!" Connell shouted. "Are you telling me we're done?"

"We'redone," Roux said, still friendly, but her voice sharpening. "You've still got some options. We'll get your research to St. Paul, and I'll ask that they let you assist their investigation. Or you could continue with the Smits case. I don't know what Duluth is doing with that anymore."

Connell turned to Lucas, her voice harsh. "What do you think?"

Lucas stepped back. "It's an interesting case, but she's right. It's St. Paul's."

Connell's face was like a stone. She stared at Lucas for a heartbeat, then at Roux, and then, without another word, spun and stalked out, slamming the office door behind her.

"You might have found a better way to handle that," Lucas said.

"Probably," Roux said, looking after Connell. "But I didn't know she was coming, and I was so damn happy to be out from under. Christ, Davenport, you saved my ass in four hours, finding that bookstore."

"So now what?"

Roux waved her hand expansively. "Do what you want." She took a drag on her cigarette, then took it out of her mouth and looked at it. "Jesus, sometimes I wish I was a man."

"Why?" Lucas was amused by her excitement.

"'Cause then I could take out a big fuckin' Cuban cigar and smoke its ass off."

"You could still do that."

"Yeah, but then people who don't already think I'm a bull dyke would start thinking I'm a bull dyke. Besides, I'd barf."

Lucas talked briefly to Anderson and Lester about wrapping up the paper on the case. "St. Paul will probably want to talk to you," Lester said.

"That's fine. Give them my home phone number if they call. I'll be around," Lucas said.

"Connell thinks it's a cheap shot, doesn't she? Dumping the case."

"It is cheap," Lucas said.

"Man, we're hurting," Lester said. "We've never hurt this bad. And if you're looking for something to do, we've still got bodies coming out of our ears. Did Greave tell you about his?"

"He mentioned something, but it didn't sound very interesting."

Sloan wandered in, hands in his pockets. He nodded to them, yawned, stretched, and to Lester said, "You got a Coke or something? I'm a little dry."

"Do I look like a fuckin' vending machine?" Lester asked.

"What happened, Sloan?" Lucas asked, picking up the signs.

Sloan yawned again, then said, "A little pissant student named Lanny Bryson threw Heather Tatten off the bridge."

"What?" A smile broke across Lester's face, like the sun coming up.

"Got him on tape," Sloan said, ostentatiously studying his fingernails. "She was hooking, part-time. She fucked him once, but wouldn't do it twice, not even for money. They were arguing, walking across the bridge, and he tried to smooch her but she hit him with her fist, in the nose. It hurt and he got mad and when she walked away, he hit her on the back of the head with an economics textbook-big fat motherfucker-and knocked her down. She was stunned and he just picked her up and pushed her over the railing. She tried to hang on at the last minute, scratched him all the way down his forearms."

"Did you use the cattle prods?" Lucas asked.

"Told us the whole fuckin' thing in one long sentence," Sloan said. "We Miranda-ed him twice on the tape. Got Polaroids of his arms; we'll get a DNA match later. He's over in the lockup now, waiting for the public defender."

Lucas, Anderson, and Lester looked at each other, then back at Sloan. Lester stepped close, took him by the arm, and said, "Can I kiss you on the lips?"

"Better not," Sloan said. "People might think you favor me at promotion time."

A pizza arrived, too much for somebody's lunch, so they cut it up, got Cokes from the machine in the basement, had a little party, giving Sloan a hard time.

Lucas left smiling. Sloan was a friend, maybe his best friend. But at the same time, he felt… He looked for a word. Disgruntled? Yes. Sloan had his victory. But somewhere out there, a monster was roaming around…