Night Prey

CHAPTER
7

Anderson was waiting in the corridor outside Lucas's office, reading through a handful of computer printouts. He pushed away from the wall when he saw Lucas.

"Chief wants to see us now."

"I know, I got a call. I saw TV3," Lucas said.

"Paper for you," Anderson said, handing Lucas a manila file. "The overnights on Wannemaker. Nothing in the galleries. The Camel's confirmed, the tobacco on her body matched the tobacco in the cigarette. There were ligature marks on her wrists, but no ties; her ankles were tied with a piece of yellow polypropylene rope. The rope was old, partially degraded by exposure to sunlight, so if we can find any more of it, they could probably make a match."

"Anything else? Any skin, semen, anything?"

"Not so far… And here's the Bey file."

"Jesus." Lucas took the file, flipped it open. Most of the paper inside had been Xeroxed for Connell's report; a few minor things he hadn't seen before. Mercedes Bey, thirty-seven, killed in 1984, file still open. The first of Connell's list, the centerpiece of the TV3 story.

"Have you heard about the lakes?" Anderson asked, his voice pitching lower, as though he were about to tell a particularly dirty joke.

"What happened?" Lucas looked up from the Bey file.

"We've got a bad one over by the lakes. Too late to make morning TV. Guy and his girlfriend, maybe his girlfriend. Guy's in a coma, could be a veggie. The woman's dead. Her head was crushed, probably by a pipe or a steel bar. Or a rifle barrel or a long-barreled pistol, maybe a Redhawk. Small-time robbery, looks like. Really ugly. Really ugly."

"They're freaking out in homicide?"

"Everybody's freaking out," Anderson said. "Everybody went over there. Roux just got back. And then this TV3 thing-the chief is hot. Really hot."

Roux was furious. She jabbed her cigarette at Lucas. "Tell me you didn't have anything to do with it."

Lucas shrugged, looked at the others, and sat down. "I didn't have anything to do with it."

Roux nodded, took a long drag on her cigarette; her office smelled like a bowling alley on league night. Lester sat in a corner with his legs crossed, unhappy. Anderson perched on a chair, peering owlishly at Roux through his thick-lensed glasses. "I didn't think so," Roux said. "But we all know who did."

"Mmm." Lucas didn't want to say it.

"Don't want to say it?" Roux asked. "I'll say it. That fuckin' Connell."

"Twelve minutes," Anderson said. "Longest story TV3's ever run. They must have had Connell's file. They had every name and date nailed down. They dug up some file video on the Mercedes Bey killing. They used stuff they'd have never used back then, when they made it. And the stuff on Wannemaker, Jesus Christ, they had video of the body being hoisted out of the Dumpster, no bag, no nothing, just this big fuckin' lump of guts with a face hanging off it."

"Shot it from the bridge," Lucas said. "We saw them up there. I didn't know the lenses were that good, though."

"Bey's still an open file, of course," Lester said, recrossing his legs from one side to the other. "No statute of limitations on murder."

"Should have thought of that yesterday," Roux said, getting up to pace the carpet, flicking ashes with every other step. Her hair, never particularly chic, was standing up in spots, like small horns. "They had Bey's mother on. She's this fragile old lady in a nursing-home housecoat, a face like parchment. She said we abandoned her daughter to her killers. She looked like shit, she looked like she was dying. They must've dumped her out of bed at three in the morning to get the tape."

"That video of Connell was pretty weird, if she's the one who tipped them," Anderson suggested.

"Aw, they phonied it up," Roux said, waving her cigarette hand dismissively. "I did the same goddamned thing when I was sourcing off the appropriations committee. They take you out on the street and have you walk into some building so it looks like surveillance film or file stuff. She did it, all right." Roux looked at Davenport. "I've got the press ten minutes from now."

"Good luck." He smiled, a very thin, unpleasant smile.

"You were never taken off the case, right?" Her left eyebrow went up and down.

"Of course not," Lucas said. "Their source was misinformed. I spent the evening working the case and even developed a lead on a new suspect."

"Is that right?" The eyebrow again.

"More or less," Lucas said. "Junky Doog may be working at a landfill out in Dakota County."

"Huh. I'd call that a critical development," Roux said, showing an inch of satisfaction. "If you can bring him in today, I'll personally feed it directly and exclusively to the Strib. And anything else you get. Fuck TV3."

"If Connell's their source, they'll know you're lying about not calling off the case," Lester said.

"Yeah? So what?" Roux said. "What're they gonna do, argue? Reveal their source? Fuck 'em."

"Is Connell still working with me?" Lucas asked.

"We've got no choice," Roux snapped. "If we didn't call off the investigation, then she must still be on it, right? I'll take care of her later."

"She's got no later," Lucas said.

"Jesus," Roux said, stopping in midpace. "Jesus, I wish you hadn't said that."

The TV3 story had been a mйlange of file video, with commentary by a stunning blond reporter with a distinctly erotic overbite. The reporter, street-dressed in expensive grunge, rapped out long, intense accusations based on Connell's file; behind her, floodlit in the best Addams Family style, was the redbrick slum building where Mercedes Bey had been found slashed to death. She recounted Bey's and each of the subsequent murders, reading details from the autopsy reports. She said, "With Chief Roux's controversial decision to sweep the investigation under the rug…" and "With the Minneapolis police abandoning the murder investigation for what appear to be political reasons…" and "Will Mercedes Bey's cry for justice be crushed by the Minneapolis Police Department's logrolling? Will other innocent Minneapolis-area women be forced to pay the killer's brutal toll because of this decision? We shall have to wait and see…"

"Nobody fucks with me like this," Roux was shouting at her press aide when Lucas left her office with Anderson. "Nobody fucks with me…"

Anderson grinned at Lucas and said, "Connell does."

Greave caught Lucas in the hall. "I read the file, but it was a waste of time. I could have gotten the executive summary on TV this morning." He was wearing a loose lavender suit with a blue silk tie.

"Yeah," Lucas grunted. He unlocked his office door and Greave followed him inside. Lucas checked his phone for voice mail, found a message, and poked in the retrieval code. Meagan Connell's voice, humble: "I saw the stories on TV this morning. Does this change anything?" Lucas grinned at the impertinence, and scribbled down the number she left.

"What're we doing?" Greave asked.

"Gonna see if we can find a guy down in Dakota County. Former sex psycho who liked knives." He'd been punching in Connell's number as he spoke. The phone rang once, and Connell picked up. "This is Davenport."

"Jeez," Connell said, "I've been watching TV…"

"Yeah, yeah. There're three guys in town don't know who the source is, and none of them are Roux. You better lay low today. She's smokin'. In the meantime, we're back on the case."

"Back on." She made it a statement, with an overtone of satisfaction. No denials. "Is there anything new?"

He told her about Anderson's information from the Wisconsin forensic lab.

"Ligatures? If he tied her up, he must've taken her somewhere. That's a first. I bet he took her to his home. He lives here-he didn't at the other crime scenes, so he couldn't take them… Hey, and if you read the Mercedes Bey file, I think she was missing awhile, too, before they found her."

"Could be something," Lucas agreed. "Greave and I are going after Junky Doog. I've got a line on him."

"I'd like to go."

"No. I don't want you around today," Lucas said. "It's best, believe me."

"How about if I make some calls?" she asked.

"To who?"

"The people on the bookstore list."

"St. Paul should be doing that," Lucas said.

"Not yet, they aren't. I'll get going right now."

"Talk to Lester first," Lucas said. "Get them to clear it with St. Paul. That part of the investigation really does belong to them."

"Are you gonna listen to my story?" Greave asked as they walked out to the Porsche.

"Do I gotta?"

"Unless you want to listen to me whine for a couple hours."

"Talk," Lucas said.

A schoolteacher named Charmagne Carter had been found dead in her bed, Greave said. Her apartment was locked from the inside. The apartment was covered by a security system that used motion and infrared detectors with direct dial-out to an alarm-monitoring company.

"Completely locked?"

"Sealed tight."

"Why do you think she was murdered?"

"Her death was very convenient for some bad people."

"Say a name."

"The Joyce brothers, John and George," Greave said. "Know them?"

Lucas smiled. "Excellent," he said.

"What?"

"I played hockey against them when I was a kid," he said. "They were assholes then, they're assholes now."

The Joyces had almost been rich, Greave said. They'd started by leasing slum housing from the owners-mostly defense attorneys, it seemed-and renting out the apartments. When they'd accumulated enough cash, they bought a couple of flophouses. When housing the homeless became fashionable, they brought the flops up to minimum standards and unloaded them on a charitable foundation.

"The foundation director came into a large BMW shortly thereafter," Greave said.

"Skipped his lunches and saved the money," Lucas said.

"No doubt," Greave said. "So the Joyces took the money and started pyramiding apartments. I'm told they controlled like five to six million bucks at one point. Then the economy fell on its ass. Especially apartments."

"Aww."

"Anyway, the Joyces saved what they could from the pyramid, and put every buck into this old apartment building on the Southeast Side. Forty units. Wide hallways."

"Wide hallways?"

"Yeah. Wide. The idea was, they'd throw in some new drywall and a bunch of spackling compound and paint, cut down the cupboards, stick in some new low-rider stoves and refrigerators, and sell the place to the city as public housing for the handicapped. They had somebody juiced: the city council was hot to go. The Joyces figured to turn a million and a half on the deal. But there was a fly in the ointment."

The teacher, Charmagne Carter, and a dozen other older tenants had been given long-term leases on their apartments by the last manager of the building before the Joyces bought it, Greave said. The manager knew he'd lose his job in the sale, and apparently made the leases as a quirky kind of revenge. The city wouldn't take the building with the long-term leases in effect. The Joyces bought out a few of the leases, and sued the people who wouldn't sell. The district court upheld the leases.

"The leases are $500 a month for fifteen years plus a two-percent rent increase per year, and that's that. They're great apartments for the price, and the price doesn't even keep up with inflation," Greave said. "That's why these people didn't want to leave. But they might've anyway, because the Joyces gave them a lot of shit. But this old lady wasn't intimidated, and she held them all together. Then she turned up dead."

"Ah."

"Last week, she doesn't make it to school," Greave continued. "The principal calls, no answer. A cop goes by for a look, can't get the door open-it's locked from the inside and there's no answer on the phone. They finally take the door down, the alarms go off, and there she is, dead in her bed. George Joyce is dabbing the tears out of his eyes and looking like the cat that ate the canary. We figured they killed her."

"Autopsy?"

"Yup. Not a mark on her. The toxicology reports showed just enough sedative for a couple of sleeping pills, which she had a prescription for. There was a beer bottle and a glass on her nightstand, but she'd apparently metabolized the alcohol because there wasn't any in her blood. Her daughter said she had long-term insomnia, and she'd wash down a couple of sleeping pills with a beer, read until she got sleepy, and then take a leak and go to bed. And that's exactly what it looks like she did. The docs say her heart stopped. Period. End of story."

Lucas shrugged. "It happens."

"No history of heart problems in her family. Cleared a physical in February, no problems except the insomnia and she's too thin-but being underweight goes against the heart thing."

"Still, it happens," Lucas said. "People drop dead."

Grave shook his head. "When the Joyces were running the flops, they had a guy whose job it was to keep things orderly. They brought him over to run the apartments. Old friend of yours; you busted him three or four times, according to the NCIC. Remember Ray Cherry?"

"Cherry? Jesus. He is an asshole. Used to box Golden Gloves when he was a kid…" Lucas scratched the side of his jaw, thinking. "That's a nasty bunch you got there. Jeez."

"So what do I do? I got nothing."

"Get a cattle prod and a dark basement. Cherry'd talk after a while." Lucas grinned through his teeth, and Greave almost visibly shrank from him.

"You're not serious."

"Mmm. I guess not," Lucas said. Then, brightening: "Maybe she was stabbed with an icicle."

"What?"

"Let me think about it," Lucas said.

There were two landfills in Dakota County. Adhering to Murphy's Law, they went to the wrong one first, then shifted down a series of blacktopped back roads to the correct one. For the last half-mile, they were pinched between two lumbering garbage trucks, gone overripe in the freshening summer.

"Office," Greave said, pointing off to the left. He dabbed at the front of his lavender suit, as though he were trying to whisk away the smell of rotten fruit.

The dump office was a tiny brick building with a large plate-glass window, overlooking a set of truck scales and the lines of garbage haulers rumbling out to the edge of the raw yellow earth of the landfill. Lucas swung that way, dumped the Porsche in a corner of the lot.

Inside the building, a Formica-topped counter separated the front of the office from the back. A fat guy in a green T-shirt sat at metal desk behind the counter, an unlit cigar in his mouth. He was complaining into a telephone and picking penny-sized flakes of dead skin off his elbows; the heartbreak of psoriasis. A door behind the fat man led to a phone booth… size room with a sink and a toilet. The door was open, and the stool was gurgling. A half-used roll of toilet paper sat on the toilet tank, and another one lay on the floor, where it had soaked full of rusty water.

"So he says it'll cost a hunnert just to come out here and look at it," the fat guy said to the telephone, looking into the bathroom. "I tell you, I run up to Fleet-Farm and I get the parts… Well, I know that, Al, but this is drivin' me fuckin' crazy."

The fat guy put his hand over the mouthpiece and said, "Be with you in a minute." Then to the phone, "Al, I gotta go, there's a couple guys here in suits. Yeah." He looked up at Lucas and asked, "You EPA?"

"No."

The fat man said, "No," to the phone, listened, then looked up again. "OSHA?"

"No. Minneapolis cops."

"Minneapolis cops," the fat man said. He listened for a minute, then looked up. "He sent the check."

"What?"

"He sent the check to his old lady. Put it in the mail this morning, the whole thing."

"Terrific," Lucas said. "I really hope he did, or we'll have to arrest him for misfeasance to a police officer on official business, a Class Three felony."

Greave turned away to smile, while the fat man repeated what Lucas said into the phone, then after a pause said, "That's what the man said," and hung up. "He says he really mailed it."

"Okay," said Lucas. "Now, we're also looking for a guy who supposedly hangs around here. Junky Doog…" The fat man's eyes slid away, and Lucas said, "So he's out here?"

"Junky's, uh, kind of…" The fat man tapped his head.

"I know. I've dealt with him a few times."

"Like, recently?"

"Not since he got out of St. Peter."

"I think he got Alzheimer's," the fat man said. "Some days, he's just not here. He forgets to eat, he shits in his pants."

"So where is he?" Lucas asked.

"Christ, I feel bad about the guy. He's a guy who never caught a break," the fat man said. "Not one fuckin' day of his life."

"Used to cut people up. You can't do that."

"Yeah, I know. Beautiful women. And I ain't no softy on crime, but you talk to Junky, and you know he didn't know any better. He's like a kid. I mean, he's not like a kid, because a normal kid wouldn't do what he did… I mean, he just doesn't know. He's like a… pit bull, or something. It just ain't his fault."

"We take that into account," said Greave, his voice soft. "Really, we're concerned about these things."

The fat man sighed, struggled to his feet, walked around the counter to a window. He pointed out across the landfill. "See that willow tree? He's got a place in the woods over there. We ain't supposed to let him, but whatcha gonna do?"

Lucas and Greave scuffed across the yellow-dirt landfill, trying to stay clear of the contrails of dust thrown up by the garbage trucks rumbling by. The landfill looked more like a highway construction site than a dump, with big D-9 Cats laboring around the edges of the raw dirt; and only at the edges did it look like a dump: a jumble of green plastic garbage bags, throwaway diapers, cereal boxes, cardboard, scraps of sheet plastic and metal, all rolled under the yellow dirt, and all surrounded by second-growth forest. Seagulls, crows, and pigeons hung over the litter, looking for food; a bony gray dog, moving jackal-like, slipped around the edges.

The willow tree was an old one, yellow, with great weeping branches bright green with new growth. Beneath it, two blue plastic tarps had been draped tentlike over tree limbs. Under one of the tarps was a salvaged charcoal grill; under the other was a mattress. A man lay on the mattress, faceup, eyes open, unmoving.

"Jesus, he's fuckin' dead," Greave said, his voice hushed.

Lucas stepped off the raw earth, Greave tagging reluctantly behind, followed a narrow trail around a clump of bushes, and was hit by the stink of human waste. The odor was thick, and came from no particular direction. He started breathing through his mouth, and unconsciously reached across to his hipbone and pulled his pistol a quarter inch out of the holster, loosening it, then patted it back. He moved in close before he called out, "Hello. Hey."

The man on the mattress twitched, then subsided again. He lay with one arm outstretched, the other over his pelvis. There was something wrong with the outstretched arm, Lucas saw, moving closer. Just off the mattress, a flat-topped stump was apparently being used as a table. A group of small brown cylinders sat on the stump, like chunks of beef jerky. Beside the stump was a one-gallon aluminum can of paint thinner, top off, lying on its side.

"Hey…"

The man rolled up farther, tried to sit up. Junky Doog. He was barefoot. And he had a knife, a long curved pearl-handled number, open, the blade protruding five inches from the handle. Doog held it delicately, like a straight razor, and said, "Gothefuckaway," one word. Doog's eyes were a hazy white, as though covered with cataracts, and his face was burned brown. He had no teeth and hadn't shaved in weeks. As he stood, his graying hair fell down on his shoulders, knotted with grime. He looked worse than Lucas had ever seen him: looked worse than Lucas had ever seen a human being look.

"There's shit all over the place," Greave said. Then: "Watch it, watch the blade…"

Junky whirled the knife in his fingers with the dexterity of a cheerleader twirling a baton, the steel twinkling in the weak sunlight. "Gothefuckaway," he screamed. He took a step toward Lucas, fell, tried to catch himself with his free hand, the hand without the knife, screamed again, and rolled onto his back, cradling the free hand. The hand had no fingers. Lucas looked at the stump: the brown things were pieces of finger and several toes.

"Jesus Christ," he muttered. He glanced at Greave, whose mouth was hanging open. Junky was weeping, trying to get up, still with the knife flickering in his good hand. Lucas stepped behind him, and when Junky made it to his knees, put a foot between his shoulder blades and pushed him facedown on the worn dirt just off the mattress. Pinning him, he caught the bad arm, and as Junky squirmed, crying, caught the other arm, shook the knife out of his hand. Junky was too weak to resist; weaker than a child.

"Can you walk?" Lucas asked, trying to pull Junky up. He looked at Greave. "Give me a hand."

Junky, caught in a crying jag, nodded, and with a boost from Lucas and Greave, got to his feet.

"We gotta go, man. We gotta go, Junky," Lucas said. "We're cops, you gotta come with us."

They led him back through the shit-stink, through the weeds, Junky stumbling, still weeping; halfway up the path, something happened, and he pulled around, looked at Lucas, his eyes clearing. "Get my blade. Get my blade, please. It'll get all rusted up."

Lucas looked at him a minute, looked back. "Hold him," he said to Greave. Junky had nothing to do with the killings; no way. But Lucas should take the knife.

"Get the blade."

Lucas jogged back to the campsite, picked up the knife, closed it, and walked back to where Greave held Junky's arm, Junky swaying in the path. Junky's mind had slipped away again, and he mutely followed Lucas and Greave across the yellow dirt, walking stiffly, as though his legs were posts. Only the big toes remained on his feet. His thumb and the lowest finger knuckles remained on his left hand; the hand was fiery with infection.

Back at the shed, the fat man came out and Lucas said, "Call 911. Tell them a police officer needs an ambulance. My name is Lucas Davenport and I'm a deputy chief with the City of Minneapolis."

"What happened, did you…?" the fat man started, then saw first Junky's hand, and then his feet. "Oh my sweet Blessed Virgin Mary," he said, and he went back into the shed.

Lucas looked at Junky, dug into his pocket, handed him the knife. "Let him go," he said to Greave.

"What're you gonna do?" Greave asked.

"Just let him go."

Reluctantly, Greave released him, and the knife, still closed, twinkled in his hand. Lucas stepped sideways from him, a knife fighter's move, and said, "I'm gonna cut you, Junky," he said, his voice low, challenging.

Junky turned toward him, a smile at the corner of his ravaged face. The knife turned in his hand, and suddenly the blade snapped out. Junky stumbled toward Lucas.

"I cut you; you not cut me," he said.

"I cut you, man," Lucas said, beginning to circle to his right, away from the blade.

"You not cut me."

The fat man came out and said, "Hey. What're you doin'?"

Lucas glanced at him. "Take it easy. Is the ambulance coming?"

"They're on the way," the fat man said. He took a step toward Junky. "Junky, man, give me the knife."

"Gonna cut him," Junky said, stepping toward Lucas. He stumbled, and Lucas moved in, caught his bad arm, turned him, caught his shabby knife-arm sleeve from behind, turned him more, grabbed the good hand and shook the knife out.

"You're under arrest for assault on a police officer," Lucas said. He pushed the fat man away, picked up the knife, folded it and dropped it in his pocket. "You understand that? You're under arrest."

Junky looked at him, then nodded.

"Sit down," Lucas said. Junky shambled over and sat on the flat concrete stoop outside the shack. Lucas turned to the fat man. "You saw that. Remember what you saw."

The fat man looked at him doubtfully and said, "I don't think he would have hurt you."

"Arresting him is the best I can do for him," Lucas said quietly. "They'll put him inside, clean him up, take care of him."

The fat man thought about it, nodded. The phone rang, and he went back inside. Lucas, Greave, and Junky waited in silence until Junky looked up suddenly and said, "Davenport. What do you want?"

His voice was clear, controlled, his eyes focused.

"Somebody's cuttin' women," Lucas said. "I wanted to make sure it wasn't you."

"I cut some women, long time ago," Junky said. "There was this one, she had beautiful… you know. I made a grapevine on them."

"Yeah, I know."

"Long time ago; they liked it," he said.

Lucas shook his head.

"Somebody cuttin' on women?" Junky asked.

"Yeah, somebody's cuttin' on women."

After another moment of silence, Greave asked Junky, "Why would they do that? Why would he be cuttin' women?" In the distance, over the sound of the trucks moving toward the working edge of the fill, they could hear a siren. The fat man must have made it an emergency.

"You got to," Junky said solemnly to Greave. "If you don't cut them, especially the pretty ones, they get out of hand. You can't have women getting outa hand."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. You cut 'em, they stay put, that's for sure. They stay put."

"So why would you go a long time and not cut any women, then start cuttin' a lot of women?"

"I didn't do that," Junky said. He cast a defensive eye at Greave.

"No. The guy we're looking for did that."

Lucas looked on curiously as the man in the lavender Italian suit chatted with the man with no toes, like they were sharing a cappuccino outside a cafй.

"He just started up?" Junky asked.

"Yup."

Junky thought about that, pawing his face with his good hand, then his head bobbed, as though he'd worked it out. "'Cause a woman turns you on, that's why. Maybe you see a woman and she turns you on. Gets you by the pecker. You go around with your pecker up for a few days, and you gotta do something. You know, you gotta cut some women."

"Some woman turns you on?"

"Yup."

"So then you cut her."

"Well." Junky seemed to look inside himself. "Maybe not her, exactly. Sometimes you can't cut her. There was this one…" He seemed to drift away, lost in the past. Then: "But you gotta cut somebody, see? If you don't cut somebody, your pecker stays up."

"So what?"

"So what? You can't go around with your pecker up all the time. You can't."

"I wish I could," Greave cracked.

Junky got angry, intent, his face quivering. "You can't. You can't go around like that."

"Okay…"

The ambulance bumped into the landfill, followed a few seconds later by a sheriff's car.

"Come on, Junky, we're gonna put you in the hospital," Lucas said.

Junky said to Greave, pulling at Greave's pant leg with his good hand, "But you got to get her, sooner or later. Sooner or later, you got to get the one that put your pecker up. See, if she goes around putting your pecker up, anytime she wants, she's outa hand. She's just outa hand, and you gotta cut her."

"Okay…"

Lucas filed a complaint with the sheriff's deputy who followed the ambulance in, and Junky was hauled away.

"I'm glad I came with you," Greave said. "Got to see a dump, and a guy cutting himself up like a provolone."

Lucas shook his head and said, "You did pretty good back there. You've got a nice line of bullshit."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Talking to people, you know, that's half of homicide."

"I got the bullshit. It's the other part I ain't got," Greave said gloomily. "Listen, you wanna stop at my mystery apartment on the way back?"

"No."

"C'mon, man."

"We've got too much going on," Lucas said. "Maybe we'll catch some time later."

"They're wearing me out in homicide," Greave said. "I get these notes. They say, 'Any progress?' Fuck 'em."

Greave went on to homicide to check in, while Lucas walked down to Roux's office and stuck his head in.

"We picked up Junky Doog. He's clear, almost for sure."

He explained, and told her how Junky had mutilated himself. Roux, nibbling her lip, said, "What happens if I feed him to the Strib?"

"Depends on how you do it," Lucas said, leaning against the door, crossing his arms. "If you did it deep off-the-record, gave them just the bare information… it might take some heat off. Or at least get them running in a different direction. In either case, it'd be sorta cynical."

"Fuck cynical. His prior arrests were here in Hennepin, right?"

"Most of them, I think. He was committed from here. If you tipped them early enough, they could get across the street and pull his files."

"Even if it's bullshit, it's an exclusive. It's a lead story," Roux said. She rubbed her eyes. "Lucas, I hate to do it. But I'm taking some serious damage now. I figure I've got a couple of weeks of grace. After that, I might not be able to save myself."

Back at his office, a message was waiting on voice mail: "This is Connell. I got something. Beep me."

Lucas dialed her beeper number, let it beep, and hung up. Junky had been a waste of time, although he might be a bone they could throw the media. Not much of a bone…

With nothing else to do, he began paging through Connell's report again, trying to absorb as much of the detail as he could.

There were several threads that tied all the killings together, but the thread that worried him most was the simplicity of them. The killer picked up a woman, killed her, dumped her. They weren't all found right away-Connell suggested he might have kept one or two of them for several hours, or even overnight-but in one case, in South Dakota, the body was found forty-five minutes after the woman had been seen alive. He wasn't pressing his luck by keeping the woman around; they wouldn't get a break that way.

He didn't leave anything behind, either. The actual death scenes might have been in his vehicle-Connell suggested that it was probably a van or a truck, although he might have used a motel if he'd been careful in his choices.

In one case, in Thunder Bay, there may have been some semen on a dress, but the stain, whatever it was, had been destroyed in a failed effort to extract a blood type. A note from a cop said that it might have been salad dressing. DNA testing had not yet been available.

Vaginal and anal examinations had come up negative, but there was oral bruising that suggested that some of the women had been orally raped. Stomach contents were negative, which meant that he didn't ejaculate, ejaculated outside their mouth, or they lived long enough for stomach fluids to destroy the evidence.

Hair was a different problem. Foreign-hair samples had been collected from several of the bodies, but in most cases where hair was collected, several varieties were found. There was no way to tell that any particular hair came from the killer-or, indeed, that any of the hair was his. Connell had tried to get the existing hair samples cross-matched, but some of it had been either destroyed or lost, or the bureaucratic tangles were so intense that nothing had yet been done. Lucas made a note to search for hair crosses on Wannemaker and Joan Smits. All were relatively recent, with autopsies done by first-rate medical examiners.

Closing the file, Lucas got out of his chair and wandered around to stare sightlessly out the window, working it through his head. The man never left anything unique. Hair, so far, was the only possibility: they needed a match, and needed it badly. They had nothing else that would tie a specific man to a specific body. Nothing at all.

The phone rang. "This is Meagan. I've got somebody who remembers the killer…"