Rules of Prey

CHAPTER 12

Lucas was sitting at the drafting table, a printout of the rules for Everwhen on the tabletop. He rubbed his late-night beard, thinking. The notes. The guy knew the notes. And the accent was there, and it was right. Barely perceptible, but it was there. Texas. New Mexico.

He picked up the phone and dialed Daniel.

"It's Davenport."

The chief was unconscious. " Davenport? You know what time it is?"

Lucas glanced at his watch. "Yeah. It's twelve minutes after two in the morning."

"What the fuck?"

"The maddog just called me."

"What?" Daniel's voice suddenly cleared.

"He quoted the notes to me. He had the accent. He sounded real."

"Shit." There was a five-second pause. "What'd he say?"

Lucas repeated the conversation.

"And he sounded real?"

"He sounded real. More than that. He sounded pissed off. He'd seen Jennifer's piece, about how I didn't think Smithe did it. He wants me to set things straight. Man, he wants the credit."

There was a long silence. "Chief?"

Daniel moaned. "So now we got Smithe in jail and the maddog is about to rip another one."

"We've got to start backing away from Smithe. Go butter up the public defender tomorrow. McCarthy is sucked on Smithe's neck like a lamprey. If we can get him off, maybe we can talk some sense to the guy about giving us an alibi. If he does-if he gives us anything-we can turn him loose."

"If he doesn't?"

"I don't know. Keep trying to work something out. But if the guy who called me is real, and I'd bet my left nut on it, then I suspect Smithe will come up with something. He's had some time in Hennepin County now, and you know that place."

"Okay. Let's do it that way. God, the first appearance was fourteen hours ago, and we're already doing a two-step. I'll talk to the PD tomorrow and see if there's a deal somewhere. You stop at homicide in the morning and make a statement on the phone call. The preliminary hearing is Monday? If we're going to move, we ought to do it before then. Or the maddog may do it for us. That'd be a real turd in the punch bowl, wouldn't it?"

"The guy usually hits at midweek," Lucas said. "This is Thursday morning. If he follows the pattern, he'll do it tonight or wait until next week."

"He said 'the near future' on the phone?"

"Yeah. It doesn't sound like he was ready to go. But then, he could be… dissembling."

"Good word."

"He started it. I'm sitting here trying to remember the exact words he used, and he used some good ones. 'Dissent' and 'miscarriage.' Maybe some more. He's a smart guy. He's had some education."

"Glad to hear it," Daniel said wearily. "Fuck it. I'll talk to you tomorrow."

When he got off the phone, Lucas couldn't focus on the game and finally left it. He wandered out to the kitchen, got a beer from the refrigerator, and turned out the light. As the light went out, a yellow-and-white rectangle caught his eye and it meant something. He took a step down the hallway, frowned, stepped back, and turned on the light. It was the cover on the phone book.

"Where'd he get my number?" Lucas asked aloud.

Lucas was unlisted.

"The goddamn office directory. It has to be."

He picked up the phone and dialed Daniel again, but the line was busy. He put the phone back on the hook, paced for one minute by his watch, and dialed again.

"What, what?" The chief was snarling now.

"It's Davenport again. Just had an ugly thought."

"Might as well tell me," Daniel said in vexation. "It'll add color to my nightmares."

"Remember back when you had me under surveillance? Thought it might be a cop, and you had a couple of reasons?"

"Yeah."

"This just occurred to me. The guy called me at home. The only place my number is listed is in the office directory. And that Carla identified one of the pictures she had seen as a cop…"

"Uh-oh." There was another long silence; then, "Lucas, go to bed. I got Anderson out of the sack to tell him about the call. I'll call him again and tell him about this. We can figure something out tomorrow."

"We'd look like idiots if Carla fingered the guy in our lineup and we ignored it."

"We'd look worse than that. We'd look like criminal conspirators."

The phone rang again and Lucas cracked his eyelids. Light. Must be morning. He looked at the clock. Eight-thirty.

"Hello, Linda," he said as he picked up the phone.

"How'd you know it was me, Lucas?"

"Because I have a feeling the shit hit the fan."

"The chief wants to see you now. He says to dress dignified but get down here quick."

Daniel and Anderson were huddled over the chief's desk when Lucas arrived. Lester was sitting in a corner, reading a file.

"What's happened?"

"We don't know," Daniel said. "But the minute I walked in the door, the phone rang. It was the public defender. Smithe wants to talk to you."

"Great. Did you say anything about the call last night?"

"Not a thing. But if he's ready to alibi, maybe we can find a way to dump the whole thing on McCarthy… something along the lines of Smithe decided to cooperate and with his cooperation we were able to eliminate him as a suspect. We could come out smelling like a rose."

"If we can eliminate him," Anderson said.

"What about this cop?" Lucas asked "The one Carla picked out?"

"I came down last night after the chief called," Anderson said. "I pulled the rosters. He was on duty when Ruiz was attacked, with a partner, up in the northwest. I talked to his partner and he confirms they were up there. They took a half-dozen calls around the time of the attack. We went back and checked the tapes, and he's on them."

"So he's clear," said Lucas.

"Thank Christ for small favors," Daniel said. "You better haul ass over to the detention center and talk to Smithe. They're waiting for you."

McCarthy and Smithe waited in a small interrogation room. The decor was simple, being designed to repel bodily fluids. McCarthy was smoking and Smithe sat nervously on a padded waiting-room chair, rubbing his hands, staring at his feet.

"I don't like this and I'm writing a memorandum to the effect," McCarthy spat as Lucas walked in.

"Yeah, yeah." He looked at Smithe. "Could I ask you to stand up for a minute?"

"Wait a minute. We wanted to talk-" McCarthy started, but Smithe waved him down and stood up.

"I hate this place," he said. "This place is worse than I could have imagined."

"Actually, it's a pretty good jail," Lucas said mildly.

"That's what they tell me," Smithe said despondently. "Why am I standing up?"

"Flex your pecs and stomach for me."

"What?"

"Flex your pecs and stomach. And brace yourself."

Smithe looked puzzled, but dropped his shoulders and flexed. Lucas reached out with his fingers spread and pushed hard on Smithe's chest, then dropped his hand and pushed on his stomach. The underlying muscles felt like boards.

"You work out?"

"Yeah, quite a bit."

"What's this about?" McCarthy asked.

"The woman who survived. The killer grabbed her from behind, wrapped her up. She said he felt kind of thick and soft."

"That's not me," Smithe said, suddenly more confident. "Here, you turn around."

Lucas turned and Smithe stepped behind him and wrapped him up. "Get loose," Smithe said.

Lucas started to struggle and twist. He had enough weight to move Smithe around the floor in a tight, controlled dance, but the encircling arms felt almost machinelike. Try as he might, he couldn't break loose.

"Okay," Lucas said, breathing hard.

Smithe released him. "If I had her, she wouldn't get loose," Smithe said confidently. "Does that prove anything?"

"To me it does," Lucas said. "It wouldn't convince a lot of other people."

"I saw that thing on television, about you believing me," Smithe said. "And I can't handle this jail. I decided to take a chance on you. I have an alibi. In fact, I've got two of them."

"We could do all of this at the preliminary," McCarthy said.

"That's four days away," Smithe said sharply. He turned to Lucas. "If my alibis are good, how soon do I get out?"

Lucas shrugged. "If they're good and we can check them, we could have you out of here this afternoon."

"All right," Smithe said suddenly. "Mr. McCarthy brought my calendar in. On the day Lewis was attacked, that afternoon, I was doing in-service training. Started at nine o'clock in the morning and went straight through to five. There were ten people in the class. We all ate lunch together. That wasn't long ago, so they'll remember.

"And on the day Shirley Morris was killed, the housewife? I got on a plane for New York at seven o'clock that morning. I have the plane tickets and a friend took me out to the airport, saw me get on the plane. I've got hotel bills from New York, they have the check-in time on them. Morris was killed in the afternoon, and I checked in during the afternoon. I bet they'll remember me, too, because when I went up to my room with the bellhop, he pulled back my sheet and there was a rat under it and the guy freaked out. I freaked out. This is supposed to be a nice hotel. I went down to the desk and they gave me a new room, but I bet they remember that rat. You can check it with phone calls. And Mr. McCarthy has the bills and plane tickets at his office."

"You should have told us," Lucas said.

"I was scared. Mr. McCarthy said…" They both turned and looked at McCarthy.

"It was too much all at once. You were grilling him, everybody was running around yelling, we had to cool out or we could make a mistake," McCarthy said.

"Well, we sure made a mistake doing it this way," Smithe said. "My family knew I was gay, my parents and my brothers and sisters and a few friends back home, but most people in my high school didn't, most of the people around the home place…"

He suddenly sat down and started to sob. "Now they all know. You know how hard it'll be to go back to the farm? My home?"

McCarthy stood up and kicked his chair.

In the lobby of the detention center, Lucas stopped at a phone and made a single call.

"Lucas Davenport," he said. "Can you meet me someplace discreet? Quickly?"

"Sure," she said. "Name the place."

He named a used-book store on the north side of the loop. When she arrived, he thought how out-of-place she looked. With her perfect hair and faultless makeup, she wandered through the stacks like Alice in Wonderland, stunned by the presence of so many baffling artifacts. Annie McGowan. Pride of Channel Eight, the Now Report.

"Lucas," she whispered when she saw him.

"Annie." He stepped toward her and she reached out with both hands, as though she expected Lucas to take her in his arms. He instead took her hands and pulled her close to his chest.

"What I'm going to tell you now must be kept a secret. You must give me journalistic immunity or I can't tell you," he said, glancing back over his shoulder. Introduction to Method Acting 1043, two credits.

"Yes, of course," she blurted. Her breath smelled like cinnamon and spice.

"This gay fellow arrested for the maddog murders? He didn't do it," Lucas whispered. "He has two excellent alibis that are being checked out even as we speak. He should be released late this afternoon. No one, but no one, knows this outside the police department, except you. If you wait until three-thirty or so, you can probably catch his attorney-you know McCarthy, the public defender?"

"Yes, I know him," she said breathlessly.

"You can catch him outside the detention center, signing Smithe out. Better stake the place out around three o'clock. I don't think it could happen earlier than that."

"Oh, Lucas, this is enormous."

"Yeah. If you can keep it exclusive. And I'll give you another tip, but this also has to come from 'an informed source.'"

"What?"

"These women were supposedly raped, but nobody ever found any semen. They think the killer may be using some kind of… foreign object because he's impotent."

"Oh, jeez. Poor guy."

"Uh, yeah."

"What kind of object?"

"Uh, well, we don't know exactly."

"You mean like one of those huge rubber cocks?" The words came tripping out of her perfect mouth so incongruously that Lucas felt his chin drop.

"Uh, well, we don't know. Something. Anyway, if you handle this right and protect me, I'll have more exclusive tips for you. But right now I've got to get out of here. We can't be seen together."

"Not yet, anyway," she said. She turned to go, and then stepped back.

"Listen, when you call me at the station, they'll know who my source is if you keep leaving your name. I mean, if you can't get me."

"Yeah?"

"So maybe we should use a code name."

"Good idea," Lucas said, dumbfounded. He took a card from his wallet, wrote his home phone number on the back of it. "You can call me at the office or at home. I'll be one place or the other when I call you. When I call, I'll say 'Message for McGowan: Call Red Horse.'"

"Red Horse," she whispered, her lips moving as she memorized the phrase. "Red Horse. Like the horse in chess?"

More like the fish, the red horse sucker, Lucas thought. McGowan stepped forward another step and kissed him on the lips, then with a flash of black eyes and fashionable wool coat was gone down the stacks.

The store owner, an unromantic fat man who collected early editions of Mark Twain's Life on the Mississippi, appeared in the dim aisle and said, "Jesus, Lucas, what're you doing back there, squeezin' the weasel?"

Lucas stopped at Daniel's office and outlined Smithe's alibis. Together they went to the homicide division and outlined them to Lester and Anderson.

"I want everybody off everything else, I want this checked right now," Daniel said. "You can start by going over to the welfare office, see about this in-service training. That'll give us a quick read. Then look at these tickets, make a few calls. If it all checks, and I bet it will, we'll set up a meeting with the prosecutor's office. For like one o'clock, two o'clock. Decide what to do."

"You mean drop the charges," Lester said.

"Yeah. Probably."

"The press'll eat us alive," Anderson said.

"Not if we play it right. We tell them that Davenport was the only guy Smithe would trust, told him the stories, Davenport came to us, and we realized our mistake."

"Sounds like a lead balloon to me," Lester said.

"It's all we got," Daniel said. "It's better than having McCarthy shove it down our throats."

"Christ." Lester's face was gray. "I made the call. They're going to be all over me. The fuckin' TV."

"Could be worse," Daniel said philosophically.

"How?"

"Could be me."

Lucas and Anderson started laughing, then Daniel, and finally Lester smiled.

"Yeah, that'd be un-fuckin'-thinkable," Lester said.

Lucas spent the rest of the morning in his office, talking to contacts around the Cities. Nothing much was moving. There were rumors that somebody had been killed at a high-stakes poker game on the northeast side, but he'd heard a similar rumor three weeks earlier and it was beginning to sound apocryphal. Several hundred Visa blanks had hit the Cities and were working through the discount stores and shopping centers; some heavy-hitting retailers were upset and were talking to the mayor. There was a rumor about guns, automatic weapons going out-country through landing strips in the Red River Valley. That was a weird one and needed checking. And a strip-joint owner complained that a neighboring bar was putting on young talent: "It ain't fair, these girls ain't old enough to have hair on their pussy. Nobody else is gettin' any business, everybody's down at Frankie's." Lucas told him he'd look into it.

"It all checks," Daniel said. "We faxed a photo out to New York, had the cops run it over to the hotel, and the bellhop remembers him and remembers the rat. He couldn't remember the exact date, but he remembers the week it was in. It's the right week."

"How about the in-service?"

"Checks out. That's the clincher, because there isn't any question about it. As soon as we asked the question, word was all over welfare that we fucked up. It'll be all over the courthouse by tonight."

"And?"

"We've got a meeting with the prosecutor and the public defender at two o'clock," Daniel said. "We're going to recommend that all charges be dismissed. We'll have a press conference this evening."

"He's going to sue our butts," Anderson said.

"We'll ask for a waiver," Daniel said.

"No chance," said Lucas. "The guy is freaked." He looked at the chief. "I don't think I ought to show at the press conference."

"That might be best."

"If anybody asks, you can tell them I'm on vacation. I'm going to take a couple of days off and go up north."

Lucas left City Hall at three and wandered down to the detention center, stopping only to pick up a box of popcorn. Annie McGowan and a cameraman were outside the center, waiting. Lucas sat on a bus bench a block away, and a half-hour later saw McCarthy walk out of the center with Smithe right behind. They were with two older people, a man and a woman, whom Lucas recognized as Smithe's parents from the photos in his house. McGowan was on them in a flash, and after a bit of milling around, they apparently agreed to a brief on-camera interview. Lucas balled up the empty popcorn bag, tossed it under the bench, and smiled.

"Press conference at seven," Anderson said, spotting Lucas in the hall.

"I've got something going tonight," Lucas said. "And I'm trying to hide out for a while."

Before leaving, he made arrangements for backup with the patrol division and headed home in time for the six-o'clock news. McGowan looked wonderful as she delivered her scoop. After two minutes of videotaped interview outside the detention center, the cameras cut back to McGowan in the studio.

"Now Report Eight has also learned that police believe the real killer is sexually impotent and the women may actually have been raped using some kind of blunt object because he is incapable of raping them himself."

She turned to the anchorman and smiled. "Fred?"

"Thanks for that exclusive report, Annie…"

Lucas turned to Channel Four. The last story of the broadcast was a recap of McGowan's, obviously stolen: "We have just learned that Jimmy Smithe, who was arrested in the investigation of the multiple murders of three Twin Cities women, has been released and that police apparently now believe him to be innocent of the crimes…"

Jennifer was on the phone five minutes later.

"Lucas, did you feed her that?"

"Feed who what?" Lucas asked innocently.

"Feed McGowan the Smithe release?"

"Has he been released?"

"You jerk, you better be wearing your steel jockstrap the next time I'm over, because I'm bringing a knife."

Late that evening, he cruised Lake Street in an unmarked departmental pool car, watching the night walkers, the drinkers, the hookers, looking for any one of a dozen faces. He found one just before ten.

"Harold. Get in the car."

"Aw, lieutenant…"

"Get in the fuckin' car, Harold." Harold, a dealer in free-market pharmaceuticals, got in the car.

"Harold, you owe me," Lucas said. Harold weighed a hundred and thirty pounds and was lost in his olive-drab field jacket.

"What do y' want, man?" he whined. "I haven't been talking to anybody…"

"What I want is for you to go into Frankie's and do some light drinking. On me. But light. Wine, beer. I don't want you hammered."

"What's the bad part?" Harold asked, suddenly looking perkier.

"They're going to put some young puss up on the bar. Real young. When they do, I want you to walk out and tell me. I'll be up the block. You come out as soon as she starts, hear? Not two minutes later, just as soon as she starts." He handed Harold a ten.

"Ten? You want me to stay in there drinkin' on ten?" he complained.

Lucas gripped the front of Harold's field jacket and shook him once. "Listen, Harold, you're lucky I don't charge you for the privilege, okay? Now, get your lame ass in there or I'm going to rip your fuckin' face off."

"Jesus, lieutenant…" Harold got out, and Lucas slumped in the seat, watching the passersby. Most were drinking or already drunk. A few drug cases walked by. A pimp and one of his string; Lucas knew him, and put his head down further, his hand up to block a view of his face. The pimp never looked toward him. A pusher, a pusher, a fat-faced boy who might just have come in from the country, and a drunk salesman. He watched the parade for a half-hour before Harold eased up to the car.

"There's one on and she's real young," he whispered.

"Okay. Take off." Harold vanished. Lucas used the radio to make a prearranged call for patrol backup, pulled on a tweed shooting hat and a pair of windowpane glasses, got out of the car, locked it, and headed down the street to Frankie's.

Frankie's smelled of old beer and cheap wine. The front room, next to the street, was empty except for two unhappy-looking women sitting across from each other in a red leatherette booth. The bartender was wiping glasses and casually watched Lucas pick his way through the empty tables to the entry arch into the back room.

The back room was jammed, thirty or forty men and a half-dozen women in a cloud of cigarette smoke, clapping to the rock music that poured out of a jukebox. The girl was dancing on the bar, stripped down to a tiny brassiere and a pair of translucent blue underpants. Lucas shouldered his way through the crowd and spotted Frankie himself behind the bar, pushing out plastic glasses of beer as fast as the tap would pour them. Lucas tilted his head up at the girl. Eleven? Twelve? She did a bump and reached behind her back with one hand, her teeth biting her lower lip in a semiprofessional grin. She was feeding off the crowd's enthusiasm. With another bump, she popped the brassiere and slowly peeled it off, carefully covering her tiny breasts with her forearms as she did it. After a few more bumps she tossed the brassiere behind the bar and switched into a new dance, her exposed breasts bobbling in the flashing ceiling lights.

"Bottoms, bottoms, bottoms," the crowd was chanting, and the girl hooked her thumbs in the top of the pants and after coyly pulling them down an inch here and an inch there, turning, bending, peering out between her legs, she stood and slid them off, her back to the audience, and then turned to finish the dance.

And the bartender from the front screamed, "There're cops outside."

"Take off," yelled Frankie. As the crowd broke for the two doors, he reached up and grabbed the nude girl by the ankle. Lucas lurched forward and got his gun out, his elbows on the bar, and poked the muzzle of the weapon into Frankie's cheek.

"Don't make me have an accident, Frank," he said. "This weapon has a very light trigger pull." Frankie froze. Three uniformed cops ran in from the front, pressing customers to the wall as they passed. A dozen Ziploc bags of cocaine and crack hit the floor. Lucas looked up at the girl. "Get down," he said.

She leaned over and carefully spat in his face.

"So what happened to her?" Carla asked.

They sat on the edge of the dock, their feet hanging over the water. It was an hour before sunset and they had just walked down to the dock from the firing range in the woods. The afternoon was cool and quiet, the violet hue of the sky reflected in the water. Three hundred feet out, a musky fisherman was working a surface lure around the edges of a submerged island. The water was as flat as a tabletop and they could hear the paddle-wheel chop-chop-chop of the lure as the fisherman retrieved it.

"We dropped her off with child protection," Lucas said. "They'll try to figure out who her parents are, get her back there. Two weeks from now she'll run away again and start hooking or dancing or whatever. At her age, it's the only kind of job she can get."

"What about Frankie?"

"We wrote him up for everything we could think of. We'll get him on some of them, felonies. He'll do some time, lose his liquor license."

"Good. They ought to… I don't know. A twelve-year-old."

Lucas shrugged. "The average age of the hookers out on the street is probably fourteen. By sixteen they're getting too old. The younger they are, the more money they make; it's what the Johns want. Young stuff."

"Men are such perverts," Carla said, and Lucas laughed.

"What do you want to do, go fishing or go inside and fool around?" he asked.

"I've already been fishing," she said, wrinkling her nose at him.