Rules of Prey

CHAPTER 14

It had been one of the best weekends of the year, with warm days and crisp, cold nights. Brilliant color lingered in the woods, and the faint scent of burning birch logs hung in the air.

"We've got at least another week for the leaves. Maybe two," Carla said. A stand of maples on the north end of the lake was a flaming orange. "Too bad you don't have more maples."

"I thought about that when I bought the place," Lucas said. "I didn't want maples. They're pretty, but I wanted the pines. They give the place a North Woods feel. A little further south, down in the maples and oaks, it feels like farm country."

They drifted along the shoreline, working the bucktail lures around emergent weeds, docks, and fallen timber. "There are some people who'd say it's already too late for bucktails, but I don't hold with that. And they're more fun to throw," Lucas said.

In three hours of casting they caught five northern pike and had two musky follows.

"Bad day for musky, huh?" Carla said as they headed back to the dock.

"Hate to tell you this, but that was a good day. Two follows is all right. Lots of days, you don't see any."

"Great sport."

"Don't have to fool around with cleaning any fish, anyway," he said with a grin.

"When do I have to leave here?" she asked.

"What do you mean, have to leave!"

"I assume that the hot pursuit by the television people will have tapered off by now, I could go back. But jeez, you know, I've been living in that studio with a hot plate. I hate to go."

"Hey, stay a month if you want," Lucas said. "I've got to come up in two or three weeks and pull the dock out. After that, there won't be much to do until the freeze and the snow comes in."

"I accept," Carla said, laughing. "Maybe not a month, but for a couple of more weeks. You don't know how much of a break this is for me. I brought up a couple of drawing pads and some pastels and I'm having a great time."

"Good. That's what the place is for."

She looked over at him. "I'm glad you could stay an extra day. It's quiet here all the time, but on Saturday and Sunday there are a few people around. Today we had it to ourselves. It's kind of special on the weekdays."

After dinner, Lucas started a fire in the fireplace, dragging in birch logs cut the previous fall. When the fire was going, they sat on the couch and talked and watched television and then a rental movie, The Big Chill.

Toward the end of the movie Lucas started working on her blouse buttons. When the phone rang, he had her blouse off and she was straddling his hips, tickling him. He looked up at her and said, suddenly somber, "I don't want to answer. He's killed somebody else."

Carla stopped giggling and half-turned and reached out to grab the receiver and thrust it at him. He looked at it for a second and then reluctantly took it.

"Davenport," he said, sitting up.

"Lucas," said Anderson, "we've got another one."

"Shit." He looked at Carla and nodded.

"You better get down here."

"Who is it?"

"A hooker. We've got a street name, that's all. Heather Brown. Maybe fifteen. Knife, just like the others. The note's there."

"I don't know her. You check on Smithe?"

"Yeah, he's up at the family farm. We figure she was done around seven o'clock. A TV crew followed him up to the farm. They did some film at six. He's still up there. He's out of it."

"How about the girl's pimp?"

"We're looking for him. That's one reason we need you down here-we need you to look at her, see if you recognize her, shake down some of her people."

"Vice working it?"

"Yeah. They know her, but they haven't come up with anything yet."

"Where was it?"

"Down on South Hennepin. Randy's."

"Yeah, I know it. Okay, I'll be down as soon as I can."

He hung up and turned to Carla, who was slipping into her blouse. He reached out and pressed a palm against one of her breasts.

"I've got to go," he said.

"Who was it?" Her voice was low, depressed.

"A hooker. In a hot-bed hotel. It's the guy, all right, but it's kind of… weird. It sounds almost spontaneous. And it's the first time he's gone near a hooker." He hesitated. "I've got a favor to ask you, but I don't want you to take it the wrong way."

She wrinkled her forehead and shrugged. "So ask."

"Could you take a walk down to the dock for a few minutes?"

"Sure…"

"I've got to make a phone call, and…" He gestured helplessly. "It's not that I don't trust you, but it would be best if I was talking in private. Sometimes I do things that are considered mildly outside the law. If there were ever a grand jury… I wouldn't want you to perjure yourself or even think you had to."

She smiled uncertainly. "Sure. So I take a walk. No problem."

"It feels like a problem," Lucas said, running his hands through his hair. "Every time I get into this situation with a woman, they think I don't trust them."

"You've been in it a lot?" she asked.

"A couple of times. Drives me crazy."

"Okay. So you're a cop."

She picked up one of his long-sleeved flannel shirts that she'd been wearing in the cool evenings and smiled at him. "Don't worry about it, for God's sake. I'll be down at the dock, just call when you're done."

He watched her go down the steps and along the path through the front yard, and a moment later saw her silhouette against the dark water as she stepped out on the dock. He picked up the phone and dialed.

"I need to talk to Annie McGowan immediately. This is an emergency."

"Can I tell her who's calling please?"

"Tell her Red Horse."

A moment later McGowan was on the line. "Red Horse?"

"Annie, there's been another killing. Have you heard yet?"

"No." Her voice was quick, excited. "Where's it at?"

"It's a hooker at Randy's Motel, down on Hennepin. Young girl. Her street name was Heather Brown. We've got people on the scene right now, you better get a crew up there. And let me give you one more piece of information about him, that our shrinks worked out. The chief and the other detectives will probably try to deny it, because they don't want this kind of sensitive information getting out, but we were expecting him to kill a hooker."

"Jeez, why?"

"Our shrinks think the guy is probably so ugly, so unattractive to women that not only can't he get it up, he can't get a woman on his own, either. One probably contributes to the other. We don't know that it's appearance, though. Maybe it's body chemistry or something. You know, maybe he's got like world-class body odor."

"Wow."

"Yeah, you get the idea. Really repellent, like a human lizard. I wouldn't give this to anybody, but I liked the way you blended my last tip, about the impotence, into your story. Now that he's killed the hooker, I think maybe this last piece of information will give the Now Report viewers some exclusive insight into the mind of a serial murderer, you know."

"This is really heavy, Luca… uh, Red Horse. Let me get this stuff going and I'll get back to you. Are you at home?"

"No. I'm way up north, three hours away. I'm about to start back, I'll get there just before midnight. I'll be at my house, probably, sometime after one o'clock, and I'll be up until three or so. If you have to call, call then."

"Okay. Thanks, Red Horse."

Carla was on the dock, wrapped in the flannel shirt.

"You going?"

"Yeah."

"I'll walk you up to your car."

"I wanted to spend more time," he said.

"So come back."

"If I can." He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her and she clung to him for a moment, then broke away and turned to the cabin. Lucas dropped into the Porsche, brought it around in a circle, and headed back to the Cities.

Driving at speed on the narrow roads of the North Woods thrilled him, but he usually did it in the daytime. At night the roadside timber seemed to step in, to press closer to the road. He overran his headlights, brush and phone poles flicking in and out of his vision without leaving time for thought.

Thirty miles out, just across the Minnesota border, he passed a roadside rest and the red lights came up behind him as a highway-patrol car burst onto the road.

Lucas wrenched the car to the shoulder and climbed out with his badge case in his hand. The patrolman was already on the road, one hand on his weapon, the other holding a long steel flashlight.

"I'm a Minneapolis cop making an emergency run back to the Cities," Lucas said as he walked toward the patrolman, extending the badge case. "Lieutenant Lucas Davenport. The maddog killer just ripped a hooker, a little girl. I'm trying to get back."

"Uh-huh," the patrolman said. He looked at the badge case and ID card with his light, then flashed it momentarily in Lucas' face.

"If you can call your dispatcher and have them patch you through to our dispatch-"

"I've seen you on TV," the patrolman said. He handed the badge case back. "I'm not going to give you a ticket, but a word to the wise, okay? I clocked you at eighty-three miles an hour. If you drive from here to the Interstate at fifty-five instead of eighty-three, it'll cost you an extra two minutes. If you drive at eighty-three and you hit a deer or a bear, you'll be dead. You're lucky you haven't hit one already. They're really moving right now. You hit a big old sow-bear broadside with that car, it'd be like hitting a brick wall."

"Right. I'm just sort of freaked out."

"Well, cool off," said the patrolman. "I'll call up ahead, tell the guys on the Interstate that you're trying to make up a little extra time. Keep it under a hundred and they won't hassle you, once you get on the Interstate."

"Thanks, man." Lucas headed back to his car.

"Hey, Davenport."

Lucas stopped with the door half-open. "Yeah?"

"Get that cocksucker."

The motel was a shabby single-story L-shaped building with a permanent hand-painted vacancy sign. There were a half-dozen squad cars and four television trucks parked in front when Lucas rolled in. He saw Jennifer and, further down the street, Annie McGowan, both with cameramen. Lucas squeezed the Porsche between two squad cars, got out, locked it, and started toward the yellow tape that blocked the motel driveway.

"Lucas."

"Hey, Jennifer…"

"You son of a bitch, you fed her another one."

"Who?"

"You know who. McGowan." Jennifer turned her head to glare down the street at the other woman.

"I did not," Lucas lied. "I was up north at my cabin, for Christ's sake."

"Well, somebody's feeding her select stuff. She's laughing up her sleeve at the rest of us."

"That's the way it goes in the news biz, huh?" He crouched and slipped under the tape. "Give me a call tomorrow, I'll see if I can get something for you."

"Hey, Lucas, you're not still angry? About the Smithe thing?"

"We have to talk," he said. "We have to figure out some kind of arrangement. You off tomorrow night?"

"Yeah, sure."

"So I'll take you to dinner somewhere private. We'll work something out."

"Great." She smiled and he turned and saw Anderson standing in a crowd outside the motel manager's office.

"So what?" he asked, taking Anderson by the sleeve.

"Come on down and take a look." He led the way toward the rear of the motel.

"Who found her?"

"The night clerk," Anderson said, glancing back. "The girl'd stop by and rap on the window when she was coming and going. She rapped going in, but never came back out. After a while, he kind of stuck his head out and says he saw this crack of light around her door. The killer apparently didn't pull it all the way shut when he left. That made the clerk curious and he walked down and knocked. And there she was."

"Did he see the killer? The clerk?"

"Uh-uh. He says he didn't see anybody."

"This clerk, is it Vinnie Short?"

"I don't know his name," Anderson said. "He's short, though."

Heather Brown was bound like the others, but unlike the others, her arms were stretched out at right angles to her body, as though she'd been crucified. The handle of the knife protruded from her chest under her breastbone. Her head was turned to one side, her eyes and mouth open. Her tongue stuck out, obscenely pale. She had long narrow scars on her thighs, white against her too-even machine tan.

"I don't know her," Lucas said. A vice officer walked in. "You know her?" Lucas asked.

"Seen her around a few times, she's been on the street a couple years," the vice cop said. "She used to be over on University, in St. Paul, but her old man OD'd on crank and she disappeared for a while."

"You're talking about Louis the White?"

"Yeah. See the scars on her legs? That was Louis' trademark. Used to beat them with coat hangers. Said it never took more than twice."

"But he's dead," said Lucas.

"Eight months ago. Good riddance. But I'll tell you something. His girls did the specialty tricks. Golden showers, bondage, spanking, like that. So this guy may have known her. The way she's tied up… it'd be hard to tie somebody up like that if she wasn't cooperating."

"You guys don't know who's running her now?"

"Nope. Haven't seen her around for a while," said the vice cop.

"We've talked to the night clerk but he claims he doesn't know anything about her," Anderson said. "Said she's been around two, three weeks. She'd come into the office, pay for the room, leave. She'd take a room for the night, bring two or three guys back, knock on the window when she was coming and going. She'd remake the bed herself."

"How much did she pay for the room?"

"I don't know," the vice cop said. "I could check."

"Usually it's one guy, one rent. They don't usually take them for the night. Not if the motel knows what's going on."

"This guy knows," said the vice cop.

"It's Vinnie Short?"

"Yeah."

"We have a long relationship. I'll go talk to him," Lucas said. He looked around the room again. "Nothing, huh?"

"Not much. The note."

"What'd it say?"

"'Never carry a weapon after it has been used.'"

"Son of a bitch. He's not leaving us much."

Anderson wandered out. Lucas looked at the body again, then picked up Brown's bag and looked through it. A cheap plastic billfold contained fifteen dollars, a driver's license, a social-security card, and a half-dozen photos. He pulled the clearest one out of the billfold and let it fall to the bottom of the bag. In a side pocket he found two twists of plastic. Cocaine.

"Got a couple quarter-grams here," he said to the vice cop. "You inventoried her purse yet?"

"Not yet."

"Stick your head out the door and call Anderson, will you?"

When the cop stepped outside, Lucas pocketed the photograph from the billfold and snapped the billfold shut.

"Yeah?" Anderson stepped back inside.

"Got some toot. Better get a property bag around this purse before it goes away."

Vincent Short was short. He also had long, thinning red hair and thought he looked like Woody Allen. He didn't know nothing. He scratched his head and shook it, and scratched his head some more. The dandruff flakes fell like snow on his black turtleneck shirt. Two vice cops were standing around looking at him when Lucas came in. Short looked up and paled.

"Lieutenant," he said nervously.

"Vincent, my friend, we need to talk," Lucas said cheerfully. He looked around at the vice cops. "Could I have a private talk with this guy? We're old pals."

"No problem," said one of the cops.

"Say, you find the girl's registration card?"

"Yeah, right here."

One of the vice cops handed it to him and Lucas glanced at the total charge. Thirty dollars. "Thanks. See you around."

When they were gone, Lucas turned to Short, who was shrinking back in his chair.

"Maybe we ought to go back in the office where we can talk," he suggested.

"You fuck, Davenport-" Short started to cry.

Lucas leaned over his chair and spoke in kindly tones. "Vincent, you know who the girl's pimp is. Now, you've got to decide, are you more scared of him? Or more scared of me? And let me give you a hint. We're working on a multiple killer here. My ass is on the line. So you should definitely be more scared of me."

"You fuck-"

"And maybe you should think about what the boss is going to say when he finds out you rented a room to a hooker, all night, for thirty bucks. You must have been getting a little on the side, huh? Maybe a little pussy, maybe a little kickback? Huh, Vincent?"

"You fuck…"

Lucas glanced out the windows toward the street. Nobody was looking in. He reached down and grabbed the flesh between Short's nostrils between a thumb and forefinger and drove his thumbnail into it. Short arched his head as though he were being electrocuted and dragged at Lucas' hand with his, but Lucas hung on and pressed his other thumb into Short's throat below his Adam's apple so he couldn't scream. They struggled for a few seconds and then Lucas let go and backed off, and Short doubled up in the chair, his face buried in his hands, a long groan squeezing from his mouth.

Lucas leaned over him and wiped his fingers on Short's shirt, his face close to Short's.

"Who's her pimp?" Lucas asked quietly.

"Aw, c'mon, Davenport."

"If you think that hurt, I've got a couple more in places you wouldn't even believe," Lucas said. "Don't show, either."

"Sparks," he mumbled. His voice was almost inaudible. "Don't tell him I told you."

"Who?"

"Jefferson Sparks. She works for Sparks."

"Sparky. God damn." Lucas patted Short on the shoulder. "Thanks, Vincent. The police appreciate the cooperation of our citizens."

Short looked up at him, his eyes rimmed with red, tears running down his cheeks.

"Get out of here, you fuck."

"If this isn't right, if it's not Sparky, I'll be back," Lucas promised. He smiled at Short. "Have a nice day."

Outside, they were moving the body, wheeling it out into the flaring lights of the TV cameras. The vice cops were standing in a small group by the sidewalk, watching, when Lucas walked up.

"Your old pal tell you anything?"

"She worked for Jefferson Sparks," Lucas said.

"Sparky," one of the cops said enthusiastically. "I do believe I know where he's staying."

"Pick him up," said Lucas. "Soliciting or something. We'll talk to him downtown tomorrow morning."

"Sure."

Anderson was talking to the medical examiner. When he finished, he walked over to Lucas, shaking his head.

"Nothing?" asked Lucas.

"Not a thing."

"You're dragging the neighborhood for witnesses?"

"Got guys all over the place. Won't know anything until tomorrow."

"We got a name on the pimp," Lucas said. "Vice is going to look for him. Probably have him tomorrow."

"I hope he's got something," Anderson said. "This is getting old."

Lucas worked on his game for half an hour, editing the scenarios. It was the worst part of the job. The finishing touches were never done. With the murder of Heather Brown, he couldn't focus on the work.

He quit at two o'clock, ate a cup of strawberry yogurt, checked the doors, and turned out the lights. He had been in bed for ten minutes when the doorbell rang. Crawling out of bed, he tiptoed into the workroom so he could look out a window down the length of the house to the front door.

The doorbell rang again as he peeked out. Annie McGowan, alone in the streetlight, self-conscious as she waited by the door. Lucas sat down with his back to the wall, staring into the dark room. Jennifer was pregnant. Carla was waiting at the cabin. Lucas loved women, new women, different women. Loved to talk to them, send them flowers, roll around in the night. Annie McGowan was stunning, a woman with the face of Helen and what promised to be an exquisite body, pink nipples, pale, solid flesh.

And she was dumb as a stump. Lucas thought about it, pinching the bridge of his nose.

Outside, Annie McGowan waited, and after another minute turned away from the house and started back toward her car. Lucas stood up and peered through a crack between the curtain and the wall as she opened the car door, hesitated, looked back at the house. The window opened vertically, with a crank. His hand was on the crank and it would take only a second to open it, call out to her before she got away. He didn't move. She slid into the driver's seat, pulled the door shut, and backed out of the drive.

In another second she was gone. Lucas walked back to the bedroom, lay down, and tried to sleep.

Visions of Annie…