Rules of Prey

CHAPTER 15

Lucas' office door was open and the vice cop ambled in and plopped down in one of the extra chairs.

"Sparky's gone," he said.

"Damn. Nothing's coming easy," Lucas said.

"We found his place, down on Dupont, but he split last night," the vice cop said. "The guy who lives upstairs said Sparky came home about midnight, threw his shit in the car, and took off with one of his ladies. Said it didn't look like he was coming back."

"He knew about Brown," said Lucas, leaning back and planting his feet on the desktop.

"Yeah. Looks like."

"So where'd he go?"

The vice cop shrugged. "We're asking around. He's got a couple of other women. We've heard they're working a sauna out on Lake Street. Used to work at a place called the Iron Butterfly, but that's closed now. So we're looking."

"Relatives?"

"Don't know."

"When did we last have him in?" Lucas asked.

"'Bout a year ago, I guess. Gross misdemeanor, soliciting for prostitution."

"He do time?"

"Three months in the workhouse."

"File upstairs?"

"Yeah. I could get it."

"Never mind," Lucas said. "I'm not doing anything. I'll walk over and take a look."

"We'll keep looking for him," the vice cop said. "Daniel's all over our backs."

Lucas flipped the lock on his office door and was pulling it closed when the phone rang. He stepped back inside and picked it up.

"Lucas? This is Jennifer. Are we going out tonight?"

"Sure. Seven o'clock?" An image of Carla flashed into his mind, her back arched, her breasts flattened, her mouth half-open.

Carla Ruiz.

Jennifer Carey, pregnant. "Yeah, that'd be fine. Pick me up here?"

"See you at seven."

The maddog was waiting for files in the clerk's office when Lucas walked in. The maddog recognized him immediately and forced himself to look back at the file he was holding. Lucas paid no attention to him. He walked through the swinging gate, behind the service counter, and across the room to the supervisor's cubicle. He stuck his head in the door and said something the maddog couldn't quite make out. The supervisor looked up from her desk and laughed and Lucas went in and perched on the edge of her desk.

The detective had an easy way about him. The maddog recognized and envied it. The files supervisor was an iron-girdled courthouse veteran who had seen one of everything, and Davenport had her fluttering like a teenage girl. As he watched, Lucas suddenly turned and looked at him and their eyes touched briefly. The maddog recovered and looked down at the file again.

"Who's the dude at the counter?" Lucas asked.

The supervisor looked around him at the maddog, who dropped the file in the return basket and headed for the door. "Attorney. Can't remember the firm, but he's been around a lot lately. He had that Barin kid, you know, that rich kid who drove into the crowd…"

"Yeah." The maddog disappeared through the door and Lucas dismissed him. " Jefferson Sparks. Bad guy. Pimp. I need the latest on him."

"I'll get it. You can use Lori's desk. She's out sick," the supervisor said, pointing at an empty desk behind the business counter.

Sparks had three recent files, each with a slender sheaf of flimsies. Lucas read through them and found a half-dozen references to the Silk Hat Health Club. He picked up the phone, called vice, and asked for the detective he had talked to that morning.

"Is the Silk Hat still run by Shirley Jensen?" he asked when the detective came on the line.

"Yup."

"I find the name in a couple of places in Sparky's file. Could that be where his women are working?"

"Could be. Come to think of it, Shirley used to do the books on the Butterfly."

"Thanks. I'll run out there."

"Stay in touch."

Lucas hung up, tossed the files in the return basket, and glanced at his watch. Just after noon. Shirley should be working.

The Silk Hat was a black-painted storefront squeezed between a used-clothing store and a furniture-rental agency. The neon sign in the window said "Si k Hat t ealth Club" and the glass in both the window and door had been painted as black as the siding. There was a small wrought-iron door light over the door and a wise guy had spray-painted it red. Or maybe not a wise guy, Lucas thought. Maybe the owner.

Lucas pushed through the door into a small waiting room. Two plastic chairs sat on a red shag carpet behind a coffee table. A fish tank full of guppies perched on the sill of the blacked-out window. There were a half-dozen well-thumbed copies of Penthouse magazine on the coffee table. The chairs were facing a six-foot-long business counter that looked like it might have been stolen from a doctor's office. A door beside the counter led into the back of the store.

As Lucas stepped into the waiting room, he heard a buzzer sound in the back, and a few seconds later a young woman in a low-cut black dress stepped up behind the counter. She was chewing gum, and a June-bug tattoo was just visible on the swell of her left breast. She looked like Betty Boop but smelled like Juicy Fruit.

"Yah?"

"I want to talk to Shirley," Lucas said.

"I don't know if she's here."

"Tell her Lucas Davenport is waiting and if she doesn't get her fat ass out here, I'm going to fuck the place up."

The woman looked at him for a second, working her jaw until the gum snapped. She was not impressed. "Pretty tough," she said laconically. "I got a guy here you might want to talk to. Before you fuck the place up."

"Who?"

She looked him over and decided he might recognize the name. "Bald Peterson."

"Bald? Yeah. Tell him to get his ass out here too," Lucas said enthusiastically. He reached under his jacket and took out the P7 and the woman's eyes widened and she put up her hands as though to fend off a bullet. Lucas grinned at her and kicked the front panel of the counter and it splintered and he kicked it again and the woman turned and started running toward the back.

"Bald, you cocksucker, come out here," Lucas shouted into the back. He reached across the counter, grabbed the bottom side of the top sheet and pulled and it came up with a groan and he let it go and he kicked the front panel again and a piece of board broke off. "Bald, you motherfucker…"

Bald Peterson was six and a half feet tall and weighed two hundred and seventy pounds. He had had a minor career as a boxer, a slightly bigger one on the pro wrestling tour. Some people on Lake Street were sure he was psychotic. Lucas was sure he was not. Bald had attacked Lucas once, years before, when Lucas was still on patrol. It happened in a parking lot outside a nightclub, one-on-one. Bald used his fists. Lucas used a nine-inch lead-weighted sap wrapped in bull leather. Bald went down in six seconds of the first round. And after he went down, Lucas used his feet and a heavy steel flashlight and broke several of the bones in Bald's arms, most of the bones in his hands, the lower bones in both legs, the bones in the arches of his feet, his jaw, his nose, and several ribs. He also kicked him in the balls a half-dozen times.

While they were waiting for the ambulance, Bald woke up and Lucas gripped him by the shirt and told him that if he ever had any more trouble with him, he would cut off his nose, his tongue, and his dick. Lucas was suspended for investigation of possible use of excessive force. Bald was in the hospital for four months and a wheelchair for another six.

If Bald had been psychotic, Lucas thought, he would have come after Lucas with a gun, a knife, or, if he was really crazy, with his fists, as soon as he could walk. He didn't. He never looked at Lucas again, and walked wide around him.

"Bald, you dickhead…" Lucas shouted. He kicked the front panel of the desk and it caved in. There was a clattering on a back stairs and he stopped kicking and Shirley Jensen hurried up the hallway toward the counter. Lucas put the P7 away.

"You asshole," Jensen yelled.

"Shut up, Shirley," Lucas said. "Where's Bald?"

"He's not here."

"The other cunt said he was."

"He's not, Davenport, I mean, Jesus Christ on a crutch, look at this mess…" Jensen was in her late forties, her face lined from years of sunlamps, bourbon, cigarettes, and potatoes. She was a hundred pounds overweight. The fat bobbled under her chin, on her shoulders and upper arms, and quivered like jelly beneath her gold lame belt. Her face crinkled and Lucas thought she might cry.

"I want to know where Sparky went."

"I didn't know he was gone," she said, still looking at the wreckage of the counter.

Lucas leaned forward until his face was only four inches from her nose. Her Pan-Cake makeup was cracking like a dried-out Dakota lake bed. "Shirley, I'm going to tear this place up. My neck is on the line with this maddog killer, and Sparky might have some information I need. I'm going to wait here…" He looked at his watch, as though timing her. "Five minutes. Then I'm coming over the counter. You go find out where he is."

"Sparky knows something about the maddog?" The idea startled her.

"That was one of his girls who got ripped last night. The maddog's starting on hookers. It's a lot easier than scouting out the straights."

"Don't kick my counter no more," Shirley said, and she turned and waddled down the hallway and out of sight.

A few seconds later the front door opened and Lucas stepped back and away from it. A narrow man with a gray face, thin shoulders, and a seventy-dollar suit stepped inside, blinked at the ruined counter, and looked at Lucas.

"Jeez, what happened?"

"There's a police raid going on," Lucas said cheerfully. "But if you just want to exercise, you know, like push-ups, and drink some fruit juice, that's okay. Go on back."

The narrow man's Adam's apple bobbed twice and he said, "That's okay," and disappeared out the door. Lucas shrugged and dropped into one of the plastic chairs and picked up a Penthouse. "I didn't believe things like this really happened," he read, "but before I tell you about it, maybe I should describe myself. I'm a junior at a big midwestern university and the coeds around here say I'm pretty well-equipped. A girlfriend once measured me out at nine inches of rock-hard-"

"Davenport…" Shirley emerged from the back.

"Yeah." He dropped the magazine on the table.

"Don't know where he is exactly, what hotel," she said, "but it's like in Cedar Rapids, some downtown hotel-"

"Iowa?"

"Yeah. He trolls through there a couple of times a year, Sioux City, Des Moines, Waterloo, Cedar Rapids. So one of his girls says he's down there, she don't know exactly the place, but she says it's a hotel downtown."

"Okay." Lucas nodded. "But if he's not there…"

"Fuck you, Davenport, you broke my desk."

Jennifer liked the flowers. Each table had two carnations, one red and one white, in a long-necked vase. The restaurant was run by a Vietnamese family, refugees who left a French restaurant behind in Saigon. The old man and his wife financed it, their kids ran the place and cooked, the in-laws worked the tables and bar and cash register, the ten-year-old grandchildren bused the tables and washed up.

"The big problem with this place," Jennifer said, "is that it's about to be discovered."

"That's okay," Lucas said. "They deserve it."

"I suppose." Jennifer looked at the red wine in her glass, watching the light reflections thrown through the Venetian blinds from the street. "What are we going to do?" she asked after a moment of silence.

Lucas leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs. "We can't go on like this. You've really hammered me. Daniel knows about our relationship, and every time something breaks in the press, he's looking at me. Even if it's Channel Eight."

"I'm done reporting, at least for now," she answered. She tilted her head and let her hair fall away from her face, and Lucas' eyes traveled around the soft curve of her chin and he thought he was in love.

"Yeah, but if you get a lead… tell me you won't feed it to one of your pals," he said.

Jennifer sipped the wine, set the glass on the table, ran her finger around its rim, and suddenly looked up into his eyes. "Did you sleep with McGowan?"

"Goddammit, Jennifer," Lucas said in exasperation. "I did not. Have not."

"Okay. But I'm not sure about you," she said. "Somebody's feeding stuff to her, and whoever he is, he's tight with the investigation."

"It's not me," Lucas said. He leaned forward and said, "Besides, the stuff she's getting…" He stopped, bit his lip. "I could tell you something, but I'm afraid you'd quote me and really louse me up."

"Is it a story?" she asked.

Lucas considered. "It could be, maybe. It'd be pretty unusual. You'd be cutting on McGowan."

Jennifer shook her head. "I wouldn't do that. Nobody in TV does that. It's too dangerous, you'd set off a war. So tell me. If it's like you say, I swear nobody will hear it from me."

Lucas looked at her a minute. "Really?"

"Really."

"You know," he said casually, as though it were of no importance, "I've threatened to stop talking to you in the past, but there were always reasons to get together again. I could always find a way to excuse what you did."

"That's big of you,"

"Wait a minute. Let me finish. This time, you've made a direct promise. No ifs, ands, or buts. If it gets out, I'll know where it had to come from. And I'll know that we won't have any basis to trust each other. Ever. Even with the kid. I'm not playing a game now. This is real life."

Jennifer leaned back, looked up at the ceiling, then dropped her eyes to him. "When I was a teenager, I made a deal with my father," she said slowly. She looked up. "If something was really important and he had to know the truth of it, I would tell him the truth and then say 'Girl Scout' honor.' And if he wanted to tell me something and emphasize that it was important and he wasn't kidding or fibbing, he'd say 'Boy Scout's honor' and give me the Boy Scout sign. I know it sounds silly, but we never broke it. We never lied."

"And you won't tell…"

"Girl Scout's honor," she said, giving the three-finger sign. "Jesus, we must look ridiculous."

"All right," Lucas said. "What I was going to tell you is this. I don't know where McGowan's information is coming from, but most of it is completely wrong. She says we think the guy is impotent or smells bad or looks weird, and we don't think any of that. It's all courthouse rumor. We think she's probably getting it from some uniform out on the periphery of the investigation."

"It's all bull?" Jennifer asked, not believing.

"Yep. It's amazing, but that's the truth of the matter. She's had all these great scoops and it's all bullshit. As far as I know, she's making it up."

"You wouldn't be fibbing, would you, Davenport?" She watched him closely and he stared straight back.

"I'm not," he said.

"Did you sleep with McGowan?"

"No, I did not," he said. He lifted his hand in the three-fingered Scout sign. "Boy Scout's honor," he said.

She toyed with the stem of her wineglass, watching the wine roll around inside. "I've got to do some thinking about you, Davenport. I've had some… passions before, for other men. This is turning into something different."

They slept in the next morning. Jennifer was reading the Pioneer Press and Lucas was cooking breakfast when the phone rang.

"This is Anderson."

"Yeah."

"A cop from Cedar Rapids called. They busted Sparky for conspiracy to commit prostitution, and they've got-"

"Conspiracy to what?"

"Some kind of horseshit charge. He said their county attorney will kick their ass when he finds out. They'll have to tell him this afternoon, before the end of business hours. We got you on a plane at ten. Which gives you an hour to get out to the airport. Ticket's waiting."

"How long does it take to drive?"

"Five, six hours. You'd never make it, not before they have to tell the county attorney. Then they'll probably have to turn Sparky loose."

"All right, all right, give me the airline." Lucas wrote the details on a scratch pad, hung up, and went to tell Jennifer.

"I won't ask," she said, grinning at him.

"I'll tell you if you want. But I'd need the Girl Scout's oath that you won't tell."

"Nah. I can live without knowing," she said. She was still grinning at him. "And if you're going to fly, you might want to break out the bourbon."

The airline that flew between Twin Cities International and Cedar Rapids was perfectly reliable. Never had a fatal crash. Said so right in its ads. Lucas held both seat arms with a death grip. The elderly woman in the next seat watched him curiously.

"This can't be your first time," she said ten minutes into the flight.

"No. Unfortunately," Lucas said.

"This is much safer than driving," the old woman said. "It's safer than walking across the street."

"Yes, I know." He was staring straight ahead. He wished a stroke on the old woman. Anything that would shut her up.

"This airline has a wonderful safety record. They've never had a crash."

Lucas nodded and said, "Um."

"Well, don't worry, we'll be there in an hour."

Lucas cranked his head toward her. He felt as though his spine had rusted. "An hour? We've been up pretty long now."

"Only ten minutes," she said cheerfully.

"Oh, God."

The police psychologist had told him that he feared the loss of control.

"You can't deal with the idea that your life is in somebody else's hands, no matter how competent they are. What you have to remember is, your life is always in somebody else's hands. You could step into the street and get mowed down by a drunk in a Cadillac. Much more chance of that than a plane wreck."

"Yeah, but with a drunk, I could see him coming, maybe. I could sense it. I could jump. I could get lucky. Something. But when a plane quits flying…" Lucas mimed a plane plowing nose-down into his lap. "Schmuck. Dead meat."

"That's irrational," the shrink said.

"I know that," Lucas said. "I want to know what to do about it."

The shrink shook his head. "Well, there's hypnotism. And there are some books that are supposed to help. But if I were you, I'd just have a couple of drinks. And try not to fly."

"How about chemicals?"

"You could try some downers, but they'll mess up your head. I wouldn't do it if you have to be sharp when you get where you're going."

The flight to Cedar Rapids didn't offer alcohol. He didn't have pills. When the wheels came down, his heart stopped.

"It's only the wheels coming down," the old woman said helpfully.

"I know that," Lucas grated.

Lucas cashed the return portion of the plane ticket.

"You'll take a loss," the clerk warned.

"That's the least of my problems," Lucas said. He rented a car that he could drop back in Minneapolis and got directions to the police station. The station was an older building, four-square concrete, function over form. Kind of like Iowa, he thought. A cop named MacElreney was waiting for him.

"Carroll MacElreney," he said. He had wide teeth and an RAF mustache. He was wearing a green plaid sport coat, brown slacks, and brown-and-white saddle shoes.

"Lucas Davenport." They shook hands. "We appreciate this. We're in a bind."

"I've been reading about it. Sergeant Anderson said you don't think Sparks did it, but might know something? That right?"

"Yeah. Maybe."

"Let's go see." MacElreney led the way to an interview room. "Mr. Sparks is unhappy with us. He thinks he's been treated unfairly."

"He's an asshole," Lucas said. "You find his girl?"

"Yeah. Kinda young."

"Aren't they all?"

Sparks was sitting on one of three metal office chairs when Lucas followed the Cedar Rapids cop into the room. He's getting old, Lucas thought, looking at the other man. He had first seen Sparks on the streets in the early seventies. His hair then had been a faultless shiny black, worn in a long Afro. Now it was gray, and deep furrows ran down Sparks' forehead to the inside tips of his eyebrows. His nose was a flattened mess, his teeth nicotine yellow and crooked. He looked worried.

"Davenport," he said without inflection. His eyes were almost as yellow as his teeth.

"Sparky. Sorry to see you in trouble again."

"Whyn't you cut the crap and tell me what you want?"

"We want to know why you left town fifteen minutes after one of your ladies got her heart cut out."

Sparks winced. "Is that what-"

"Don't give me any shit, Sparky. We just want to know where you dumped the knife." Lucas suddenly stopped and looked at MacElreney. "You gave him his rights?"

"Just on the prostitution charge."

"Jesus, I better do it again, let me get my card…" Lucas reached for his billfold and Sparks interrupted.

"Now, wait a minute, Davenport," Sparks said, even more worried. "God damn, I got witnesses that I didn't do nothin' like that. I loved that girl."

Lucas eased his billfold back in his pocket.

"You see who did it?"

"Well, I don't know…"

Lucas leaned forward. "I personally don't think you did it, Sparky. But you gotta give me something to work with. Something I can take back. These guys from vice want to hang you. You know what they're saying? They're saying, sure, he might not be guilty of this. But he's guilty of everything else and we can get him for this. Dump old Sparky in Stillwater, it'd solve a lot of problems. That's what they're saying. They found some coke in your lady's purse, and that doesn't go down too well either…"

Sparks licked his lips. "I knew that bitch was holding out."

"I don't care about that, Sparky. What'd you see?"

"I seen this guy…"

"Let me get my recorder going," Lucas said.

Sparks had a crack habit that was hard to stay ahead of. On the night Heather Brown was killed, he had been sitting on a bus bench across the street, waiting for her to produce some money. He had seen her last date approach her.

"Wasn't it pretty dark?"

"Yeah, but they got all them big blue lights down there."

"Okay."

There was nothing particularly distinctive about the maddog. Average height. White. Regular features, roundish face. Yeah, maybe a little heavy. Went right to her, there didn't seem to be much negotiation.

"You think she knew him?"

"Yeah, maybe. But I don't know. I never saw him before, and she was on the street for a while. Wasn't a regular. At least, not while she was with me."

"She still doing the rough trade?"

"Yeah, there was a few boys would come around." He held his hands up defensively. "I didn't make her. She liked it. Get spanked a little. Good money, too."

"So this guy. How was he dressed? Sharp?"

"No. Not sharp," Sparks said. "He looked kind of like a farmer."

"A farmer?"

"Yeah. He had one of them billed hats on, you know, that got shit wrote on the front? And he was wearing one of those cheap jackets like you get at gas stations. Baseball jackets."

"You sure this was her last date?"

"Yeah. Had to be. She went to the motel and I went off to get a beer. The next thing I knew was the sirens coming down the street."

"Farmer doesn't sound right," Lucas said.

"Well…" Sparks scratched his head. "He didn't look right, either. There was something about him…"

"What?"

"I don't know. But there was something." He scratched his head again.

"You see his car?"

"Nope."

Lucas pressed, but there wasn't anything more.

"You think you'd recognize him?"

"Mmm." Sparks looked at the floor between his feet, thinking it over. "I don't think so. Maybe. I mean, maybe if I saw him walking down the street in the night with the same clothes, I'd say, there, that's the motherfucker right there. But if you put him in a lineup, I don't think so. I was way across the street. All there was, was those streetlights."

"Okay." Lucas turned off his recorder. "We want you back in the Cities, Sparky. You can run your girls. Nobody will hassle you until we get this turkey. When we locate him, we'd like you around to take a look. Just in case."

"You ain't gonna roust me?"

"Not if you stay cool."

"All right. How about this bullshit charge here?"

MacElreney shook his head. "We can process you out in ten minutes if Minneapolis doesn't want you."

"We don't want him," Lucas said. He turned back to Sparks. "But we do want you back in the Cities. If you start trolling the other Iowa cities on your route, we'll roust you out of every one of them. Get back up to Minneapolis."

"Sure. Be a relief. Too much corn down here for the likes of me." He glanced at MacElreney. "No offense."

MacElreney looked offended.

Lucas had unlocked the door of the rental car when MacElreney shouted at him from the steps of the police station. Sparks was right behind him and they walked down the sidewalk together.

"I thought of what was weird about that dude," Sparks said. "It was his haircut."

"His haircut?"

"Yeah. Like, when they walked away from me toward the motel, he took his hat off. I couldn't see his face or anything, only the back of his head. But I remember thinking he didn't have a farmer haircut. You know how farmers always got their ears stickin' out? Either that, or it looks like their old lady cut their hair with a bowl? Well, this guy's hair was like styled. Like yours, or like a businessman or a lawyer or doctor or something. Slick. Not like a farmer. Never seen a farmer like that."

Lucas nodded. "Okay. Blond guy, right?"

Sparks' forehead wrinkled. "Why, no. No, he was a dark-haired dude."

Lucas leaned closer. "Sparky, are you sure? Could you make a mistake?"

"No, no. Dark-haired dude."

"Shit." Lucas thought it over. It didn't fit. "Anything else?" he asked finally.

Sparks shook his head. "Nothin' except you're getting old. I remember when I first knew you, when you beat up Bald Peterson. You had this nice smooth face like a baby's ass. You gettin' some heavy miles."

"Thanks, Sparks," Lucas said. "I needed that."

"We all be gettin' old."

"Sure. And I'm sorry about your lady, by the way."

Sparks shrugged. "Women do get killed. And it ain't like there's no shortage of whores."

The drive back took the rest of the day. After a stop near the Iowa line for a cheeseburger and fries, Lucas put the cruise control on seventy-five and rolled across the Minnesota River into Minneapolis a little after eight o'clock. He dropped the rental car at the airport and took a taxi home, feeling grimy and tight from the trip. A scalding shower straightened out his bent back. When he was dressed again, he got beer from the refrigerator, went down to the spare bedroom, put the beer can on the floor next to the bed, and lay back, looking at the five charts pinned to the wall.

Bell, Morris, Ruiz, and Lewis. The maddog. The dates. Personal characteristics. He read through them, sighed, got up, pinned a sixth sheet of paper to the wall, and wrote "Brown" at the top with his Magic Marker.

Hooker. Young. Dark hair and eyes. The physical description was right. But she was killed in a motel, after being picked up on the street. All the others had been attacked in private places, their homes or apartments, or, in Lewis' case, the empty house she was trying to sell.

He reviewed the other features of the Brown murder, including her appearance in court. Could the maddog be a lawyer? Or even a judge? A court reporter? How about a bailiff or one of the other court personnel? There were dozens of them. And he noted the knife. The maddog brought it with him for this killing. Chicago Cutlery was an expensive brand, and it was widely sold around the Twin Cities in the best department and specialty stores. Could he be some kind of gourmet? A cooking freak? Was it possible that he bought the knife recently and that a check of stores would turn up somebody who'd sold a single blade to a pudgy white guy?

Lucas looked at the notes on the maddog chart. That he was well-off, that he could be new to the area. Up from the Southwest. Office job. Sparks had confirmed that he was fair-skinned. The business about the dark hair was a problem; Carla was sure that he was very fair, and that suggested lighter hair. There were some black-haired Irish, and some Finns would fit the bill, but that seemed to be stretching. Lucas shook his head, added "dark hair?" At the end of the list he wrote "Expensive haircut. Dark hair? Wig? Wears disguises (farmer). Gourmet?"

He lay back again, his head propped up on a pillow, took a sip of beer, held the can on his chest, and read through the lists again.

Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief, doctor, lawyer, Indian chief. Cop.

He glanced at his watch. Nine-forty-five. He got off the bed, the beer still in his hand, walked back to the workroom, and picked up the telephone. After a moment's hesitation he punched in the number for Channel Eight.

"Tell her it's Red Horse," he said. McGowan was on the line fifteen seconds later.

"Red Horse?"

"Yeah. Listen, Annie, this is exclusive. There was a witness on the street near the Brown killing. He actually saw the maddog. Says he looked like a farmer. He was wearing one of those hats with the bills on them, like seed hats? So it's possible that he's driving in from the countryside."

"A commuter killer?"

"Yeah, you could say that."

"Like he commutes to the Twin Cities to murder these women, then goes back home, where he's just another farmer picking potatoes or whatever?"

"Well, uh, we think maybe he's a pig farmer. This guy, the witness, brushed past him, wondered what this farmer-looking dude was doing with a chick like Brown. Anyway, he said there was a kind of odor hanging about him, you know?"

"You mean… pig shit?"

"Uh, pig manure, yes. That kind of confirms what we thought before."

"That's good, Red Horse. Is there any chance we can get this guy on camera?"

"No. No chance. If something happens to change that, we'll let you know, but we're keeping his identity a secret for now. If the maddog found out who he is, he might go after him."

"Okay. Let me know if that changes. Anything else?"

"No. That's it."

"Thanks, Red Horse. I mean, I really, really appreciate this."

There was a moment of silence, of pressure. Lucas fought it.

"Uh, yeah," he said. "See you."