Rules of Prey

CHAPTER 28

The maddog should never have spotted the surveillance. It was purely an accident.

He left a late-afternoon real-estate closing at a bank in the Mississippi River town of Hastings, twenty-odd miles south of the Twin Cities. It was dark. He crossed the Mississippi at the Hastings bridge and drove north on Highway 61, through the suburban towns of Cottage Grove, St. Paul Park, and Newport. As he passed through St. Paul Park he found himself behind an uncovered gravel truck. Pieces of gravel bounced out of the back of the truck and along the highway. A big one could star a windshield.

The maddog, thinking of the shiny finish on his new Thunderbird, moved into the left lane and accelerated around the truck. The close-surveillance car behind him caught the truck a moment later. Since the maddog appeared to be in no particular hurry, intent only on staying ahead of the truck, the surveillance car fell in behind it.

Gravel bounced around the surveillance car, but the cops inside didn't care. The car was mechanically sound, but, like most surveillance cars, was not much to look at, just a plain vanilla Dodge. A few dings more or less wouldn't make any difference. And the gravel truck made excellent cover.

None of it would have mattered if one particularly large rock hadn't bounced off the highway and knocked half the plastic lens off the amber left-turn light. The cops inside heard the thump, but couldn't see the broken lens.

"We oughta give this asshole a ticket," one of the surveillance cops said as the rock bounced off.

"Right," the driver answered. "Go ahead and stick the light on the roof."

"Could you see Daniel's face? We say, 'Well, we was following him when we ran into this incredible asshole with a truck full of rocks… '"

"He'd put us in prison," the first cop said. "He'd find a way."

The maddog decided to stop at a fast-food restaurant off the Interstate loop highway, I-494. The loop intersected with Highway 61 just north of the town of Newport. When the maddog pulled onto the circular entrance ramp for I-494, he glanced into the rearview mirror and noted, with no particular interest, the unusual turn signal on a car a hundred yards back. The signal flashed a peculiar combination of amber and unshielded white..

The close-surveillance car was tighter on the maddog's tail than it normally would have been. The lead car had continued up Highway 61 through the I-494 interchange and would now have to find a place to turn around and catch up from behind. In the meantime, until one of the trailing surveillance cars could move up into the lead position, the cops in the close-surveillance car couldn't take chances. They stuck close.

They were still close when the maddog turned off on the Robert Street exit, heading for one of the restaurants just north of the interchange. As he came down the ramp and slowed to a stop at the bottom, the maddog again noticed the car with the odd turn light. Something was wrong with it, he thought. A broken lens or something. The car was slow in coming down the ramp behind him.

When the traffic signal turned green, the maddog forgot about it and took a left, went up the hill, and pulled into a restaurant parking lot. Outside the entrance, he got a copy of USA Today and carried it inside.

While the maddog ate and read his newspaper, the surveillance cops took turns stocking up on burgers and Cokes at a McDonald's a half-mile away. Two teams always stayed on the maddog.

When he left the restaurant, the maddog decided to drive into St. Paul on Robert Street. It was a crowded, tricky street, but there were two movie theaters not far ahead. A movie would go down well.

He saw the shattered turn light halfway up Robert Street. It was three cars back. At first he wasn't certain, but then he saw it again, more clearly. And again.

They were on him.

He knew it.

He sat halfway through a green light, staring blindly at the street ahead, until the cars behind him started to honk. Should he run for it?

No. If he was being watched, it would tip them off that he knew. He needed time to think. Besides, maybe he was wrong. He wasn't certain about the light. It could be a coincidence.

But it didn't feel like a coincidence.

He passed a shopping center, took a right turn, and drove down to the high-speed Highway 3, which went north to intersect with Interstate 94. Coming off the exit ramp, he watched the mirror. A car followed him down the ramp, but far enough away that he couldn't see the turn light.

He thought about pulling over, feigning car trouble; but that could precipitate something, force their hands. He was not sure that he wanted to do that. He did a mental catalog. There was nothing at the apartment. Nothing. Nothing in the car. There was nothing to hang him with. If they were really watching, they must be waiting for an attack.

Approaching the I-94 interchange across the LaFayette Bridge, the maddog let his speed drop sharply. The cars behind began to close up, and he picked up the surveillance car in an adjacent lane. He still couldn't see it clearly, but there was something definitely wrong with its turn signal.

Two cops in a trailing surveillance car had moved up and finally passed the maddog as they all drove north on Highway 3. As they approached I-94, the two women cops in the new lead car made the logical decision that the maddog was heading back to Minneapolis on the Interstate. They committed to the ramp. Behind them, the maddog drove through the interchange and into the dark warren of streets in St. Paul 's Lowertown. The net spread out around him on parallel streets, staying in touch. Again, with the lead car out of it, the close-surveillance car moved in a bit tighter. Tight enough that when they turned a corner and found the maddog at a dead stop, backing into a parking place, they had to drive by.

And the maddog, who was watching for them, clearly caught the broken lens on the turn signal.

He was being watched. Coincidence was one thing. To believe all these sightings were coincidences was to believe in fairy tales.

The maddog locked his car and walked briskly into a downtown shopping mall and went up two floors. The net was thinner, but still in place. The drivers of the trailing units had been alerted by the close-surveillance car that the maddog was parking. The passenger-cops were on the street before the maddog had fully gotten into his parking place.

They followed him into the theater. The theater was a place to think. How had they gotten onto him? Perhaps, as part of their surveillance of McGowan's house, they had routinely noted the license plates of all cars in the neighborhood. Perhaps somebody had heard the shots, seen him drive away, and noted the tag number. Maybe they had nothing at all but a number that didn't quite fit in the neighborhood. Perhaps he should start preparing an alibi for being there. He couldn't think of any offhand, but something might occur to him if he considered the problem.

If they were following him, there was little he could do about it. He didn't dare try to dodge the surveillance. That would confirm that he was guilty. He had disposed of all evidence that would put him at the crime scene. As far as he knew, there was no conclusive evidence against him anywhere.

When the movie ended, the maddog walked down to his car, resisting the almost overwhelming temptation to look around, to search the doorways for watchers. He wouldn't see them, of course. They would be too good for that. He stayed on city streets out to I-94, then turned east toward his own exit. He didn't see the broken turn signal on the way out to the Interstate. That meant nothing, he knew, but he couldn't suppress a tiny surge of hope. Maybe it had been coincidence.

The Interstate was crowded, and though he watched, he didn't see any cars with broken turn signals. He sighed, felt the tension seeping out. When he reached his exit, he ran the car up the ramp to the traffic signal and waited. Another car came off behind. Coasted up the ramp, slowly. Too slowly.

The traffic light changed to green. The maddog waited. The other car eased up. The left-front turn signal was broken, the white light shining brightly past the amber. The maddog looked up, saw the green, and took a right.

"Jeez, you don't look so good. You sick?" His secretary seemed concerned.

"No, no. Just had a little insomnia the last few nights. Could you get the papers for the Parker-Olson closing?"

The maddog sat at his desk, the office door closed, a blank yellow pad in front of him. Think.

The news stories of the surveillance on McGowan's house mentioned that the cops set up observation posts both in front and in back. Would they have done the same at his place? Probably. There were empty apartments on the block; he'd seen the signs, but not paid much attention. Nor did he know his neighbors, other than to nod at the others in his fourplex. Could he spot the other surveillance posts?

The maddog stood and stepped over to the window, hands in his jacket pockets, staring sightlessly out at the street.

Maybe. Maybe he could spot them, maybe he could deduce where they were. Where would that get him? If they came for him, he would not resist. That would be pointless. And had he not imagined himself in court, defending himself against his accusers? Had he not dreamed of capturing the jury with his eloquence?

He had. But now the vision of a magnificent defense did not come so easily. Deep in his heart, he knew they were right. He was not a good attorney; not in court, anyway. He'd never taken the fact out and looked at it, but the fact was there, like a stone.

He paced two steps one way, two steps back, tugging at his lip. They were watching. No matter how long he suppressed the urge to take another woman, they would eventually come. They wouldn't wait forever.

He sat down, looked at the yellow pad, and summarized:

They were not sure enough to arrest him yet.

They could not wait forever.

What would they do?

He thought of Davenport, the gamer. What would the gamer do?

A gamer would frame him.

It took him a half-minute on his knees in the garage to find the radio transmitter on the car. It took another hour to find the photographs under the mattress. The beeper he left in place. The photos he stared at, frightened. If the police should come through the door at this instant, he would go to jail for eighteen years, a life sentence in Minnesota.

He took the photographs into the kitchen and, one by one, burned them, the pictures curling and charring in the flames from the stove burner. When they were gone, reduced to charcoal, he crushed the blackened remains to powder and washed them down the kitchen sink.

That night he forced himself to lie in bed for fifteen minutes, then crept to the window and looked down the street. There was a patchwork of lighted windows, and many more that were dark. He watched, and after a while crawled back to his bed, got both pillows and put one on the floor and the other upright against the wall, where he could lean on it. It would be a long night.

After three hours, the maddog dozed, his head falling forward. He jerked it back upright and peered groggily through the window. Everything was about the same, but he couldn't watch much longer. There were only two lights still on, he had noted them, and he was simply too tired to continue.

He got up, carrying the pillows, and flopped facedown on the bed. Paradoxically, as soon as he was willing to allow himself to sleep, he felt more alert. The thoughts ran through his brain like a night train, hard and quick and hardly discernible as independent ideas. A mishmash of images-his women, their eyes, Lucas Davenport, the fight outside McGowan's, the broken turn signal.

From the mishmash there came an idea. The maddog resisted it at first, because it had the quality of a nightmare, requiring a broad-scope action under the most intense stress. Finally he considered it and paraded the objections, one by one. The longer he turned it in his mind, the more substantial it became.

It was a winning stroke. And the surveillance? What better alibi could he find? Would he have the courage to attempt the stroke? Or would he sit there like a frightened rabbit, waiting to have his neck wrung by the hunter?

He bit his lip. He bit so hard that he found blood on the pillow the next morning. But he had decided. He would try.