Wicked Prey

Chapter 9

Lucas got the Hudson cops crawling through the surrounding motels, looking for anyone who'd checked out of a room overlooking the corner room where Charles Dee had died. Somebody, he believed, had warned Cohn that the cop was coming; why Dee had gone inside the room, he didn't know, unless he'd been met at the door by Cohn, with a gun.

Nobody had heard a gunshot' There'd been a guest on the other side of Cohn's double room, and he'd been in the room at the time of the fire, asleep, but he should have heard a shot. He'd heard the gasoline explode, had gotten up to see what it was, but hadn't heard a shot.

Goddamned Hudson cops, he thought: they'd sent out one guy to look for a cop killer. And they knew it. They were tap dancing like crazy, but everybody else would know it, too, by the six o'clock news.

Which reminded him. He got on the phone to Carol and said,

"Get those pictures of Cohn out to everybody. Everybody. Beg and plead if you have to, but get his face on the air. Get it to the newspapers, ask them if we can get it on the front."

"What're we doing?" she asked.

"Changing direction. He knows we're all over him, so if he's going to run, he's already on the way. See if we can get it on CNN and the networks, all the local TV, go out two tiers of states-down to Missouri, over to Indiana, out to Montana. Get it out to every airport police department in, say, six hundred miles. Border Patrol, Grand Portage, International Falls. Maybe we'll freeze him here in the Cities, so we'll get another shot at him. If he gets out to LA or down to Miami, he's going to be harder to spot. Beg for help."

"I'll get it started," she said. "But there was trouble downtown with one of the marches, a bunch of people are being arrested. Lot of them. That'll be the big story tomorrow…"

"Tell them about this cop getting killed," Lucas said. "Tell them ' tell them he was left behind when they torched the motel. Tell them we don't know if the guy was dead. That'll catch them."

"Was he dead?"

"Yeah, probably. We really don't know," Lucas said. "We need to stress that, Carol-we don't know. Maybe he burned alive. We need the attention."

Lucas stayed until the reports came back from the adjoining hotels: nobody in any of the rooms in question had checked out.

"Nothing there," the chief said, as though Lucas had screwed up somehow.

"There's something there," Lucas said. "We just haven't found it yet."

"Yeah, well' any more ideas?" the chief asked. "One," Lucas said.

Cohn and Lindy headed west on I-94 toward the Cities, and as soon as they were clear of Hudson, across the bridge in Minnesota, Cohn got on his cell phone and called Cruz.

"I talked to the boys and told them to stay put at least until tonight," Cruz said. "They're cleaning out their rooms, wiping everything down. Do you know where you're going?"

"I get off at the Sixth Street exit? Is that right? Then straight ahead to the parking structure."

"Do not take the elevator," Cruz said. "There's only one, and if there's anybody waiting for a ride, they'll see you, and we can't afford that anymore. You've got to keep out of sight until we can change your appearance. I'll get some hair dye, we'll give you black hair and a mustache, no beard. We can wipe down the condo tonight and get out of here."

"Okay. Maybe. When are you coming over?"

"I'll be a half hour behind you," she said. "I've got to get that dye."

"See you then."

While he was talking, Lindy had organized all the loose stuff into the two sheets, then flattened them and pushed them onto the floor of the backseat, and pulled their two suitcases over them. When she'd tidied up, she waited until Cohn had passed a semi-trailer, then squeezed over the seat back, into the front again. "I hope he was dead," she said. "I hope he didn't burn alive."

"Shut up. I'm sorry, but I've got to think." He thought for two minutes, then said, "Cruz said they had my picture. Where'd that come from? How'd they get it? How'd they know? Jesus Christ, how did that happen?"

"Somebody ratted you out," Lindy said.

Cohn turned his cool gaze on her, saw her sudden nervousness, then smiled: "Thank you, dear. That makes me think you weren't the one."

"If that jerk Spitzer was here, I'd say he's the one," Lindy said. Cohn was silent for a moment, calculating, then said, "He was here."

"He was?" She was surprised. "Where is he?"

"He went away," Cohn said.

"But then, maybe he's pissed…"

"He went away," he said again. His voice had an icicle in it.

Ah. Now she had it. She looked straight ahead and said, "Good." Then, "Maybe before he went away."

"If he was going to do it, he could have told them exactly where we were at, and when we'd be there."

More silence, then Lindy said, "I can't believe it was the boys."

Cohn shook his head: "I can't either. For one thing, they helped us take down a couple of people already, and I can't believe they'd do that, if they were talking to the cops. Or if they did, we'd already have been busted. I mean, they were all there when Spitzer went away."

"Even Rosie, or whatever her name is," Lindy said.

"Yeah, even her." But he remembered Cruz's objection to the murder, and then her explanation, which now seemed less convincing.

Lindy said, "The thing about Rosie is, she might not just be ratting you out. You know what I mean?"

"I think so," Cohn said. "But say it."

"Maybe she's playing some other game that we can't see. She's really' complicated. Where does she get all this information? What is she really doing?"

"She's done a lot of jobs with us," Cohn said. "And three with Jerry, before Jerry's accident."

"Wonder whatever happened to the guy who got Jerry's heart?" Lindy asked.

"I don't know…" Cohn shook his head. "I have to think about Rosie. You're right, she wouldn't just give us up, because we could give her up. She sure as hell didn't tell them that she planned a robbery that ended in a couple of cop killings. Three cop killings, now. If she's the one, why'd she warn us? No-something else is happening."

Lindy pointed: "Exit's coming up."

"That's what I'm afraid of," Cohn said.

The new spot was their disaster hole, a last-ditch hideout that Cruz had arranged, in a condominium building that was half-empty. When she rented the furnished model unit for a month, from the developer, she'd warned him that he couldn't show it: "I haven't shown a unit in three months," he said, ruefully. "I got another model to show if I need to."

The developer was under the impression that Cruz worked with the Republicans, that the model would be used for secret meetings, and she didn't disabuse him. Cruz had had to buy sheets and a couple of blankets, towels and soap and toilet paper, but most everything else had been there, as part of the model.

Cohn pulled into the parking ramp and punched in the key-code, and went down through the ramp and around to their private parking spaces. Then they were out and climbing the interior stairs, five floors. They opened the lobby door and peeked, saw nobody moving-of the six condos on the floor, only two others were occupied-then hurried down to 402, unlocked it and went inside.

As soon as they were in, Cohn called Cruz, who was in her car, heading toward St. Paul.

"The motel looks like a cop convention back there," she said. "You did that guy?"

"I had to," Cohn said. He was looking out the window, over a small park, where a cluster of twenty or thirty peace demonstrators were wandering around, as if they'd lost something: peace, maybe, he thought. A young girl pushed a bike along the sidewalk, on the opposite side of the street, leaned it against a parking meter, walked over to a white van with Channel 3 on the door, and knocked on the window. Cohn had gotten nothing but silence from Cruz, but he waited her out, and finally she said, "I'll see you in ten or fifteen minutes."

Across the street, whoever was in the TV van opened the door and the young girl got in.

Frank and Lois were in the back of the van, eating pizza, and Frank said, "If you leave the bike like that, somebody's gonna run up and steal it."

"You think?" Letty asked.

"I think," he said. "Look at the crowd."

So Letty got back out and unwrapped the cable lock from around the seat tube, cinched it around the parking meter, got back in. Lois, a tall thin woman with spiky, close-cut black hair, said, "Mushroom and pepperoni."

Letty took a slice, realized that she was starving to death, took a bite, and turned to Frank. Frank had short curly hair and a round face and rimless glasses, a short fleshy nose, and thin, delicate pink lips in a rust-colored beard now going gray. Aside from being an excellent cameraman, he was somewhat famous for having gotten a blow job from a low-rent hooker on University Avenue. In his Sebring convertible. With the top down. At noon. He not only got caught, he got videotaped.

But that was water over the dam, at least until Letty, talking around the slice, asked, "If I wanted to find a low-rent hooker right now, on the street, where'd be the best place? Here in St. Paul."

Lois didn't move her face but her eyeballs clicked left, toward Frank, like a couple of marbles in a water glass. Frank carefully peeled a mushroom off his slice, dangled it for a moment over his upturned lips, sucked it in, chewed once, and then asked, "How old are you?"

"Never mind that. Where would I find her?" Letty asked. "I read that the St. Paul cops have cleared off University, but with this convention in town'"

"Why do you want to know?" Frank asked.

"A story," Letty said, and she half-believed it. An idea had been forming in the back of her head.

"You're too young to do a story about hookers," Lois said. "Forget it."

Letty looked at Frank. "Where?"

He whined, "If your dad even heard you asking the question…"

"Listen. I got a tip from a friend," Letty lied. "I'm the only one who could pull it off, and it'd be spectacular. One of my classmates is working the street-somewhere, and I'm sure it's got to be in St. Paul. Her boyfriend put her up to it, so they could get money for cocaine. If I can spot her ' I mean, she's fourteen. All I want to do is find her, and talk to her. I mean, what a great story"

She was right about the story, if she'd been telling the truth. She went to one of the snottiest private schools in the Twin Cities, and if one of her classmates was out doing knobjobs on the Republicans, and fourteen… That would be a story.

Frank said, "If you can get Jennifer…" Jennifer Carey was Letty's mentor at the station.

Letty broke in: "I don't have time. I'll talk to her as soon as I can, but I think my friend, Betsy, I think Betsy is out here right now. I need to know…"

Lois said, "I have nothing to do with this."

Frank sighed and said, "I suppose she'd be up on Wabasha, Fourth Street, Market' working that area between the Radisson and Rice Park ' down St. Peter. That's where most of the convention people are, up there…"

"I owe you one," Letty said. "Thanks for the slice-and I'll talk to Jennifer the first minute I see her."

She locked up her bike a second time, now behind City Hall. The place was crawling with cops, wearing insignia that she'd never seen; cops from Illinois, the Dakotas, Virginia, Wisconsin. Cops from Cedar Rapids. Cops on horses-the horses had face shields-and cops in black armor carrying long wooden riot batons. They paid no attention to her as she walked over to the Radisson, wandered through the lobby, and then continued down Wabasha Street, looking for a wheelchair, for the heavy girl, not finding them. She walked around the block, through the St. Paul Hotel, in the back door, out the front, the doorman giving her the eye. As she went by, he asked, "Aren't you on Channel Three?"

"Yes, I am," she said. "Maybe you can help me. I'm looking for a woman, probably eighteen, a little heavy, dark clothes, kind of ' sad-looking."

The doorman shrugged, and nodded at the sidewalk: "Look at this. There's ten thousand people an hour walking past here."

"Okay; well, thanks," she said. Across the street, in the park, a stage had been set up, red-white-and-blue bunting hung overhead, with the lights; cameras on three sides, and she could see people working in front of cameras: MSNBC. A crowd was watching, and she threaded through it, past the fountain with the bronze girl, and a guy, thirty-something, geeky wearing a McCain button, looked her over and said, "Hi there," and she kept going, around the park and down Fourth Street, against the stream of people walking toward the Xcel Center, where the convention was being held, and back to the Radisson.

And around again, and then off the loop, down St. Peter, to an open-air mall that ran between St. Peter and Wabasha, with people sitting outside, eating lunch, and watching the passersby; and she saw the wheelchair, at a bar called Juicy's.

Whitcomb was in it, talking to a man on a bench, and they were drinking beer. She watched for five minutes, staying back in the crowd, and never saw the girl.

She was out there, somewhere.

Would Letty be more likely to find her by walking the street, or by watching Whitcomb? Since the woman seemed to drive the car, she had to come back-but then she and Whitcomb might go somewhere else, and she had no way to stay with them. She thought it over, one eye on Whitcomb as she scanned the crowd, and decided that the best bet was to work along St. Peter Street, between the park at one end and the mall at the other, with occasional checks a block over on Wabasha.

She began working the loop. How long would it take, anyway, an appointment with a guy? When she was a kid, her mom would come home with men sometimes, and if they didn't stay over, they usually weren't more than a couple of hours ' and sometimes only an hour or so. But her mom wasn't getting paid, so the guys probably felt like they ought to hang around for a while, and talk. Or whatever.

Not with Whitcomb's girl'

She worked the crowded streets for an hour before she saw her, and when she did, she was a hundred yards away and not more than a hundred feet from the corner of the mall, where Whitcomb was drinking. Letty hurried after her, moving fast, but there was no chance: the woman turned the corner. Whitcomb was farther down the mall, and she took the corner carefully, so she didn't blunder into them, if he'd moved-and threading through the crowd, saw him in the same place, saw the woman sit down next to him.

She was there fifteen minutes, Letty watching from fifty or sixty yards away, back in the doorway of a sandwich place. She thought they might be arguing, that the woman might be crying. Then the woman stood, heavily, as though she were old, and she started walking back toward Letty. Letty thought the sadness came off her like a morning fog, a sadness that you could almost touch.

Letty caught her two hundred yards down the sidewalk. She called, "Hey! Girl!"

Briar turned, her eyes uncertain. "Are you ' Me?"

"Yes." Letty gave her a TV smile. "You're Randy's friend. We talked in a McDonald's. I was with a couple of friends."

"Oh ' I didn't recognize you ' here. What are you?"

"I'm with a TV crew. I report on young people. So what's up with you?"

Briar's eyes seemed to recede in her face: she was thinking about Randy, Letty thought, and what he might do about this conversation. She said quickly, "I won't tell Randy."

The woman's tongue flicked out: "Please."

"What's your name?" Letty asked.

"I shouldn't talk to you. Do you want to get Randy? He's right around the corner," Briar said.

"I know," Letty said. "I was watching you, but I don't want to see

Randy, because Randy's a violent asshole and he beats you with a stick. Doesn't he?"

She looked at Letty without saying anything, then past her, checking for Randy, then said, "Tiara."

"What?"

"That's my name. Tiara."

"What's your real name?" Letty asked.

"That is my real name…" she began, but when she saw Letty's head shake, she said, after a couple more seconds, "Juliet. Briar."

"How are you, Juliet? I'm Letty. Did you know that? My name? Or just my dad's name?"

"You know?"

"Sure I know. Look at Randy. He's been trashed so many times that he's living in a wheelchair. He's not the brightest guy in the universe. Come on, I'll buy you a Coke."

Briar frowned: "Are you really with a TV crew? You don't act like it." She looked around. "If you're with TV where's your TV stuff?"

"Down by Mears Park. Hang on." Letty flicked out her phone and called Lois: "Are you guys still down by the park?"

"No. We're up at the Capitol, cruisin' for a bruisin'. Did you ever find your hooker?"

"Yes. Is there any possibility you could come down Wabasha? I'm at Fifth and Wabasha. She sorta doesn't believe me about TV and I need her to," Letty said.

"I thought you were schoolmates," Lois said.

"We're not close," Letty said, smiling into the phone. Whew.

"The cops have Wabasha blocked off, but we could come down Cedar," Lois said. "Meet you at Cedar and Fifth? Five minutes?"

"See you there," Letty said. She clicked the phone shut and said, "C'mon, ride around for a couple of minutes."

Briar, nervous: "If Randy finds out'"

"He won't find out," Letty said. "He can't get around, we're walking away from him. C'mon, girl, have some fun."

Briar bobbed her head, and Letty took her arm and started her across the street toward the hill down to Cedar. "So, how'd you get the name Tiara?"

"Randy gave it to me. He said, you know, I need a better show-business name than Juliet. He said Juliet was old-fashioned."

"Oh!" Letty put on some outrage. "Juliet is a great name. You know that song "Romeo and Juliet"? My dad has it on his iPod, it's an old-timey band. Dire Straits, I think. You don't know it? Maybe I can get a copy for you…"

AS a child in her time and place, with the mother she'd had, Letty had learned a number of things that would never leave her. She was exquisitely sensitive to social differences: who was rich and who was poor, who was smart and who was dumb, who was succeeding, who was failing. And she'd always kept an emotional distance from people that she'd had to deal with, an observational distance. Jennifer Carey carried the same space-and had told Letty, "You could be a hell of a reporter if you wanted to be. You're really smart, and I can see you watching."

Letty knew what she looked like, and what she looked like was a rich, popular, high school kid. She didn't have to look like that: she chose to, when she was doing her TV thing. She could also look like a smart kid, which was different, a little less put-together; she could look like a shlump, and sometimes, at home, she did that look, watching, watching, watching.

Today she was wearing jeans, but they were designer jeans, and her blouse came from a boutique, not from Macy's. Her sneakers were sleek and cool and olive green, with rust-colored laces; and her sunglasses were small and oval and glittery. She was slender with good cheekbones; she was put together, and she knew it. She could see the weight of it in Briar's face-the weight of being arm in arm with a rich popular kid.

She got Briar talking about stage names, and then about clothes, and then about Randy-Briar didn't want to talk about Randy-and then the other girl, slowing, but not disentangling her arm from Letty's, asked, "Do you know what I do?"

Letty gave her another TV grin, one she'd practiced two thousand times. "Yup."

Now Briar disentangled herself and slowed. "Is that why you want to put me on TV?"

"Nope. I'm not going to put you on TV because that would really mess you up," Letty said. "I just want to prove to you that I am on TV."

"Why?"

Letty went serious: "Because I'm worried about you. How old are you?"

"Sixteen. Almost seventeen."

Letty was surprised. Briar looked at least a couple of years older. "How long have you been doing this?" "Four months."

"Ah, jeez." Letty let the sympathy out. "I'm so worried about you. I'm so worried about what Randy is up to. You know, if he hurt me ' my father would kill him, maybe. And he'd find out. Randy is dumb, dumb, dumb."

"He's not that dumb," Briar said.

Letty shook her finger in Briar's face. "Yes, he is. If he was a smart guy, you think he'd be living in a shack? You think he'd have gone to jail four or five different times, and he's not hardly thirty yet?"

"He's twenty-four," Briar said.

Letty's eyebrows went up. "Juliet-he's not twenty-four. Look at his ID sometime, when he's not around. He's almost thirty. He lies about everything."

Briar glanced back up the hill, afraid again. She looked like a denizen of 1984, caught talking about Big Brother. "He doesn't always lie…"

Letty said, seriously, "Yes, he does. He always lies. That's what he does for a living. He lies."

Briar looked down at the sidewalk: "Okay."

Letty studied her for a moment, then said, "Look, here comes the van."

"I really can't ride around," Juliet said, but there was a hint of curiosity in her eyes.

"You have to work?" Letty asked. She looked away: "Yeah."

"How much do you get?"

"Hundred."

"A hundred? Always?"

"Not always, but that's what Randy wants. Sometimes, if I don't'"

"I saw the stick," Letty said. "I was in your house."

"What?"

"I saw the stick," Letty repeated. The van pulled up, and Lois ran the window down. "What's up?" she asked, checking out Briar.

"We'd like to ride around for a few minutes, so I can show Juliet some of the equipment," Letty said. "And I need to borrow some money."