Wicked Prey

Chapter 15

The Los Angeles cop said, "Get outside Northwest, over where the Hertz vans stop. I'm in a black-and-white Toyota FJ."

Lucas went outside, spotted the FJ and walked over. The cop, whose name was Lance Barr, and who looked like the third banana in a so-so cop film, poked the door open for him; they shook hands and Barr said, "Nice threads for a Minnesota cop."

Barr looked pretty good himself, in a tan suit and white shirt, with an ice-blue tie and high-shine brown oxfords. He was wearing skinny sunglasses under his gelled black hair. Lucas said, "We have a special suit for a guy traveling to the Coast. Gives us a chance to get out of the Pendletons."

"I suspected that-but I'm a detective," Barr said, and he pulled out and they headed east into a lot of blacktop.

"What about the fire?" Lucas asked.

"Well, sometime early this morning, about, mmm, six o'clock or so, this chick's house goes up in smoke. The bottom floor, anyway, and most of the top floor. That's before we were even looking at her. Her next-door neighbor was up and heard the place go-said it sounded like a gas explosion-and the silly asshole ran in there with a fire extinguisher and put some of it out. He said he was afraid the girls were in there."

Two women lived in the house, Barr said, but one was traveling, the neighbors said.

"Anyway, this guy slowed the fire down, and the fire guys got there and put the rest of it out. The Shell Avenue station is only a half mile away, right down Venice Boulevard, so they were there in three minutes ' Somebody poured gasoline, and touched it off. It's totally fucked, of course, but there are still some unburned pieces. One of the guys called and said they looked at a computer, but it had been cracked open and the hard drive was missing, so…"

"Probably cleaned the place out," Lucas said. "Anybody got any photos?"

"Not that we've found. Still looking."

"Got tags on their cars?" Lucas asked.

"No. Their names aren't in the database," Barr said. "I mean, their names are, but there are a number of people named Elena Diaz and Martha Knofler, and none of them live in Venice."

"Knofler. She's the roommate?"

"Yup. Rug-munchers. That's what their neighbors say. Long-term commitment," Barr said. "One of the neighbors, though, thought, for some reason, that Martha's name is Laura, or Lauren, and she's pretty sure about it, but she doesn't know why, since she only knew them to nod to at Whole Foods."

"So their names are probably phony, and they cleaned the place out and then burned it," Lucas said.

"Cleaned it out, but they didn't clean out the shower drain, so we got some hair. If you get some hair in Minnesota, then we can put our girl on your crime scene…"

"Don't have any hair yet," Lucas said. "And they don't have any in Washington. You gotta start processing it, because we might need it' but what we really need to do is chase down this Knofler, and break her ass."

"We're working on that," Barr said. "We're looking in garbage cans for hard drives, though they're probably in a canal or out in the ocean ' or maybe she still has them, and when we catch her, we'll get them back."

"If the place burned at six, that'd be eight back home," Lucas said. "So Diaz, or whatever her name is, probably saw the TV broadcast at seven o'clock or so, and called out here. That'd be five o'clock ' That'd give Knofler an hour to get out."

"Must have rehearsed it, though," Barr said. "She wouldn't have had much time. They maybe already had the gas in the garage. And, they leased the place, so they didn't lose anything but some furniture and their security deposit."

"These guys are no dummies," Lucas said. They were passing a cluster of small, hot-looking apartments off Lincoln Boulevard, and a woman with a dog on a leash and three small children in shorts and flip-flops. "Man, if we'd gotten this Knofler ' Man."

Diaz and Knofler lived in a pink-stucco house on Carroll Canal Court, a blank-faced two-story cube with a forbidding incised-steel garage door and a canal in the backyard. The decoration on the garage door was of a sunflower, but that succeeded only in making it look more like a bank safe. A fire truck was still parked in the street, but the hoses had been reeled in and the firefighters were working in shirtsleeves.

Another cop, named Harvey Cason, was standing in the front door when they arrived, cleaning his teeth with a length of dental floss. He flicked the floss into the yard and said, "I'm gonna smell like a burned couch for the rest of the day."

"So, no change," Barr said. He introduced Lucas and Cason said, "Four cops?"

Lucas nodded: "Two in New York, one in Hudson, Wisconsin, and one of my guys last night. Plus they killed a civilian last night, and one of their own guys is dead with them-my guy got him."

"God bless him," Cason said, and he crossed himself.

"So whatcha got?" Barr asked Cason.

"Nothing since you left," Cason said. "There's some paper upstairs, but it's all wet and runny. We're looking for credit card receipts, official paper of any kind, you know. The crime-scene guys are looking for prints, hair, anything. We've got DNA, but no prints, so far. We need prints…"

"Working the neighbors?" Lucas asked.

"Yeah. Looking for pictures, but they seem kind of camera-shy," Cason said. "They didn't go to block parties, they pretty much kept to themselves. Both of them did yoga; we're looking for a yoga place they might have gone."

"How do you know?"

"People would see them carrying yoga mats around," Cason said.

"What kind of cars?"

"Toyota and a Lexus. A minivan and an SC430 convertible."

There wasn't much more: Lucas stood in the doorway and looked in, but he wasn't going to find anything the crime-scene crew hadn't. He walked once around the house, and saw a tricycle in the canal, and wondered about it. A bicycle he'd have understood: you steal a bike, ride it, then throw it in the canal; that's the way of the world. Had somebody hijacked a trike?

When he got back around to the front, Barr and Cason had gone inside, and Lucas looked around, then wandered across the street, where a pretty woman, maybe forty or forty-five, was standing in the doorway, watching. Lucas said, "Hi."

She nodded. "How's it going over there?"

"Not well," Lucas said. "Somebody asked you if you had photos, right?"

"Yes, but we don't."

"How about photos of the street in general?" Lucas asked. "You know, something that might have their cars in it?"

"I don't think so, but I'll check," she said. "They killed some police officers?"

The woman had a peculiar California look, a something-like-coral blouse and aqua slacks, which worked for her, and long blond slightly messy hair that she'd probably paid some guy two hundred dollars to mess up. Lucas took her in, and said, "Yeah, and they executed this woman. A political worker, you know, she worked for a community organizing group. Happened to be there, and bam! Killed her in cold blood."

That woke her up a little. "You got this from the Minneapolis police?"

"I'm from the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension," Lucas said. "I was at the scene-my guy was the guy who was murdered. The woman…" He lifted his hands. "… I mean, why?"

"Ah, jeez, that's awful," she said, and she meant it. "Look, I'll go check my pictures, but I'm ninety-nine percent that we don't have any. We're not really picture people. I don't even know how to work my cell phone cam."

"Thanks." Lucas turned and looked down the street. "Don't see cars. Are any of the other people home?"

"Dick and Carly live right there. I saw Dick a minute ago." She pointed sideways across the street.

"Thanks. Let me know," Lucas said.

He was halfway across the street when she called him, and she came down the ten-foot-long driveway, barefoot, and said, "You know, over on Venice Boulevard, there's a place about four blocks that way"-she pointed-"called David Something, Wedding and Portrait Photography. That guy is supposedly documenting contemporary life in Venice. He's always walking around in the evening taking pictures of the houses and the people…"

"Great," Lucas said. And, "You're a very attractive woman."

"I know," she said. "It makes me feel good."

"Are you in the movies?"

"No, no, but thank you for asking," and she twiddled her fingers at him and walked back up the driveway to her house. Lucas found Barr and asked, "Could I get a ride?"

"Where?"

"A place called David Something's, a wedding and portrait photography place on Venice…"

David Harelson's Wedding and Portrait Photography, By Appt., was tucked in a corner of a strip shopping center three blocks down the street. Lucas spotted it, Barr did an illegal U-turn to get into the parking lot, and a patrol car lit up its lights and came after him.

"Ah, kiss my ass," Barr groaned. "Traffic school, here I come."

Lucas said, smiling at it, "I'll go talk to this guy, you talk to your guy."

David Harelson was in, but the door was locked. Lucas saw him moving through to the back of the place, and rapped on the door, and then rapped louder, and then banged on it, and finally Harelson came steaming out of the back, waving a finger like a windshield wiper, and he shouted, "We're closed."

"I'm a cop," Lucas shouted back. "Open up."

Harelson looked at him for a minute, then past him at Barr and the patrol cop, and the flashing lights on the patrol car, then turned a latch.

"What?" He was a short man, balding, running to fat, with a caterpillar-style brown mustache crawling across his upper lip, and a tiny soul patch on his round chin.

"A house burned down over by the canals-Carroll Court," Lucas said. "We hear you've been doing some documentary photography in the area."

Harelson looked astonished, stepped back to let Lucas inside. "A house on Carroll Court? Which one? Was it badly damaged?"

"Yeah, it's pretty messed up," Lucas said. "As you go in from Venice Boulevard, it's a left turn, about halfway down the block, a pink stucco. It's got a shiny steel garage door with a sunflower incised on it."

Harelson slapped himself on the forehead: "The Lu house."

"Lu?"

"He was the original owner ' the builder ' years and years ago. Oh, God. I've got to get over there."

"Wait a minute. We're really hurting. We've got dead cops, dead civilians…" He told Harelson the story, and Harelson said, halfway through, "I never knew. I don't watch TV."

Barr came in and said, "Beat it," meaning the ticket, and Lucas said, "Good," and Harelson said, "I keep my files in a Lightroom database and I sort them by block and some of them by address, but not the Lu house, it's not that' distinguished."

"We need a car, we need one of the women, we need anything."

Harelson nodded: "Come on. I'll show you."

He had an Apple computer in the back, a tall silver tower with handles on top and two screens, a really big one and a smaller one, and he called up the program, called up the block files into thumbnails, and they began looking up and down the block for cars. "How many pictures do you have?" Barr asked.

Harelson tapped a couple of keys: "On this block, four hundred and twelve. Back in the film days, I would maybe have had six or ten. God bless digital."

"I've been shooting a little myself," Lucas said.

"Yeah? A cop would have some great opportunities…"

In the end, they found two photos of the Lexus sitting in the driveway, and one of the Toyota. The Toyota was taken side-on, and from some distance, late in the afternoon, and they couldn't make out anything special about it. In one of the photos of the Lexus, they could almost make out the license-tag number, in the thumbnail. "Hang on," Harelson said. He isolated the license, magnified it: "Got it."

"Amazing," Barr said, and he slapped the fat man on the back. "Print that."

The car was registered to a Louise Janowitz, and Louise Janowitz had insurance through State Farm, and a driver's license with the state of California. "So it's Louise, not Lauren or Laura or Martha," Barr said.

Lucas was a little skeptical. "Who knows, at this point? Why would she give the right name to the DMV when she lies about everything else?"

Barr, operating from his cell phone, said, "We'll have her driver's license photo in two minutes, down at the office. They can e-mail it to me and we can get it at a coffee shop Wi-Fi."

"Gotta find the car," Lucas said.

"We're looking," Barr said. "It's not a common car, even out here. So, if it's around, we'll get it."

They got the photo at a Starbucks, of a dark-haired, sallow-faced woman with large plastic-rimmed glasses and Three Stooges bangs. She peered out of the photo with a depressive frown, chin down. "Whoa. Gonna jump right on that," Barr said.

"Didn't think that was an option open to us," Lucas said.

"Hey, gay or straight, don't matter. Look at the vibration she gives out: you gonna jump on that, gay or straight?"

They didn't find the car immediately, but they did get a break. One of the LA crime-scene people, checking the house phone, found an incoming call that morning, an hour and fifteen minutes before the fire erupted.

The call had come from an over-the-counter prepaid cell phone, with no real way to trace it-but after some rigmarole with the local prosecutor's office, they got a list of phone calls from that cell phone. There weren't many, but two of them, two days apart, went to a motel in Bloomington.

"Might be nothing, but might be something," Barr said.

They were standing in the driveway of the burned house, talking, and Lucas saw the garage door across the street go up, and the pretty woman walk around the back of a Mercedes SL500. He waved at her, shouted, "Hang on," and said to Barr, "Get your computer."

Barr got it from his truck, and they walked it across the street. "Did David what's-his-face help out?" the woman asked. "Yes, he did, and we're grateful," Lucas said. "Could you take a look at this…"

She peered at the photo of Louise Janowitz for several long seconds, shook her head and laughed ruefully, said, "Yeah, that's her ' but that's not what she looks like. You'd never recognize her from that. She's actually quite attractive."

Lucas said to Barr, "That's not good."

They were sitting in a Fatburger in Marina del Rey, three hours after Lucas arrived, and Lucas looked at his watch, and then at a list Carol, his secretary, had made. He could get on a plane at four o'clock-maybe-and be back in the Cities by 10 p.m. The Bloomington motel was five minutes from the airport'

"You think you could get me on a four-o'clock plane out of LAX?"

Barr looked at his watch. "We'd have to move right along. I could call a cop out there, have him push you through."

Lucas popped the last of the Fatburger. "I'm thinking this: I was hoping to get the house and maybe Knofler, and maybe see something you wouldn't see, because I've got some background. Now, with no house and no suspect, I'm not going to get anything you won't. The way I see it, they were ready for us: they had a whole exit plan all figured out. She's probably in Canada by now."

"Why Canada?"

"Well, Canada's full of criminals, so it's a good place to hide out," Lucas explained.

"I didn't know that," Barr said. "Anyway-there's that motel. In Bloomfield, or whatever it is."

"Yeah. Bloomington. Maybe I oughta get back."

Barr slurped up the last of his orange soda, looked at his watch, and said, "Let's go. You got a ticket?"

From Barr's car Lucas called Carol, who called Northwest and got the ticket fixed; and he called Del, who said he'd get Shrake and Jenkins and they'd meet him at the motel.

At the airport, an airport cop was waiting at the ticket counter and pushed him through security, and got him a ride to the gate. The cabin attendant said, "Man, you were pushing it," and Lucas said, "Glad to be going home, though."

They pulled the door shut behind him, and as he settled into his seat his cell rang: the cabin attendant said, "Sir, you'll have to turn off your phone. We're ready to roll."

Lucas looked at the cell screen, saw that the call was from Los Angeles. He said, "I'm a police officer working a murder case. This will only take a minute and it could be important."

She nodded, curious, and Lucas opened the phone and said, "Yeah?" and Barr said, "We found that Lexus."

"Ah, jeez, I'm on the plane."

"Don't worry about it," Barr said. "It was illegally parked on a nice quiet street up in Pasadena, Ninita Parkway. Nice green oak trees over the street, nice houses, nice cars. They noticed it when it exploded and burned right down to the wheels."

"Man…"

"Some kind of bomb, probably on a timer," Barr said. "If a kid had messed with that car, or if a cop had checked it out, they might have been barbecued. So: take care."

"You, too. You ever need anything out of the Cities, let me know."

The three and a half hours going back wasn't as bad as the three and a half hours going out, because, to his own surprise, Lucas dozed off in the quiet cabin. He had a window seat, and declined the meal; dropped back, the seat softened by a pillow from the flight attendant, and closed his eyes. When he woke up, the guy in the next seat, who was poking at a laptop, said, "Wish I could sleep like that."

Lucas yawned and said, "How long was I out?"

"Close to three hours. Sleeping like a baby. We're coming up on Sioux Falls."

Lucas looked out the window, and there it was, lights of the city twinkling in the distance, Minnesota ahead in the dark. He was on the ground in an hour, on his cell phone, walking down the concourse: Del said, about the motel, "It's pretty small and stinky. I don't know. It could be something."

"I'll be there in fifteen," Lucas said.

The Wayfarer Motel was a crappy place, a long two-story rectangle with car parking on three sides and a chain-link fence and I-494 on the fourth side. Access was through two sets of hallways on each floor, up two sets of stairways. No elevators. The halls smelled of beer and cigarette smoke and disinfectant, with outdoor carpet hard underfoot.

Lucas hooked up with Del, Jenkins, and Shrake, and they did a stroll around the place, two-and-two, saw nothing of special interest, and met at the office. Two clerks were working the counter: a straw-headed kid, pale and thin, with Grand Theft Auto eyes; and a soft round Indian woman with a dot on her forehead.

They knew cops when they saw them, and the straw man said, "What's up?" and Del rolled out the pictures of Cohn and the woman-of-many-names. The clerks studied them for a minute, then the Indian woman, who wore a name tag that said, "Jane," shook her head and said, "No. They are not here."

"You're sure," Lucas said.

"I work here twelve hours a day," she said. "They're not here. Not only are they not here, they've never been here, not in the last eight months and twelve days, since I got here."

So they talked about the phone calls, and Jane explained that the phone number was the main number. If somebody called that number, one of the clerks answered it, and then switched it to the room. There was no record of which room took which call.

"Nothing suspicious lately? Nothing out of the ordinary?" Del asked. "Nothing that caught your eye?"

Straw Man glanced at Jane, then said, "Curtis Ramp was here. Not with his wife."

Curtis Ramp was a Minnesota Vikings running back. Shrake said, "Jesus, I hope it wasn't before a game?"

Straw Man shook his head: "It was Wednesday. He paid cash. He didn't want us to know who he was."

"That doesn't help a lot," Lucas said.

"Sorry, dude."

"We may send a couple of guys over here to sit with you for a while, watch who comes and goes," Lucas said. "We'll call you."

"Call the manager," Jane said. "He'd have to set it up."

In Lucas's absence, a cold front had come through, and the night was now chilly: the first night of the northern autumn, which sometimes started in August. Out in the parking lot, they looked up at the rows of windows, and Lucas said, "Well, shoot. I thought it might be something."

"Still might be," Del said. "Oughta get somebody here early tomorrow morning, watch people when they're moving around. Run some license tags…"

Shrake and Jenkins had come together in Jenkins's Crown Vic, and they broke away, and Lucas and Del ambled down to the end of the parking lot to Lucas's Porsche, talking babies. Del was saying, "… dilating, but then she got stuck. The doc said if she doesn't go by the end of the week, she wants to do a C-section. I worried about it, but'" He realized he'd lost Lucas, who'd stopped, staring back at the lot: "What?"

"Look at that old rattrap pickup," Lucas said.

"Uh…"

"It's got Oklahoma plates."

Del said, "Ah, jeez." He went and looked, and came back. "This can't be right, man. This can't be right." Down the lot, they could see Jenkins unlocking the door of his car, and Del whistled at them, and Jenkins looked up, and Del waved them back.

Lucas said, "It's got an NRA sticker; it's got a Bushmaster sticker." Bushmaster sold M-15 variants.

"Can't be right," Del said. "What'd the connection be?"

"Don't know," Lucas said. He scratched his head, mystified.

"Jenkins had some of the guy's pictures in his car," Del said.

Jenkins and Shrake came up and looked at the truck, and Jenkins said, "There're only two possibilities. Either it's a terrific coincidence and no big deal, or something is a lot more fucked up than we know about."

"You got those pictures?" Lucas asked.

"Got one," Jenkins said.

"Let's go ask Jane," Lucas said. "She should know."

Jane said, "Two-fourteen. Been here almost a week."

Lucas said, "Let me get my gun. We'll take him right now."