Naked Prey ld-14

by John Sandford

  He led them to a cubicle at the back of the room, where an Indian man with two careful red-ribbon-tied braids was poking at a computer. "Les, are we still on last night's tapes on Number Twelve?"

  "Yeah. That's good for another couple of days." The man looked curiously at Lucas and Del.

  "State police," Hoffman said. "Looking into the Jane Warr thing."

  "Hanged," Les said. He toyed with the end of one of his braids. "That sort of freaked me out when I heard it. She won't be on Twelve, though… "

  "We're looking for another fella. Go to ten o'clock. Start there."

  The computer guy typed in a group of codes, and they waited, fifteen seconds, then twenty, and finally a wide-angled color film came up. The people in the film moved in a herky-jerky motion, indicating that the camera was shooting at a super-slow rate. "There he is," Hoffman said, tapping the camera.

  The camera was looking down a long row of slots from slightly above. Two-thirds of the way down the row, a tall man in a dark coat, watch cap, and glasses was playing one of the machines.

  "Can we get a closer shot of him?" Lucas asked.

  "Not from that camera-we could have zoomed in if we thought he was up to something, but he never did anything," Hoffman said. "I just noticed him when I was down there because he didn't seem right. I forgot about his glasses, though."

  "How about another camera?"

  "The overhead won't help, but we've got a camera coming across from the side, but it's gonna be partly blocked by the machines."

  "Number twenty-eight," Les said. "I can get it if you want it."

  "Get it," Lucas said.

  Number twenty-eight showed slices of the man's face, only marginally more clearly than the first camera. "Is that the best there is?"

  "Probably got him walking in or out on number thirty-six, but I don't know when he arrived. Leaving, we'd only get the back of his head… It'd take some time. I don't know how much better the shot would be," Hoffman said.

  "We could take the flashes we got of him on twenty-eight, freeze the shots, and then stitch them together and we'd have his whole face," Les said. "I could do it in Photoshop."

  "How long would that take?"

  "I don't know. I've never done it, but I think I could. I could print the best partial shots, too."

  "Let's try it all," Lucas said to Hoffman. "We can get a subpoena to make it all legal."

  "That'd be good," Hoffman said. "It'd help publicity-wise, if somebody asks-but we could get started right away. Look, look where he keeps looking."

  "What?"

  Hoffman tapped the monitor. "See, he keeps looking over the top of the machine, sideways. That's where Jane is. She's out of the picture, but he keeps looking over there. Here comes Small Bear… "

  A woman pushing a change cart moved into the picture. When she got to the man, she stopped and spoke to him. He nodded, took out his wallet and gave her a bill. She gave him a stack of coins, said a couple more words, then pushed on down the aisle.

  "Who's that?"

  "JoAnne Small Bear. Been working here since we opened."

  "We need to talk to her," Lucas said. "We're gonna need all the tape you've got of this guy. Even the overheads. He might be wearing a ring or a watch, and that could be a good thing to know."

  Hoffman nodded. "Sure. I'll have Les pull out everything we've got. You're a hundred percent sure it's him?"

  "No. Only about ninety percent," Lucas said. "Ninety and climbing."

  "How about this Small Bear?" Del asked. "Where can we get her?"

  Hoffman looked at his watch. "She's gotta be checked in by now-she works the three-to-eleven. Let's go find her."

  Joanne Small bear looked nothing at all like a bear-she looked more like a raspberry. Barely five feet tall, she was jolly and fat, with black eyes and brilliant white teeth; she wore boot-cut jeans with a western shirt and a turquoise necklace. She remembered the man in the watch cap. "He looked lonely and sad," she said. "Pretty good-looking, though. Polite."

  "Any particular characteristics that might tell us about him?" Del asked.

  "Maybe," she said. "You think he killed Jane Warr?"

  "We need to talk to him," Lucas said.

  "Jane was a big pain in the ass," Small Bear said.

  "You don't hang people for being a pain in the ass," Del said. "You wouldn't have wanted to see her this morning when they cut her down."

  Small Bear exhaled and said, "I know one thing that might be important. When he opened his billfold to give me some bills, I saw that he had a black card. One of those American Express black cards."

  Del looked at Lucas and Lucas shrugged.

  Small Bear looked from Lucas to Del to Lucas and said, "You don't know about the black cards?"

  "I don't know what you're talking about," Lucas said.

  "We get every card in the world in here," Hoffman said. "The black card is called the Centurion Card. To get one, you gotta spend a hundred and fifty thousand bucks a year with American Express. I bet there aren't a hundred of them in Minnesota."

  "You're kidding me," Lucas said. "A hundred and fifty thousand a year?"

  "That's what I hear."

  Del said to Lucas, "That ought to narrow the list."

  Lucas stepped away, took out his cell phone, found a slip of paper with Neil Mitford's personal cell-phone number and punched it in. Mitford answered on the second ring: "This is Davenport. Things are moving here. We could have a photo and maybe a name pretty quick-but we need some help."

  "What?"

  "We need somebody to get to American Express. Maybe there's a local office or a local official we can give a subpoena to, but we need all the names of all the Centurion Card members from Minnesota and the Kansas City area. Maybe somebody could feed them a list of ZIP codes. We need it quick as we can."

  "Wait a minute, let me jot this down." After a second of silence, Mitford said, "What the fuck is a Centurion Card?"

  "Some kind of exclusive card," Lucas said. "The casino people say they're pretty rare."

  "I'll find out the fastest way to do it, and get it to you."

  "See if you can get a printable list from them, and fax it to the sheriff's office here. And tell them, you know, it involves a multiple murder. Put a little heat on them."

  "I can do heat," Mitford said. "I'll call you."

  Hoffman had walked away while Lucas was talking; when he got off the phone, Del said, "Hoffman's gone to get Anderson. His brother-in-law."

  "Damnit. I would have liked to have been there, see how the guy takes it."

  "He went over there… he said he'd be right back, maybe we could catch him."

  They found Hoffman and Anderson just outside an employee's canteen off the main floor. Anderson was a thin, dark-haired white man with big crooked teeth and a small narrow mustache. He was waving his arms around, his face harsh and urgent, as he talked to Hoffman, who leaned against a wall with his arms crossed. Lucas heard, "Goddamnit, Clark, you know me better than that, I just ate lunch… "

  Lucas came up, with Del trailing, and said, "There you are."

  Hoffman turned and pushed away from the wall. To Anderson he said, "These are the cops."

  Anderson pushed a finger at Lucas: "What the hell are you doing, telling Clark that I've been cheating on Suzie?"

  "Didn't exactly say that," Lucas said. "We heard from a guy in town that you were pretty friendly with Jane Warr."

  "What guy?"

  "Can't tell you, unless we bust you. Then you'd have a right to know," Lucas said, hardening up. "Your lawyer could get the name."

  Anderson shriveled back. "My lawyer? What the hell is going on?"

  Del edged in, the beat-up good guy. "Listen: just tell us-how well did you know her?"

  "I wasn't screwing her, if that's what you mean."

  "How well?" Del pressed.

  Anderson took a step back, and the stress in his voice dropped a notch. "A little bit. She used to deal in Vegas and I worked out there for a whi
le, years ago. I didn't know her then-we weren't even there at the same time-but you know, working in Vegas was sort of a big deal for both of us. When we were both off at the same time, we'd eat lunch together, here in the canteen, sometimes. But most of the time, just in a group, only once or twice, when there was just the two of us." He looked at Hoffman: "Clark, I wouldn't bullshit you."

  "All right," Hoffman said.

  Del said, "Did you ever meet any of her friends, Deon Cash or Joe Kelly?"

  "I didn't really meet them, but I knew who they were, because they were black," Anderson said. To Hoffman: "That's another reason I wouldn't do it, Clark. Even if I'd wanted to. You ever see her boyfriend? The guy was like some kind of ghetto killer or something."

  "All right," Hoffman said again.

  "She ever say anything about them?" Lucas asked. "Or was she worried about anything? Did she seem apprehensive, or scared?"

  "A few weeks back, I don't know, three or four weeks, the Joe guy took off. Or disappeared. She didn't know where he went, she said he just vanished. She was pretty worried about him, but that's all I know. She never did say if he ever showed up."

  "She seemed scared about it?"

  Anderson dipped his chin, thinking, scratched his head, straightened his hair-a little relieved grooming, Lucas thought-and said, "Maybe scared. Sort of more freaked out, like when you find out something weird about someone. Like if somebody told you your best friend was a child molester, or something."

  "Did you see a guy watching her last night? A big guy."

  "Wasn't here last night. I was out with my wife," Anderson said, leaning on the wife.

  "Okay," Lucas said. "Tell me this: how much coke was she pushing out on the floor here?"

  "What?"

  "Cocaine," Del said.

  Anderson looked at them like they were crazy. "She wasn't dealing cocaine. No way. I woulda known about that. You get a bunch of dealers and one of them is pushing, everybody knows. There was nothing like that about Jane."

  "She use it?" Lucas asked.

  Anderson's eyes flicked away. "Maybe… I never saw her use it." He unconsciously rubbed his nose with the back of his hand. "But she used to get a little cranked, and once or twice I thought she might've gone back to the ladies' can and done something."

  "You didn't tell us," Hoffman said.

  "I didn't know," Anderson said. "Hell, you even hint at something like that around here, and the next thing you know, somebody's looking for a job. And I kinda liked her."

  "But not too much," Hoffman said.

  "No. Jesus, Clark." Then his eyes narrowed, and he turned to Lucas. "Did that asshole Bud Larson put you on me?"

  Lucas kept his face straight and shook his head. "Haven't heard any Larsons mentioned," he said. "Why?"

  "Nothin'," Anderson said. To Hoffman: "He was the guy who complained that we cold-decked him. Last week? Mean-looking guy?"

  Del looked at Lucas and shook his head.

  When they were finished with Anderson-still a worried man, despite Hoffman's assurances that he believed him-they went looking for other employees who remembered the big man. Les, the computer operator, brought down the first printout of the man's face: it was fuzzy, but would be recognizable in context.

  Nobody else remembered talking to him.

  By the time they finished talking with other employees, Les had saved a dozen shots of the man, and two stitched-together composites, to a CD that could be opened on any PC with the Imaging program, which he said was most of them.

  "We still need the actual tapes," Lucas told him.

  "We're pulling them; we'll hang on to them," he said.

  They'd been in the casino for an hour and a half when Mitford called back. "We're running with Amex. They accepted a faxed subpoena and they're putting the list together now. They say they'll have it in half an hour. I'm having copies faxed to the sheriff's office up there, and another one down here. They say there might be a couple hundred names."

  "We'll head downtown," Lucas said. "I've got a CD with some photos on it."

  "We'd like to see some down here."

  "I'll e-mail them to you. You gonna be there?"

  "Until you guys go to bed," Mitford said. "Washington just had a press conference in Grand Forks and he says the law enforcement agencies must be complicit in this crime-I'm reading this-either actually or morally. Then… ah, blah blah blah. I think he's on his way up there to have a rally."

  "Yeah? In Armstrong? Who's gonna rally?"

  "I don't know. I'm just telling you what he says."

  "I'll get back to you," Lucas said.

  On the way out, they thanked Hoffman, agreed that Anderson probably hadn't been playing around on his sister, and made arrangements to have the videotapes picked up by a BCA crime scene man.

  "So we got a face and a few hundred names," Del said. He looked at his watch. "You think we'll get him by midnight?"

  "We're rolling," Lucas said. "And I'll tell you what: he left enough stuff on the bodies that when we identify him, we've got him. I'd bet that hair was his, I bet that blood on Warr's face was his."

  "Could be Cash's."

  "Not dripping down like that. It was fresh when she was hanging."

  "God bless DNA," Del said.

  On the way back to town, Lucas called Dickerson and filled him in. Then, "Did you get anything out of that motel room? Fingerprints, hair, anything?"

  "We've got an ocean of fingerprints, but we've also got some places that appear to have been wiped," Dickerson said. "I wouldn't get your hopes up."

  "Did you hear anything from St. Paul about tracking down the Cherokee?"

  "If you go back a month, you can find maybe thirty Cherokee transactions in Minnesota. We've got the names on those, and we're working with North and South Dakota, Missouri and Iowa. I think Iowa's in, haven't gotten word from the others yet. I'm not sure South Dakota is computerized enough to get what we need that quick."

  "Let's get what we can."

  ABUNCH OF cops were leaning on the wall outside the Law Enforcement Center, smoking, when Lucas and Del pulled into the parking lot. Lucas had just gotten out of the car when his cell phone rang.

  "Yeah?"

  "Lucas, it's Neil. I got the list on those cards down here, and it'll be up there in the next couple of minutes. I don't think you have to waste a lot of time checking it out."

  "Why not?"

  " 'Cause I think I know who it is."

  "What?"

  "There's a guy on the list named Hale Sorrell. You remember him?"

  "Sorrell? He's… oh, shit."

  Del said, "What?"

  Lucas ignored him, and asked Mitford, "Do you know him?"

  "Yeah. I once tried to get him to give some money to our guy, on the basis that our guy was a rational conservative Democrat. Sorrell wasn't buying; he's a dyed-in-the-wool Republican. Seemed like an okay guy. Shitload of money from Medlux."

  "Big guy, but not fat, big shoulders, dark hair, middle forties, glasses, this guy had a recent beard… "

  "I don't know if he wears glasses, but he's at an age where he might. He's forty-six. He could grow the beard. Everything else is right on."

  "I'm gonna e-mail you a photo. Maybe a couple of them," Lucas said. "Gimme an address."

  "What?" Del asked, when Lucas rang off. "We got him?"

  "Maybe," Lucas said. "Hale Sorrell? You remember?"

  Del thought for a moment, then a light flared behind his eyes. "Oh, shit."

  "That's what I said. Let's get this list. Maybe they got a T1 or a DSL line out of here, we can send the photos from here."

  They crossed the parking lot at a half-trot. One of the deputies pushed away from the wall and said, "Chief Davenport… you remember me?"

  Lucas slowed down. He did remember the deputy, more or less. He'd beaten up the guy's partner a few years before, in a different county, but not too far away. "Yeah, I do," Lucas said. "What happened, you take a transfer?"

  "Moved over here w
hen Sheriff Mason retired. My folks live over here. Anyway, have you seen the TV? The news?"

  "No. Bad?"

  "Pretty bad. That little girl, Letty, she was terrific, but man, they took some pictures of those people hanging in the trees, and they're everywhere. They were on the CBS and ABC and NBC evening news, and they're on CNN almost full-time. They got video of the bodies sort of swinging in the wind."

  "Aw, Christ."

  "Then that Washington guy gave a talk down in Grand Forks and they had this video picture behind him with the bodies hanging, and it looked like he was standing in there with them, and he was screaming about lynching."

  "Maybe we better figure this out in a hurry."

  "I'm pretty sure you can do it," the deputy said. "I been telling the guys about you."

  "Not too much, I hope," Lucas said.

  "Yeah, I told them that part," the deputy said. "That's the best part. Uh, whatever happened to the girl? The girl that come up with you?"

  "Marcy Sherrill. She's a lieutenant in Minneapolis, now. She runs the Intelligence unit."

  "Really… jeez." The deputy was impressed.

  "Gotta go," Lucas said. "Nice talking to you again."

  As he and Del went inside, he heard the deputy's voice, "… got a pair of knockers on her like muskmelons and… "

  "You got groupies," Del said.

  "Groupie with a good eye for knockers," Lucas said, amused. "Muskmelons… those are cantaloupes, right?"

  The Sheriff's Department had a fast line out. Anderson and a dozen other cops were in the building when Lucas and Del arrived, and came out to meet them. "Something happen?"

  "We might have a name," Lucas said. "We need to send some pictures to St. Paul, right now."

  Anderson's jaw dropped. He stood like that for a moment, looked at a deputy who'd trailed him in, and then said, "Well, Jiminy, who is it? You mean a name for the killer?"

  "Possibly. Know in a minute, if I can get an Internet connection on a computer with a CD drive."

  "I got one in my office."