Lucas Davenport Collection

by John Sandford

  He said, “What is it?”

  “Peanut skin?” She brushed it off. “Gone now.”

  “Thanks.”

  SHE WENT on her way, turned into the greenroom, where people waited for their turn on Bob & Jane, got two sweet rolls, and ate them on the way back to Jennifer Carey’s office. She’d had breakfast, but not much—she and Lucas were both light eaters in the morning. She realized on the way over that since she planned to give the twenty dollars to Juliet, she’d better get a couple of sweet rolls when she could.

  A coffee niche, for employees only, was located down the hall from Carey’s office. She stopped there, looked around, stepped inside, and picked up the coffee donation can and peeled off the plastic lid. Three or four dollars. Not worth taking.

  She needed eighty dollars more, although a hundred would be better, she thought—enough to convince Whitcomb that Juliet had been working.

  Down the hall, she found Carey poking at her computer. Carey looked up and said, “Hi, good-lookin’,” with just enough forced cheer that Letty instantly knew who’d ratted her out. It might have been Lois, but it had gone through Carey to Lucas.

  “You ratted me out,” she said.

  Carey started to deny it, and then gave it up: “You’re too young. You don’t think so, but you are. When I was your age, I thought I was twenty-eight, too, but I wasn’t.”

  “How old were you when you shot your first cop?” Letty asked.

  “Letty, that’s not fair.” Carey was a hockey mom, and sometimes acted like one.

  “How old were you when you first drove your drunk mother home from the bar?” Letty asked.

  “Letty . . .” Carey was getting flustered.

  “How old were you when you first stole money to get something to eat?” Letty was all over her now.

  “For Christ’s sakes, I gotta do what I think is best,” Carey said. “You’re fourteen.”

  Letty leaned into it: “I know how old I am. When it comes to trouble, I am twenty-eight. Try not to forget that the next time you turn me in.”

  Carey rolled her eyes: “I don’t want to fight with you.”

  “I’m done,” Letty said. “But I need a ride to St. Paul and I need a camera in the park. I talked to some street kids—not prostitutes, just skaters from St. Paul—who are going to skate in one of the marches. It’ll make a good snip of film.”

  “I’m going over in fifteen minutes,” Carey said, eager to make peace. “The cameras are already over there, so . . . we’ll hook you up.”

  Letty smiled: “I’m not really mad at you. Everybody thinks they’re doing the right thing. You’re not, but I appreciate it anyway.”

  CAREY HAD her personal reporting rules that she’d been passing along to Letty. Like, before you go out on a job, always pee first. Even if you don’t feel like you have to. A woman can never find a comfortable place to pee when she needs one. Check your makeup and your hair; there’s never a place to do that when you need one—a little too much hairspray is better than too little.

  Letty went out in the newsroom to chat with some of the producers, keeping one eye on Carey’s office. When Carey came out and looked around, Letty waved at her, and Carey called, “I’ll be right back,” and she headed down toward the bathrooms. Letty ambled over to her office as she watched her go, and when she was sure that Carey was in the bathroom, she stepped into the office and pulled Carey’s purse out from under her desk.

  Carey never had any idea how much money she had or what she’d spent it on. She was one of those people who believed that if she had checks, she must have money. She made a good salary, and her husband was rich, so money, at least the kind you spend during the day, meant almost nothing to her: Letty popped the purse and took a peek into Carey’s billfold. Must be a thousand dollars in fifties, Letty thought. She took two of them, decided that the thickness of the currency seemed not at all diminished and took two more. She put the billfold back in the purse, put the purse back as she’d found it, and ambled back out of the office and over to the people she’d been talking with earlier.

  When Carey came back from the bathroom, she called, “Let’s do it,” and Letty went to join her.

  THE SKATERS were gathering in Mears Park in St. Paul’s Lower-town, an area of older brick warehouses converted to lofts and condos and small, marginal businesses. Letty pointed them out and Carey looked them over, from the front seat of her SUV, and then said, “You know, you do have a natural eye for this. I told your dad that last night.”

  “Maybe I’ll be an economist,” Letty said. “TV is starting to seem so superficial.”

  Carey made a rude noise and said, “Let’s get a truck over here. You go get your friends lined up.”

  CAREY CALLED a Channel Three van, and let Letty out to talk to the skaters while she took her SUV to a parking garage up the block. Letty got her cell phone out and called Juliet Briar: “Where are you?”

  “Still at home. Randy’s sleeping,” Briar said.

  “Tell him that a guy called for a date, and that you’ll walk down,” Letty said. “I got some money.”

  After a moment’s silence, Briar said, “Okay.”

  “Call me when you get out.”

  THE LEADER of the skate gang was named Marv, a burly, cheerful busted-faced guy with a shaven head and jeans so old that they looked like paper. He was wearing a T-shirt that said, “Mathews Solocam, Catch Us If You Can,” that was washed thinner than the jeans.

  He held out a fist and they bumped knuckles and he said, “How are you, babe?”

  “Don’t call me babe,” Letty said, but she said it with her happy face, and she asked, “So who’s who?”

  There were seven guys and one girl among the skaters, and all of them desperately wanted to be on television. As Marv introduced them, Letty kept looking at the girl, with her dry, underfed, feral face, thinking that she was the one; but she had to keep Marv and the others happy, too. A management problem.

  After the introductions, she said, “Listen, we’ve got a van coming with a camera. I’ll want to talk to Marv, and then to Jean, because she’s a girl, and we don’t have that many girl skaters, and then maybe whoever . . . but I’d like to see some runs, if you got anything that’s good.”

  One of the kids, a too-tall teenager with a bandaged hand, said, “We were jumping barrels . . .”

  “That’s terrific, that’s great,” Letty said. “Why don’t you guys get set up with the barrels and we’ll get shots of you skating, and then I’ll do a couple of quick interviews.”

  CAREY CAME back and Letty explained the situation to her, off to the side, and said, “Take a look at Jean’s face. Isn’t that a great face?”

  Carey looked at her, then said, “You really are going to be good at this. That’s a great face.”

  The van showed, and the kids gathered around the cameraman, whose name was Mike, not really believing that it was going to happen. So the kids did their tricks and Mike even lay on the ground behind a trash barrel that they were jumping and had a kid jump over him, which got everybody laughing.

  Briar called and said, “I’m out, I’m walking down the hill.”

  Letty: “I’m doing an interview in Mears Park. You know where that is?”

  “Yeah. I can come there.”

  Letty did a quick stand-up with Marv and a longer one with Jean, then they all bumped knuckles and the skaters took off. Letty did a couple of shots alone, putting up some background, and then she saw Briar standing on the sidewalk, watching.

  Off-camera, she walked over to Carey and said, “I’ve got somebody you need to meet.”

  “Who?”

  “Come on,” and she grabbed the older woman’s elbow and pulled her over toward Briar.

  THEY GOT HOT DOGS and talked for half an hour. Letty dug harder into Briar’s passivity; to her way of thinking, if she could replace Randy Whitcomb as Briar’s boss, she would be making progress.

  Carey, on the other hand, was fascinated by Briar’s story an
d her relationship with Whitcomb. “He can’t possibly love you. He treats you like an animal,” Carey said. “He loves himself, he doesn’t love you. I mean, he doesn’t, Juliet.”

  “You don’t know him,” Briar said defensively.

  Letty pushed: “She’s right. He doesn’t love you. If you think he does—well, you’re wrong.”

  Briar flinched, and put her head down, and said, “Okay,” and Carey looked at Letty and said, “Get off her back, Letty. Jeez.”

  “I’m just backing you up,” Letty said.

  “I’m discussing,” Carey said. “You’re pushing her around.”

  “Letty’s okay, she’s a friend,” Briar mumbled.

  “Going home is out of the question?” Carey asked.

  “As long as Don is around,” Briar said. “He won’t leave me alone, and Mom doesn’t believe me when I tell her about him.”

  “You’re sixteen?” Carey asked.

  “Almost seventeen. Next month,” Briar said.

  “And Don’s a mailman. So he’s got to be quite a bit older.”

  “He’s forty, I think,” Briar said. “He’s . . . an asshole.”

  “I DON’T want to embarrass you,” Carey said, “but I’ve got to ask. What does he do?”

  “Well, you know, he grabs me, he feels me up, he comes in the bathroom when I’m taking a shower—he’s got a nail thing that he can push in the doorknob, and open it even when it’s locked. He gets naked and he comes out and grabs me, and rubs himself on me. He’s come into my bedroom naked and gotten in bed, and when I tried to get out, he’s, you know, held me . . .”

  “Hasn’t raped you?”

  “No, but he will, if I go back,” Briar said. “He came into my bedroom naked and got in bed with me, when I was asleep, and when I woke up, he was all over me. He was trying to push my head down by his cock, and I bit him right here”—she touched her hip bone—“and he bled all over and was screaming at me . . . Mom pretended like she didn’t hear.”

  “You’ve seen him naked,” Carey said. “Does he have any identifying marks, you know, around his penis, or on his butt? You know, something you couldn’t have seen if he wasn’t naked?”

  Briar thought for a minute and then said, “Well . . . he shaves. You know, he shaves his cock and his balls. He does have a big brown spot, like a football shape, where the hair should be.”

  “Great!”

  “And when I bit him, I bit a piece out of him,” Briar said, with satisfaction. She smiled with the memory. “That’s why he was bleeding so much. I bit out a piece and spit it on the floor. Not a big piece, but you know, enough that he was really bleeding.”

  “So he’ll have a scar,” Letty said.

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “How long ago was that?” Carey asked.

  “Last spring. I ran away in June . . . and met Randy.”

  “Okay, then. We can handle Don,” Carey said. “We can get rid of him. If we get rid of him, could you go back home?”

  “Maybe,” Briar said. She was twisting her hands, and then she said, “Maybe Randy doesn’t love me. But you know what? He needs me. He needs me to take him around, and to rub his shoulders and his back, and clean him up. In my whole life, he’s the only person who ever needed me. Who ever wanted me around. Except Don, I guess.”

  Letty leaned forward: “You want to be needed, become a nurse. Not a hooker. God. Juliet.”

  Briar looked doubtful, and Carey said, “Let’s get rid of Don for a start. When we get rid of Don, and Juliet has a place to stay, then maybe we can make some progress.”

  Carey got up, and Letty said to her, “I need to walk with Juliet for one minute. I swear to God it won’t be any longer than that. I’ll be right back.”

  “What don’t you want me to hear?” Carey asked.

  Letty said, “Come on, Juliet. I’ll be right back, Jen.”

  DOWN THE SIDEWALK, Letty pressed seventy dollars into Juliet’s hand. “Is that enough?”

  “That should be,” Briar said, and showed a little sparkle. “He hasn’t caught me yet.”

  “He won’t catch you,” Letty said. “I can get some more money. We’ll meet tomorrow—I’ll call you. Remember what I said?”

  “Yup.” Briar showed a little grin. “Lie like a motherfucker.”

  CAREY HAD been watching from a distance, and when Letty walked back to her, she said, “All right—that was interesting, but there’s no story. I mean, nothing I would feel right about doing now. She’s really too young to say ‘yes’ to it.”

  “I don’t want to do a story, either,” Letty said. “I wanted you to meet her because I need to tell somebody the rest of it. I can’t tell Mom or Dad—Mom would freak out and she wouldn’t know what to do. And Dad . . . well, that’s the problem.”

  “What?” Carey asked.

  “Juliet’s pimp, this Randy. His name is Randy Whitcomb. Dad arrested him, and beat him up once—that’s why he got kicked off the Minneapolis police that one time.”

  “That guy!” Carey said. “I remember that.”

  “Yeah. Then Randy got paralyzed and he blames Dad for what happened. So now he’s trying to get back at Dad. By getting at me.”

  Carey’s mouth dropped: “What?”

  Letty filled in the rest of it, about Randy watching her in the park, tracking her to the McDonald’s. “You know what Dad’ll do if he finds out?”

  Carey said, “He’ll . . . oh, shit.”

  “He could get caught—they’ve had this long feud,” Letty said.

  “So what’re you doing with Juliet?”

  Letty shook her head: “First, tell me how we get rid of this mailman guy? Don.”

  “GET A CAMERA, you know, we’ve got guys who’ll do it for me,” Carey said. “We get a camera and ambush Don and ask him about rolling around with an underage girl, talk to him about the amount of jail time he’ll get. When he denies it, we tell him that she described his physical characteristics . . . and then we tell him that we’re more worried about her than about him doing jail time, so that if he moves out, and never comes back, there’s no story. But the minute he comes back, or makes one single threat, or even a phone call, we make him into a movie star, off he goes to prison.”

  “Simple,” Letty said.

  “Not simple, but effective. There was this chick who used to work for a Lutheran social services group; she’d take underage hookers away from their pimps. I helped her out a couple of times, this way. We could do it with Whitcomb, too. Back him off Juliet, back him off Lucas, tell him he goes back to prison . . .”

  Letty was shaking her head. “I actually thought about that. He’s on parole. I figured that we could send him back, because she’s underage. Then Juliet told me about him being paralyzed, and . . . He can’t do it. They don’t have sex because he can’t. He makes her work the street, and sometimes he makes her have sex with another guy, and he watches, and gets all worked up . . . but she could walk away if she wanted to. Just leave him. He can’t drive, either. So, everything she’s been doing . . . I mean, it looks voluntary. The other thing is . . . I’m not positive she’d testify against him.”

  “Ah, man.”

  “We need to get him,” Letty said. She held Carey with an intense stare, and Carey felt almost unable to move out of it. “For sure. Randy is crazy. I’ve talked to Juliet a lot, about Randy, and he’s crazy. If we don’t get him, maybe he’ll try to shoot Dad. Or me. Or Mom, or somebody. But he’s crazy and he’s getting crazier, so we’ve got to get him.”

  “How . . . ?”

  “What I’m trying to do is . . .” Letty looked away from Carey, up into the tree branches, away from Carey’s eyes.

  “What?”

  “I thought I might get Randy to . . . do something to her,” Letty said.

  “What?”

  “When he gets mad, he makes her get down on her hands and knees, naked, and then he beats her with this stick,” Letty said. “I’ve seen the stick—it has blood on it. He hasn’t done it f
or a month and . . . I mean, I don’t know how evidence works, fingerprints and all that. But if he finds out she’s been lying to him, and he beats her with that stick, and she calls me, and we call the cops . . . He’ll go back, right? Her blood will be on the stick, fresh, and her back will have the marks, and his fingerprints will be on the stick?”

  Carey stared at her for a long fifteen seconds, then said, “Juliet is supposed to be your friend.”

  “My dad is my friend,” Letty said.

  “But Juliet . . .” Carey’s jaw worked. “Letty, that’s appalling. What you’re thinking. That’s the coldest thing I ever heard of.”

  “You do what you gotta do,” Letty said, her eyes cutting back into Carey’s.

  Carey recoiled: “Not that.”

  “Look,” Letty said. “She’s gonna get beat, sooner or later. All we’re doing is taking advantage.”

  “You’re setting her up,” Carey said.

  “I’m taking care of Dad. Okay? That’s what I’m doing. So let’s take care of Don, and get Juliet a place to go if . . . this other thing happens.”

  “Letty! I can’t do this. This is awful,” Carey said.

  “It’s already going. There’s nothing you can do to stop it that wouldn’t help Randy, and hurt Juliet and Dad and me.” Letty stepped back and said, “So make your pick. Who do you help?”

  LUCAS, BORED, called Jenkins and Shrake, and found them, bored, getting nowhere. He got some names from them and hit a dozen condo buildings himself, running down the presidents of the condo associations, getting head shakes and uh-uhs from each of them: nobody had seen anybody who looked like Cohn or the woman in the cell-phone photograph.

  One of them said, “You might be on the right trail, though. We’ve only got twelve units here, and two of them are rented out. Bought on spec, can’t be sold—might be foreclosed. Same thing all over town, so there’s lots of space to hide out.”