Night Prey ld-6

by John Sandford

  “Ah.”

  “Last week, she doesn’t make it to school,” Greave continued. “The principal calls, no answer. A cop goes by for a look, can’t get the door open-it’s locked from the inside and there’s no answer on the phone. They finally take the door down, the alarms go off, and there she is, dead in her bed. George Joyce is dabbing the tears out of his eyes and looking like the cat that ate the canary. We figured they killed her.”

  “Autopsy?”

  “Yup. Not a mark on her. The toxicology reports showed just enough sedative for a couple of sleeping pills, which she had a prescription for. There was a beer bottle and a glass on her nightstand, but she’d apparently metabolized the alcohol because there wasn’t any in her blood. Her daughter said she had long-term insomnia, and she’d wash down a couple of sleeping pills with a beer, read until she got sleepy, and then take a leak and go to bed. And that’s exactly what it looks like she did. The docs say her heart stopped. Period. End of story.”

  Lucas shrugged. “It happens.”

  “No history of heart problems in her family. Cleared a physical in February, no problems except the insomnia and she’s too thin-but being underweight goes against the heart thing.”

  “Still, it happens,” Lucas said. “People drop dead.”

  Grave shook his head. “When the Joyces were running the flops, they had a guy whose job it was to keep things orderly. They brought him over to run the apartments. Old friend of yours; you busted him three or four times, according to the NCIC. Remember Ray Cherry?”

  “Cherry? Jesus. He is an asshole. Used to box Golden Gloves when he was a kid…” Lucas scratched the side of his jaw, thinking. “That’s a nasty bunch you got there. Jeez.”

  “So what do I do? I got nothing.”

  “Get a cattle prod and a dark basement. Cherry’d talk after a while.” Lucas grinned through his teeth, and Greave almost visibly shrank from him.

  “You’re not serious.”

  “Mmm. I guess not,” Lucas said. Then, brightening: “Maybe she was stabbed with an icicle.”

  “What?”

  “Let me think about it,” Lucas said.

  There were two landfills in Dakota County. Adhering to Murphy’s Law, they went to the wrong one first, then shifted down a series of blacktopped back roads to the correct one. For the last half-mile, they were pinched between two lumbering garbage trucks, gone overripe in the freshening summer.

  “Office,” Greave said, pointing off to the left. He dabbed at the front of his lavender suit, as though he were trying to whisk away the smell of rotten fruit.

  The dump office was a tiny brick building with a large plate-glass window, overlooking a set of truck scales and the lines of garbage haulers rumbling out to the edge of the raw yellow earth of the landfill. Lucas swung that way, dumped the Porsche in a corner of the lot.

  Inside the building, a Formica-topped counter separated the front of the office from the back. A fat guy in a green T-shirt sat at metal desk behind the counter, an unlit cigar in his mouth. He was complaining into a telephone and picking penny-sized flakes of dead skin off his elbows; the heartbreak of psoriasis. A door behind the fat man led to a phone booth… size room with a sink and a toilet. The door was open, and the stool was gurgling. A half-used roll of toilet paper sat on the toilet tank, and another one lay on the floor, where it had soaked full of rusty water.

  “So he says it’ll cost a hunnert just to come out here and look at it,” the fat guy said to the telephone, looking into the bathroom. “I tell you, I run up to Fleet-Farm and I get the parts… Well, I know that, Al, but this is drivin’ me fuckin’ crazy.”

  The fat guy put his hand over the mouthpiece and said, “Be with you in a minute.” Then to the phone, “Al, I gotta go, there’s a couple guys here in suits. Yeah.” He looked up at Lucas and asked, “You EPA?”

  “No.”

  The fat man said, “No,” to the phone, listened, then looked up again. “OSHA?”

  “No. Minneapolis cops.”

  “Minneapolis cops,” the fat man said. He listened for a minute, then looked up. “He sent the check.”

  “What?”

  “He sent the check to his old lady. Put it in the mail this morning, the whole thing.”

  “Terrific,” Lucas said. “I really hope he did, or we’ll have to arrest him for misfeasance to a police officer on official business, a Class Three felony.”

  Greave turned away to smile, while the fat man repeated what Lucas said into the phone, then after a pause said, “That’s what the man said,” and hung up. “He says he really mailed it.”

  “Okay,” said Lucas. “Now, we’re also looking for a guy who supposedly hangs around here. Junky Doog…” The fat man’s eyes slid away, and Lucas said, “So he’s out here?”

  “Junky’s, uh, kind of…” The fat man tapped his head.

  “I know. I’ve dealt with him a few times.”

  “Like, recently?”

  “Not since he got out of St. Peter.”

  “I think he got Alzheimer’s,” the fat man said. “Some days, he’s just not here. He forgets to eat, he shits in his pants.”

  “So where is he?” Lucas asked.

  “Christ, I feel bad about the guy. He’s a guy who never caught a break,” the fat man said. “Not one fuckin’ day of his life.”

  “Used to cut people up. You can’t do that.”

  “Yeah, I know. Beautiful women. And I ain’t no softy on crime, but you talk to Junky, and you know he didn’t know any better. He’s like a kid. I mean, he’s not like a kid, because a normal kid wouldn’t do what he did… I mean, he just doesn’t know. He’s like a… pit bull, or something. It just ain’t his fault.”

  “We take that into account,” said Greave, his voice soft. “Really, we’re concerned about these things.”

  The fat man sighed, struggled to his feet, walked around the counter to a window. He pointed out across the landfill. “See that willow tree? He’s got a place in the woods over there. We ain’t supposed to let him, but whatcha gonna do?”

  Lucas and Greave scuffed across the yellow-dirt landfill, trying to stay clear of the contrails of dust thrown up by the garbage trucks rumbling by. The landfill looked more like a highway construction site than a dump, with big D-9 Cats laboring around the edges of the raw dirt; and only at the edges did it look like a dump: a jumble of green plastic garbage bags, throwaway diapers, cereal boxes, cardboard, scraps of sheet plastic and metal, all rolled under the yellow dirt, and all surrounded by second-growth forest. Seagulls, crows, and pigeons hung over the litter, looking for food; a bony gray dog, moving jackal-like, slipped around the edges.

  The willow tree was an old one, yellow, with great weeping branches bright green with new growth. Beneath it, two blue plastic tarps had been draped tentlike over tree limbs. Under one of the tarps was a salvaged charcoal grill; under the other was a mattress. A man lay on the mattress, faceup, eyes open, unmoving.

  “Jesus, he’s fuckin’ dead,” Greave said, his voice hushed.

  Lucas stepped off the raw earth, Greave tagging reluctantly behind, followed a narrow trail around a clump of bushes, and was hit by the stink of human waste. The odor was thick, and came from no particular direction. He started breathing through his mouth, and unconsciously reached across to his hipbone and pulled his pistol a quarter inch out of the holster, loosening it, then patted it back. He moved in close before he called out, “Hello. Hey.”

  The man on the mattress twitched, then subsided again. He lay with one arm outstretched, the other over his pelvis. There was something wrong with the outstretched arm, Lucas saw, moving closer. Just off the mattress, a flat-topped stump was apparently being used as a table. A group of small brown cylinders sat on the stump, like chunks of beef jerky. Beside the stump was a one-gallon aluminum can of paint thinner, top off, lying on its side.

  “Hey…”

  The man rolled up farther, tried to sit up. Junky Doog. He was barefoot. And he had a
knife, a long curved pearl-handled number, open, the blade protruding five inches from the handle. Doog held it delicately, like a straight razor, and said, “Gothefuckaway,” one word. Doog’s eyes were a hazy white, as though covered with cataracts, and his face was burned brown. He had no teeth and hadn’t shaved in weeks. As he stood, his graying hair fell down on his shoulders, knotted with grime. He looked worse than Lucas had ever seen him: looked worse than Lucas had ever seen a human being look.

  “There’s shit all over the place,” Greave said. Then: “Watch it, watch the blade…”

  Junky whirled the knife in his fingers with the dexterity of a cheerleader twirling a baton, the steel twinkling in the weak sunlight. “Gothefuckaway,” he screamed. He took a step toward Lucas, fell, tried to catch himself with his free hand, the hand without the knife, screamed again, and rolled onto his back, cradling the free hand. The hand had no fingers. Lucas looked at the stump: the brown things were pieces of finger and several toes.

  “Jesus Christ,” he muttered. He glanced at Greave, whose mouth was hanging open. Junky was weeping, trying to get up, still with the knife flickering in his good hand. Lucas stepped behind him, and when Junky made it to his knees, put a foot between his shoulder blades and pushed him facedown on the worn dirt just off the mattress. Pinning him, he caught the bad arm, and as Junky squirmed, crying, caught the other arm, shook the knife out of his hand. Junky was too weak to resist; weaker than a child.

  “Can you walk?” Lucas asked, trying to pull Junky up. He looked at Greave. “Give me a hand.”

  Junky, caught in a crying jag, nodded, and with a boost from Lucas and Greave, got to his feet.

  “We gotta go, man. We gotta go, Junky,” Lucas said. “We’re cops, you gotta come with us.”

  They led him back through the shit-stink, through the weeds, Junky stumbling, still weeping; halfway up the path, something happened, and he pulled around, looked at Lucas, his eyes clearing. “Get my blade. Get my blade, please. It’ll get all rusted up.”

  Lucas looked at him a minute, looked back. “Hold him,” he said to Greave. Junky had nothing to do with the killings; no way. But Lucas should take the knife.

  “Get the blade.”

  Lucas jogged back to the campsite, picked up the knife, closed it, and walked back to where Greave held Junky’s arm, Junky swaying in the path. Junky’s mind had slipped away again, and he mutely followed Lucas and Greave across the yellow dirt, walking stiffly, as though his legs were posts. Only the big toes remained on his feet. His thumb and the lowest finger knuckles remained on his left hand; the hand was fiery with infection.

  Back at the shed, the fat man came out and Lucas said, “Call 911. Tell them a police officer needs an ambulance. My name is Lucas Davenport and I’m a deputy chief with the City of Minneapolis.”

  “What happened, did you…?” the fat man started, then saw first Junky’s hand, and then his feet. “Oh my sweet Blessed Virgin Mary,” he said, and he went back into the shed.

  Lucas looked at Junky, dug into his pocket, handed him the knife. “Let him go,” he said to Greave.

  “What’re you gonna do?” Greave asked.

  “Just let him go.”

  Reluctantly, Greave released him, and the knife, still closed, twinkled in his hand. Lucas stepped sideways from him, a knife fighter’s move, and said, “I’m gonna cut you, Junky,” he said, his voice low, challenging.

  Junky turned toward him, a smile at the corner of his ravaged face. The knife turned in his hand, and suddenly the blade snapped out. Junky stumbled toward Lucas.

  “I cut you; you not cut me,” he said.

  “I cut you, man,” Lucas said, beginning to circle to his right, away from the blade.

  “You not cut me.”

  The fat man came out and said, “Hey. What’re you doin’?”

  Lucas glanced at him. “Take it easy. Is the ambulance coming?”

  “They’re on the way,” the fat man said. He took a step toward Junky. “Junky, man, give me the knife.”

  “Gonna cut him,” Junky said, stepping toward Lucas. He stumbled, and Lucas moved in, caught his bad arm, turned him, caught his shabby knife-arm sleeve from behind, turned him more, grabbed the good hand and shook the knife out.

  “You’re under arrest for assault on a police officer,” Lucas said. He pushed the fat man away, picked up the knife, folded it and dropped it in his pocket. “You understand that? You’re under arrest.”

  Junky looked at him, then nodded.

  “Sit down,” Lucas said. Junky shambled over and sat on the flat concrete stoop outside the shack. Lucas turned to the fat man. “You saw that. Remember what you saw.”

  The fat man looked at him doubtfully and said, “I don’t think he would have hurt you.”

  “Arresting him is the best I can do for him,” Lucas said quietly. “They’ll put him inside, clean him up, take care of him.”

  The fat man thought about it, nodded. The phone rang, and he went back inside. Lucas, Greave, and Junky waited in silence until Junky looked up suddenly and said, “Davenport. What do you want?”

  His voice was clear, controlled, his eyes focused.

  “Somebody’s cuttin’ women,” Lucas said. “I wanted to make sure it wasn’t you.”

  “I cut some women, long time ago,” Junky said. “There was this one, she had beautiful… you know. I made a grapevine on them.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “Long time ago; they liked it,” he said.

  Lucas shook his head.

  “Somebody cuttin’ on women?” Junky asked.

  “Yeah, somebody’s cuttin’ on women.”

  After another moment of silence, Greave asked Junky, “Why would they do that? Why would he be cuttin’ women?” In the distance, over the sound of the trucks moving toward the working edge of the fill, they could hear a siren. The fat man must have made it an emergency.

  “You got to,” Junky said solemnly to Greave. “If you don’t cut them, especially the pretty ones, they get out of hand. You can’t have women getting outa hand.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. You cut ‘em, they stay put, that’s for sure. They stay put.”

  “So why would you go a long time and not cut any women, then start cuttin’ a lot of women?”

  “I didn’t do that,” Junky said. He cast a defensive eye at Greave.

  “No. The guy we’re looking for did that.”

  Lucas looked on curiously as the man in the lavender Italian suit chatted with the man with no toes, like they were sharing a cappuccino outside a cafй.

  “He just started up?” Junky asked.

  “Yup.”

  Junky thought about that, pawing his face with his good hand, then his head bobbed, as though he’d worked it out. “‘Cause a woman turns you on, that’s why. Maybe you see a woman and she turns you on. Gets you by the pecker. You go around with your pecker up for a few days, and you gotta do something. You know, you gotta cut some women.”

  “Some woman turns you on?”

  “Yup.”

  “So then you cut her.”

  “Well.” Junky seemed to look inside himself. “Maybe not her, exactly. Sometimes you can’t cut her. There was this one…” He seemed to drift away, lost in the past. Then: “But you gotta cut somebody, see? If you don’t cut somebody, your pecker stays up.”

  “So what?”

  “So what? You can’t go around with your pecker up all the time. You can’t.”

  “I wish I could,” Greave cracked.

  Junky got angry, intent, his face quivering. “You can’t. You can’t go around like that.”

  “Okay…”

  The ambulance bumped into the landfill, followed a few seconds later by a sheriff’s car.

  “Come on, Junky, we’re gonna put you in the hospital,” Lucas said.

  Junky said to Greave, pulling at Greave’s pant leg with his good hand, “But you got to get her, sooner or later. Sooner or later, you got to get the
one that put your pecker up. See, if she goes around putting your pecker up, anytime she wants, she’s outa hand. She’s just outa hand, and you gotta cut her.”

  “Okay…”

  Lucas filed a complaint with the sheriff’s deputy who followed the ambulance in, and Junky was hauled away.

  “I’m glad I came with you,” Greave said. “Got to see a dump, and a guy cutting himself up like a provolone.”

  Lucas shook his head and said, “You did pretty good back there. You’ve got a nice line of bullshit.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. Talking to people, you know, that’s half of homicide.”

  “I got the bullshit. It’s the other part I ain’t got,” Greave said gloomily. “Listen, you wanna stop at my mystery apartment on the way back?”

  “No.”

  “C’mon, man.”

  “We’ve got too much going on,” Lucas said. “Maybe we’ll catch some time later.”

  “They’re wearing me out in homicide,” Greave said. “I get these notes. They say, ‘Any progress?’ Fuck ‘em.”

  Greave went on to homicide to check in, while Lucas walked down to Roux’s office and stuck his head in.

  “We picked up Junky Doog. He’s clear, almost for sure.”

  He explained, and told her how Junky had mutilated himself. Roux, nibbling her lip, said, “What happens if I feed him to the Strib?”

  “Depends on how you do it,” Lucas said, leaning against the door, crossing his arms. “If you did it deep off-the-record, gave them just the bare information… it might take some heat off. Or at least get them running in a different direction. In either case, it’d be sorta cynical.”

  “Fuck cynical. His prior arrests were here in Hennepin, right?”

  “Most of them, I think. He was committed from here. If you tipped them early enough, they could get across the street and pull his files.”

  “Even if it’s bullshit, it’s an exclusive. It’s a lead story,” Roux said. She rubbed her eyes. “Lucas, I hate to do it. But I’m taking some serious damage now. I figure I’ve got a couple of weeks of grace. After that, I might not be able to save myself.”