Buried Prey p-21

by John Sandford

  Landry came to the door in a dressing gown, looked at him through half-drunk morning eyes, and said, “Yep, it’s you. You look tougher than you used to.”

  “You okay?” Lucas asked.

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” she said, pulling the gown tight around herself. “Come on in. I work late, I should be sleeping for another couple of hours.”

  She had one bedroom, a small living room with a kitchen to one side, a round wooden table to eat at, a corduroy-covered couch to sit on, and a TV peering across the couch. Lucas sat on one end of the couch and took out his pictures.

  She went through them, pulled out the same picture that Ryan had. “That’s the closest,” she said.

  “Just close, or do you think that’s him?”

  “If I were putting a face on him, with this computer or whatever it is, that’s what I’d draw. There’s something not quite right around the mouth, but it’s pretty good.” She stood up, absently scratched her crotch while looking around the living room, then tottered off to the kitchen area and came back with a pencil and a book. She put the paper on the book and then used the pencil to touch up the mouth. After one try and an erasure, she said, “There. That’s better.”

  She handed it back to Lucas: she’d made only a small change, but one of significance-she’d changed the line of his lips, from squared-off, to a descending curve. She asked, “Do you think he killed the Jones girls?”

  Lucas said, “I think maybe he did. I think this time I’m going to get a chance to ask him.”

  “I saw on a Channel Three promo that some woman was attacked by him and got away. She’s on at noon.”

  Kelly Barker had gotten her wish, Lucas thought. “She’s the one who gave us this picture,” he said.

  “So he was still trying to snatch girls like years later,” Landry said. “You think he got some that nobody knows about?”

  Lucas stood up, stuffed the pictures of Fell back in his briefcase. “I hate to think about that,” he said.

  He took the stairs down instead of the elevator and was slowed by two men, artists, he supposed, carrying a four-by-eight sheet of plywood down the stairs. When they turned it around the corner, he saw that it was painted with a picture of a dancing man, like Lucas had seen on tarot cards.

  Back at his car, he decided not to go after Mary Ann Ang/ Morgan. He might have screwed up a few lives through simple inexperience, way back when, but he didn’t need to screw up another, by showing up on her doorstep with questions about a massage parlor.

  He would locate and identify Fell-he probably had enough now, he thought-and doubted that Ang/Morgan would be able to speed that up much. Now, it was all research.

  While Lucas was talking to Landry, the killer was lying facedown on his couch. Just as he had gotten out of the shower, he’d suffered a series of muscle spasms in his back and legs, and he was afraid the ride might have done something to his spine. He found a bottle of oxycodone, left over from an oral surgery, popped three of them.

  After an hour on the couch, he felt good enough to eat. He turned on the TV and headed into the kitchen. He was putting together three fried-egg-and-onion sandwiches on Wonder bread when he heard a promo for a woman who might be able to identify the killer of the Jones girls.

  He went into the living room to watch, eating the sandwiches, swilling Diet Pepsi. He had to wait ten minutes, through the last part of a gardening show, before the noon news came up. Kelly Barker was the first story.

  He remembered the bitch with perfect clarity. He’d cut her up, but she got away-one of only two women to get away from him. The other had been in Kansas, under similar circumstances. But he’d made his move too soon then, and never got close enough to touch.

  With Barker, he’d gotten close enough, but she’d fought him and then she’d gotten a couple of steps on him, and she’d run like the wind. He’d made the executive decision to get the fuck out of there.

  Now she was on TV-and she had a picture that looked something like him.

  He unconsciously licked egg and grease off his fingers, shook his head, and when she’d finished, went off to lie down and think about it.

  Lucas got back to his office at five minutes to twelve. He turned on the TV, to Channel Three, for the Midday Report. Del wandered in as he was waiting for the show to come on: “I talked to a security guy at Wells Fargo,” he said. “They have a file of three cards they issued at different times, and they think they might all be linked to the same guy. John Fell was the first one. The others were a Ronald James Hubbard and a Tom Piper.”

  “Nursery rhyme names,” Lucas said. “Mother Hubbard and Tom the piper’s son.”

  “Yeah, the Wells Fargo guy picked that up, too. He wasn’t working with them, then, Norwest Bank issued the cards before it took over Wells Fargo, but the old Norwest file had all three guys already pulled out. No idea who he was, but he did the same thing with all three of them: had an address to start it, had it linked to a checking account he’d opened a couple of years earlier, changed the address to a post office box, emptied out the account, and skipped on the last credit-card bill. The first two final bills were small change, but the last one, he skipped on four thousand dollars. He worked it as a con, that last time.”

  “Checks?” Lucas asked.

  Del shook his head: “It’s all electronic. We can get facsimiles, but not the originals. They’ve all been recycled.”

  “But we know what he was paying for…”

  “Yeah, we got that. But it’s all pretty obscure. Small amounts, scattered all over the place. Maybe porn, like we were thinking. Could be books or records. That kind of money. Except that last one, toward the end, he bought a lot of stereo and TV stuff-stuff he could sell, I think.”

  “But why would he hide books or money on a fake account?”

  “That’s why I’m thinking porn, or something like it. Sex toys or something. I can’t find any of the account names at their address, so they were small-time, whatever they were. I’ll keep looking.”

  The news came up on Channel Three, and Lucas used his remote to push the volume. After a story about a woman who cleaned out the accounts of a local charity to support her Vegas habit, Barker came up, sitting on a couch, talking to Jennifer Carey, the woman with whom Lucas shared a daughter.

  “She’s on some kind of anti-aging sauce,” Del said. “She looks terrific.”

  “Got the cheekbones,” Lucas agreed.

  Barker said, “… came as a complete surprise. I agreed to cooperate, of course, so I went to the BCA office in St. Paul, and talked to an imaging expert named John Retrief, who helped me put together the image of the man who attacked me.”

  The image of Fell flashed up full-screen, stuck for a moment, then pulled back, and down, to reveal the two women again.

  “And this man they’re looking for, this John Fell-he matches that image?” Carey asked.

  “He matches exactly, according to Agent Davenport,” Barker said, with a solemn turn of her lips and eyes.

  “Jesus, I didn’t say that,” Lucas said.

  Del said, “You did now.”

  She continued, “And if you read the Star Tribune this morning, there’s a story on the case, where a serial-murder expert says he almost certainly killed more girls.” The camera shot changed to catch her square in the face: “I’m probably the only survivor…” She began to shake, and tears appeared on her cheeks, and she said, “And I’m permanently scarred…” and held up her hands.

  “She can do it,” Del said. “She’s only about an inch away from Oprah.”

  “She might get Oprah, if we find Fell and pin the Jones murders on him,” Lucas said.

  “Hope her alligator mouth don’t get her hummingbird ass in trouble,” Del said. “If Fell sees her…”

  “I thought about that,” Lucas said. “I didn’t do anything about it.”

  Jennifer Carey said, “If any of our viewers have any idea who this John Fell might possibly be, his real name, or his current name, no
tify the Minneapolis Police Department or BCA agent Lucas Davenport immediately, at the numbers on your screen. Do not attempt to apprehend…”

  After the Channel Three broadcast, the other four stations jumped on the Identi-Kit picture, and Barker did tape for both KSTP and KARE for the evening news, variations on Channel Three; KARE also ran tape of James Hayworth, the St. Paul cop interviewed by the Star Tribune. Hayworth repeated his contention that there were almost certainly more dead girls.

  During the afternoon, Del found four successor companies to the ones who took charges from Fell. “We were right-they were porn and sex toys,” he told Lucas. “None of them have records from back then. Just too long ago.”

  During the afternoon, too, seven calls came in for Lucas, based on the Channel Three broadcast, with tips on people who resembled John Fell. Minneapolis got twelve more.

  Lucas worked biographies on all of them during the afternoon, pulling criminal records, driver’s licenses, credit reports, personal histories. Four had minor criminal records, none for sex. Judging from driver’s license photos and data, two of the seven didn’t have dark hair, and four, including one of the brown-haired candidates, were too young. He was left with two possibilities, and he didn’t have much faith in either.

  He talked to Marcy Sherrill, who said of the twelve tips they got, three were still considered possibilities. “We’ll have more calls coming in overnight,” she said. “I figure the chances we’ll get him are like four to one, against.”

  “That’s about right,” Lucas said. “But if he’s still around, we’re gonna scare the shit out of him. That might get us somewhere.”

  He took another tip, shifted up by the BCA operator. A man who said, “I don’t want to say my name, but the guy you want is named Robert Sherman. He’s a sex freak and he’s the spitting image of the guy on TV, and he’s the right age-early fifties.”

  Lucas checked the number: the guy was calling from a bar.

  The guy said, “He lives on Iowa Avenue. In St. Paul.”

  And was gone.

  Lucas looked at his watch: he could hit Iowa on the way home, check the guy out. Or maybe after dinner…

  He did a quick dip into the driver’s license records, decided the guy did look like Fell, but Fell with a mustache. He got an address and date of birth, went out to NCIC to check criminal records, found nothing.

  No record, but he was a sex freak?

  Called Del on his cell. “What’re you doing?”

  “I’m on my way home for dinner. What’s up?”

  “You got time after dinner to make a quick stop up in north St. Paul?”

  “Sure, as long as I don’t get shot. What’re you doing?”

  “Going home,” Lucas said. “But I got a guy I want to look at. Pick you up at your place, at seven?”

  “See you then.”

  He was home by six; watched the KARE broadcast with Letty and Weather.

  “All in all,” Lucas told them, “a fairly satisfactory day. We’ve got the guy’s nuts in a vise.”

  “Lucas, watch the language,” Weather said.

  The housekeeper stuck her head in from the kitchen: “Everybody come on. Food’s getting cold.”

  “Okay, testicles,” Lucas said, as they all headed for the dining room.

  “What do you think about the whole concept of nuts-in-a-vise?” Letty asked.

  “Letty…” Weather began.

  Letty said to her mother, “Something I’m curious about. You see these movies where a guy gets racked in the nuts, and they fall down. But I once shot a guy and he didn’t fall down. In fact, he walked away. So what I want to know is, is racking a guy in the nuts really that powerful? Or is that a myth? I mean, what if I’m attacked someday? Should I kick the guy in the nuts, or what?”

  Weather said, “Speaking as a medical doctor…”

  Lucas waved her down and focused on his daughter. “Here’s the thing. If you give a guy a really good shot in the nuts-like, if he doesn’t see you coming, and you kick him from behind, right in the crotch, you’re gonna hurt him. He’s gonna hurt bad.

  “But-and this is what you need to know: First, guys whack themselves in the nuts every once in a while, by accident, from the time they’re young. We develop really good reflexes for protecting ourselves. You try to kick a guy in the nuts from the front, all he has to do is flinch, and you wind up kicking him in the leg, instead. And, you piss him off.

  “Second, when you hit a guy in the nuts, from the front, even if you give him a solid shot, it takes a couple of seconds for the full reaction. You don’t drop him like a sack of… rocks. And what you’ve done, by kicking him, is you’ve gotten close enough that he can get his hands on you. And no matter how bad his nuts hurt, he can hang on to you. And he can kill you. With all the pain, he is seriously pissed, and he just might do that.

  “Thing to remember: the average guy is a lot bigger and stronger than the average woman. Best way to protect yourself is to scream and run. If he gets you and pulls you in, go with it. Go in, and go for his nose-try to bite it. Hard-like you were trying to bite through an overdone steak. He’ll let go of you, to try to push you off. When your hand comes free, go for his eyes with your nails. A kick in the nuts, it’s too hard to score, and even if you do, there’s a good chance he’ll still take you down.”

  “What if you don’t want to really hurt him, you just want him to quit what he’s doing?” Letty asked.

  “If a guy’s a serious threat, you hurt him,” Lucas said. “If he’s not a serious threat-if he’s just messing you around-don’t hurt him. Don’t rip his nose off or his eyes out, don’t kick him in the nuts. But if he’s serious, tough shit. Take him any way you can. Okay? Is that what you wanted to know?”

  “That about covers it,” Letty said.

  “I hope the new one didn’t hear that,” Weather said, patting her baby bump.

  While Lucas and Letty were reviewing testicular vulnerabilities, the killer was cruising Barker’s home in Bloomington. He’d looked her up on Facebook, had taken her husband’s name from that, and then looked them up in the phone book.

  And there they were.

  He had the old man’s Glock with him. Didn’t need to be a genius to use it. He’d fired it any number of times up at the cabin, back in the woods. Thirteen rounds. Enough to start a war.

  Just point and shoot.

  He was a little scared, but not too. Quiet neighborhood, close to a freeway where he could quickly get lost.

  If he decided to do it.

  14

  Letty was going to a snobby friend’s prejunior-year party. Letty wasn’t a snob, but something about the whole insider-clique idea appealed to her sense of investigation. She’d dressed carefully, and carefully suggested that it might be good if she were to arrive at the party in a Porsche. With the top down.

  Letty had Lucas whipped, so Weather took her in the Porsche, with the top down. And so Lucas was driving the Lexus SUV when he pulled over to pick up Del. Del was standing at the curb outside his house, talking to a guy in a St. Paul Saints hat who had a wiener dog on a leash. Del said goodbye to the guy, climbed in the car, and said, “Maybe I oughta get a wiener dog.”

  “You got a toddler, why would you need a dog?” Lucas asked. “Teach the kid to retrieve.”

  “Wiener dogs don’t retrieve. They were bred to go down into badger dens and fight the badgers.”

  “Hey, that’d be right up your kid’s alley, from what I’ve seen.”

  Del refused to rise to the bait: “No, really, I think a kid ought to grow up with a pet. It’s another way to get socialized.”

  “When the hell did everybody start worrying about socialization?” Lucas asked. “Look at you. You’re not socialized, and you’ve done okay. Well, I mean, you’re not in jail, anyway.”

  “I’m trying to make a serious point,” Del said.

  So they talked about it on the way to Robert Sherman’s house on Iowa Avenue. Lucas knew where he was going, he thou
ght, and, despite St. Paul’s insane method of assigning street addresses, didn’t bother to punch the address into the truck’s navigation system. When they ran out of street before they got to the number, they wound up driving around, running into more dead-end streets, muttering to each other, until finally Lucas pulled over and laboriously punched the address into the navigation system.

  Iowa Avenue, it turned out, existed in several pieces. The piece that they’d been looking for was a nice-enough neighborhood of older clapboard houses, with a touch of brick here and there, garages added later, full-grown maple and ash trees along the streets, and mailboxes out at the curb.

  Sherman’s house sat ten feet or so above the street, with a newer concrete driveway leading to a four-car garage in what had once been the backyard. There were lights in the window. Lucas and Del got out of the car, and Del hitched up his pants, which gave him a chance to touch his pistol, making sure it was in exactly the right spot.

  Lucas said, “Somebody’s playing a piano,” and they both turned and looked for the source. The sound was coming from a house across the street, Lucas decided, where somebody was playing a familiar tinkly movie theme that he couldn’t quite name. Something old.

  “And somebody’s cooking pork chops,” Del said.

  Lucas said, “That’s it-we’re cooking out next weekend. Brats and sweet corn. If nobody wants to eat with me, I’ll eat it all myself.”

  “Attaboy,” Del said.

  They went on up Sherman’s driveway, the music notes falling about them like raindrops.

  Sherman came to the screen door, a heavyset man wearing sweatpants and a St. Thomas T-shirt, and as soon as Lucas saw him coming, he thought, Wrong guy. He looked like the Identi-Kit picture of Fell, but he also had a cheerful, hang-out face, and that was not Lucas’s idea of John Fell. He had a can of beer in one hand.