Chosen Prey ld-12

by John Sandford

  "I hope not," he said.

  They finally went to bed at midnight, and just before she went to sleep, Weather asked, "Are you really going to stay home all day?"

  "Nah. Probably not. May go for a run in the Porsche. Knock around a little."

  "I'll try to get home early. Why don't we go out to the marina and take a look at my boat?"

  "Okay."

  She went quickly and softly to sleep, as she often did. Lucas lay awake, waiting for the phone to ring. He thought it might ring sometime after three o'clock, but it didn't. He never heard Weather leave, and when he opened his eyes, it was eleven in the morning.

  He ate breakfast, went out and got in the car, took it out on the Interstate across the river to Wisconsin, jumped on his favorite blacktop road to River Falls, and let the Porsche engine out of the box. For the next hour he looped along the backroads, surprised that the golf courses were already open, looking for but not seeing any more snow in the woods-it had melted away in a week. Sometimes, after a long winter, the snow stayed back in the trees into May. Not this year.

  He thought about Qatar, about the bloody clothing from Barstad's. At three o'clock, he pulled the lightly breathing Porsche into the parking lot at St. Patrick's, walked across the lawns to Qatar's office building, and found the janitor with the whiskey nose.

  "If you were gonna hide something in this building where you could get at it quick and whenever you wanted, safely and without anybody seeing, but you didn't want to hide it in your own office…"

  "You mean like if Jim Qatar hid some evidence."

  "Yeah. Where would you hide it?" Lucas asked.

  The janitor thought for a couple of minutes, then said, "I personally might hide it anywhere, because I can go anywhere in the building and nobody looks at me twice. But if I was Jim Qatar… Let me show you. You know about the skeleton cases upstairs?"

  "No."

  "Next floor up from Qatar's office. Just up the stairway. Let's take the elevator," the janitor said. On the way up, he said, "You think maybe he didn't burn the clothes?"

  "I don't know. It seems a little risky… What if somebody saw him down there?"

  "Yeah, but if you know your way around, like he did, you could do it. It's a little risky, but hell, what're we talking about? You think he murdered-what, a dozen people?"

  They got out at the top floor. The hallway outside the elevator was lined with glass cases, each holding reconstructed skeletons or stuffed birds or animals-thirty or forty of them, Lucas thought, lining both sides of the narrow hall. The ceiling hung low overhead, a checkerboard of darker and lighter wood panels.

  "This originally was book storage and supplies, but when that moved out, they put these cases up here for the art students," the janitor said. "They're supposed to draw from them, and some of them do. Human skeletons down that way, and some muscle things, full-sized."

  "So Qatar…"

  "I'll show you." There were hard-backed wooden chairs between cases. "They sit on these, drag them around…" He pulled a chair out, stood on it, and pushed one of the wooden ceiling panels. It lifted easily. "There used to be a higher ceiling-way high, to the top of the building-but dirt filtered down all the time, and there wasn't any way to clean it, so they put this drop-ceiling in. Years and years ago. Maybe in the sixties, maybe. Anyway, all the kids know about it. There's a ledge right inside, and sometimes, if they're working, they'll just push one of these things up and leave their stuff in here."

  "All right." Lucas looked down the hall. There were probably a hundred panels per side: He could spend the rest of the afternoon looking, and probably not finding anything. On the other hand…

  "You want to look? Glad to give you a hand."

  "Nah, you go on," Lucas said. "I might push up a few of them."

  "Are you sure? Glad to."

  "Nah. I can take care of it."

  Lucas looked him back into the elevator, and when he was gone, and the elevator cables stopped grinding, he dragged a chair out and began pushing up panels in the silence of the long hallway. He found he could place the chair beneath one panel, lift it and the panels on both sides, and so cover three with one move of the chair. He went left down the hall from the elevator, spent twenty minutes, found nothing but an old lunch-very old, maybe a decade.

  Instead of working back down the other side of the hall, he carried his chair back to the elevator and started the other way. On the second panel, he saw a plastic sack stuffed on the ledge. But Qatar had been carrying a grocery sack…

  He had driving gloves in his pockets. He pulled them on, then tugged at the plastic bag. Heavy and hard. He lifted it down carefully and peeled back the garbage bag.

  A laptop: not what he'd been expecting. He stepped down carefully, sat on the chair, and opened the laptop's cover-found the switch and turned it on. A green light came up instantly: still charged. A student? Windows came up, and then the icons on the left side of the screen. Halfway down he spotted the eye-in-the-square of Photoshop.

  "Sonofabitch," he muttered. He brought Photoshop up, found a file listed as "B1," opened it. A photograph of a woman, but skeletonized, reduced to a skein of fine lines. He maneuvered it awkwardly around the screen, unfamiliar with the Photoshop protocols, but finally got a face. Barstad. "There you are," he said. He maneuvered the pointing stick, brought up another one. A woman he didn't recognize, but he recognized the pose: It had been lifted from a porn site. He scanned the list of files. Found an A1, A2, and A3.

  Opened A1, found the face.

  Closed his eyes for a moment, then said, "Gotcha."

  Aronson stared back at him.

  There had to be prints on the bag or the laptop. Nobody could be that careful, that paranoid… and the surfaces were perfect for prints. But now, what to do? He sat thinking for another five minutes, vacillating, then stood on the chair and put the package back on the ledge.

  Hesitated, then put the panel back in place.

  Went down in the basement and found the whiskey-nosed janitor. "It's taking longer than I thought, and I can't see well enough, all the way back," he lied. "I'm gonna bring in a crime- scene crew tomorrow. Don't let anybody go up there, okay? You don't have to guard it, but don't let anybody mess around up there."

  "I'll keep everybody out. I'll block it off, if you want."

  "It doesn't look like there are many people around… why don't you just keep an eye on it? There might be fingerprints somewhere, and we wouldn't want to mess them up."

  The janitor nodded. "Never thought of fingerprints. Whatever you say-I go home at seven, but I'll make sure that everybody knows it's off-limits."

  HE SPENT THAT evening thinking about the phone call to Randy and about the laptop. Did the laptop assemble the bricks into a wall? Or was it just another half-assed brick? Even if they could demonstrate that Qatar did the drawings, and therefore knew Aronson before she died, what if Qatar argued that he met her through the second man-Randy-or vice versa, that Aronson had met Randy through him. After all, only one of the dead women was associated with a drawing. And there were more than a dozen women still alive who'd got them.

  Weather said to him, "You've been in never-never land again. What's going on?"

  "Working on a little puzzle," he said.

  "Want to talk?"

  "No. Not right now." He looked at her. "Maybe tomorrow."

  She was mildly offended and a little stiff after that, but that had happened before. She always got over it. Again, Lucas lay awake after she slept.

  The phone call, when it came, would probably be a little after three o'clock, he thought. The pit of the night…

  Three o'clock passed, and he dozed. Woke up briefly at four, then dropped back asleep, more soundly now. The problem may have resolved itself, he thought as he went under.

  He really wasn't prepared when the phone rang at five o'clock.

  He was awake instantly, rolling off the bed, Weather waking and saying, "What? What?"

  Lucas picked up the pho
ne. "Yeah."

  "Chief? This is Mary Mikolec over at the Center. You asked to be called. We've sent a car over to Qatar's place. He's running."

  "Okay," he said. "When did he walk?"

  "About fifteen minutes ago."

  "Thanks… Thanks for calling."

  "What's happening?" Weather asked.

  "Qatar's gone," Lucas said.

  "Are you going?"

  "No… nothing for me to do," he said.

  "Lucas, what's going on?"

  He sat on the bed and said, "Jesus. I dunno-I might have screwed up, but there's no way to know. That's what's been worrying me."

  "Tell me," she said. She sat up and put a hand on his shoulder.

  He thought about it for a minute, then said, "It was that call to Randy. You gotta ask yourself, who knew the direct-line number into his room? After they moved him out of the ICU, they put him in this little room by himself where he'd be away from everybody else, and you could see the door from the nursing station. The switchboard was told not to switch any calls without an okay from Lansing. I asked the nurses: He didn't have any visitors… And then you've got to ask why somebody would do that. Make that call, even if he could?"

  Weather was puzzled. "Well, why?"

  "Because he wanted Qatar turned loose, or at least let out on bail. If he was in jail, and if he cut a deal on a plea-second-degree with psychological evaluation, whatever-he'd be out of reach."

  Weather thought about it for half a second, then her hand went to her mouth. "Oh, no. Oh my God."

  "Yeah. I think Terry Marshall probably picked him up. It's about sixty-forty that Qatar's dead already."

  "Lucas… why did you…?"

  "Because I wasn't sure. And even if I thought so, I'm not sure it's not the right thing. What if Qatar gets out in ten or twelve years and starts killing again? That could happen."

  "Yes, but Lucas-this isn't right. This is awful."

  "But Qatar-"

  "Lucas, this is not about that asshole. This is about Terry. If he's done this, it's gonna be terrible for him. The heck with Qatar, it's Terry."

  He looked at her and said, "It's only about sixty-forty that Qatar's dead. If he's not, it's about sixty-forty that I know where they're going."

  Weather said, "The graveyard."

  "That would fit with the way Terry's mind works, I think."

  "Lucas, you've got to call somebody," she said. "Lucas, you can't let this happen."

  Lucas put his hands to his head, sitting on the bed, frozen. Then, suddenly, looking up: "All right. I'm going. I can beat them down there. The alarm went off fifteen minutes ago. Maybe I can work something, maybe I can, if there's time, maybe…"

  He was out of bed, pulling on his pants, boots. "Gimme my sweatshirt, give me my sweatshirt…"

  They stumbled all the way through the house, Lucas pulling on clothes, out to the garage. He climbed into the Porsche as the garage door rolled up, and she shouted, "Go! Go!"

  29

  LUCAS FUMBLED HIS flasher up on the dash and plugged it in, and with the harsh red light cutting holes through the night, he followed it down along the Mississippi, across the river by the airport, across the Minnesota River at the Mendota Bridge, and then south on Highway 55, all the time running the numbers. Marshall wouldn't be driving more than a mile or two over the speed limit, to avoid any possible traffic cops-it was early for traffic cops, but the first trickle of the rush was beginning, and Marshall wouldn't want to take any chances.

  And that gave Lucas a chance. Giving Marshall a twenty- or twenty-five-minute head start-Marshall was starting farther into town than Lucas was, and facing more traffic-he and Lucas should arrive at the graveyard about the same time. What would happen there, Lucas didn't know; and if Marshall wasn't there, if he'd just decided to drop Qatar out in the woods somewhere, in some predug hole, then it was over.

  Cell phone, he thought. Maybe he should call the Goodhue County sheriff, get them to send a car. But then, if Marshall wasn't there, they'd know that Lucas knew who had taken Qatar… He touched his jacket pocket for the phone, still thinking about it. The pocket was empty. The phone was back on the charger on his desk.

  One option gone.

  He touched his belt: The. 45 was there. He'd taken it without thinking. But what for?

  THREE PEOPLE WOULD know about all of this-he and Weather, and Marshall-and Del would probably figure it out if he ever sat down to think about it. There would never be any proof. Marshall would be too careful for that. What to do if he got there too late, with Qatar already dead? Just keep going?

  He had to run…

  He went through the suburbs, through the red lights and around shying cars, watching for movement along the sides of the roads, of people unaware. If he hit another car at this speed, the Porsche would be flattened into a hubcap; if he hit a wandering human, he would instantly convert that human to hamburger.

  All the way, calculating, wondering: He hadn't told Weather or anyone else about the laptop. If he'd taken the laptop downtown after he found it, had processed it, they could have rearrested Qatar on the Aronson charge and he probably wouldn't have made bail. Marshall's whole concept would have been short-circuited.

  But then what happens to justice? Ten or fifteen years in jail, with Qatar coming out all clear, even more careful, to kill again? Some of them, some of the Qatars, never stopped. Lucas was still uncertain of the equities. If it weren't for Weather, he might have let it go…

  HE HIT THE blacktop north of the Pine Creek crossing with enough daylight to see it clearly. He slid through the turn and jumped back on the gas, then cut out on the gravel road. Close now; more light. He saw the DNR parking area coming, and sitting in it…

  "Goddamnit." Marshall's red Jeep Cherokee.

  Lucas screamed into the lot, braked down beside the Cherokee, and hopped out.

  Looked around…

  Marshall and Qatar were up on the hillside. They had stopped walking, and both were looking down at him. Qatar was dressed in pajamas, and his feet were bare. He had been gagged for a while, Lucas thought: Several coils of duct tape were looped around his neck, as though they'd been pulled down from his face. He was shivering, either from fear or simply from the cold.

  Marshall was wearing jeans and a tan barn coat. He had one hand on Qatar's jacket, and in his other, the big-frame. 357.

  Qatar shouted down, "Help me, please. He's crazy, he's going to kill me." There was a catch in his voice. His hands had been cuffed, and he held them out toward Lucas as though he were praying.

  "Terry, goddamnit," Lucas called. "Don't do this, man."

  Marshall called back, "I was about half afraid you'd show up here. I didn't think you'd be this quick. Ten minutes later and we'd have all been fine."

  "Terry, we got him," Lucas shouted, moving closer. "I found his laptop computer. It was in the ceiling in the museum. Me and the janitor found it. It's got pictures of the women on it, it's gotta have prints-we got him for everything, man."

  "Little too late for that," Marshall said. "This is better anyway. Takes care of a couple of problems: his and mine."

  "Shoot him," Qatar screamed at Lucas. "Shoot him."

  Marshall jerked him another step across the hill, dragging him by the loops of duct tape.

  "Terry, goddamnit, stop it. Stop it." Lucas was walking up the hill toward them.

  "You gonna shoot me and save this asshole?"

  "No. But you gotta listen. We can still smooth this out: You turn him in, we tell everybody you freaked, you talk to a shrink for a couple of weeks…"

  He was fifty feet away. Marshall had gotten Qatar to the dug-over area where the graves were.

  "Oh, horseshit, Lucas, you know better'n that," Marshall drawled. He might have been smiling. "Minnesota's the same as Wisconsin: They'd hang me by my nuts. They'd make an example out of me. Cops can't do this shit."

  Forty feet. Qatar's eyes were wide, his shoulders twisting away from Marshall. "Don't let him… You can't ju
st shoot me," he shouted at Marshall. "I can't die today. I can't… I have classes today. I have responsibilities. The college is expecting me."

  "I don't think so, pal."

  Thirty feet. Lucas could see that Qatar's bare feet were bleeding, apparently from dragging over the rocks and roots of the hillside. Marshall lifted his pistol so that it pointed directly into the back of Qatar's head. "Stop right there," he said to Lucas.

  "Terry, please, man, you're a good guy. And listen to this-one last thing." Lucas was begging for time. "There's not much chance, but what if he is innocent? What if we've screwed this up somehow?"

  "That's right," Qatar said. "This is completely illegal. My lawyer-"

  "Shut up." Marshall snapped the pistol barrel against the back of his head, and Qatar stopped, his mouth open in midsentence. Marshall said to Lucas, "There's a tape recorder on the front seat of the car. When I got him in the car, I pulled the duct tape off his mouth and told him what I was gonna do, but I told him that maybe I wouldn't if he'd tell me about the women. You listen to that tape, you'll get all the names, and pretty close to the dates, and the places he picked them up. He even says there are two more down in Missouri, some godforsaken place down there."

  "You promised me," Qatar said. He tried to twist out of Marshall's grasp, but Marshall played him like a fish. "You promised."

  "I lied," Marshall said.

  "All right, I'll go to trial, I'll confess," Qatar said. "You got me. All right? All right? Just stop this, stop this now. You win. Okay ?"

  "On the other hand, I could always shoot you, too," Marshall said to Lucas, but he was showing a grin again. "How'd they ever prove it was me?"

  Lucas shrugged. "They would. Tire tracks, the slugs, nitrites when they picked you up. There's probably a parade on the way here now."

  "Yeah, I know, I guess," Marshall admitted. The smile, if it was ever there, faded away and he took a deep breath and looked around the hillside, tipped his head back to look up through the oak branches. Again he cocked the gun up against Qatar's head. "Well, I guess there ain't gonna be any big ceremony in this."