Wicked Prey

by John Sandford

  The chief nodded at the body: "Charles found him. We think."

  "Was he by himself? You know what happened?"

  "Yeah, he was by himself. Damn fool didn't call in," the chief said, and a tear trickled out of one eye and he wiped it away.

  The fire chief said, "See the skinny kid up there?" He pointed toward the motel office, where a kid in an ill-fitting brown suit and necktie was looking down at them. "He's the last guy Charles talked to, if you want to know exactly what happened."

  Lucas nodded and asked, "What about the fire? Was there an accelerant? How long did it take?"

  The fire chief was nodding. "The arson guys are here, walking around. They say gasoline and oil, probably. Molotov cocktail. There's a melted two-gallon plastic gas container in there, by the end of the bed." The bed frame and box spring was a tangled mass of metal.

  Lucas stepped over to the burnt-out front wall of the room and looked through the hole that had been a window. Aside from the body, he could see nothing but motel equipment: beds, burned tables, telephones, lamps, television, a melted alarm clock, two burned picture frames.

  "Doesn't look like they left much behind," Lucas said.

  "They didn't-first thing the arson guys checked. They cleaned the place out."

  ***

  "Don't know why this Cohn had to do this," the chief said. "He wasn't covering up anything. If he hadn't set it on fire, might have been longer before we found out about it."

  "DNA," Lucas said. "Fire messes up the possibilities of pulling up DNA. If he'd been living there for a while, it'd be all over-body hair, skin, blood, semen, whatever. With this fire…"

  "But you know who he is," the chief said.

  "Can't prove it-but we do know it," Lucas said. "These guys killed a couple of cops in New York and pulled the same stunt. Burned the motel room. The NYPD got nothing out of it. No prints, no DNA, no nothing."

  The chief's face stormed up. "New York? If he killed cops there, why in the hell weren't we warned? If we'd known he killed cops…"

  "It was right on the photo," Lucas said. "With all the other personal information."

  The chief looked down at a uniformed sergeant, a fortyish sandy-haired man with a brush mustache and small round glasses, who looked away, shrugged, and said, "Nobody thought he'd find anything. I mean, the guys sent him up here because ' you know."

  Lucas said, "Because he was a fuckup?"

  "Because they were busy with other stuff," the sergeant said, but his eyes said, Yeah, Charles was a fuckup.

  "What was his first name?" Lucas said.

  "Charles. His name was Charles Dee."

  ***

  A half-dozen motel employees clustered in the office and on the concrete slab outside, their voices buzzing with suppressed excitement, and Lucas pulled two of them, Joshua Martin and Kyle Wayne, into the stairway to the second floor. "Tell me exactly what Officer Dee said to you. Every word, from the minute he walked in the door."

  The two looked at each other: Kyle had dim gray eyes, and Lucas suspected there wasn't much content behind them. Kyle shrugged and Joshua said to him, "Okay, you tell me if I go wrong, okay?"

  Kyle bobbed his head: "G."

  "We were standing behind the desk…"

  "Alone in the office," Lucas interjected.

  Joshua nodded. "Yup. We were standing behind the desk, alone, and Kyle had come back from carrying some old lady's stuff up the stairs, she couldn't walk very good. I was counting out my change drawer, and we see this cop car pull through the lot and he parks. Then this guy comes in, Charles…"

  "You knew him?"

  Joshua shrugged. "We knew who he was. They sometimes put him on school patrol. Anyway, he comes in, and he's got this picture, and he says, "You ever seen this guy?"' We look at the picture, and Kyle says, "Whoa, dude, he looks just like that big tall dude."

  Kyle did a body-bob and said, "Yup."

  "I don't know what he's talking about, but Kyle says this guy was down in one-twenty, which is the one that's burned, so I guess he was," Joshua said. "Charles asked Kyle if he was sure, and Kyle said, "Dude, I don't know. Maybe not."

  Kyle said, "I said, "Maybe not. But maybe yes." Not or yes, I said them both."

  Joshua picked it up. "So, Charles went out of here, and Kyle went to watch him. I went to counting the money again."

  "You watched him?" Lucas asked Kyle.

  "Yeah, kinda. I didn't want him to see me, but I stuck my head out. He went down there and knocked on the door, and then he went inside. That's all I saw. I came back and got my plunger, "cause we've got a bad toilet, some asshole woman stuck a whole roll of toilet paper down it' anyway, I came back, and we heard this ' Vooooommtnm. We ran outside and saw the fire and called nine-one-one."

  "Didn't see anybody else?" Lucas asked.

  "Not then," Kyle said. "But, there was this chick…"

  He and Joshua exchanged glances again, and Joshua said, "She has, like, this amazing rack, you know? I mean, we're talking Hollywood, and she's showing them off. We think she went into that room, when we both saw her that once. We didn't see her go in, but she was headed that way, and she wasn't checked in here."

  "You boys know a hooker when you see one?" Lucas asked.

  Kyle did: he shook his head and said, "Not a hooker. Hookers always carry these big bags. She wasn't carrying anything. Maybe car keys. She was coming back from somewhere and I think she went in that room."

  "Would you recognize her if you saw her again?" Lucas asked.

  "Oh, yeah," Joshua said. "I'd recognize her."

  Lucas took down the description: mid-thirties, blond, long hair, mid-height. Hollywood tits.

  "Looked me right in the eyes for a long time," Joshua said. "Really sorta…" His voice trailed away.

  "… stroked your rod," Kyle finished.

  Lucas was walking out of the office, then paused and turned back. "Kyle ' you said you came in here to get your plunger, and then you heard the explosion. How much time between the time you came back in and the explosion?"

  Kyle said, "Well'"

  He walked over to the door, pushed it open, then stepped back through and stomped around the desk and down a short hallway to a closet, opened it, got out a plunger, and walked back to the desk. "How long was that?"

  Lucas said, "Thirty seconds."

  "Then that's how long it was. Wasn't long."

  "You didn't stop to chat or anything…"

  "Nope. Went right back to the closet and got the plunger," he said.

  "He did," Joshua said.

  "When Officer Dee pulled into the parking lot, did he hang around outside, or did he come right in?"

  "He came right in. You know, however long it takes to walk from his car to here."

  Dee's car was thirty feet from the door. Fifteen seconds.

  "And how long did you talk to him in here?" Lucas asked.

  "Showed us the picture, Kyle said that thing about the corner room. We talked about it, and he walked out. Just, you know ' not too long."

  "No conversation…"

  "Not really. Not long, anyway."

  Lucas nodded, gave them business cards and said, "If you think of anything else, give me a call."

  ***

  Outside again, Lucas walked back to the crowd of cops, sorted out an arson guy.

  "Is there any personal stuff in there? Anything left behind? Anything? Toothbrush?"

  "Not that I've seen so far. But everything that wasn't nailed down, fell down, so there could be something under all the crap."

  "Call me when you've worked through it; I need to know," Lucas said, and handed over a business card.

  The arson guy nodded and stuck the card in his wallet. "What's up with that?"

  "The kids up at the office say the fire started a couple of minutes after Dee went through the door-probably less than five minutes. The question is, since they can't see the office from their room, how'd they know he was coming? They had to know, they had to start cleaning the p
lace out before he got there. Dee pulled into the parking lot, talked to the kids, walked down there ' they didn't have more than three or four minutes before he was knocking at their door. But they were ready for him, apparently, and got out within another minute or so."

  "Yeah. Huh."

  Lucas looked around at the range of buildings, at the motels farther down the strip. "They were warned. They've got a lookout. Might be looking at us right now."

  The arson guy looked around, turned some more, and said, "Lotta windows."

  Chapter 9

  Lucas got the Hudson cops crawling through the surrounding motels, looking for anyone who'd checked out of a room overlooking the corner room where Charles Dee had died. Somebody, he believed, had warned Cohn that the cop was coming; why Dee had gone inside the room, he didn't know, unless he'd been met at the door by Cohn, with a gun.

  Nobody had heard a gunshot' There'd been a guest on the other side of Cohn's double room, and he'd been in the room at the time of the fire, asleep, but he should have heard a shot. He'd heard the gasoline explode, had gotten up to see what it was, but hadn't heard a shot.

  Goddamned Hudson cops, he thought: they'd sent out one guy to look for a cop killer. And they knew it. They were tap dancing like crazy, but everybody else would know it, too, by the six o'clock news.

  Which reminded him. He got on the phone to Carol and said,

  "Get those pictures of Cohn out to everybody. Everybody. Beg and plead if you have to, but get his face on the air. Get it to the newspapers, ask them if we can get it on the front."

  "What're we doing?" she asked.

  "Changing direction. He knows we're all over him, so if he's going to run, he's already on the way. See if we can get it on CNN and the networks, all the local TV, go out two tiers of states-down to Missouri, over to Indiana, out to Montana. Get it out to every airport police department in, say, six hundred miles. Border Patrol, Grand Portage, International Falls. Maybe we'll freeze him here in the Cities, so we'll get another shot at him. If he gets out to LA or down to Miami, he's going to be harder to spot. Beg for help."

  "I'll get it started," she said. "But there was trouble downtown with one of the marches, a bunch of people are being arrested. Lot of them. That'll be the big story tomorrow…"

  "Tell them about this cop getting killed," Lucas said. "Tell them ' tell them he was left behind when they torched the motel. Tell them we don't know if the guy was dead. That'll catch them."

  "Was he dead?"

  "Yeah, probably. We really don't know," Lucas said. "We need to stress that, Carol-we don't know. Maybe he burned alive. We need the attention."

  Lucas stayed until the reports came back from the adjoining hotels: nobody in any of the rooms in question had checked out.

  "Nothing there," the chief said, as though Lucas had screwed up somehow.

  "There's something there," Lucas said. "We just haven't found it yet."

  "Yeah, well' any more ideas?" the chief asked. "One," Lucas said.

  ***

  Cohn and Lindy headed west on I-94 toward the Cities, and as soon as they were clear of Hudson, across the bridge in Minnesota, Cohn got on his cell phone and called Cruz.

  "I talked to the boys and told them to stay put at least until tonight," Cruz said. "They're cleaning out their rooms, wiping everything down. Do you know where you're going?"

  "I get off at the Sixth Street exit? Is that right? Then straight ahead to the parking structure."

  "Do not take the elevator," Cruz said. "There's only one, and if there's anybody waiting for a ride, they'll see you, and we can't afford that anymore. You've got to keep out of sight until we can change your appearance. I'll get some hair dye, we'll give you black hair and a mustache, no beard. We can wipe down the condo tonight and get out of here."

  "Okay. Maybe. When are you coming over?"

  "I'll be a half hour behind you," she said. "I've got to get that dye."

  "See you then."

  While he was talking, Lindy had organized all the loose stuff into the two sheets, then flattened them and pushed them onto the floor of the backseat, and pulled their two suitcases over them. When she'd tidied up, she waited until Cohn had passed a semi-trailer, then squeezed over the seat back, into the front again. "I hope he was dead," she said. "I hope he didn't burn alive."

  "Shut up. I'm sorry, but I've got to think." He thought for two minutes, then said, "Cruz said they had my picture. Where'd that come from? How'd they get it? How'd they know? Jesus Christ, how did that happen?"

  "Somebody ratted you out," Lindy said.

  Cohn turned his cool gaze on her, saw her sudden nervousness, then smiled: "Thank you, dear. That makes me think you weren't the one."

  "If that jerk Spitzer was here, I'd say he's the one," Lindy said. Cohn was silent for a moment, calculating, then said, "He was here."

  "He was?" She was surprised. "Where is he?"

  "He went away," Cohn said.

  "But then, maybe he's pissed…"

  "He went away," he said again. His voice had an icicle in it.

  Ah. Now she had it. She looked straight ahead and said, "Good." Then, "Maybe before he went away."

  "If he was going to do it, he could have told them exactly where we were at, and when we'd be there."

  More silence, then Lindy said, "I can't believe it was the boys."

  Cohn shook his head: "I can't either. For one thing, they helped us take down a couple of people already, and I can't believe they'd do that, if they were talking to the cops. Or if they did, we'd already have been busted. I mean, they were all there when Spitzer went away."

  "Even Rosie, or whatever her name is," Lindy said.

  "Yeah, even her." But he remembered Cruz's objection to the murder, and then her explanation, which now seemed less convincing.

  Lindy said, "The thing about Rosie is, she might not just be ratting you out. You know what I mean?"

  "I think so," Cohn said. "But say it."

  "Maybe she's playing some other game that we can't see. She's really' complicated. Where does she get all this information? What is she really doing?"

  "She's done a lot of jobs with us," Cohn said. "And three with Jerry, before Jerry's accident."

  "Wonder whatever happened to the guy who got Jerry's heart?" Lindy asked.

  "I don't know…" Cohn shook his head. "I have to think about Rosie. You're right, she wouldn't just give us up, because we could give her up. She sure as hell didn't tell them that she planned a robbery that ended in a couple of cop killings. Three cop killings, now. If she's the one, why'd she warn us? No-something else is happening."

  Lindy pointed: "Exit's coming up."

  "That's what I'm afraid of," Cohn said.

  ***

  The new spot was their disaster hole, a last-ditch hideout that Cruz had arranged, in a condominium building that was half-empty. When she rented the furnished model unit for a month, from the developer, she'd warned him that he couldn't show it: "I haven't shown a unit in three months," he said, ruefully. "I got another model to show if I need to."

  The developer was under the impression that Cruz worked with the Republicans, that the model would be used for secret meetings, and she didn't disabuse him. Cruz had had to buy sheets and a couple of blankets, towels and soap and toilet paper, but most everything else had been there, as part of the model.

  Cohn pulled into the parking ramp and punched in the key-code, and went down through the ramp and around to their private parking spaces. Then they were out and climbing the interior stairs, five floors. They opened the lobby door and peeked, saw nobody moving-of the six condos on the floor, only two others were occupied-then hurried down to 402, unlocked it and went inside.

  As soon as they were in, Cohn called Cruz, who was in her car, heading toward St. Paul.

  "The motel looks like a cop convention back there," she said. "You did that guy?"

  "I had to," Cohn said. He was looking out the window, over a small park, where a cluster o
f twenty or thirty peace demonstrators were wandering around, as if they'd lost something: peace, maybe, he thought. A young girl pushed a bike along the sidewalk, on the opposite side of the street, leaned it against a parking meter, walked over to a white van with Channel 3 on the door, and knocked on the window. Cohn had gotten nothing but silence from Cruz, but he waited her out, and finally she said, "I'll see you in ten or fifteen minutes."

  Across the street, whoever was in the TV van opened the door and the young girl got in.

  ***

  Frank and Lois were in the back of the van, eating pizza, and Frank said, "If you leave the bike like that, somebody's gonna run up and steal it."

  "You think?" Letty asked.

  "I think," he said. "Look at the crowd."

  So Letty got back out and unwrapped the cable lock from around the seat tube, cinched it around the parking meter, got back in. Lois, a tall thin woman with spiky, close-cut black hair, said, "Mushroom and pepperoni."

  Letty took a slice, realized that she was starving to death, took a bite, and turned to Frank. Frank had short curly hair and a round face and rimless glasses, a short fleshy nose, and thin, delicate pink lips in a rust-colored beard now going gray. Aside from being an excellent cameraman, he was somewhat famous for having gotten a blow job from a low-rent hooker on University Avenue. In his Sebring convertible. With the top down. At noon. He not only got caught, he got videotaped.

  But that was water over the dam, at least until Letty, talking around the slice, asked, "If I wanted to find a low-rent hooker right now, on the street, where'd be the best place? Here in St. Paul."

  Lois didn't move her face but her eyeballs clicked left, toward Frank, like a couple of marbles in a water glass. Frank carefully peeled a mushroom off his slice, dangled it for a moment over his upturned lips, sucked it in, chewed once, and then asked, "How old are you?"