Wicked Prey

by John Sandford

  "Never mind that. Where would I find her?" Letty asked. "I read that the St. Paul cops have cleared off University, but with this convention in town'"

  "Why do you want to know?" Frank asked.

  "A story," Letty said, and she half-believed it. An idea had been forming in the back of her head.

  "You're too young to do a story about hookers," Lois said. "Forget it."

  Letty looked at Frank. "Where?"

  He whined, "If your dad even heard you asking the question…"

  "Listen. I got a tip from a friend," Letty lied. "I'm the only one who could pull it off, and it'd be spectacular. One of my classmates is working the street-somewhere, and I'm sure it's got to be in St. Paul. Her boyfriend put her up to it, so they could get money for cocaine. If I can spot her ' I mean, she's fourteen. All I want to do is find her, and talk to her. I mean, what a great story"

  She was right about the story, if she'd been telling the truth. She went to one of the snottiest private schools in the Twin Cities, and if one of her classmates was out doing knobjobs on the Republicans, and fourteen… That would be a story.

  Frank said, "If you can get Jennifer…" Jennifer Carey was Letty's mentor at the station.

  Letty broke in: "I don't have time. I'll talk to her as soon as I can, but I think my friend, Betsy, I think Betsy is out here right now. I need to know…"

  Lois said, "I have nothing to do with this."

  Frank sighed and said, "I suppose she'd be up on Wabasha, Fourth Street, Market' working that area between the Radisson and Rice Park ' down St. Peter. That's where most of the convention people are, up there…"

  "I owe you one," Letty said. "Thanks for the slice-and I'll talk to Jennifer the first minute I see her."

  ***

  She locked up her bike a second time, now behind City Hall. The place was crawling with cops, wearing insignia that she'd never seen; cops from Illinois, the Dakotas, Virginia, Wisconsin. Cops from Cedar Rapids. Cops on horses-the horses had face shields-and cops in black armor carrying long wooden riot batons. They paid no attention to her as she walked over to the Radisson, wandered through the lobby, and then continued down Wabasha Street, looking for a wheelchair, for the heavy girl, not finding them. She walked around the block, through the St. Paul Hotel, in the back door, out the front, the doorman giving her the eye. As she went by, he asked, "Aren't you on Channel Three?"

  "Yes, I am," she said. "Maybe you can help me. I'm looking for a woman, probably eighteen, a little heavy, dark clothes, kind of ' sad-looking."

  The doorman shrugged, and nodded at the sidewalk: "Look at this. There's ten thousand people an hour walking past here."

  "Okay; well, thanks," she said. Across the street, in the park, a stage had been set up, red-white-and-blue bunting hung overhead, with the lights; cameras on three sides, and she could see people working in front of cameras: MSNBC. A crowd was watching, and she threaded through it, past the fountain with the bronze girl, and a guy, thirty-something, geeky wearing a McCain button, looked her over and said, "Hi there," and she kept going, around the park and down Fourth Street, against the stream of people walking toward the Xcel Center, where the convention was being held, and back to the Radisson.

  And around again, and then off the loop, down St. Peter, to an open-air mall that ran between St. Peter and Wabasha, with people sitting outside, eating lunch, and watching the passersby; and she saw the wheelchair, at a bar called Juicy's.

  Whitcomb was in it, talking to a man on a bench, and they were drinking beer. She watched for five minutes, staying back in the crowd, and never saw the girl.

  She was out there, somewhere.

  Would Letty be more likely to find her by walking the street, or by watching Whitcomb? Since the woman seemed to drive the car, she had to come back-but then she and Whitcomb might go somewhere else, and she had no way to stay with them. She thought it over, one eye on Whitcomb as she scanned the crowd, and decided that the best bet was to work along St. Peter Street, between the park at one end and the mall at the other, with occasional checks a block over on Wabasha.

  She began working the loop. How long would it take, anyway, an appointment with a guy? When she was a kid, her mom would come home with men sometimes, and if they didn't stay over, they usually weren't more than a couple of hours ' and sometimes only an hour or so. But her mom wasn't getting paid, so the guys probably felt like they ought to hang around for a while, and talk. Or whatever.

  Not with Whitcomb's girl'

  She worked the crowded streets for an hour before she saw her, and when she did, she was a hundred yards away and not more than a hundred feet from the corner of the mall, where Whitcomb was drinking. Letty hurried after her, moving fast, but there was no chance: the woman turned the corner. Whitcomb was farther down the mall, and she took the corner carefully, so she didn't blunder into them, if he'd moved-and threading through the crowd, saw him in the same place, saw the woman sit down next to him.

  She was there fifteen minutes, Letty watching from fifty or sixty yards away, back in the doorway of a sandwich place. She thought they might be arguing, that the woman might be crying. Then the woman stood, heavily, as though she were old, and she started walking back toward Letty. Letty thought the sadness came off her like a morning fog, a sadness that you could almost touch.

  ***

  Letty caught her two hundred yards down the sidewalk. She called, "Hey! Girl!"

  Briar turned, her eyes uncertain. "Are you ' Me?"

  "Yes." Letty gave her a TV smile. "You're Randy's friend. We talked in a McDonald's. I was with a couple of friends."

  "Oh ' I didn't recognize you ' here. What are you?"

  "I'm with a TV crew. I report on young people. So what's up with you?"

  Briar's eyes seemed to recede in her face: she was thinking about Randy, Letty thought, and what he might do about this conversation. She said quickly, "I won't tell Randy."

  The woman's tongue flicked out: "Please."

  "What's your name?" Letty asked.

  "I shouldn't talk to you. Do you want to get Randy? He's right around the corner," Briar said.

  "I know," Letty said. "I was watching you, but I don't want to see

  Randy, because Randy's a violent asshole and he beats you with a stick. Doesn't he?"

  She looked at Letty without saying anything, then past her, checking for Randy, then said, "Tiara."

  "What?"

  "That's my name. Tiara."

  "What's your real name?" Letty asked.

  "That is my real name…" she began, but when she saw Letty's head shake, she said, after a couple more seconds, "Juliet. Briar."

  "How are you, Juliet? I'm Letty. Did you know that? My name? Or just my dad's name?"

  "You know?"

  "Sure I know. Look at Randy. He's been trashed so many times that he's living in a wheelchair. He's not the brightest guy in the universe. Come on, I'll buy you a Coke."

  Briar frowned: "Are you really with a TV crew? You don't act like it." She looked around. "If you're with TV where's your TV stuff?"

  "Down by Mears Park. Hang on." Letty flicked out her phone and called Lois: "Are you guys still down by the park?"

  "No. We're up at the Capitol, cruisin' for a bruisin'. Did you ever find your hooker?"

  "Yes. Is there any possibility you could come down Wabasha? I'm at Fifth and Wabasha. She sorta doesn't believe me about TV and I need her to," Letty said.

  "I thought you were schoolmates," Lois said.

  "We're not close," Letty said, smiling into the phone. Whew.

  "The cops have Wabasha blocked off, but we could come down Cedar," Lois said. "Meet you at Cedar and Fifth? Five minutes?"

  "See you there," Letty said. She clicked the phone shut and said, "C'mon, ride around for a couple of minutes."

  Briar, nervous: "If Randy finds out'"

  "He won't find out," Letty said. "He can't get around, we're walking away from him. C'mon, girl, have some fun."

  Briar b
obbed her head, and Letty took her arm and started her across the street toward the hill down to Cedar. "So, how'd you get the name Tiara?"

  "Randy gave it to me. He said, you know, I need a better show-business name than Juliet. He said Juliet was old-fashioned."

  "Oh!" Letty put on some outrage. "Juliet is a great name. You know that song "Romeo and Juliet"? My dad has it on his iPod, it's an old-timey band. Dire Straits, I think. You don't know it? Maybe I can get a copy for you…"

  ***

  AS a child in her time and place, with the mother she'd had, Letty had learned a number of things that would never leave her. She was exquisitely sensitive to social differences: who was rich and who was poor, who was smart and who was dumb, who was succeeding, who was failing. And she'd always kept an emotional distance from people that she'd had to deal with, an observational distance. Jennifer Carey carried the same space-and had told Letty, "You could be a hell of a reporter if you wanted to be. You're really smart, and I can see you watching."

  Letty knew what she looked like, and what she looked like was a rich, popular, high school kid. She didn't have to look like that: she chose to, when she was doing her TV thing. She could also look like a smart kid, which was different, a little less put-together; she could look like a shlump, and sometimes, at home, she did that look, watching, watching, watching.

  Today she was wearing jeans, but they were designer jeans, and her blouse came from a boutique, not from Macy's. Her sneakers were sleek and cool and olive green, with rust-colored laces; and her sunglasses were small and oval and glittery. She was slender with good cheekbones; she was put together, and she knew it. She could see the weight of it in Briar's face-the weight of being arm in arm with a rich popular kid.

  ***

  She got Briar talking about stage names, and then about clothes, and then about Randy-Briar didn't want to talk about Randy-and then the other girl, slowing, but not disentangling her arm from Letty's, asked, "Do you know what I do?"

  Letty gave her another TV grin, one she'd practiced two thousand times. "Yup."

  Now Briar disentangled herself and slowed. "Is that why you want to put me on TV?"

  "Nope. I'm not going to put you on TV because that would really mess you up," Letty said. "I just want to prove to you that I am on TV."

  "Why?"

  Letty went serious: "Because I'm worried about you. How old are you?"

  "Sixteen. Almost seventeen."

  Letty was surprised. Briar looked at least a couple of years older. "How long have you been doing this?" "Four months."

  "Ah, jeez." Letty let the sympathy out. "I'm so worried about you. I'm so worried about what Randy is up to. You know, if he hurt me ' my father would kill him, maybe. And he'd find out. Randy is dumb, dumb, dumb."

  "He's not that dumb," Briar said.

  Letty shook her finger in Briar's face. "Yes, he is. If he was a smart guy, you think he'd be living in a shack? You think he'd have gone to jail four or five different times, and he's not hardly thirty yet?"

  "He's twenty-four," Briar said.

  Letty's eyebrows went up. "Juliet-he's not twenty-four. Look at his ID sometime, when he's not around. He's almost thirty. He lies about everything."

  Briar glanced back up the hill, afraid again. She looked like a denizen of 1984, caught talking about Big Brother. "He doesn't always lie…"

  Letty said, seriously, "Yes, he does. He always lies. That's what he does for a living. He lies."

  Briar looked down at the sidewalk: "Okay."

  Letty studied her for a moment, then said, "Look, here comes the van."

  "I really can't ride around," Juliet said, but there was a hint of curiosity in her eyes.

  "You have to work?" Letty asked. She looked away: "Yeah."

  "How much do you get?"

  "Hundred."

  "A hundred? Always?"

  "Not always, but that's what Randy wants. Sometimes, if I don't'"

  "I saw the stick," Letty said. "I was in your house."

  "What?"

  "I saw the stick," Letty repeated. The van pulled up, and Lois ran the window down. "What's up?" she asked, checking out Briar.

  "We'd like to ride around for a few minutes, so I can show Juliet some of the equipment," Letty said. "And I need to borrow some money."

  Chapter 10

  Lucas had one idea, called Jones, the Minneapolis cop, and said, "I need to talk to the victims again. Soon as you can get them together. I hope none of them have checked out."

  "They're still here. What's up?" Lucas told him about the murder of Charles Dee, and outlined the idea, and Jones said, "That could be something. Wilson's still in the hospital. We can meet there. As far as running around to these hotels-I got nothin'."

  "That's "cause they were in Hudson. How soon can we get these people together?"

  "Soon as you can get here, I guess. That thing about Dee, man- I heard somebody was down, but nobody knew what happened. You sure it's our guys?"

  "Ninety-five percent," Lucas said. "Like everything else, though, I couldn't prove it."

  "Fucker's probably walking through Miami International right now, on his way to Brazil."

  ***

  Lucas asked the Hudson chief to keep him updated, said goodbye, and headed west, fast; there was a regatta on the St. Croix, two dozen sailboats beating around in a gentle breeze, and then he was over the bridge and back in Minnesota and on his cell phone, calling Lily Rothenburg at her Manhattan apartment. Her husband answered, said, "Hang on," and went and got her.

  "What?" she asked.

  "We've got a cop down, dead. Cohn did it. Cohn himself, I think," Lucas said. "He set his room on fire and we've got no proof, except that two semi-stoner hotel clerks think they might have recognized him."

  "Goddamnit."

  "I put his face everywhere," Lucas said. "It'd help if you could do the same, out of New York. All the national feeds we can get. If he's running, we've got to make it hard. If he's still here, maybe we can freeze him, keep him off airplanes, trains, whatever."

  "I can call some people," she said. "I can get it on Today, I think, tomorrow morning. Maybe-maybe-Good Morning America. CNN, I'd have to call somebody to call somebody…"

  "Much as you can, it'd help," he said. "USA Today?"

  "Don't know anybody there. Maybe ' I might be able to get the mayor to call somebody."

  "Whatever you can do, Lily."

  ***

  He flashed past the outlying shopping centers, slowed coming into St. Paul, worked back and forth through traffic, heading into

  Minneapolis. He was crossing the Mississippi when his cell phone jangled. He picked it up, looked at the face of it: Jennifer Carey; which meant that it could be Letty, since she used Carey's phone at Channel Three.

  He flicked open the phone and said, "Yeah?"

  Jennifer Carey said, "I've got something I've got to tell you. If you let on that I'm the one who told you, I'll kill you. I'm serious."

  "If I have to go to court'"

  "It's personal," Carey said. "Sort of."

  "All right. What?"

  "Letty took off this morning before I got here," Carey said. "So ten minutes ago I was talking to Lois Cline ' you know Lois?"

  "Vaguely. Looks like a pencil with a paintbrush on her head?"

  "Yes. Lois said that Letty has been out trolling downtown St. Paul, looking for a hooker, who she said was a classmate," Carey said. "Lois wasn't really sure if she was telling the truth, but warned her not to mess around with any hookers."

  "Aw'"

  "That's not the good part, yet. An hour later, Letty flagged her down, and she's got the girl with her. Sure enough, this other kid's a hooker," Carey said. "Letty even got her talking about it. You know, the street. Letty's idea, apparently, is that she could interview an underage hooker about giving blow jobs to Republicans."

  Lucas thought he felt a vein pop out in his temple. "Aw, for Christ's sakes."

  "Hey. She's got the eye and she's g
ot the balls," Carey said. "And she's apparently got the source."

  "Aw, sweet bleedin' Jesus," Lucas said. "Where is she?"

  "Downtown St. Paul, somewhere," Carey said. "You've got her cell phone?"

  "Yeah. Have you tried it?"

  "No, because then she'd know that I was the one who told you," Carey said. "I rather she didn't know that."

  "Okay. Good-bye. Hey-thanks."

  ***

  Letty answered on the third ring. "Hello, Dad?"

  "Where are you?"

  "Up at the Capitol," Letty said. "The big march is about to start, there are about a million people, I'm watching these black-flag guys…"

  "Go home," Lucas said.

  "What?"

  "Go home. I'm going to call your mom to pick you up," Lucas said.

  "I'm on my bike," Letty said. "But I can't go right now."

  "Letty, go right now."

  After a long silence, Letty asked, "Who told you? Lois?"

  "Just go home, Letty," Lucas said.

  "Bullshit. I'm going to march with my bike," she said. "I might not ever get to do this again for the rest of my life. Then I'll go home. I'm not with Juliet anymore."

  "Letty, goddamnit'"

  "I'm turning off my phone," she said, "Since you can't seem to handle this in an adult manner." She was gone.

  ***

  The women in Lucas's life reduced him to a chattering-chipmunk state about once a month. If not Letty, then Weather; if not Weather, then Jennifer Carey, mother of his other daughter; if not Carey, then Elle Kruger, a nun and lifelong friend; if not her, then Carol, his secretary. They were, he sometimes thought, when he had time to think about it, all crazier than a barrel of hair. All of them together, and also taken as individuals. But this, he thought, took the everlasting triple-decker chocolate-fudge cake.

  He was already rolling into downtown Minneapolis, thinking about the best way to get turned around to head back to St. Paul, when it occurred to him that if he went back, he (a) wouldn't find her in the crowd, and (b) if he found her, what would he do with her bike? He was driving a Porsche, and (c) if he did find her, would he try to force her into the car? Knowing Letty, she'd probably start screaming for help.