Wicked Prey

by John Sandford

  "I've got another plan," Letty said. "Once she's home, and she's safe, and Don's not there, I'll get her to talk to the police about Randy," Letty said. "I asked Lorenzo at the station, he said that if she told the police about Randy, they wouldn't even have to have a trial. He's on parole, and they'd put him back inside, for drug use and prostitution and maybe assault. They might have a trial on some of those, but they'd put him away first."

  Lorenzo the Lawyer covered legal affairs for the news department.

  "That's enough for you?" Carey asked. "That he goes back to jail?"

  "If that's what I can get, that's what I can get," Letty said. "It'll take care of the problem for a couple of more years."

  "I'll drop you," Carey said. "Don't forget to tell her about Don."

  "I'll tell her," Letty said.

  "Letty?"

  "I'll tell her."

  ***

  Letty told her, but Briar, scared and sad and also, Letty thought, somewhat interested in Whitcomb's new disability, said she couldn't go home right away.

  "I mean, I love it about that fucker Don," Briar said. "But Randy does love me somehow ' I know, I know what you're going to say, but I can feel it'"

  "He treats you like a goddamn dog," Letty shrilled.

  "Not anymore; he really needs me now."

  "What if he starts in again?" Letty asked. "What if he gets his stick out?"

  "He won't. He won't."

  "Ah, God. Juliet, he'll put you out there again," Letty said. "You'll be trolling for old fat guys again."

  "You just don't believe," Briar said, and then, "I gotta get back. He's really hurt."

  ***

  When Briar got back to Whitcomb's room, she found him scratching on a piece of printer paper with a ballpoint. "Where the hell you been?"

  "I got your ice cream," she said, and passed the carton to him, with a plastic spoon. He took it, and she asked, looking at the paper, "What are you doing, honey?"

  "Making a plan. I been fuckin' off, no help from you and Ranch, but we're going after that Davenport bitch when I get out of here. No more fuckin' off."

  Briar looked at the plan: a list of words in handwriting so cramped, with letters so tiny, that they were illegible.

  "You don't have to read. It's my plan. You do what you're told."

  ***

  Lucas jammed the Porsche in a slot in the short-term parking lot, ran into the underground ramp, carrying his overnight bag, flashed his ID across the counter at the Northwest Airlines ticket agent, said, "Plane leaves in twenty minutes, I gotta be on it'"

  With his ticket in his pocket, he jumped the security line, and one of the TSA security guys got him a ride on a handicapped transporter, and the driver ran him out to the gate.

  The gate attendant was standing at the door, the plane already loaded. She smiled at him as he hustled down the ramp and on board, and a flight attendant said, "Cut it close," and she smiled and shook her head, and he was in his seat.

  Breathing hard.

  He'd gotten the call no more than forty-five minutes earlier, that the Los Angeles cops thought they had a positive ID on the woman. Her name apparently was Elena Diaz, and she had an address in Venice, which the cop said was on the West Side, whatever that meant. More details coming; a couple of intelligence guys were going over to take a look, and a request for a search warrant was being considered.

  "Have I got time to come out?"

  "Nothing's going to happen for at least a couple of hours, maybe longer," the LA cop said. "Got to get our shit together, figure out what we're doing."

  Lucas made a call, found out about the flight, called his housekeeper, got her to pack for him, and dashed across town and out to the airport.

  Not until the plane turned down the runway did he remember how badly they frightened him, and here he was, strapped to a rocket, and then the plane blasted off and he was in the air, no books, no magazines, no pills.

  Three and a half hours to LAX.

  When he crawled off the plane at the other end, he turned on his cell phone and it lit up. He first returned the calls to Los Angeles, to the cop's cell phone. The cop answered, and Lucas identified himself, and the cop said, "There's been a fire…"

  "Ah, shit."

  Chapter 15

  The Los Angeles cop said, "Get outside Northwest, over where the Hertz vans stop. I'm in a black-and-white Toyota FJ."

  Lucas went outside, spotted the FJ and walked over. The cop, whose name was Lance Barr, and who looked like the third banana in a so-so cop film, poked the door open for him; they shook hands and Barr said, "Nice threads for a Minnesota cop."

  Barr looked pretty good himself, in a tan suit and white shirt, with an ice-blue tie and high-shine brown oxfords. He was wearing skinny sunglasses under his gelled black hair. Lucas said, "We have a special suit for a guy traveling to the Coast. Gives us a chance to get out of the Pendletons."

  "I suspected that-but I'm a detective," Barr said, and he pulled out and they headed east into a lot of blacktop.

  "What about the fire?" Lucas asked.

  "Well, sometime early this morning, about, mmm, six o'clock or so, this chick's house goes up in smoke. The bottom floor, anyway, and most of the top floor. That's before we were even looking at her. Her next-door neighbor was up and heard the place go-said it sounded like a gas explosion-and the silly asshole ran in there with a fire extinguisher and put some of it out. He said he was afraid the girls were in there."

  Two women lived in the house, Barr said, but one was traveling, the neighbors said.

  "Anyway, this guy slowed the fire down, and the fire guys got there and put the rest of it out. The Shell Avenue station is only a half mile away, right down Venice Boulevard, so they were there in three minutes ' Somebody poured gasoline, and touched it off. It's totally fucked, of course, but there are still some unburned pieces. One of the guys called and said they looked at a computer, but it had been cracked open and the hard drive was missing, so…"

  "Probably cleaned the place out," Lucas said. "Anybody got any photos?"

  "Not that we've found. Still looking."

  "Got tags on their cars?" Lucas asked.

  "No. Their names aren't in the database," Barr said. "I mean, their names are, but there are a number of people named Elena Diaz and Martha Knofler, and none of them live in Venice."

  "Knofler. She's the roommate?"

  "Yup. Rug-munchers. That's what their neighbors say. Long-term commitment," Barr said. "One of the neighbors, though, thought, for some reason, that Martha's name is Laura, or Lauren, and she's pretty sure about it, but she doesn't know why, since she only knew them to nod to at Whole Foods."

  "So their names are probably phony, and they cleaned the place out and then burned it," Lucas said.

  "Cleaned it out, but they didn't clean out the shower drain, so we got some hair. If you get some hair in Minnesota, then we can put our girl on your crime scene…"

  "Don't have any hair yet," Lucas said. "And they don't have any in Washington. You gotta start processing it, because we might need it' but what we really need to do is chase down this Knofler, and break her ass."

  "We're working on that," Barr said. "We're looking in garbage cans for hard drives, though they're probably in a canal or out in the ocean ' or maybe she still has them, and when we catch her, we'll get them back."

  "If the place burned at six, that'd be eight back home," Lucas said. "So Diaz, or whatever her name is, probably saw the TV broadcast at seven o'clock or so, and called out here. That'd be five o'clock ' That'd give Knofler an hour to get out."

  "Must have rehearsed it, though," Barr said. "She wouldn't have had much time. They maybe already had the gas in the garage. And, they leased the place, so they didn't lose anything but some furniture and their security deposit."

  "These guys are no dummies," Lucas said. They were passing a cluster of small, hot-looking apartments off Lincoln Boulevard, and a woman with a dog on a leash and three small children in shorts
and flip-flops. "Man, if we'd gotten this Knofler ' Man."

  ***

  Diaz and Knofler lived in a pink-stucco house on Carroll Canal Court, a blank-faced two-story cube with a forbidding incised-steel garage door and a canal in the backyard. The decoration on the garage door was of a sunflower, but that succeeded only in making it look more like a bank safe. A fire truck was still parked in the street, but the hoses had been reeled in and the firefighters were working in shirtsleeves.

  Another cop, named Harvey Cason, was standing in the front door when they arrived, cleaning his teeth with a length of dental floss. He flicked the floss into the yard and said, "I'm gonna smell like a burned couch for the rest of the day."

  "So, no change," Barr said. He introduced Lucas and Cason said, "Four cops?"

  Lucas nodded: "Two in New York, one in Hudson, Wisconsin, and one of my guys last night. Plus they killed a civilian last night, and one of their own guys is dead with them-my guy got him."

  "God bless him," Cason said, and he crossed himself.

  "So whatcha got?" Barr asked Cason.

  "Nothing since you left," Cason said. "There's some paper upstairs, but it's all wet and runny. We're looking for credit card receipts, official paper of any kind, you know. The crime-scene guys are looking for prints, hair, anything. We've got DNA, but no prints, so far. We need prints…"

  "Working the neighbors?" Lucas asked.

  "Yeah. Looking for pictures, but they seem kind of camera-shy," Cason said. "They didn't go to block parties, they pretty much kept to themselves. Both of them did yoga; we're looking for a yoga place they might have gone."

  "How do you know?"

  "People would see them carrying yoga mats around," Cason said.

  "What kind of cars?"

  "Toyota and a Lexus. A minivan and an SC430 convertible."

  There wasn't much more: Lucas stood in the doorway and looked in, but he wasn't going to find anything the crime-scene crew hadn't. He walked once around the house, and saw a tricycle in the canal, and wondered about it. A bicycle he'd have understood: you steal a bike, ride it, then throw it in the canal; that's the way of the world. Had somebody hijacked a trike?

  ***

  When he got back around to the front, Barr and Cason had gone inside, and Lucas looked around, then wandered across the street, where a pretty woman, maybe forty or forty-five, was standing in the doorway, watching. Lucas said, "Hi."

  She nodded. "How's it going over there?"

  "Not well," Lucas said. "Somebody asked you if you had photos, right?"

  "Yes, but we don't."

  "How about photos of the street in general?" Lucas asked. "You know, something that might have their cars in it?"

  "I don't think so, but I'll check," she said. "They killed some police officers?"

  The woman had a peculiar California look, a something-like-coral blouse and aqua slacks, which worked for her, and long blond slightly messy hair that she'd probably paid some guy two hundred dollars to mess up. Lucas took her in, and said, "Yeah, and they executed this woman. A political worker, you know, she worked for a community organizing group. Happened to be there, and bam! Killed her in cold blood."

  That woke her up a little. "You got this from the Minneapolis police?"

  "I'm from the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension," Lucas said. "I was at the scene-my guy was the guy who was murdered. The woman…" He lifted his hands. "… I mean, why?"

  "Ah, jeez, that's awful," she said, and she meant it. "Look, I'll go check my pictures, but I'm ninety-nine percent that we don't have any. We're not really picture people. I don't even know how to work my cell phone cam."

  "Thanks." Lucas turned and looked down the street. "Don't see cars. Are any of the other people home?"

  "Dick and Carly live right there. I saw Dick a minute ago." She pointed sideways across the street.

  "Thanks. Let me know," Lucas said.

  He was halfway across the street when she called him, and she came down the ten-foot-long driveway, barefoot, and said, "You know, over on Venice Boulevard, there's a place about four blocks that way"-she pointed-"called David Something, Wedding and Portrait Photography. That guy is supposedly documenting contemporary life in Venice. He's always walking around in the evening taking pictures of the houses and the people…"

  "Great," Lucas said. And, "You're a very attractive woman."

  "I know," she said. "It makes me feel good."

  "Are you in the movies?"

  "No, no, but thank you for asking," and she twiddled her fingers at him and walked back up the driveway to her house. Lucas found Barr and asked, "Could I get a ride?"

  "Where?"

  "A place called David Something's, a wedding and portrait photography place on Venice…"

  ***

  David Harelson's Wedding and Portrait Photography, By Appt., was tucked in a corner of a strip shopping center three blocks down the street. Lucas spotted it, Barr did an illegal U-turn to get into the parking lot, and a patrol car lit up its lights and came after him.

  "Ah, kiss my ass," Barr groaned. "Traffic school, here I come."

  Lucas said, smiling at it, "I'll go talk to this guy, you talk to your guy."

  ***

  David Harelson was in, but the door was locked. Lucas saw him moving through to the back of the place, and rapped on the door, and then rapped louder, and then banged on it, and finally Harelson came steaming out of the back, waving a finger like a windshield wiper, and he shouted, "We're closed."

  "I'm a cop," Lucas shouted back. "Open up."

  Harelson looked at him for a minute, then past him at Barr and the patrol cop, and the flashing lights on the patrol car, then turned a latch.

  "What?" He was a short man, balding, running to fat, with a caterpillar-style brown mustache crawling across his upper lip, and a tiny soul patch on his round chin.

  "A house burned down over by the canals-Carroll Court," Lucas said. "We hear you've been doing some documentary photography in the area."

  Harelson looked astonished, stepped back to let Lucas inside. "A house on Carroll Court? Which one? Was it badly damaged?"

  "Yeah, it's pretty messed up," Lucas said. "As you go in from Venice Boulevard, it's a left turn, about halfway down the block, a pink stucco. It's got a shiny steel garage door with a sunflower incised on it."

  Harelson slapped himself on the forehead: "The Lu house."

  "Lu?"

  "He was the original owner ' the builder ' years and years ago. Oh, God. I've got to get over there."

  "Wait a minute. We're really hurting. We've got dead cops, dead civilians…" He told Harelson the story, and Harelson said, halfway through, "I never knew. I don't watch TV."

  Barr came in and said, "Beat it," meaning the ticket, and Lucas said, "Good," and Harelson said, "I keep my files in a Lightroom database and I sort them by block and some of them by address, but not the Lu house, it's not that' distinguished."

  "We need a car, we need one of the women, we need anything."

  Harelson nodded: "Come on. I'll show you."

  ***

  He had an Apple computer in the back, a tall silver tower with handles on top and two screens, a really big one and a smaller one, and he called up the program, called up the block files into thumbnails, and they began looking up and down the block for cars. "How many pictures do you have?" Barr asked.

  Harelson tapped a couple of keys: "On this block, four hundred and twelve. Back in the film days, I would maybe have had six or ten. God bless digital."

  "I've been shooting a little myself," Lucas said.

  "Yeah? A cop would have some great opportunities…"

  ***

  In the end, they found two photos of the Lexus sitting in the driveway, and one of the Toyota. The Toyota was taken side-on, and from some distance, late in the afternoon, and they couldn't make out anything special about it. In one of the photos of the Lexus, they could almost make out the license-tag number, in the thumbnail. "Hang on," Ha
relson said. He isolated the license, magnified it: "Got it."

  "Amazing," Barr said, and he slapped the fat man on the back. "Print that."

  ***

  The car was registered to a Louise Janowitz, and Louise Janowitz had insurance through State Farm, and a driver's license with the state of California. "So it's Louise, not Lauren or Laura or Martha," Barr said.

  Lucas was a little skeptical. "Who knows, at this point? Why would she give the right name to the DMV when she lies about everything else?"

  Barr, operating from his cell phone, said, "We'll have her driver's license photo in two minutes, down at the office. They can e-mail it to me and we can get it at a coffee shop Wi-Fi."

  "Gotta find the car," Lucas said.

  "We're looking," Barr said. "It's not a common car, even out here. So, if it's around, we'll get it."

  ***

  They got the photo at a Starbucks, of a dark-haired, sallow-faced woman with large plastic-rimmed glasses and Three Stooges bangs. She peered out of the photo with a depressive frown, chin down. "Whoa. Gonna jump right on that," Barr said.

  "Didn't think that was an option open to us," Lucas said.

  "Hey, gay or straight, don't matter. Look at the vibration she gives out: you gonna jump on that, gay or straight?"

  ***

  They didn't find the car immediately, but they did get a break. One of the LA crime-scene people, checking the house phone, found an incoming call that morning, an hour and fifteen minutes before the fire erupted.

  The call had come from an over-the-counter prepaid cell phone, with no real way to trace it-but after some rigmarole with the local prosecutor's office, they got a list of phone calls from that cell phone. There weren't many, but two of them, two days apart, went to a motel in Bloomington.