Night Prey

by John Sandford

  Lucas, moderately surprised, shut his mouth and looked straight out over the wheel, and Connell said, "Fuck you, Greave."

  Greave, still cheerful, said, "Say, did I tell you about the deaf people?"

  "Huh?"

  "Some deaf people went into the St. Paul cops. They saw the thing on TV, you know, that Connell fed them? They think they saw the guy at the bookstore the night Wannemaker was taken off. Bearded guy with a truck.

  They even got parrt of his license tag."

  Connell turned to look over the seat. "Why didn't you say something?"

  "Unfortunately, they didn't get any numbers. Only the letters."

  "Well, that'd get it down to a thousandþ" "Uh-uh," Greave said. "The letters they got were ASS."

  "ASS?"

  "Yeah."

  "Damnit," Connell said, turning back front. The state banned license plates with potentially offensive letter combinations: there were no FUK, SilK, LIK, or DIK No CNT or TWT. There was no ASS.

  "Did we check?"

  "Yup," Greave said. "There's nary a one. I personally think this old guy did it, then comes home and gives the daughter a little tickle."

  "Kiss my ass," Connell said.

  "Any time, any place," said Greave.

  A TV3 truck was parked on the street in front of the Weston house, a reporter combing her strawberry-blond hair in the wing mirror, a cameraman in a travel vest sitting on the curb, eating an egg-salad sandwich. The cameraman said something to the reporter as Lucas stopped at the house, and the reporter turned, saw him, and started across the street. She had long smooth legs on top of black high heels. Her dress clung to her like a new paint job on a 55

  Chevy.

  think she's in my Playboy, " Greave said, his face pressed to the window. "Her name is Pamela Stern. She's a piranha."

  Lucas got out and Stern came up, thrust out her hand, and said, "I think we've got him bottled up inside."

  "Yeah, well..." Lucas looked up at the house. The curtains twitched in an old-fashioned picture window. The reporter reached out l and turned over his necktie. Lucas looked down and found her reading the orange label.

  "Hermes," she said. "I thought so. Very nice."

  "His shoes are from Payless," Connell said from across the car.

  "His shorts are from Fruit of the Loom," said Greave, chipping in.

  "He's one of the fruits."

  love your sunglasses," Stern said, ignoring them, her perfect white teeth catching her lower lip for just an instant. "They make you look mean. Mean is so sexy."

  "Jesus," Lucas said. He started up the walk with Greave and Connell, and found the woman right at his elbow. Behind her, the cameraman had the camera on his shoulder, and rolling. Lucas said, "When we get to the steps, I'm going to ask the guy if he wants me to arrest you for trespassing. If he does, I will. And I suspect he does."

  She stopped in her tracks, eyes like chips of flint. "It's not nice to fuck with Mother Nature," she said. And then, "I don't know what Jan Reed sees in you."

  Connell said, "Who? Jan Reed?" and Greave said, "Whoa," and Lucas, irritated, said, "Bullshit," and rang the doorbell. Ray Weston opened the door and peeked out like a mouse. "I'm Lucas Davenport, deputy chief of police, City of Minneapolis. I'd like to speak to you."

  "My daughter's nuts," Weston said, opening the door another inch.

  "We need to talk," Lucas said. He took off the sunglasses.

  "Let them in, Ray," a woman's voice said. The voice was shaky with fear. Weston opened the door and let them in.

  Neither Ray nor Myrna Weston knew anything about the killings, Lucas, Connell, and Greave agreed on that in the first five minutes. They spent another half hour pinning down times on the Wannemaker and Lane killings. The Westons were in bed when Lane was taken, and were watching The Wild Ones with friends when Wannemaker was picked up.

  "Do you think you can get these bums off our back?" Ray Weston asked when they were ready to leave.

  don't know," he said honestly. "That stuff your daughter's giving themþit's pretty heavy."

  "She's nuts," Weston said again. "How can they believe that stuff?"

  "They don't," Lucas said.

  Outside, Stern was waiting, microphone in hand, the camera rolling, when Lucas, Connell, and Greave left the house. "Chief Davenport," she said. "What have you learned? Will you arrest Ray Weston, father of Elaine Louise Weston-Brown?"

  Lucas shook his head. "Nope. Your whole irresponsible story is a crock of shit and a disgrace to journalism."

  Greave was laughing about Stern's reaction on the way back, and even Connell seemed a little looser. "I liked the double take she did.

  She was already rolling with the next question," Greave said.

  "It won't seem so funny if they put it on the air," Connell said.

  "They won't do that," Lucas said.

  "The whole thing is like some weird feminist joke," Greave said.

  "If there was such a thing as a feminist joke."

  "There are lots of feminist jokes," Connell said.

  "Oh. Okay, I'm sorry. You're right," Grave admitted. "What I meant to say is, there are no funny feminist jokes."

  Connell turned to him, a tiny light in her eye. "You know why women are no good at math?" she asked.

  "No. Why?"

  She held her thumb and forefinger two inches apart. "Because all their lives they're told this is eight inches."

  Lucas grinned, and Greave let a smile slip. "One fuckin' funny joke after thirty years of feminism."

  "You know why men give names to their penises?"

  "I'm holding my breath," Greave said.

  "'Cause they don't want a complete stranger making all their important decisions for them."

  Greave looked into his lap. "You hear that, Godzilla? She's making fun of you."

  Just before they got back, Connell asked, "Now what?"

  don't know," Lucas said. "Think about it. Read your files some more.

  Dredge something up. Wait."

  "Wait for him to kill somebody else?"

  "Something," Lucas said.

  think we ought to push him. I think we ought to publish the artist's drawing. I couldn't find anybody to confirm it, but I'd bet there's some resemblance."

  Lucas sighed. "Yeah, maybe we should. I'll talk to Roux."

  Roux agreed. "It'll give us a bone to throw them," she said. "If they believe us."

  Lucas went back to his office, stared at the phone, nibbling at his lower lip, trying to find a hold on the case. The easy possibilities, like Junky, were fading.

  The door opened without a knock, and Jan Reed stuck her head in.

  "Whoops. Was I supposed to knock? I thought this was an outer office."

  "I'm not a big enough deal to have an outer office," Lucas said.

  "Come on in. You guys are killing us."

  "Not me," she said, sitting down, her legs crossed to one side.

  She'd changed since he saw her in the morning, and must've gotten some sleep.

  She looked fresh and wide awake, in a simple skirt with a white silk blouse.

  wanted to apologize for Pam Stern. She's been out there a little too long."

  "Who turned up the original story?"

  really don't knowþit was phoned in," she said.

  "The therapist."

  really don't know," she said, smiling. "And I wouldn't tell you if I did."

  "Ah. Ethics raise their ugly head."

  "Is there anything new?" she asked. She took a short reporter's notebook out of her purse.

  "No."

  "What should I look for next?"

  "The autopsy. Evidence of the killer's semen or blood. If we get that, we've got something. There's a good chance that he's a prior sexual offender, and the stah's got a DNA bank on prior offenders.

  That's next."

  "All right," she said. She made a few notes. "I'll look for that.

  Anything else?"

  Lucas shrugged. "That's about it."
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  "Okay. Well, that's it, then." And she left, leaving behind her scent.

  There's been just the tiniest, microscopic pause after she'd said "Okay." An opporrtunity to get personal? He wasn't sure.

  Connell came by late in the afternoon. "Nothing from the autopsy yet.

  There's a bruise on her face where it looks like somebody pinched her, and they're bringing in a specialist to see if they can lift a fingerprint. No great hopes."

  "Nothing else?"

  "Not yet. And I'm drawing blanks," she said.

  "How about the PPP guy, the convict who saw the tattoo? What was his nameþPrice? If nothing comes up, why don't we drive over to Waupun tomorrow and talk to him?"

  "Okay. What about Greave?"

  "I'll tell him to work his own case for the day. That's all he wants to do anyway."

  "Good. How far is Waupun?"

  "Five or six hours."

  "Why don't we fly?"

  "Ah..."

  can get a state patrol plane, I think."

  Heather's head was snuggled in under Lucas's jaw, and she said, "You should have driven. You don't need the stress."

  "Yeah, but I sound like such a chicken."

  "Lots of people don't like to fly."

  "But they do," he said.

  She patted his stomach. "You'll be okay. I could get you something that'd mellow you out a little, if you want."

  "That'd mess up my head. I'll fly." He sighed and said, "My main problem is, I'm not running this investigation. Connell's done everything, and I can't see beyond what she's done. I'm not thinking: the gears aren't moving like they used to."

  "What's wrong?"

  don't know, exactlyþI can't get anything to starX with. If I could get the smallest bite of personal information on the guy, I'd have somethingþwe just can't get it. All I have to work with is paper."

  "You said he might do cocaine...."

  "Maybe fifty thousand people in the Twin Cities do cocaine on a more or less regular basis," Lucas said. "I could jump a few dealers, but the chances of getting anywhere are nil."

  "It's something."

  need something else, and soon. He's gone crazyþless than a week between kills. He'll be doing another one. He'll be thinking about it already."

  Lucas hated airplanes, feared them. Helicopters, for reasons he didn't understand, were not so bad. They flew to Waupun in a small four-seater fixed-wing plane, Lucas in the back.

  "I've never seen anything like that," Connell said, an undercurrent of satisfaction in her voice.

  "You're exaggerating it," Lucas said, his face grim. The airport was open, windy, a patch on the countryside. A brown state car waited by the Waupun sign, and they walked that way.

  thought you were going to throw the pilot out the window when we hit those bumps. I thought you were gonna explode. It was like your head was blowing up, like one of those Zodiac boats where the pressure builds up."

  "Yeah, yeah."

  hope you and the pilot can kiss and make up before we fly back," Connell said. "I don't want him flying scared."

  Lucas turned to her and she stepped away, half smiling, half frightened. With the fish-white stone face behind the black glasses, he looked like a maniac, Lucas did not like airplanes.

  A Waupun guard tossed a newspaper in the backseat of the state car and got out as they came up. "Ms. Connell?"

  "Yes."

  "Tom Davis." He was a mild-looking, fleshy man with rosy cheeks and vague blue eyes under a smooth, baby-clear forehead. He had a small graying mustache, just a bit wider than Hitler's. He smiled and shook her hand, then to Lucas, "And you're her assistant?" "That was a joke," Connell said hastily. "This is, uh, Deputy Chief Lucas Davenport from Minneapolis."

  "Whoops, sorry, Chief," Davis said. He winked at Connell. "Well, hop in. We got a little ride."

  Davis knew D. Wayne Price. "He's not a bad fella," he said. He drove with one foot on the gas and the other on the brake. The constant surging and slowing reminded Lucas of the airplane's motion.

  "He was convicted of murdering a woman by slicing her open with a knife," Connell said. "They had to remove her intestines from the street with a bucket." Her voice was conversational.

  "That wouldn't put him in the top ten percent of his class," the guard said, just as conversationally. "We got guys in here who raped and killed little boys before they ate them."

  "That's bad," Lucas said.

  "That is bad," said Davis.

  "Is there any talk about Price?" Lucas asked. "He says he's innocent."

  "So do fifty percent of the others, though most of them don't actually claim to be innocent. They say the law wasn't followed, or the trial wasn't fair. I mean, they did it, whatever it was, but they say the state didn't dot every single i and cross every single t before puttin' them awayþand they say that's just not fair. There's nobody finickier about the law than a con," Davis said.

  "How about Price?"

  don't know D. Wayne that good, but some of the guys believe him," Davis said. "He's been pretty noisy about it, filing all kinds of appeals. He's never stopped, he's still doing it."

  "Don't like prisons," Connell said. The interview room had the feel of a dungeon.

  "Like the doors might not open again after you're inside," Lucas said.

  "That's exactly it. I could stand it for about a week, and then they'd come to put me back in the cell, and I'd freak. I don't think I'd make a full month. I'd kill myself," Connell said.

  "People do," Lucas said. "The saddest ones are the people they put on a suicide watch. They can't get out, and they can't get it over with.

  They just sit and suffer."

  "Some of them deserve it."

  Lucas disagreed. "I don't know if anybody deserves that."

  D. Wayne Price was a large man in his early fornies, his face looked as if it had been slowly and incompetently formed with a ballpeen hammer.

  His forehead was shiny and pitted, with scars running up into his hairline. He had rough poreless skin under his eyes, scar tissue from being punched. His small round ears seem to be fitted into slots in his head. When the escort brought him to the interview room, he smiled a convict's obsequious smile, and his teeth were small and chipped.

  He was wearing jeans and a white T-shirt with "Harley-Davidson" on the front.

  Lucas and Connell were sitting on a couple of slightly damaged green office chairs, facing a couch whose only notable quality was its brownness. The escon was a horse-faced older man with a bur cut, he was carrying a yellow-backed book, said, "Sit," to Price, as though he were a Labrador retriever, said, "How do" to Lucas and Connell, then dropped onto the other end of the couch with his book.

  "You smoke?" Connell asked Price.

  "Sure." She fished in a pocket, handed him an open pack of Marlboros and a butane lighter. Price knocked a cigarette out of the pack, lit it, and Connell said, voice soft, "So, this woman in Madison. You kill her?"

  "Never touched the bitch," Price said, testing, his eyes lingering on her.

  "But you knew her," Connell said.

  knew who she was," Price said.

  "Sleep with her?" Lucas asked.

  "Nope. Never got that close," Price said, looking at Lucas. "Had a nice ass on her, though."

  "Where were you when she was killed?" asked Connell.

  "Drunk. My buddies dropped me off at my house, but I knew if I went inside I'd start barfin', so I walked down to this convenience store for coffee. That's what got me."

  "Tell me," said Connell.

  Price looked up at the ceiling, stuck the cigarette in his mouth, looked down at it long enough to light it, blew some smoke and closed his eyes, remembering. "I was out drinking with some buddies. Shit, we were drinking all afternoon and shootin' pool. And so about eight o'clock my buddies brought me home cause I was too fuckin' drunk to drink."

  "That's pretty drunk," Lucas said.

  "Yeah, pretty," Price said. "Anyway, they dumped me off on my porch, and I sat there
for a while, and when I could get going, I decided to go up to the corner and get some coffee. There was a 7-Eleven in one of them side-street shopping centers. There was like a drugstore and a cleaners and this bookstore. I was in the 7-Eleven, and she came down from the bookstore to get something. I was drunker'n shit, but I remembered her from some welding I done for her."