Night Prey

by John Sandford

  "Asshole's getting out in a few minutes. I want to see who picks him up." Del snapped the cigarette into the street and looked up at Lucas.

  "Who's the chick?"

  "Meagan Connell. Investigator with the state," Lucas said.

  Connell said, "Lucas, we're in a hurry, remember?"

  Lucas said, "Meagan. Meet Del Capslock."

  She looked down, and Del looked up and said, "How do."

  "You're a..." She couldn't find the right word.

  "A police officer, yes, ma'am, but there's been some bureaucratic foul-up and I ain't been paid the last few years."

  "You gotta see this asshole?" Lucas asked him.

  "Don't gotta."

  "Then come on inside. We're doing this thing...."

  "Yeah?"

  "The Seeds came up."

  Del had a database on the Seeds known to Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and Illinois police agencies. Joe Hillerod came in for twenty lines.

  "His brother Bob is heavily involved," Del said, scanning a computer file.

  "He transported drugs out of the port, down here and over to Chicago and maybe St. Louis, for some medium-time dealers. He didn't retail himself, not at the time, although he might be now. Then he had some hookers working all the big truck stops around Wisconsin and northern Illinois.

  Joe... the information says he mostly drove for his older brother but wasn't much of a businessman. Apparently he's a wild one, likes women and good times. And he seems to be the enforcer when they need one."

  "What're they doing now?" Connell asked.

  "Small-time retailing coke and crank through the roadhouses up there.

  And they've got a salvage yard outside of Two Horse."

  "Any chance that they were involved with those fifty-cals you found?"

  Lucas asked.

  Del shook his head doubtfully. "The Seeds have a bunch of little splinter groups. The fifty-cal guys are into this weird right-wing whitesupremacy Christian-Nazi shit. And they're mostly holdup guys and armored car guys. The Hillerods are a different splinter, mostly based around the old biker gang the Bad Seeds. They're dope and women. A couple of them supply women to the massage parlors over in Milwaukee and here in the Cities. One of them has a porno store in Milwaukee."

  Lucas scratched his head and looked at Connell, who'd been peering over Del's shoulder. "I guess the only way we're gonna find out is go up there and roust them."

  "Be a little careful," Del said.

  "When?" Connell asked.

  "Tomorrow," Lucas said. "I'll call the sheriff tonight, and we'll go first thing in the morning."

  "Driving?"

  Lucas showed a sickly grin. "Driving."

  Lucas and Connell agreed to meet at eight o'clock for the drive up north. "I'll check the medical examiner on Marcy Lane and see if anything's come up," she said. "I'll get everything I can on the Hillebrods. The whole file."

  Lucas stopped at homicide to check with Greave, but was told he was out. Another cop said, "He's down with that thing at Eisenhower Docks.

  He should be back by now."

  From his office, Lucas called Lincoln County Sheriff Sheldon Carr at Grant, Wisconsin, touched the scar on his neck as Carr picked up the phone. Carr had been there when Lucas was shot by the child.

  "Lucas, how are things?" Carr was hardy and country and smart.

  "You comin' up to fish? Is Heather pregnant yet?"

  "Not yet, Shelly. We'll let you know... Listen, I gotta talk to George Beneteau over in Carren County. Do you know him?"

  "George? Sure. He's okay. Should I give him a call?"

  "If you would. I'll call him later on and talk. I'm going up there tomorrow to look at a guy involved with the Seeds." "Ah, those assholes," Carr said with disgust. "They used to be around here, you know. We ran them off."

  "Yeah, well, we're bumping into them down here now. I would appreciate an introduction, though."

  "I'll call him right now. I'll tell him to expect to hear from you," Carr said. "You take it easy with those bad boys."

  Greave came in with a kid. The kid was wearing a black-and-white striped French fisherman's T-shirt, dirty jeans, and stepped-on white sneaks. He had a pound of dirty-blond hair stuck up under a long-billed red Woody Woodpecker cap.

  "This is Greg," Greave said, throwing a thumb at the kid. "He does handyman work around the apartments."

  Lucas nodded.

  "Don't tell nobody you talked to me or they'll fire my ass," Greg said to Lucas. "I need the job."

  "Greg says that the day before the old lady died, the air-conditioning went out and it got really hot in the apartments. He and Cherry spent the whole day down the basement, taking things apart. He says it was so hot, almost everybody left their windows and even their doors open."

  "Yeah?"

  "Yeah." Greave prodded the kid. "Tell him."

  "They did," the kid said. "It was the first real hot day of the year."

  "So maybe they could have gotten in the old lady's apartment," Greave said. "Come in with a ladder and figured out some way to drop the window, locked. We know it couldn't be the door."

  hat'd they do to her after they came in the window?"

  "They smothered her."

  "The medical examiner could determine that. And how do you drop a window, locked? Did you try it?"

  haven't got it figured out yet," Greave said.

  "We tried it a lot," the kid said to Lucas, Greave looked at him in exasperation. "Ain't no way."

  "Maybe there's some way," Greave said defensively. "Remember, Cherry's the maintenance man, he'd know tricks."

  "Woodworking tricks? Listen, Cherry's no smarter than you are," Lucas said. "If he could figure out a way to do it, you could. Whatever it was, must've been quiet. The neighbor didn't hear a thing. He said it was spooky-quiet."

  thought maybe you could come down and take a look," Greave said.

  "Figure something out."

  don't have the time," Lucas said, shaking his head. "But if you can figure a way to get them in and out... but even then, you'd have to figure out what killed her. It wasn't smothering."

  "They must've poisoned her," Greave said. "You know how jockeys dope up horses and still pass the drug tests? That must be what they didþthey went out and got some undetectable poison, put it in her booze, and she croaked."

  "No toxicology," Lucas said.

  know that. That's the whole point. It's undetectable, see?"

  "No," said Lucas.

  "That's gotta be it," Greave said.

  Lucas grinned at him. "If they did, then you should lie down, put a cold rag on your forehead, and relax, cause you're never gonna convict anybody on the vanishing-drug theory."

  "Maybe," Greave said. "But I'll tell you something else I figured out: it's gotta have something to do with the booze. The old lady takes booze and a couple of sleeping pills. That's the most noticeable thing she did, far as we know. Then she's murdered. That shit had to be poisoned.

  Somehow."

  "Maybe she masturbated at night, and it put a heavy strain on her heart and she croaked," Lucas said.

  thought of that," Greave said.

  "You did?" Lucas started to laugh.

  "But how does that explain the fact that Cherry did it?"

  Lucas stopped laughing. Cherry had done it. "You got me there," he said. He looked at the kid. "Do you think Cherry did it?"

  "He could do it," the kid said. "He's a mean sonofabitch. There was a little dog from across the street, belonged to this old couple, and he'd come over and poop on the lawn, and Ray caught it with a rope and strangled it. I seen him do it."

  Greave said, "See?"

  know he's mean," Lucas said. Then, to Greave: "Connell and I are headed up north tomorrow, checking on a guy."

  "Hey, I'm sorry, man," Greave said. "I know I'm not helping you much.

  I'll do whatever you want."

  "Anderson's doing a computer run: known sex offenders against trucks.

  W
hy don't you start pulling records, looking for any similarities in old charges, anything that refers to the motorcycle gang called the Bad Seeds. Or any motorcycle gang, for that matter. Flag anything that's even a remote possibility."

  The phone was ringing when Lucas got home: Heather. "I'll be a while," she said.

  "What happened?" He was annoyed. No. He was jealous.

  "A kid chopped his thumb off in a paper cutter at school. We're trying to stick it back on." She was both excited and tired, the words stumbling over each other.

  "A tough one?"

  "Lucas, we took two hours trying to find a decent artery and get it hooked up, and George is dissecting out a vein right now. Christ, they're so small, they're like tissue paper, but if we get it back on, we'll give the kid his hand back... I gotta go."

  "You'll be really late?"

  "I'm here for another two hours, if the vein works," she said. "If it doesn't, we'll have to go for another one. That'd be late."

  "See you then," he said.

  Lucas had been in love before, but with Heather, it was different.

  Everything was tilted, a little out of control. He might be overcommitting himself, he thought. On the other hand, there was a passion that he hadn't experienced before....

  And she made him haPW Lucas sometimes found himself laughing aloud just at the thought of her. That hadn't happened before. And the house in the evening felt empty without her.

  He sat at his desk, writing checks for household bills. When he finished, he dropped the stamped envelopes in a basket on an antique table by the front door. The antique was the first thing they'd bought together.

  "Jesus." He rubbed his nose. He was in deep. But the idea of one single woman, for the rest of time...

  Sara Jensen worked at Raider-Garrote, a stockbrokerage in the Exchange Building. The office entry was glass, and on the other side of the glass was a seating area where investors could sit and watch the numbers from the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ scroll across a scoreboard.

  Few people actually went inside. Most of themþthin white guys with glasses, briefoases, gray suits, glasses, and thinning hairþstood mouth-open in the skyway until their number came up, then scurried away, muttering.

  Koop loitered with them, hands in pockets, his look changing daily.

  One day it was jeans, white T-shirt, sneakers, and a ball cap, the next day it was long-sleeved shirt, khakis, and loafers.

  Through the window, over the heads of the few people in the display area, past the rows of white-shirted men and well-dressed women who sat peering at computer terminals and talking on telephones, in a separate large office, Jensen worked alone.

  Her office door was usually open, but few people went in. She wore a telephone headset most of the day. She often talked and read a newspaper at the same time. A half-dozen different computer terminals lined a shelf behind her desk, and every once in a while she'd poke one, watch the screen, occasionally, she'd rip paper out of a computer printer, look at it, or stuff it in her briefcase.

  Koop had no idea what she was doing. At first, he thought she might be some kind of super secretary. But she never fetched anything, nobody ever gave her what appeared to be an order. Then he noticed that when one of the white shirts wanted to talk to her, the shirt was distinctly deferential. Not a secretary.

  As he watched, he began to suspect that she was involved in something very complicated, something that wore her down. By the end of the day, she was haggard. When the white shirts and conservative dresses were standing up, stretching, laughing, talking, she was still working her headset. When she finally left, her leather briefoase was always stuffed with paper.

  On this day, she left a bit earlier than usual. He followed her through the skyway to the parking ramp, walked past her, face averted, in a crowd. At the elevator, he joined the short queue, feeling the tension in the back of his neck. He'd not done this before. He'd never been this close....

  He felt her arrive behind him, kept his back to her, his face turned away. She'd ride up to the sixth floor, if she remembered where she left her car. Sometimes she forgot, and wandered through the ramp, lugging the briefoase, looking for it. He'd seen her do it. Today her car was on six, just across from the doors.

  The elevator arrived and he stepped inside, turned left, pushed seven, stepped to the back. A half-dozen other people got on with her, and he maneuvered until he was directly behind her, not eight inches away.

  The smell of her perfume staggered him. A small tuft of hair hung down on the back of her neck, she had a mole behind her earþbut he'd seen that before.

  The smell was the thing. The Opium...

  The elevator started up and a guy at the front lost his balance, took a half-step back into her. She tried to back up, her but bumping Koop in the groin. He stood his ground and the guy in front muttered "Sorry," and she half-turned to Koop at the same time, not looking at him, and said, "Sorry," and then they were at six.

  Koop's eyes were closed, holding on. He could still feel her.

  She'd pressed, he thought.

  She'd apparently noticed him, noticed his body under the chameleon's shirt, and had been attracted. She'd pressed. He could still feel her ass.

  Koop got off at seven, stunned, realized he was sweating, had a ferocious hard-on. She'd done it on purpose. She knew... Or did she?

  Koop hurried to his truck. If he came up beside her, maybe she'd give him a signal. She was a high-class woman, she wouldn't just come on to him. She'd do something different, none of this "Wanna fuck?" stuff.

  Koop fired up the truck, rolled down the ramp, around and around, making himself dizzy, the truck's wheels screeching down the spiral.

  Had to stay with her.

  At the exit, there were three cars ahead of him. Jensen hadn't come down yet... The first and second cars went quickly. The third was driven by an older woman, who said something to the ticket taker.

  The ticket taker stuck his head out the window and pointed left, then right.

  The woman said something else.

  A car came up from behind Koop, stopped. Not her. Then another car, lights on, down the last ramp, breaking left into the monthlyparker exit line. Jensen had an exit card. He caught a glinspse of her face as she punched the card into the automatic gate. The gate rose and she rolled past him on the left.

  "Motherfucker, what's wrong? What're you doing?" Koop poked his horn.

  The woman in the car ahead of him took ten seconds to turn and look behind her, then shrugged and started digging into her purse. She took forever, then finally passed a bill to the ticket taker. The ticket taker said something, and she dug into the purse again, finally producing the parking ticket. He took the ticket, gave her change, and then she said something else....

  Koop beeped again, and the woman looked into her rearview mirror, finally started forward, stopped at the curb, took a slow left.

  Koop thrust his money and ticket at the ticket taker.

  "Keep the change," he said.

  "Can't do that." The ticket taker was an idiot, some kind of goddamned faggot. Koop felt the anger crawling up his neck. In another minute

  "I'm in a fuckin' hurry," Koop said.

  "Only take a second," the ticket man said. He screwed around with the cash register and held out two quarters. "Here you go, in-afuckin'-hurry."

  The gate went up and Koop, cursing, pushed into the street. Jensen usually took the same route home. He started after her, pushing hard, making lights.

  "C'mon, Sara," he said to his steering wheel. "C'mon, where are you?"

  He caught her a mile out. Fell in behind.

  Should he pull up beside her? Would she give him a signal?

  She might.

  He was thinking about it when she slowed, took a right into a drugstore parking lot. Koop followed, parked at the edge of the lot. She sat inside her car for a minute, then two, looking for something in her purse. Then she swung her legs out, disappeared into the store. He thought about fo
llowing, but the last time, he'd run into that kid.

  It was hard to watch somebody in a store unobtrusively, with all the antishoplifting mirrors around.

  So he waited. She was ten minutes, came out with a small bag. At her car, she fumbled in her purse, fumbled some more. Koop sat up.

  What?

  She couldn't find her keys. She started back toward the store, stopped, turned and looked thoughtfully at the car, and walked slowly back.