Night Prey

by John Sandford

  And was gone.

  The curb outside City Hall was lined with TV vans. Something had happened.

  Lucas dumped the Porsche in a ramp and hurried back. A Star-Tribune reporter, a young guy with a buzz cut, carrying a notebook, was coming up from the opposite direction. He nodded at Lucas and held the door.

  "Anything happening with your case?" he asked.

  "Nothing serious," Lucas said. "What's going on?"

  "You haven't heard?" Buzz Cut did a mock double take.

  "I'm just coming in," Lucas said.

  "You remember that couple that was jumped up by the lakes, the woman was killed?"

  "Yeah?"

  "Somebody else got hit, right across the street. Four hours ago.

  Thirty feet away from the first scene," Buzz Cut said. "I ain't bullshitting you, Lucas: I been out there. Thirty feet. This guy came out of nowhere like a maniac, broad daylight. Big fucking switchblade.

  He sounded like somebody from a horror movie, had a hat over his face, he was screaming.

  But it wasn't any gang. It was white-on-white. The guy who got stabbed is a lawyer."

  "Dead?" Lucas asked. He'd relaxed a notch: not his case.

  "Not yet. He's cut to shit. Got a knife in the guts. He's still in the operating room. He spent the night with his girlfriend, and the next morning, he walks out the door and this asshole jumps him."

  "Has she got a husband or ex-husband?" l "I don't know," the reporter said.

  "If I were you, I'd ask," Lucas said.

  The reporter held up his notebook, which was turned over to a page with a list of indecipherable scrawls. "First question on the list," he said.

  Then he said, "Whoa."

  Jan Reed was lounging in the hall, apparently waiting for the press conference to start. She saw Lucas and lifted her chin and smiled and started toward them, and the reporter, without moving his lips, said, "You dog."

  "Not me," Lucas muttered.

  "Lucas," she said, walking up. Big eyes. Pools. She touched him on the back of his hand and said, "Are you in on this?"

  Lucas despised himself for it, but he could feel the pleasure of her company unwinding in his chest. "Hi. No, but it sounds like a good one."

  He bounced on his toes, like a basketball player about to be sent into a game.

  She looked back toward the briefing room. "Pretty spectacular right now. It could wind up as a domestic."

  "It's right across the street from that other one."

  She nodded. "That's the angle. That's what makes it good. Besides which, the people are white."

  "Is that a requirement now?" Buzz Cut asked.

  "Of course not," she said, laughing. Then her voice dropped to the confidential level, including him in the conspiracy. "But you know how it goes."

  The reporter's scalp flushed pink and he said, "I better get inside."

  "What's wrong with him?" she asked, watching him go. Lucas shrugged, and she said, "So, do you have time for a cup of coffee? After the press conference?"

  "Uhhmm," Lucas said, peering down at her. She definitely wound his clock. "Why don't you stop by my office," he said.

  "Okay... but, your tie, your collar's messed up. Here...."

  She fixed his collar and tie, and though he was fairly certain that there'd been nothing wrong with them, he liked it, and carried her touch down the hall.

  Connell was the perfect contrast to Jan Reed: a big solid blonde who carried a gun the size of a toaster and considered lipstick a manifestation of Original Sin. She was waiting for him, dark circles under her eyes. "How're you feeling?"

  "Better. Still a little morning sickness," she said dismissively, brushing the illness away. "Did you read the histories?"

  "Yeah. Not much."

  She looked angry: not at Lucas or Greave, but maybe at herself, or the world. "We're not gonna get him this time, are we? He's gonna have to kill somebody else before we get him."

  "Unless we get a big fuckin' break," Lucas said. "And I don't see a break coming."

  Jan Reed came by Lucas's office after the press conference, and they ambled through the Skyways to a restaurant in the Pillsbury Building.

  Since she was new to Minnesota, they chatted about the weather, about the lakes, about the Guthrie Theater, and about the other places she'd worked: Detroit, Miami, Cleveland. They found a table not too close to anyone else, Reed with her back to the doorþ"I get pestered sometimes"þand ordered coffee and croissants.

  "How was the press conference?" Lucas asked, peeling open one of the croissants.

  Reed opened her notebook and looked at it. "Maybe not domestic," she said. "The guy's name is Evan Hart. His girlfriend's been divorced for seven years. Her ex lives out on the West Coast and he was there this morning. Besides, she says he's a nice guy. That they broke up because he was too mellow. No alimony or anything. No kids. Sort of a hippie mistake. And she hasn't gone out with anybody else, seriously, for a couple of years."

  "How about this Hart?" Lucas asked. "Has he got an ex? Is he bisexual?

  What does he do?"

  "He's a widower," Reed said. She put the yellow pencil in her mouth and turned pages. A little clump of hair fell over her eyes and she brushed it back, Heather did that. "His wife was killed in a traffic accident.

  He's a lawyer for a stockbrokerage company, he has something to do with municipal bonds. He doesn't sell anything, so it's not that. He didn't ruin anybody."

  "Doesn't sound like a fruitcake, though," Lucas said. "It sounds like the guy was mad about something."

  "That's what it sounds like," she said. "But Jensen's really freaked out. That other attack happened right down below her apartment window."

  "That's what I heard. Jensen's his girlfriend? She was actually there at the press conference?"

  "Yeah. She was. Sara Jensen. Sharp. Good-looking, runs her own mutual fund, probably makes two hundred thousand a year," Reed said.

  "Dresses like it. She has just gorgeous clothesþshe must go to New York. She was really angry. She wants the guy caught. Actually, it sounded like she wants the guy killed, like she was there to ask the cops to find him and kill him."

  "Very strange," Lucas said. "The guys in homicide are having a hard time right now...."

  The conversation rambled along, through new subjects, Lucas enjoying it, laughing. Reed was nice-looking, amusing, and had spent a little time on the streets. They had that in common. Then she said something about gangs. Gangs was a code word for blacks, and as she talked, the code word pecked away at the back of Lucas's mind. Reed, he thought after a bit, might have a fine ass and great eyes, but she was also a bit of a racist. Racism was becoming fashionable in the smart set, if done in a suitably subtle way. Was it immoral to jump a racist? How about if she didn't have a good time, but you did?

  He was smiling and nodding and Reed was rambling on about something sexual but safe, the rumored affair between an anchorman and a cameraman, carried out in what she said was a TV van with bad springs.

  "... So there they were on Summit Avenue outside the governor's mansion, and everybody's going in for the ball and this giant van with TV3 on the side is practically jumping up and down, and her husband is out on the sidewalk, pacing back and forth, looking for her." Reed was playing with her butter knife as she talked, and she twirled it in her fingers, a cheerleader's baton twirl.

  Like Junky Doog, Lucas thought. What had Junky said when Greave had asked him why a man might start cutting on women? Cause a woman turns you on, that's why. Maybe you see a woman and she turns you on.

  Gets you by the pecker...

  The Society of Jesus, SJ.

  Or...

  Lucas said, suddenly, sitting up, "What was the guy's wound like?"

  "What?" She'd been in mid-sentence.

  "This guy who was attacked this morning," Lucas said impatiently.

  "Uh... well, he was stabbed in the stomach," Reed said, startled by the sudden roughness in his voice. "Two or three times. He was really
messed up. I guess they're still trying to put him together in the operating room."

  "With a switchblade. The kid from the Strib said it was a switchblade."

  "A witness said that," Reed said. "Why?"

  gotta go," Lucas said, looking at his watch. He threw a handful of dollars on the table. "I'm sorry, but I really got to run. I'm sorry...."

  Now she looked distinctly startled, but he did run, once he was out of sight. His office was locked, nobody around. He went down the hall to homicide and found Anderson eating an egg-salad sandwich at his desk.

  "Have you seen Connell?"

  "Uh, yeah, she just went into the women's can." He had a fleck of egg white on his lip.

  Lucas went down to the women's can and pushed the door open.

  "Connell?" he shouted. "Meagan?"

  After a moment, a reluctant, hollow, tile-walled "Yeah?"

  "Come out here."

  "Christ..." She took two minutes, Lucas walking up and down the hall, cooling off. Very unlikely, he thought. But the wound sounded right....

  Connell came out, tucking her shirt into her skirt. "What?"

  "The guy that was attacked this morning," Lucas said. "He was ripped in the stomach by a guy with a switchbladelike knife."

  "Lucas, it was a guy, it was daylight, he doesn't fit anything.

  .."

  She was pualed.

  "He'd spent the night with his girlfriend, Sara Jensen."

  Still she looked purled.

  Lucas said, "SJ."

  They found Sara Jensen at Hennepin General, distraught, pacing the surgical waiting room. A uniformed cop sat in a plastic chair reading Road & Track. They took Jensen to an examination room, shut the door, and sat her down.

  "It's about goddamn time somebody started taking this seriously," Jensen said. "You had to wait until Evan got stabbed...." Her voice was contained, but with a thread of fear that suggested she was at the edge of her self-control. "It's the goddamn burglar. If you'd find him..."

  "What burglar?" Lucas asked. The place smelled like medical alcohol and skin and adhesive tape.

  "What burglar?" Her voice rose in anger, until she was nearly shouting.

  "What burglar? What burglar? The burglar at my place."

  "We don't know anything about that," Connell said quickly. "We work homicide. We're looking for a man who has been killing women for years.

  The last two he's marked with the initials SJþyour initials. We're not sure it's you, but it might be. The attack on Mr. Hart resembles the technique he has used to kill the women. The weapon appears to be similar. He fits the descriptions we've had...."

  "Oh, God," Jensen said, her hand going to her mouth. "I saw it on TV3, the man with the beard. The man who attacked Evan had a beard."

  Lucas nodded. "That's him. Do you know anybody who looks like that?

  Somebody you've dated, somebody you have a relationship with? Maybe with some frustration? Or maybe somebody who just watches you, somebody you can feel in your office?" "No." She thought about it again. "No. I know a couple of guys with beards, but I haven't dated them. And they seem to be ordinary enough.

  .. Besides, it's not them. It's the goddamn burglar. I think he's been coming back to my apartment."

  "Tell us about the burglar," Lucas said.

  She told them: the initial burglary, the loss of her jewelry and belt, the smell of saliva on her forehead. And she told them about the sense she had, that somebody had been in and out of her apartment since the burglaryþand the feeling that it was the same man. "But I'm not sure," she said. "I thought I was going crazy. My friends thought it was stress from the burglary, that I was imagining it. But I don't think so: the place just didn't feel right, like there was something in the air.

  I think he sleeps in my bed." Then she laughed, a short, barely amused bark. "I sound like the Three Bears. Somebody's been eating my porridge.

  Somebody's been sleeping in my bed."

  "So you say that when he came in the first time, he must've touched youþkissed you on the forehead."

  "More like a lick," she said, shuddering. "I can remember it, like a dream."

  "What about the actual entry?" Lucas asked. "Did he break the door?"

  There hadn't been a sound, she said, and the door had been untouched, so he must have had a key. But she was the only one with a keyþand the building manager, of course.

  "What's he like? The manager?"

  "Older man...."

  They went through the list: who had the key, who could get it, who could copy it. More people than she'd realized. Building employees, a cleaning woman. How about valet-parking places? A few valetsþ"But I changed the locks again after the burglary. He'd have to get my key twice."

  "Gotta be somebody in the building," Connell said to Lucas. She'd grabbed his wrist to get his attention. She was sick, but she was a strong woman, and her grip had the strength of desperation.

  "If somebody's actually coming back," Lucas said. "But whoever it was is a pro. He knew what he wanted and where it was. He didn't rip the place apart. A cat burglar."

  "A cat burglar?" Jensen said doubtfully.

  "I'll tell you something: movies romanticize cat burglars, but real cat burglars are cracked," Lucas said. "They get off on creeping apartments while the residents are home. Most burglars, the last thing they want is to run into a home owner. Cat burglars get off on the thrill.

  Every one of them does dope, cocaine, speed, PCP. Quite a few of them have rape records. A lot of them eventually kill somebody. I'm not trying to scare you, but that's the truth."

  "Oh, God...."

  "The way the attack happened would suggest that the guy knows about you and Mr. Hart," Connell said. "Do you talk to anybody in your building about him?"

  "No, I really don't have any close friends in the building, other than just to say hello to," Jensen said. Then, "Last night was the first time Evan stayed over. It was actually the first time we'd slept together.

  Ever. It's like whoever it is, knew about us."

  "Did you tell anybody at work that he was coming over?"

  have a couple of friends who knew we were getting close...."

  "We'll need their names," Lucas said. And to Connell: "Somebody at the office might have occasional access to her purse, they could get the keys that way. We should check all the apartments that adjoin hers, too.

  People in her hallway." To Jensen: "Do you feel any attention from anybody in your apartment? Just a little creepy feeling? Somebody who seems sort of anxious to meet you, or talk to you, or just looks you over?"

  "No, no, I don't. The manager is a heck of a nice guy. Really straight.

  I don't mean, you know, repressed, or weird, or a Boy Scout leader or anything. He's like my dad. God, it gives me the shakes, thinking about somebody watching me," she said.

  "How about an outsider?" Lucas asked. "Is there a building across the street where you could be watched from? A Peeping Tom?"

  She shook her head. "No. There's a building across the streetþ that's the building where that woman was killed last weekþbut I'm on the top floor, which is higher even than their roof," Jensen said. "I look right across their roof into the park, and the other side of the park is residential. There's nothing as high as me on the other side of the park. Besides, that's a mile away."

  "Okay..." Lucas studied her for a moment. She was very different than the other victims. Watching her, Lucas felt a small chord of doubt.

  She was fashionable, she was smart, she was tough. There was no hint of deference, no air of wistfulness, no feeling of time and years slipping away.

  "I've got to get out of the apartment," Jensen said. "Could a policeman come with me while I get some things?" "You can have a cop with you until we get the guy," Lucas said. He reached forward to touch her arm. "But I hope you won't leave. We could move you to another apartment inside the building, and give you escorts: armed policewomen in plain clothes. We'd like to trap the guy, not scare him off."


  Connell joined in: "We don't really have any leads, Ms. Jensen.

  We're almost reduced to waiting until he kills somebody else, and hoping we find something then. This is the first break we've had."

  Jensen stood up and turned away, shivered, looked down at Lucas, and said, "How much chance is there that he'd... get to me?"

  Lucas said, "I won't lie to you: there's always a chance. But it's small. And if we don't get him, he might outwait our ability to escort you and then come after you. We had a case a few years ago where a guy in his middle twenties went after a woman who'd been his ninthgrade teacher. He'd brooded about her all that time."