Night Prey

by John Sandford

  Yeah, thanks." He scribbled a new number in the notebook.

  "Divorced," he said to Connell.

  "Who is he?"

  "Deputy warden at Stillwater. We went to school together...

  He's another suit." He dialed again, waited. "Tommy? Lucas Davenport.

  Yeah, I know what time it is, I've been up all night. Do you remember a guard out at Stillwater, six years ago, named Robert Koop?

  Resigned?"

  Smythe, his voice rusty with sleep, remembered. "... never caught him, but there wasn't any doubt. He was snitched out by two different guys who didn't know each other. We told him we were ready to bring him up on charges, either that, or get out. He got. Our case wasn't strong enough to just go ahead."

  "Okay. Any rumors about sex problems?"

  "Nothing that I know of."

  "Any connection with burglars?"

  "Jeer, I can't remember all the details, but yeah. I think the main guy he was dealing to was Art McClatchey, who was a big-time burglar years ago. He fucked up and killed an old lady in one of his burglaries, got caught. That was down in Afton."

  "Cat burglar?" Lucas asked.

  "Yeah. Why?"

  "Look, anything you can get from records, connecting the two of them, we'd appreciate. Don't go out in the population, though. Don't ask any questions. We're trying to keep all this tight."

  "Do I want to know why you're asking?" Smythe asked.

  "Not yet."

  "We're not gonna get burned, are we?"

  don't see how," Lucas said. "If there's any chance, I'll give you a ring."

  Lucas hung up and said to the others, "He was selling dope to the inmates. Cocaine and speed. One of his main contacts was an old cat burglar named McClatchey."

  "Better and better," Connell said. "Now what?"

  "We finish the records, just in case we find another candidate.

  Then we talk to Roux. We want to take a close look at this Koop.

  But do it real easy."

  They finished with eleven possibilities, but Robert Koop was the good one. They put together a file of information from the various state licensing bureausþcar registration, driver's license, an old Washington County carry permitþwith what they could get from Department of Revenue and the personnel section of the Department of Revenue.

  When he'd worked at Stillwater, Koop had lived in Lakeland. A check with the property tax department in Washington County showed the house where Koop lived was owned by a Lakeland couple, Koop was apparently a renter. A check on the Apple Valley house, through the Dakota County tax collector, suggested that the Apple Valley house was also rented.

  The current owner showed an address in California, and tax stamps showed a 1980 mortgage of $115,000.

  "If the owner's carrying a mortgage of $115,000

  ... Iet's see, I'm carrying $80,000. Jeer, I can't see that he could be renting it for less than fifteen hundred a month," Greave said.

  "Koop's income is coming up short."

  "Nothing much from the NCIC," Anderson said. "He shows prints from Stillwater, and another set from the Army. I'm working on getting his Army records."

  The phone rang and Lucas picked it up, listened, said, "Thanks," and put it back down.

  "Roux," he said to Connell. "She's in. Let's go talk."

  They got Sloan and Del to help out, and a panel truck with one-way windows, equipped with a set of scrambled radios from intelligence.

  Lucas and Connell rode together in her car, Sloan and Del took their own cars. Greave and O'Brien drove the truck. They met at a Target store parking lot and picked out a restaurant where they could wait.

  "Connell and I'll take the first shift," Lucas said. "We can rotate out every couple of hours, somebody can cruise it while we're moving the truck to make the change... Let's give him a call now, see if he's around."

  Connell called, got an answer, and asked for Mr. Clark in the paint department. "He's home," she said when she'd rung off the cellular phone. "He sounded sleepy."

  "Let's go," Lucas said..

  They cruised past Koop's house, a notably unexceptional place in a subdivision of carefully differentiated houses. They parked two blocks away and slightly above it. The lawn was neat but not perfect, with an artificially green look that suggested a lawn service. There was a singledoor, two-car garage. The windows were covered with wooden blinds.

  There was no newspaper, either on the lawn or porch.

  Lucas parked the truck and crawled between seats into the back, where there were two captain's chairs, an empty cooler, and a radio they wouldn't use. Connell was examining the house with binoculars.

  "It looks awful normal," she said.

  "He's not gonna have a billboard out front," Lucas said. "I had a guy, a few years ago, lived in a quadruplex. Everybody said he was a great neighbor. He probably was, except when he was out killing women."

  remember that," Connell said. "The mad dog. You killed him."

  "He needed it," Lucas said.

  "How do you think you would've done in court? I mean, if he hadn't gotten shot?"

  Lucas grinned slightly. "You mean, if I hadn't shot him to death.

  . Actually, we had him cold. It was his second attack on the woman."

  "Was he obsessed by her?"

  "No, r think he was just pissed off. At me, actually. We were watching him, and somehow he figured it out, slipped the surveillance and went after her. It was almost... sarcastic. He was crazier than a shithouse mouse."

  "We don't have that good a case on Koop."

  "That's an understatement," Lucas said. "I've been worried about it."

  They talked for a while, slowly ran down. Nothing happened. After two hours, they drove around the block, traded vehicles with Sloan and O'Brien, and walked up to the restaurant and sat with Del and Greave.

  "We're talking about going to the movies," Del said. "We all got beepers."

  think we should stay put," Connell said anxiously.

  "Say that after you've had fifteen cups of coffee," Greave said.

  "I'm getting tired of peeing."

  Del and Greave took the next shift, then Lucas and Connell again.

  O'Brien had brought his Penthouse with him again, forgot it in the truck. Halfway through the shift, Connell fell to reading it and looking at the pictures, occasionally laughing. Lucas nervously looked elsewhere.

  Del and Greave were back on when Koop started to move. Their beepers went off simultaneously, and everybody in the restaurant looked at them.

  "Doctors' convention," Sloan said to an openmouthed suburbanite as they left.

  "What do you got, Del?" Lucas called.

  "We got the garage door up," Del said. "Okay, we got the truck, a red-and-white Chevy...."

  They first saw Koop when he got out of his truck at a Denny's restaurant.

  "No beard," Connell said, examining him with the binoculars.

  "There's been a lot of publicity since Hart," Lucas said. "He would've shaved. Two of the Miller witnesses said he was cleanshaven."

  Koop parked in the lot behind the restaurant and walked inside. He walked with a spring, as though he were coiled. He was wearing jeans and T-shirt. He had a body like a rock.

  "He's a lifter," Lucas said. "He's a goddamned gorilla."

  can see him, he's in a front booth," Sloan said. "You want me inside?"

  "Let me go in," Connell said.

  "Hang on a minute," Lucas said. He called back to Sloan. "Is he by himself?"

  "Yeah."

  "Don't go in unless somebody hooks up with him. Otherwise, stand off."

  To Connell: "You better stay out of sight. If this drags out and we need to keep you close to Jensen, you gotta be a fresh face."

  "Okay." She nodded.

  Lucas went back to the radio. "Sloan, can he see his truck from where he's at?"

  "No."

  "We're gonna take a look," Lucas said. They'd pulled into a car wash.

  "Let's go," he said to Conne
ll.

  Connell crossed the street, pulled in next to Koop's truck. Lucas got out, looked across the roof of the car toward the truck, then got back inside.

  I "Jesus," he said. "What?" She was puzzled. "Aren't you gonna look?"

  "There's a pack of Camels on the dashboard."

  "What?" Like she didn't understand. "Unfiltered Camels," he said.

  Connell looked at Lucas, eyes wide. "Oh my God," she breathed. "It's him." Lucas went to the radio.

  "Sloan, everybody, listen up. We sorta have a confirmation on this guy.

  Stay cool but stay back. We're gonna need some technical support...."

  They tracked Koop while they talked at police headquarters, laying out the case. Thomas Troy, of the county attorney's criminal division, declared that there wasn't enough, yet, to pick him up.

  He and Connell, sitting in Roux's office with Roux and Lucas and Mickey Green, another assistant county attorney, ran down the evidence: þThe woman killed in Iowa told a friend that her date was a cop.

  But Koop never was, said Troy.

  þHillerod saw him in Madison, said Koop recognized his prison tattoo, Connell said. Sounds like ESP, Troy said, and ESP doesn't work on the witness stand. Besides, Hillerod can't remember what he looked like, Green said, and Hillerod's just been arrested for a whole series of heavy felonies, along with a parole violation, and has a long criminal record. The defense will claim he'll tell us anything we want to get a deal. And, in fact, we've already negotiated a deal.

  þHe was seen dumping a body by two witnesses, Connell said, who described both him and his truck. The witnesses' descriptions conflict, even on the matter of the truck, Troy said. They saw the guy at night at a distance. One of them is an admitted crack dealer, and the other guy hangs around with a crack dealer.

  þCamels, said Connell. There are probably fifty thousand Camel smokers in the Cities. And probably most of them drive trucks, Troy said.

  þShape was right for the man who attacked Evan Hartþbig and muscular.

  Tall, big, and muscular, is what the witnesses said, Troy replied.

  Koop is distinctly short. Besides, the attack on Hart isn't necessarily related to the attacks on the women. The man who attacked Hart had a beard and wore glasses. Koop is clean-shaven, shows no glasses requirement on his driver's license, and wasn't wearing glasses that morning. The witnesses hadn't been able to pick his photo out of a display.

  "You're working against us," Connell fumed.

  "Bullshit," said Troy. "I'm just outlining an elementary defense.

  A good defense attorney will tear up everything you've got. We need one hard thing. Just one. Just get me one, and we'll take him down."

  Koop spent the first day of surveillance in his truck, driving long complicated routes around the Cities, apparently aimlessly. He stopped at Two Guy's gym, was inside for two hours, then moved on, stopping only to eat at fast-food joints, and once to get gas.

  think he must've made us," Del called on one of the scrambled radios as they sat stalled in traffic on I-94 between Minneapolis and St. Paul.

  "Unless he's nuts."

  "We know he's nuts," Connell said. "The question is, what's he doing" "He's not scouting," Lucas said from a third car. "He's moving too fast to be scouting. And he never goes back. He just drives. He doesn't seem to know where he's goingþhe's always getting caught in those circles and dead ends."

  "Well, we gotta do something," Del said." Cause if he hasn't made us yet, he will. He'll get us up in some of those suburban switchbacks and we'll bump into him one too many times. Where in the hell is tech support?"

  "We're here," the tech-support guy said on the radio. "You stop the sonofabitch, and we'll tag him."

  At three o'clock, Koop stopped at a Perkins restaurant and took a booth. While Lucas and Connell watched from outside, Henry Ramirez from intelligence slipped under Koop's truck and hooked up a remote-controlled battery-powered transmitter, and placed a flat, battery-powered infrared flasher in the center of the topper. If Koop climbed on top of the truck, he'd see it. Otherwise, it was invisible, and the truck could be unmistakably tracked at night, from the air.

  At nine o'clock, in the last dying light of the day, Koop wandered out of the web of roads around Lake Minnetonka and headed east toward Minneapolis. They no longer had a lead car. Leading had proven impossible. The trailing cars were all well back. The radio truck followed silently, with the tracking plane doing all the work. From the air, the spotter, using infrared glasses, said Koop was clear all the way, and tracked him street by street into the Cities.

  "He's going for Jensen," Lucas said to Connell as he followed the track on a map.

  don't know where I am anymore."

  "We're coming up on the lakes." Lucas called out to the others: "We're breaking off, we'll be at Jensen's."

  He called ahead to Jensen's, but there was no answer at her phone.

  He called dispatch and got the number for the resident manager: "We've got a problem and we need a little help...."

  The manager was waiting by the open door of the parking garage, the door open. Lucas pulled inside and dumped the car in a handicapped space.

  "What do you want me to do?" the manager asked, handing him a key to Jensen's apartment.

  "Nothing," Lucas said. "Go on back to your apartment. We'd like you near a telephone. Just wait. Please don't go out in the hallway."

  To Connell: "If he comes up, we've got him. If we get him inside Jensen's place, that ties him to the stalking and the Camels on the air conditioner across the street. And the knife attack ties him to the other killings and the Camel we found on Wannemaker."

  "You think he'll come up?" she asked as they hurried to the elevators.

  hope so. Jesus, I hope so. That'd be it." At Jensen's apartment, they let themselves in, and Lucas turned on one light, slipped his out of his shoulder holster and checked it.

  "What's he doing?" Lucas asked.

  "Moving very slowly, but he's moving," the spotter called. "Now, now, we've lost him, he's under some trees or some shit, wait, I got a flash, I see him again, now he's gone...."

  see him," Del called. "I'm parked in the bike shop lot, and he's coming this way. He's moving faster, but he's under trees, he'll be out in a sec...."

  "Got him," the spotter said. "He's going around the block again.

  Slowing down..."

  "Real slow," Del called. "I'm on the street, walking, he's right in front of the apartment, real slow, almost stopped. No, there he goes...."

  "He's outa here," the spotter called a minute later. "He's heading into the loop."

  "Did he see you, Del?"

  "No way."

  Connell said, "Well, shit...."

  "Yeah." Lucas felt like a deflated balloon. He walked twice around the room. "Goddamnit," he said. "Goddamnit. What's wrong with the guy?

  Why didn't he come up?"

  Koop continued through downtown to a bar near the airport, where he drank three solitary beers, paid, bought a bottle at the liquor store down the street, and drove back to his house. The last light went off a few minutes after two o'clock.

  Lucas went home. Heather was asleep. He patted her affectionately on the ass before he went down himself.

  Koop resumed the driving the next day, trailing through the suburbs east and south of St. Paul. They tracked him until one o'clock in the afternoon, when he stopped at a Wendy's. Lucas went on down the block to a McDonald's. Feeling dried out, older, bored, he got a double cheeseburger, a sack of fries, and a malt, and ambled back to the car, where Connell was eating carrot sticks out of a Tupperware box.

  "George Beneteau called yesterday, while we were out," Connell said when they'd run out of everything else to talk about.

  "Oh, yeah?" She had a talent for leaving him short of words.

  "He left a message on my machine. He wants to go out and get a steak, or something."

  "What'd you do?"

  "Nothing." She said it flatly. "I can't deal wit
h it. I guess tomorrow I'll give him a call and explain."

  Lucas shook his head and pushed fries into his face, hoping that she wouldn't start crying again.

  She didn't. But a while later, as they escorted Koop across the Lake Street bridge, Connell said, "That TV person, Jan Reed. You guys seem pretty friendly."