Certain Prey

by John Sandford

  'Even druggies have families, sometimes,' Rinker said. 'I hated my step-dad and my older brother, I don't like my mom anymore, but I've got a little brother, he's out in L.A. and he does drugs, sometimes he lives on the beach... I'd do anything I could for him. I do everything I can for him.'

  'Really,' Carmel said, impressed. They'd moved the steaks onto a seldom-used dining table. 'I've never been like that with anybody. I mean, I give to charity and all, but I have to. I've never really been where... I do anything for somebody.'

  'Not even for Hale?'

  Carmel shook her head: 'Not even for Hale.'

  'You killed for him,' Rinker said.

  'No, I didn't,' Carmel said. 'I killed for me - for something / want. Which is Hale. If he'd had his choice, who knows? He might've decided to stay with Barbara.'

  'Mmm,' Rinker said, chewing. She swallowed, watched for a moment as Carmel worked her way into the steak and then asked, 'Would you have killed the little girl?'

  Carmel said, 'You make me sound like a monster.'

  'No, no. I'm just interested,' Rinker said. 'I'd do it, if it was absolutely necessary. But I'd hate doing it.'

  'Why?'

  'Because she's a kid.'

  'So what? None of this means anything, this...' Carmel looked around. '... this life. We're just a bunch of meat. When we think something, it's just chemicals. When we love something, it's more chemicals. When we die, all the chemicals go back in the ground, and that's it. There's nothing left. You don't go anywhere, except in the ground. No heaven, no hell, no God, no nothing. Just... nothing.'

  'That's pretty grim,' Rinker said. She pointed a fork at Carmel. 'I've seen people like you - philosophical nihilists. People who really believe all that... eventually, they can't stand it. Most of them commit suicide.'

  Carmel nodded. 'I can see that. That's probably what I'll do, when I get older. If I live to get older.'

  'Why not do it now?' Rinker asked. 'If nothing means anything, why wait?'

  'No reason, except curiosity. I want to see how things come out. I mean, killing yourself is as meaningless as not killing yourself. Makes no difference if you do or you don't. So as long as you're not bored, as long as you're feeling good... why do it?'

  'But you'd do it if you had to. Kill yourself.'

  'Hell, I might kill myself if I don't have to,' Carmel said.

  'Really?'

  'Sure. For the same reason that I'm staying now. Curiosity. I can't be absolutely one-million percent sure that there's nothing on the other side; so as long as it's one-millionth of a percent possible, why not check?'

  'Man, that's almost enough to bum me out,' Rinker said.

  'It does bum me out from time to time,' Carmel said. 'But I get over it pretty quickly. I'm just an upper sort of person.'

  'Chemically.'

  'Absolutely,' Carmel said. After a couple more bites, she asked, 'How about you? How do you justify all this stuff.'

  'I'm kind of religious, I guess,' Rinker said.

  'Really?'

  'Yeah. I don't think anything really happens in this world that isn't part of God's plan. And if God wants somebody to die, now, if that's that person's fate, I can't say no.'

  'So you're just what... the finger of God?'

  'I wouldn't put it exactly that way. It sounds too... vain, I guess. Too important. But what I do is God's will.'

  'Jesus,' Carmel said. Then quickly: 'Sorry, if that

  offends you, I'll...'

  'No, no, jeez, I hang around with Italians, for Christ's sake. Catholics, man. Nobody talks the talk like Catholics. I'm not exactly religious that way - I mean, I used to work in a nudie bar. It's just that I believe in... some kind of God. Not in heaven or hell, just in God. We're all part of it.'

  'What about stuff like guns? Where'd you learn

  about that?'

  'We always had guns in our house when I was a kid, my step-dad was a hunter. Poacher, really. So I knew about rifles and shotguns. Then the Mafia guys taught me the basic stuff about handguns, though most of them don't know a lot,' Rinker said. 'I figured that if I was gonna do this - be a hit man - I'd better learn about them. You can get most of what you need from books. There's an ocean of gun stuff out there.'

  'So you know all about the bullets and how fast

  they go...'

  'Pretty much. I don't reload - make my own ammunition - because that would be too much of a trademark,' Rinker said. 'Sooner or later they could get me on it. But factory ammo is as good as anything I could make up for my kind of work, anyway.' 'Are the guns really special? I mean...' 'Nah. Most of them are stolen, and they get passed

  around. I got a friend who picks them up for me, cuts the threads for the silencers. He checks them mechanically, and I fire them a few times to double-check, but basically, all my work is within ten feet or so. Up close. So I use fairly small calibers and fire several times.'

  'You carry the silencers separately?'

  'Yeah. A little plastic box with a couple of crescent wrenches and a couple pairs of pliers - if you saw them on an X-ray, it'd look like a tool kit. There's no way to hide guns, though. Not conventional guns, anyway.'

  They talked for a long time, nihilism and religion, guns and ammo, and that night, very late, as Carmel was dozing off, she smiled sleepily as she replayed the conversation. She'd gone to college with a lot of finance and law students. They'd stayed up nights studying, not talking.

  This night, she thought, was like what a lot of people did in college, a few beers with friends, talk about God and death.

  She drifted peacefully away, and may have had a dream about a coil of videotape going up in smoke. And about guns.

  Chapter Eight

  Lucas and Black followed the Ramsey County medical examiner into the work room, where the body of Rolando D'Aquila was stretched out on a stainless-steel tray.

  'They really fucked this boy over,' Black said, with a low whistle of disbelief. He'd heard about it, but hadn't seen the body. 'Look at his kneecaps.'

  'Look at his heels, if you want to see something that must've hurt,' the ME said. He was a dark, hairy man with a beard. A Rasputin, with a Boston accent.

  'So what are these letters?' Lucas asked.

  'I've got a photograph for you, but I thought you might want to see it in person,' the ME said. He picked up one of the dead man's hands, and turned it over. On the back of the hand were a series of bloody scrapes that looked like:

  dew

  Lucas and Black squatted, got down close: 'What is it?' Black asked.

  'I don't know,' the ME said. 'But he did it himself, because we found the skin under his fingernails. He

  did it not long before he died - he had blood on his fingertips, which would have been worn away if his hands had been free, and he used them for anything. So: we think he might have known he was going to be killed, and tried to leave something behind.'

  'Like the name of the killer,' Black said. 'Which is probably Dew.'

  'Really?' The ME bent over the hand and said, 'I never saw Dew. I was looking at it the other way - I saw Mop.'

  Black looked at Lucas: 'What do you think? M-o-p or D-e-w?'

  'Beats the shit out of me,' Lucas said, standing up. 'Maybe we can actually see it better in a photo...'To the ME: 'What are the chances he cut himself up just thrashing around? I mean, they were drilling holes in his kneecaps...'

  'Who knows, if a guy's being tortured? The scratches look deliberate - the skin looks almost ploughed off the back of his hands. And the shapes look deliberate, not like thrashing or involuntary contraction... I think he did it on purpose.'

  'Yeah.' Lucas scratched his head. 'Took some balls.'

  'You don't see d-e-w?' Black asked.

  'Yeah, and I see m-o-p, and I see something else, too, and I don't know what they hell that might mean,' Lucas said.

  'What?' Black and the ME turned their heads, trying the scratches at different angles.

  'I can see c-l-e-w - like the British sp
elling of clue,'

  Lucas said. 'But there's no clue. Unless it was something back at the house, near his hands.'

  'Aw, man, that's too weird,' Black said. 'C-l-e-w equals clue?'

  'Don't you see it?' Lucas asked.

  'I see it, but I don't think that's it. I think it's initials, I think... Hey.'

  'What?'

  Now Black was scratching his head. 'I was talking to the St. Paul guys. They're looking for Rolando's sister - she lives over by the University, but they haven't been able to catch her at home. Her name is Marta Blanca. If you read the scratches backwards it could be an M instead of a W, and a B instead of a D...'

  'Then what's all that shit in the middle?' the ME asked, pointing at the scratches.

  'I don't know, this is just a theory,' Black said. 'But his hands were chained up... how were his hands?'

  'Like this,' Lucas said, demonstrating. 'Over his head.'

  'Then he couldn't see what he was doing, he was in all kinds of pain, he's panicked because he knows what's coming. I wonder if he was trying to get us to his sister?'

  'Or that his sister had something to do with it,' Lucas said.

  'Hey,' Black said, 'It's a clew, with an e-w. Let's go knock on her door.'

  A little girl was playing with a plastic dump truck in the hallway of Marta Blanca's apartment house, in front of an open apartment door.

  'Hello,' Lucas said. A mommy's voice called, 'Who's that?'

  Lucas leaned over the little girl and knocked once on the door jamb: 'Minneapolis police, ma'am. We're looking for a Marta Blanca?'

  'Down the hall. Apartment A.'

  Black stepped down the hall and knocked on the Paris-green door at the end. A young woman appeared from the back of the open apartment, carrying a dish towel and a pan that she was in the process of drying. 'Is there some kind of trouble?'

  Lucas nodded: 'Yes. Her brother was killed. We need to interview her; just a routine thing.'

  The woman's eyebrows were up: 'I haven't heard them out this morning - Heather usually has the door open so she can play in the hall, and Marta usually stops to talk to her.' She looked at Black and then back to Lucas and asked, 'Do you have some kind of ID?'

  'Yes, I do.' Lucas smiled, tried to look pleasant, took out his ID case, handed it over.

  She looked at it, then back up at Lucas: 'I've heard of you. You only do murders.'

  'What's that, mom?' Heather asked. 'Talk to you later,' the mother said to the girl, handing Lucas's ID case back. 'This is a policeman. He catches bad men.'

  'I didn't see any men at Marta's,' the girl said.

  'Okay,' Lucas said.

  Black, at the end of the hall, said, 'Nobody home.'

  'They were having a party last night,' Heather said.

  Her mother frowned: 'I didn't hear a party - I didn't see anybody coming or going.'

  'I heard them popping the balloons. Like at a birthday party,' the girl said.

  Lucas looked down the hall at Black, whose face had gone tight. Black said, 'That's enough for an entry.'

  'Right,' Lucas said. To the mother: 'You better take Heather back inside.'

  'What? Why?' She turned her eyes down to the other door. Black had slipped his pistol out of his holster, and was holding it by his side, where the little girl couldn't see it. The woman looked back at Lucas, suddenly understanding, and said, 'Oh, no, no... Heather, c'mon. C'mon inside with mom.'

  When they'd gone inside, Lucas nodded at Black, who lined up on the Paris-green door, then kicked it below the knob. The old door punched open, and Lucas,.45 in his hand, stepped past Black. One step and he saw the Latino man on the floor. Another step, and he saw the woman just beyond. They were both face down.

  'Okay,' Black said, from behind. 'Watch me, man...'

  The two of them edged through the apartment, looking for anyone else; but the place was empty

  except for the bodies. Lucas walked back to the living room. No signs of a struggle, nor had the little girl apparently heard any - but she had heard the balloons popping. These were executions, then, with silencers. He'd seen enough bodies in his career that two more shouldn't have affected him, but these did. The cool efficiency of the killer, swatting human beings as though they were so many gnats.

  He shook his head asked Black, 'Got your phone?'

  'Yeah, I'll call,' Black said. He was standing over the man: 'Goddamn, look at this guy's head. Same deal: half-dozen rounds.'

  Lucas, slipping his gun away, squatted next to the woman's body. Her face was older than its years, he thought: careworn, but with smile-lines, too. The rims of her nostrils were slightly rough, reddened. Cocaine, he thought. 'Same here,' he said. And he added: 'This takes it away from Hale Allen. He might've been willing to kill his old lady for her money, but this isn't that. This is something else.'

  'Yeah,' Black said. 'He was too fuckin' dumb, anyway.' He was holding the cell phone to his ear and said, 'Marcy? This is me... yeah, yeah, shut up for a minute, will you? Lucas and I are looking at a couple of more dead ones in an apartment in Dinkytown... No, I'm not. No, I'm not. I need you to get all the shit rolling over here, huh? Yeah...'

  While he was telling her about it, Lucas moved quickly through the apartment. He was going through a scatter of paper on the kitchen counter when he

  heard a quiet, single knock on the door. He looked up just in time to see the mommy take two steps through the door. She said, 'Did you...' and then saw the bodies. 'Oh, God.'

  Lucas stepped toward her: 'Please don't come in.'

  She stepped back into the doorway, her right hand at her mouth, the other hand feeling for the door jamb. 'Don't touch anything, please, don't touch the door,' Lucas said urgently. 'Don't touch.'

  She backed into the hallway. Lucas followed and said, 'We haven't processed the room yet, we need to bring in crime-scene specialists.' She nodded, dumbly, and Lucas added, 'I'd like to talk to you. I've got to wait here for a few minutes, until we get this going, but I'd like to see you and your daughter.'

  'Heather?' Now she looked frightened.

  'Just for a couple of minutes,' Lucas said. 'Maybe your place would be better...'

  'Why do you want to talk to Heather?'

  'She said she heard balloons popping. Those were probably guns. Between the two of you, maybe we can figure out a time that this... happened.'

  The woman's name was Jan Davis. She was a small, slender woman with dishwater-blonde hair and high cheekbones. Her apartment was pleasantly cluttered with books, scientific reprints and a few music CDs, all classical. She scurried nervously around, picking up magazines, straightening chairs, making lemonade when Lucas went over. Heather bounced in a worn,

  oversized easy chair, watching Lucas, smiling when he looked at her. Outside, in the hallway, cops were setting up crime-scene lines.

  'I have a daughter about your age,' Lucas told Heather. 'Have you started school yet?'

  'Yes,' she said. 'I was promoted. I'm in first, now. When school comes back.'

  'So you won't be the littlest kids anymore... there'll be kindergarteners who are smaller than you.'

  'Yup.' But she hadn't thought of that before, and she slipped off the chair and ran into the kitchen: 'Hey Mom, Mr. Davenport says there'll be kids littler than me at school...'

  A minute later, Davis came out of the kitchen with two glasses of lemonade - 'There's plenty more if the other gentleman wants some.'

  Lucas nodded, and took the glass. 'I noticed on your mailbox on the way in, your husband, Howard...'

  'Howard's not living here now,' she said firmly.

  'Not for a while?' Lucas asked.

  'About seven weeks. I just haven't taken his name off the mailbox.'

  'So... what? You're going to get divorced?'

  'Yes. I'm just finishing my thesis at the U,' she said. 'I've got a post-doc offer from Johns Hopkins, and Heather and I'll be moving to Baltimore in December. Howard won't be coming.'

  'Well, I'm sorry,' Lucas said. And
he was. After a moment's silence, he turned to look at Heather and

  asked, 'What were you doing last night when you heard the party at Marta's? Were you in the hall?'

  Heather looked guiltily at her mother and then said, 'Just for a minute. I left my truck out there.'

  'She's not supposed to go out in the hall at night, after it gets dark,' Davis said. 'But sometimes she does.'