Prey: Night Prey Part 10

"What's that quaint phrase you police officers use? 'The f.u.c.kin' s.h.i.t has. .h.i.t the fan?' I think that's it."

7.

ANDERSON WAS WAITING in the corridor outside Lucas's office, reading through a handful of computer printouts. He pushed away from the wall when he saw Lucas.

"Chief wants to see us now."

"I know, I got a call. I saw TV3," Lucas said.

"Paper for you," Anderson said, handing Lucas a manila file. "The overnights on Wannemaker. Nothing in the galleries. The Camel's confirmed, the tobacco on her body matched the tobacco in the cigarette. There were ligature marks on her wrists, but no ties; her ankles were tied with a piece of yellow polypropylene rope. The rope was old, partially degraded by exposure to sunlight, so if we can find any more of it, they could probably make a match."

"Anything else? Any skin, s.e.m.e.n, anything?"

"Not so far . . . And here's the Bey file."

"Jesus." Lucas took the file, flipped it open. Most of the paper inside had been Xeroxed for Connell's report; a few minor things he hadn't seen before. Mercedes Bey, thirty-seven, killed in 1984, file still open. The first of Connell's list, the centerpiece of the TV3 story.

"Have you heard about the lakes?" Anderson asked, his voice pitching lower, as though he were about to tell a particularly dirty joke.

"What happened?" Lucas looked up from the Bey file.

"We've got a bad one over by the lakes. Too late to make morning TV. Guy and his girlfriend, maybe his girlfriend. Guy's in a coma, could be a veggie. The woman's dead. Her head was crushed, probably by a pipe or a steel bar. Or a rifle barrel or a long-barreled pistol, maybe a Redhawk. Small-time robbery, looks like. Really ugly. Really ugly."

"They're freaking out in homicide?"

"Everybody's freaking out," Anderson said. "Everybody went over there. Roux just got back. And then this TV3 thing-the chief is hot. Really hot."

ROUX WAS FURIOUS. She jabbed her cigarette at Lucas. "Tell me you didn't have anything to do with it."

Lucas shrugged, looked at the others, and sat down. "I didn't have anything to do with it."

Roux nodded, took a long drag on her cigarette; her office smelled like a bowling alley on league night. Lester sat in a corner with his legs crossed, unhappy. Anderson perched on a chair, peering owlishly at Roux through his thick-lensed gla.s.ses. "I didn't think so," Roux said. "But we all know who did."

"Mmm." Lucas didn't want to say it.

"Don't want to say it?" Roux asked. "I'll say it. That f.u.c.kin' Connell."

"Twelve minutes," Anderson said. "Longest story TV3's ever run. They must have had Connell's file. They had every name and date nailed down. They dug up some file video on the Mercedes Bey killing. They used stuff they'd have never used back then, when they made it. And the stuff on Wannemaker, Jesus Christ, they had video of the body being hoisted out of the Dumpster, no bag, no nothing, just this big f.u.c.kin' lump of guts with a face hanging off it."

"Shot it from the bridge," Lucas said. "We saw them up there. I didn't know the lenses were that good, though."

"Bey's still an open file, of course," Lester said, re-crossing his legs from one side to the other. "No statute of limitations on murder."

"Should have thought of that yesterday," Roux said, getting up to pace the carpet, flicking ashes with every other step. Her hair, never particularly chic, was standing up in spots, like small horns. "They had Bey's mother on. She's this fragile old lady in a nursing-home housecoat, a face like parchment. She said we abandoned her daughter to her killers. She looked like s.h.i.t, she looked like she was dying. They must've dumped her out of bed at three in the morning to get the tape."

"That video of Connell was pretty weird, if she's the one who tipped them," Anderson suggested.

"Aw, they phonied it up," Roux said, waving her cigarette hand dismissively. "I did the same G.o.dd.a.m.ned thing when I was sourcing off the appropriations committee. They take you out on the street and have you walk into some building so it looks like surveillance film or file stuff. She did it, all right." Roux looked at Davenport. "I've got the press ten minutes from now."

"Good luck." He smiled, a very thin, unpleasant smile.

"You were never taken off the case, right?" Her left eyebrow went up and down.

"Of course not," Lucas said. "Their source was misinformed. I spent the evening working the case and even developed a lead on a new suspect."

"Is that right?" The eyebrow again.

"More or less," Lucas said. "Junky Doog may be working at a landfill out in Dakota County."

"Huh. I'd call that a critical development," Roux said, showing an inch of satisfaction. "If you can bring him in today, I'll personally feed it directly and exclusively to the Strib. And anything else you get. f.u.c.k TV3."

"If Connell's their source, they'll know you're lying about not calling off the case," Lester said.

"Yeah? So what?" Roux said. "What're they gonna do, argue? Reveal their source? f.u.c.k 'em."

"Is Connell still working with me?" Lucas asked.

"We've got no choice," Roux snapped. "If we didn't call off the investigation, then she must still be on it, right? I'll take care of her later."

"She's got no later," Lucas said.

"Jesus," Roux said, stopping in midpace. "Jesus, I wish you hadn't said that."

THE TV3 STORY had been a melange of file video, with commentary by a stunning blond reporter with a distinctly erotic overbite. The reporter, street-dressed in expensive grunge, rapped out long, intense accusations based on Connell's file; behind her, floodlit in the best Addams Family style, was the redbrick slum building where Mercedes Bey had been found slashed to death. She recounted Bey's and each of the subsequent murders, reading details from the autopsy reports. She said, "With Chief Roux's controversial decision to sweep the investigation under the rug . . ." and "With the Minneapolis police abandoning the murder investigation for what appear to be political reasons . . ." and "Will Mercedes Bey's cry for justice be crushed by the Minneapolis Police Department's logrolling? Will other innocent Minneapolis-area women be forced to pay the killer's brutal toll because of this decision? We shall have to wait and see. . . ."

"n.o.body f.u.c.ks with me like this," Roux was shouting at her press aide when Lucas left her office with Anderson. "n.o.body f.u.c.ks with me. . . ."

Anderson grinned at Lucas and said, "Connell does."

GREAVE CAUGHT LUCAS in the hall. "I read the file, but it was a waste of time. I could have gotten the executive summary on TV this morning." He was wearing a loose lavender suit with a blue silk tie.

"Yeah," Lucas grunted. He unlocked his office door and Greave followed him inside. Lucas checked his phone for voice mail, found a message, and poked in the retrieval code. Meagan Connell's voice, humble: "I saw the stories on TV this morning. Does this change anything?" Lucas grinned at the impertinence, and scribbled down the number she left.

"What're we doing?" Greave asked.

"Gonna see if we can find a guy down in Dakota County. Former s.e.x psycho who liked knives." He'd been punching in Connell's number as he spoke. The phone rang once, and Connell picked up. "This is Davenport."

"Jeez," Connell said, "I've been watching TV. . . ."

"Yeah, yeah. There're three guys in town don't know who the source is, and none of them are Roux. You better lay low today. She's smokin'. In the meantime, we're back on the case."

"Back on." She made it a statement, with an overtone of satisfaction. No denials. "Is there anything new?"

He told her about Anderson's information from the Wisconsin forensic lab.

"Ligatures? If he tied her up, he must've taken her somewhere. That's a first. I bet he took her to his home. He lives here-he didn't at the other crime scenes, so he couldn't take them. . . . Hey, and if you read the Mercedes Bey file, I think she was missing awhile, too, before they found her."

"Could be something," Lucas agreed. "Greave and I are going after Junky Doog. I've got a line on him."

"I'd like to go."

"No. I don't want you around today," Lucas said. "It's best, believe me."

"How about if I make some calls?" she asked.

"To who?"

"The people on the bookstore list."

"St. Paul should be doing that," Lucas said.

"Not yet, they aren't. I'll get going right now."

"Talk to Lester first," Lucas said. "Get them to clear it with St. Paul. That part of the investigation really does belong to them."

"ARE YOU GONNA listen to my story?" Greave asked as they walked out to the Porsche.

"Do I gotta?"

"Unless you want to listen to me whine for a couple hours."

"Talk," Lucas said.

A schoolteacher named Charmagne Carter had been found dead in her bed, Greave said. Her apartment was locked from the inside. The apartment was covered by a security system that used motion and infrared detectors with direct dial-out to an alarm-monitoring company.

"Completely locked?"

"Sealed tight."

"Why do you think she was murdered?"

"Her death was very convenient for some bad people."

"Say a name."

"The Joyce brothers, John and George," Greave said. "Know them?"

Lucas smiled. "Excellent," he said.

"What?"

"I played hockey against them when I was a kid," he said. "They were a.s.sholes then, they're a.s.sholes now."

The Joyces had almost been rich, Greave said. They'd started by leasing slum housing from the owners-mostly defense attorneys, it seemed-and renting out the apartments. When they'd acc.u.mulated enough cash, they bought a couple of flophouses. When housing the homeless became fashionable, they brought the flops up to minimum standards and unloaded them on a charitable foundation.

"The foundation director came into a large BMW shortly thereafter," Greave said.

"Skipped his lunches and saved the money," Lucas said.

"No doubt," Greave said. "So the Joyces took the money and started pyramiding apartments. I'm told they controlled like five to six million bucks at one point. Then the economy fell on its a.s.s. Especially apartments."

"Aww."

"Anyway, the Joyces saved what they could from the pyramid, and put every buck into this old apartment building on the Southeast Side. Forty units. Wide hallways."

"Wide hallways?"

"Yeah. Wide. The idea was, they'd throw in some new drywall and a bunch of s.p.a.ckling compound and paint, cut down the cupboards, stick in some new low-rider stoves and refrigerators, and sell the place to the city as public housing for the handicapped. They had somebody juiced: the city council was hot to go. The Joyces figured to turn a million and a half on the deal. But there was a fly in the ointment."

The teacher, Charmagne Carter, and a dozen other older tenants had been given long-term leases on their apartments by the last manager of the building before the Joyces bought it, Greave said. The manager knew he'd lose his job in the sale, and apparently made the leases as a quirky kind of revenge. The city wouldn't take the building with the long-term leases in effect. The Joyces bought out a few of the leases, and sued the people who wouldn't sell. The district court upheld the leases.

"The leases are $500 a month for fifteen years plus a two-percent rent increase per year, and that's that. They're great apartments for the price, and the price doesn't even keep up with inflation," Greave said. "That's why these people didn't want to leave. But they might've anyway, because the Joyces gave them a lot of s.h.i.t. But this old lady wasn't intimidated, and she held them all together. Then she turned up dead."

"Ah."

"Last week, she doesn't make it to school," Greave continued. "The princ.i.p.al calls, no answer. A cop goes by for a look, can't get the door open-it's locked from the inside and there's no answer on the phone. They finally take the door down, the alarms go off, and there she is, dead in her bed. George Joyce is dabbing the tears out of his eyes and looking like the cat that ate the canary. We figured they killed her."

"Autopsy?"

"Yup. Not a mark on her. The toxicology reports showed just enough sedative for a couple of sleeping pills, which she had a prescription for. There was a beer bottle and a gla.s.s on her nightstand, but she'd apparently metabolized the alcohol because there wasn't any in her blood. Her daughter said she had long-term insomnia, and she'd wash down a couple of sleeping pills with a beer, read until she got sleepy, and then take a leak and go to bed. And that's exactly what it looks like she did. The docs say her heart stopped. Period. End of story."

Lucas shrugged. "It happens."

"No history of heart problems in her family. Cleared a physical in February, no problems except the insomnia and she's too thin-but being underweight goes against the heart thing."

"Still, it happens," Lucas said. "People drop dead."

Greave shook his head. "When the Joyces were running the flops, they had a guy whose job it was to keep things orderly. They brought him over to run the apartments. Old friend of yours; you busted him three or four times, according to the NCIC. Remember Ray Cherry?"

"Cherry? Jesus. He is an a.s.shole. Used to box Golden Gloves when he was a kid. . . ." Lucas scratched the side of his jaw, thinking. "That's a nasty bunch you got there. Jeez."

"So what do I do? I got nothing."

"Get a cattle prod and a dark bas.e.m.e.nt. Cherry'd talk after a while." Lucas grinned through his teeth, and Greave almost visibly shrank from him.

"You're not serious."

"Mmm. I guess not," Lucas said. Then, brightening: "Maybe she was stabbed with an icicle."

"What?"

"Let me think about it," Lucas said.