Prey: Night Prey Part 14

The girl was still standing at the corner, looking down Hennepin. She turned when she sensed him coming, gave him the half-smile and the shifting eyes that he saw from women at night, the smile that said, "I'm nice, don't hurt me," the eyes that said, "I'm not really looking at you. . . ."

He toted the heavy toolbox past her, and she looked away. A few feet farther down, he stopped, put a frown on his face, turned and looked at her.

"Are you waiting for a bus?"

"Yes." She bobbed her head and smiled. "I'm going to a friend's in Upper Town."

"Uptown," he said. She wasn't from Minneapolis. "Uh, there aren't many buses at this time of night. I don't even know if they run to Uptown . . . Can your friend come and get you?"

"He doesn't have a phone. I've only got his address."

Koop started away. "You oughta catch a cab," he said. "This is kind of a tough street. There're hookers around here, you don't want the cops thinking. . . ."

"Oh, no . . ." Her mouth was an O, eyes large.

Koop hesitated. "Are you from Minnesota?"

She really wasn't sure about talking to him. "I'm from Worthington."

"Sure, I've been there," Koop said, trying a smile. "Stayed at a Holiday Inn on the way to Sioux Falls."

"I go to Sioux all the time," she said. Something in common. She'd held her arms crossed over her stomach as they talked; now she dropped them to her sides. Opening up.

Koop put the toolbox on the sidewalk. "Look, I'm a maintenance guy with Greyhound. You don't know me, but I'm an okay guy, really. I'm on my way to South Minneapolis, I could drop you in Uptown. . . ."

She looked at him closely now, afraid but tempted. He didn't look that bad: tall, strong. Older. Had to be thirty.

"I was told that the bus . . ."

"Sure." He grinned again. "Don't take rides from strangers. That's a good policy. If you stick close to the bus stop and the station, you should be okay," he said. "I wouldn't go down that way, you can see the p.o.r.no stores. There're weirdos going in and out."

"p.o.r.no stores?" She looked down the street. A black guy was looking in the window of a camera store.

"Anyway, I gotta go," Koop said, picking up his toolbox. "Take it easy. . . ."

"Wait," she said, her face open, fearful but hoping. She picked up the duffel. "I'll take the ride, if it's okay."

"Sure. I'm parked right behind the station," Koop said. "Let me get my tools stowed away . . . You'll be there in five minutes."

"This is my first time in Minneapolis," the girl said, now chatty. "But I used to go up to Sioux every weekend, just about."

"What's your name?" Koop asked.

"Marcy Lane," she said. "What's yours?"

"Ben," he said. "Ben Cooper."

Ben was a nice name. Like Gentle Ben, the bear, on television. "Nice to meet you, Ben," she said, and tried a smile, a kind of bohemian, woman-of-the-road smile.

She looked like a child.

A pie-faced kid from the country.

10.

WEATHER HEARD THE phone at the far end of the house, woke up, poked him.

"Phone," she mumbled. "It must be for you."

Lucas fumbled around in the dark, found the bedroom phone, picked it up. Dispatch patched him through to North Minneapolis. Another one.

". . . recovered her purse and a duffel bag with some clothes. We got a license, says she's Marcy Lane with an address in Worthington," Carrigan said. His voice sounded like a file being run over sheet metal. "We're trying to run her folks down now. You better get your a.s.s over here."

"Did you call Lester?" Lucas was sitting on the bed, hunched in the light from the bedside lamp, bare feet on the floor. Weather was still awake, unmoving, listening to the conversation over her shoulder.

"Not yet. Should I?"

"I'll call him," Lucas said. "Freeze every f.u.c.kin' thing. Freeze it. The s.h.i.t's gonna hit the fan, and you don't want any mistakes. And don't talk to the uniforms, for Christ's sakes."

"It's froze hard," Carrigan said.

"Keep it that way." Lucas poked the phone's Cancel b.u.t.ton, then redialed.

"Who's dead?" Weather asked, rolling onto her back.

"Some kid. Looks like our a.s.shole did it," Lucas said. The dispatcher came on and he said, "This is Davenport. I need a number for a Meagan Connell. And I need to talk to Frank Lester. Now."

They found a number for Connell and he scribbled it down. As they put him through to Lester, he grinned at Weather, sleepy-eyed, looking up at him. "How often do they call you in the middle of the night?" she asked. "When you're working?"

"Maybe twenty times in twenty years," he said.

She rolled toward her nightstand, looked at the clock. "I get up in three hours."

"Sorry," he said.

She propped herself up on one elbow and said, "I never thought of it until now, but you've got very little hair on your a.s.s."

"Hair?" The phone was ringing at the other end, and he looked down at his a.s.s, confused. A sleepy Lester grunted, "h.e.l.lo?"

"This is Davenport," Lucas said, going back to the phone, trying to get his mind off hair. "Carrigan just called. A young girl from Worthington got gutted and dumped in a vacant lot up on the north side. If it ain't the one that did Wannemaker, it's his twin brother."

After a moment of silence, Lester said, "s.h.i.t."

"Yeah. So now we got a new one. You better get with Roux and figure out what you're gonna do, publicity-wise."

"I'll call her. Are you going up there? Wherever?"

"I'm on my way," Lucas said.

LUCAS HUNG UP, then dialed the number for Connell. She picked it up, her voice a weak croak: "h.e.l.lo?"

"This is Davenport," he said. "A girl from out in the country just got killed and dumped up on the north side. It looks like it's our guy."

"Where?" Wide-awake now. Lucas gave her the address. "I'll see you there."

Lucas hung up, hopped out of bed, and headed for the bathroom. "You were going to observe tomorrow," Weather said.

Lucas stopped, turned back. "Oh, jeez, that's right. Listen. If I finish up out there, I'll come over to the hospital. You're starting at seven-thirty?"

"Yes. That's when the kid's coming in."

"I can make that," he said. "Where do I go?"

"Ask at the front desk. Tell them the operating suite, and when you get up there, ask for me. They'll be expecting you."

"I'll try," he said. "Seven-thirty."

CARRIGAN'S SECOND CLAIM to fame was that he had small, fine feet, with which he danced. He had once appeared on stage at the Guthrie, in a modern interpretation of Oth.e.l.lo, wearing nothing but a gold lame jock and a headband.

His third claim to fame was that when a rookie had referred to him as a f.a.g dancer, he'd held the rookie's head in a locker-room toilet for so long that homicide submitted the kid's name to the Guinness Book of Records for the longest free dive. The claim was noted, but rejected.

Carrigan's first claim to fame was that a decade earlier, he'd twice won the NCAA wrestling t.i.tle at 198 pounds. n.o.body f.u.c.ked with him.

"Couldn't have been too long ago," he told Lucas, looking back at the crowd gathering on the corner. Carrigan was black, as was most of the crowd gathered across the street. "There was some people up here playing ball until dark, and there was no body then. Some kids cuttin' across the park found her a little after one o'clock."

"Anybody see any vehicles?"

"We've got people going door to door across the park there, but I don't think we'll get much. There's an interstate entrance just down the block and it's easy to miss it; people come in here to turn around and go back, so there's cars in and out all the time. n.o.body pays any attention. Come on, take a look."

The body was still uncovered, lying on bare ground between a couple of large bushes. The bushes lined a bank that ran parallel to the third-base line on a softball field. Whoever had killed her didn't care if she was found; he must have realized that she'd be found almost immediately. Portable lights illuminated the area around the body, and a crime-scene crew was working it over. "Look for cigarettes," Lucas told Carrigan. "Unfiltered Camels."

"Okay. . . ."

Lucas squatted next to the dead girl. She was lying on her side, twisted, her head and shoulders facing down, her hips half-turned toward the sky. Lucas could see enough of the wound to tell that it was identical to Wannemaker's: a stab and a disemboweling rip. He could smell the body cavity. . . . "Nasty," Lucas said.

"Yeah," Carrigan said sourly.

"Can I move her?"

"What for?"

"I want to roll her back and look at her chest," Lucas said.

"If you want to-we got photos and all," Carrigan said. "But there's blood all over her, you better use gloves. Hang on. . . ." He came back a moment later with a pair of thin yellow plastic gloves and handed them to Lucas. Lucas pulled them on, took the woman by the arm, and rolled her back.

"Look at this," Lucas said. He pointed at two b.l.o.o.d.y squiggles on her breast. "What do they look like?"

"Letters. An S and a J," Carrigan said, shining a pen-light on the girl's body. "Kiss my rosy red r.e.c.t.u.m. What is this s.h.i.t, Davenport?"

"Insanity," Lucas said as he studied the body.

A moment later, Carrigan said, "Who's this?"

Lucas looked over his shoulder and saw Connell striding toward them, wrapped in a raincoat. "My aide," he said.

"Your f.u.c.kin' what?"

"Is it him?" Connell asked, coming up. Lucas stood up and stripped off the gloves.

"Yeah. Cut the SJ into her," Lucas said. He crooked his head back and looked up at the night sky, the faint stars behind the city lights. The guy had p.i.s.sed him off. Somehow, Wannemaker didn't reach him so personally; this kid did. Maybe because he could still feel the life in her. She hadn't been dead long.

"He's out of his pattern," Connell said.

"f.u.c.k pattern. We know he did Wannemaker," Lucas said. "The girl up north didn't have the letters cut into her."

"But she was on schedule," Connell said. "Wannemaker and this one, these are two that are out of order. I hope we don't have two guys."

"Nah." Lucas shook his head. "The knife in the stomach, man, it's a signature. More than the letters, even."

"I better look at her," Connell said. She crept under the bushes for a better look, squatted next to the body, turned the light on it. She studied it for a minute, then two, then walked away to spit. Came back. "I'm getting used to it," she said.

"G.o.d help you," said Carrigan.

A patrolman and a tall black kid were walking fast up the block, the kid a half-step ahead of the patrolman. The kid wore knee shorts, an oversize shirt, Sox hat, and an expression of eye-rolling exasperation.

Carrigan took a step toward them. "What you got, Bill?"

"Kid saw the guy," the patrolman said. "Sure enough."

Lucas, Connell, and Carrigan gathered around the kid. "You see him?"

"Man . . ." The kid looked up the block, where more people were wandering in, attracted by word of a murder.

"What's your name?" Connell asked.

"Dex?" The answer sounded like a question, and the kid's eyes rolled up to the sky.

"How long ago?" Lucas asked.

The kid shrugged. "Do I look like a large f.u.c.kin' clock?"

"You're gonna look like a large f.u.c.kin' scab if you don't watch your mouth," Carrigan said.