Prey: Night Prey Part 32

AT SIX O'CLOCK in the morning, with the flat early light cutting sharp through the window like summer icicles, Greave looked up from a stack of paper, rubbed his reddened eyes, and said, "Here's something pretty interesting."

"Yeah?" Lucas looked up. They had seven possibilities, none particularly inspiring. One cop, one security guard.

"Guy named Robert Koop. He was a prison guard until six years ago. Drives a '92 Chevy S-10, red over white, no security agreement, net purchase price of $17,340."

"Sounds like a possibility," Connell said.

"If he was a prison guard, he probably doesn't have the big bucks," Greave said, as though he were thinking aloud. "He says he works at a gym called Two Guy's. . . ."

"I know the place," Lucas said.

"And he declares income of fifteen thousand a year since he left the prison. Where does he get off driving a new seventeen-thousand-dollar truck? And he paid cash, over a seven-thousand-dollar trade-in."

"Huh." Lucas came over to look at the printout, and Connell heaved herself out of her chair. "Lives in Apple Valley. Houses out there probably average what, one-fifty?"

"One-fifty for a house and a seventeen-thousand-dollar truck is pretty good, on fifteen thousand a year."

"Probably skips lunch," Greave said.

"Several times a day," Lucas said. "Where's his license information?"

"Right here . . ." Greave folded over several sheets, found it.

"Five-eight, one-ninety," Lucas said. "Short and heavy."

"Maybe short and strong," Connell said. "Like our guy."

"What's his plate number?" Anderson called. His hands were playing across his keyboard. They had limited access to intelligence division's raw data files. Lucas read it off the t.i.tle application, and Anderson punched it into the computer.

A second later he said, surprise in his voice, "Jesus, we got a hit."

"What?" This was the first they'd had. Lucas and Connell drifted over to Anderson to look over his shoulder. When the file came up, they found a long list of license plates picked up outside Steve's Fireside City. Intelligence believed that the stove and fireplace store was a front for a fence, but never got enough to make an arrest.

"High-level fence," Lucas said, reading between the lines of the intelligence report. "Somebody who would be moving jewelry, Rolexes, that kind of thing. No stereos or VCRs."

"Maybe he was buying a fireplace," Greave said.

"Couldn't afford one, after the truck," Lucas said. He took his phone book out of his coat pocket, thumbed through it. "Tommy Smythe, Tommy . . ." He picked up a telephone and dialed, and a moment later said, "Mrs. Smythe? This is Lucas Davenport, Minneapolis Police. Sorry to bother you, but I need to talk to Tommy . . .

Oh, jeez, I'm sorry . . . 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 s.e.x problems?"

"Nothing that I know of."

"Any connection with burglars?"

"Jeez, 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 f.u.c.ked 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?"

"I 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 bureaus-car registration, driver's license, an old Washington County carry permit-with what they could get from the 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 . . . let's see, I'm carrying $80,000. Jeez, 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 single-door, 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."

"I 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, I think he was just p.i.s.sed 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 s.h.i.thouse 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."

"I 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. . . ."

THEYFIRST 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 clean-shaven."

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 a T-shirt. He had a body like a rock.

"He's a lifter," Lucas said. "He's a G.o.dd.a.m.ned gorilla."

"I 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 Connell.

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.

"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 G.o.d," 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. . . ."

28.

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 a.s.sistant county attorney, ran down the evidence: -The woman killed in Iowa told a friend that her date was a cop. But Koop never was, said Troy.

-Hillerod 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.

-He 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.

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

-Shape was right for the man who attacked Evan Hart-big 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 gla.s.ses. Koop is clean-shaven, shows no gla.s.ses requirement on his driver's license, and wasn't wearing gla.s.ses that morning. The witnesses hadn't been able to pick his photo out of a display.