Night Prey (20 page)

"Yeah. The big thing on Junky."

"With this killing last night, they think we sandbagged them," Shantz said.

Lucas sat down. "What can you do? The guy's flipped out. Any other time, it might've held them for a few days."

"We're not looking good, Lucas," Roux said.

"What about the St. Paul cop?" Shantz asked. "Anything there?"

"I'm told that St. Paul had a shrink talk to him," Lester said. "They don't think he's capable of it."

"Beat up his wife," Shantz suggested.

"The charges were dropped. More like a brawl. His old lady got her licks in," Anderson said. "Hit him in the face with a Mr. Coffee."

"I heard it was an iron," Lucas said. "Where was he last night, by the way?"

"Bad news," Lester said. "His old lady moved out after the last big fight, and he was home. Alone. Watching TV."

"Shit," Lucas said.

"St. Paul's talking to him again, pinning down the shows he saw."

"Yeah, yeah, but with VCR time delays, he could have been anywhere," Shantz said.

"Bullshit," said Anderson.

Shantz was talking to Roux. "All we'd have to do is leak a name and the spousal-abuse charge. We could do it a long way from here-I could have one of my pals at the DFL do it for me. Hell, they like doing favors for media, for the paybacks. TV3'd pee their pants with that kind of tip. And it really does smell like a cover-up."

"They'd crucify him," Lester said. "They'd make it look like the charges were dropped because he's a cop."

"Who's to say they weren't?" Shantz asked. "And it would take some of the heat off us. Christ, this killing over at the lakes, that's a goddamn disaster. The woman's dead and the guy's a cabbage. Now we get this serial asshole again, knocking off some country milkmaid, we're talking firestorm."

"If you feed the St. Paul guy to the press, you'll regret it. It'd kill the Senate for you," Lucas said to Roux.

"Why is that?" Shantz demanded. "I don't see how..."

Lucas ignored him, spoke to Roux. "Word would get out. When everybody figured out what happened-that you threw an innocent cop to the wolves to turn the attention away from you-they'd never forget and never forgive you."

Roux looked at him for a moment, then shifted her gaze to Shantz. "Forget it."

"Chief..."

"Forget it," she snapped. "Davenport is right. The risk is too big." Her eyes moved to her left, past Lucas, hardened. Lucas turned and saw Connell standing in the doorway.

"Come on in, Meagan," he said. "Do you have the picture?"

"Yeah." Connell dug in her purse, took out the folded paper, and handed to Lucas. Lucas unfolded it, smoothed it, and passed it to Roux.

"This is not bullshit; this could be our man. More or less. I'm not sure you should release it."

Roux looked at the picture for a moment, then at Connell, then at Lucas. "Where'd you get this?" she asked.

"Meagan found a woman yesterday who remembers a guy at the St. Paul store who was there the same time Wannemaker was there. He's not on our list of names and this fits some of the other descriptions we've had. A guy last night who definitely saw him says he has a beard."

"And drives a truck," said Connell.

"Everybody who drives a truck has a beard," Lester said.

"Not quite," Lucas said. "This is actually... something. A taste of the guy."

"Why wouldn't I release it?" Roux asked.

"Because we're not getting enough hard evidence. Nothing that can tie him directly to a killing-a hair or a fingerprint. If this isn't a good picture of him, and we do finally track him down, and we're scraping little bits and pieces together to make a case... a defense attorney will take this and stick it up our ass. You know: Here's the guy they were looking for-until they decided to pin it on my client."

"Is there anything working today? Anything that'd give us a break?"

"Not unless it comes out of the autopsy on Lane. That'll be a while yet."

"Um, Bob Greave got a call from TV3-a tip on a suspect," Connell said. "It's nothing."

"What do you mean, nothing? What is this, Lucas?" Roux asked.

"Beats me. First I heard of it," he said.

"Get his ass down here," Roux said.

Greave came down carrying a slip of yellow paper, leaned in the doorway.

"Well?" Roux said.

He looked at the paper. "A woman out in Edina says she knows who the killer is."

Lucas: "And the bad news is..."

"She called TV3 first. They're the ones who called us. They want to know if we're going to make an arrest based on their information."

"You should have come and told us," Roux said. "We've been sitting here beating our heads against the wall."

Greave held up a hand. "You have to understand, the woman doesn't have any actual proof."

Roux said, "Keep talking."

"She remembers the killer coming back from each of the murders, washing the blood off the knife and his clothes, and then raping her. She repressed all this until yesterday, when the memories were liberated with the help of her therapist."

"Oh, no," Lucas groaned.

"It could be," Shantz said, looking around.

"Did I mention that the killer is her father?" Greave asked. "Sixty-six years old, the former owner of a drive-in theater? A guy with arteriosclerosis so bad that he can't walk up a flight of stairs?"

"We gotta check it," Shantz said. "Especially with the TV all over it."

"It's bullshit," Lucas said.

"We gotta check," Roux said.

"We'll check," Lucas said, "But we really need to catch this guy, and talking to old heart-attack victims isn't gonna do it."

"This one time, Lucas, goddamnit," Roux said, adamant. "I want you out there interviewing the guy, and I want you giving the statement to TV3."

"When the fuck did the TV start running our investigations?" Lucas asked.

"Jesus, Lucas-we're entertainment now. We're cheap film footage. We sell deodorant and get votes. Or lose votes. It's all a big loop; I've been told you were the first guy to realize that."

"Christ, it wasn't like this," Lucas said. "It was more like one hand washing the other. Now it's..."

"Entertainment for the unwashed."

As Lucas walked out the door, Roux called, "Lucas. Hey-don't kill this old guy, huh? When you talk to him?"

They took a company car, all three of them, Greave sprawled in the back.

"Let me do the TV interview," he suggested to Lucas. "I did them all the time when I was Officer Friendly. I'm good at that shit. I got the right suits."

" You
were Officer Friendly?" Connell snorted, looking over the seat at him. Then, "You know, it fits."

She said it as an insult. Lucas glanced at her and almost said something, but Greave was rambling on. "Really? I thought so. Go into all those classrooms, tell all the little boys that they'd grow up to be firemen and policemen, all the little girls that they'd be housewives and hookers."

Lucas, moderately surprised, shut his mouth and looked straight out over the wheel, and Connell said, "Fuck you, Greave."

Greave, still cheerful, said, "Say, did I tell you about the deaf people?"

"Huh?"

"Some deaf people went into the St. Paul cops. They saw the thing on TV, you know, that Connell fed them? They think they saw the guy at the bookstore the night Wannemaker was taken off. Bearded guy with a truck. They even got part of his license tag."

Connell turned to look over the seat. "Why didn't you say something?"

"Unfortunately, they didn't get any numbers. Only the letters."

"Well, that'd get it down to a thousand-"

"Uh-uh," Greave said. "The letters they got were ASS."

"ASS?"

"Yeah."

"Damnit," Connell said, turning back front. The state banned license plates with potentially offensive letter combinations: there were no FUK, SUK, LIK, or DIK. No CNT or TWT. There was no ASS.

"Did we check?"

"Yup," Greave said. "There's nary a one. I personally think this old guy did it, then comes home and gives the daughter a little tickle."

"Kiss my ass," Connell said.

"Any time, any place," said Greave.

A TV3 truck was parked on the street in front of the Weston house, a reporter combing her strawberry-blond hair in the wing mirror, a cameraman in a travel vest sitting on the curb, eating an egg-salad sandwich. The cameraman said something to the reporter as Lucas stopped at the house, and the reporter turned, saw him, and started across the street. She had long smooth legs on top of black high heels. Her dress clung to her like a new paint job on a '55 Chevy.

"I think she's in my Playboy," Greave said, his face pressed to the window. "Her name is Pamela Stern. She's a piranha."

Lucas got out and Stern came up, thrust out her hand, and said, "I think we've got him bottled up inside."

"Yeah, well..." Lucas looked up at the house. The curtains twitched in an old-fashioned picture window. The reporter reached out and turned over his necktie. Lucas looked down and found her reading the orange label.

"Hermes," she said. "I thought so. Very nice."

"His shoes are from Payless," Connell said from across the car.

"His shorts are from Fruit of the Loom," said Greave, chipping in. "He's one of the fruits."

"I love your sunglasses," Stern said, ignoring them, her perfect white teeth catching her lower lip for just an instant. "They make you look mean. Mean is so sexy."

"Jesus," Lucas said. He started up the walk with Greave and Connell, and found the woman right at his elbow. Behind her, the cameraman had the camera on his shoulder, and rolling. Lucas said, "When we get to the steps, I'm going to ask the guy if he wants me to arrest you for trespassing. If he does, I will. And I suspect he does."

She stopped in her tracks, eyes like chips of flint. "It's not nice to fuck with Mother Nature," she said. And then, "I don't know what Jan Reed sees in you."

Connell said, "Who? Jan Reed?" and Greave said, "Whoa," and Lucas, irritated, said, "Bullshit," and rang the doorbell. Ray Weston opened the door and peeked out like a mouse. "I'm Lucas Davenport, deputy chief of police, City of Minneapolis. I'd like to speak to you."

"My daughter's nuts," Weston said, opening the door another inch.

"We need to talk," Lucas said. He took off the sunglasses.

"Let them in, Ray," a woman's voice said. The voice was shaky with fear. Weston opened the door and let them in.

Neither Ray nor Myrna Weston knew anything about the killings; Lucas, Connell, and Greave agreed on that in the first five minutes. They spent another half hour pinning down times on the Wannemaker and Lane killings. The Westons were in bed when Lane was taken, and were watching The Wild Ones with friends when Wannemaker was picked up.

"Do you think you can get these bums off our back?" Ray Weston asked when they were ready to leave.

"I don't know," he said honestly. "That stuff your daughter's giving them-it's pretty heavy."

"She's nuts," Weston said again. "How can they believe that stuff?"

"They don't," Lucas said.

Outside, Stern was waiting, microphone in hand, the camera rolling, when Lucas, Connell, and Greave left the house. "Chief Davenport," she said. "What have you learned? Will you arrest Ray Weston, father of Elaine Louise Weston-Brown?"

Lucas shook his head. "Nope. Your whole irresponsible story is a crock of shit and a disgrace to journalism."

Greave was laughing about Stern's reaction on the way back, and even Connell seemed a little looser. "I liked the double take she did. She was already rolling with the next question," Greave said.

"It won't seem so funny if they put it on the air," Connell said.

"They won't do that," Lucas said.

"The whole thing is like some weird feminist joke," Greave said. "If there is such a thing as a feminist joke."

"There are lots of feminist jokes," Connell said.

"Oh. Okay, I'm sorry. You're right," Grave admitted. "What I meant to say is, there are no funny feminist jokes."

Connell turned to him, a tiny light in her eye. "You know why women are no good at math?" she asked.

"No. Why?"

She held her thumb and forefinger two inches apart. "Because all their lives they're told this is eight inches."

Lucas grinned, and Greave let a smile slip. "One fuckin' funny joke after thirty years of feminism."

"You know why men give names to their penises?"

"I'm holding my breath," Greave said.

"'Cause they don't want a complete stranger making all their important decisions for them."

Greave looked into his lap. "You hear that, Godzilla? She's making fun of you."

Just before they got back, Connell asked, "Now what?"