Gathering Prey (7 page)

“So you know who they are?”

“Sure. Followers of the Insane Clown Posse,” Lucas said. “Most of the Juggalos are okay—unusual, even strange, but okay. They have meetings around the country that they call Gatherings. The feds say some Juggalos have formed themselves into a criminal gang. I don’t know about those.”

“I didn’t know the gang part. I’ll look them up,” she said, taking out her iPad.

•   •   •

AT TWO HARBORS,
they found three travelers, including the one called Ranger, working with a county fair cleanup crew. Ranger said, “Yeah, I seen her down in Duluth yesterday. She asked me about Henry. Nobody had seen him and she was talking about going back to the Black Hills. She thinks he might be sitting on a bench at their backup spot.”

Lucas told them about Henry. They were visibly shocked, but when he told them about Pilate, Ranger said, “Hey, that guy was in Duluth. I seen that guy. They were peddlin’ puss . . .” His eyes clicked over to Letty: “No offense . . .”

She shook her head.

“. . . out of that RV, up on the hill by the big mall. Tony and me—”

“Who’s Tony?” Lucas asked.

“Just . . . Tony. He’s one of us guys. We were walking through there, and this guy seen us, and said we could get some puss for seventy-five dollars. They were workin’ it out of an RV. We didn’t have seventy-five dollars, and if we did, I wouldn’t have spent it on that skanky chick he had. I said no, and we kept on walking. But it was like he knew who we were. I mean, travelers.”

“Where’s Tony now?”

Ranger shrugged. “He was planning to go over to Hayward for the Juggalo Gathering. If he got some money, he could’ve gone back to the mall. He’s kind of a puss hound.”

“You think these women could have baited Henry in?” Lucas asked.

Ranger shook his head. “No, Henry was a nice guy, but he was kinda gay.”

“Gay?”

“Yeah. He didn’t really do nothin’ about it, but we all knew,” Ranger said. “You know, he was like from Texas, cowboy boots and jeans, but sooner or later, he was going to find out . . .”

Letty looked at Lucas and said, “Skye kind of hinted at it when I was talking to them in San Francisco. I didn’t pick up on it, though.”

Lucas asked Ranger, “You think they might’ve run into Skye?”

“I can’t tell you that,” he said. “She was dragging around town, looking in all the places that we hang out. We do go up to that mall, sometimes, and she probably would have gone up there, sooner or later.”

“This is not good,” Letty said to Lucas.

“If you guys run into Skye, or Tony, or see Pilate, you call me.” He gave them his number, written on a page, and this time, he did wrap a fifty around it. “Please, don’t let it go.”

•   •   •

ON THE WAY BACK
to Duluth, Lucas took a call from Robinson, the L.A. homicide cop. He asked, “Did you see the autopsy photos?”

“No, I’ve been on the road,” Lucas said.

“Okay. Well, we’ve got them, and we got a nine-alarm fire here. The cuts are the same. Same pattern on this kid, as they were with Kitty Place. Big knife, slashes start up around the shoulder, and then go all the way down the body in one long slash. Right across the face, too. It might not stand up if they got a good defense attorney, but I personally think it’s about ninety-nine percent that it’s the same killer. You got a walking nightmare on your hands, my friend.”

“Did they say if the kid was raped?”

“That, I don’t know,” Robinson said. “All I got were the pictures. They don’t have an autopsy report yet.”

“I’ll call them, get reports for both of us.”

“You chasing this guy?” Robinson asked.

“Looking for him.”

“Send him to South Dakota if you get him. They got the death penalty. Unlike us, they use it.”

P
ilate and the disciples got out of South Dakota in a hurry, traveling in an eight-vehicle caravan spaced out over a mile or two, twelve men, seven women, leaving Sturgis and the motorcycle rally in the dust.

So far, the Great Northern Expedition had been a marginal success. They’d spent two weeks in San Francisco, buying dope, then headed east to Reno, where they peddled the weed to tourists. They ran into some Colorado competition there, but it wasn’t too bad, because the Colorado dope was fairly janky, plus, it had tax paid on it, so it couldn’t compete on price.

Pilate tried to use the money from the weed to step up to cocaine, but good clean coke was hard to find and they wound up with a small bag of coke and a fat bag of meth. They also lost two crew members, Biggie and Darrell, who wandered away one day and never came back.

From there, they had taken I-15 north all the way to Butte, Montana, mostly because Pilate didn’t like to drive across mountains if he didn’t have to. From Butte, taking their time, they’d gone to Dickinson, North Dakota, where they unloaded most of the meth, for cash, to be sold to the oil field workers, and then they turned south to Sturgis, to catch the motorcycle rally.

The meth sale in Dickinson had gone well, and they got to Sturgis with more than twenty thousand in cash and no dope at all. Pilate spent almost half the cash buying cocaine and then they’d gone through that. Then they’d gone camping up in the hills, had their fun with Henry, and then they got the fuck out of South Dakota.

•   •   •

“THIS IS SURE AS HELL
the long way around,” Kristen said, looking out at the arrow-straight I-90.

Pilate said, “Well, we couldn’t go back through North Dakota. That cop was on us like Holy on the Pope.”

“Could have pulled the trigger on him,” Kristen said.

“And spend the rest of your life in a hole somewhere,” Pilate said. “Those cops are wired for sound and video. We wouldn’t have had a chance. Lucky you kept your fuckin’ mouth shut.”

They’d been hassled by a North Dakota highway patrolman. He’d been called after an argument about a restaurant bill. They hadn’t been moving at the time, so he hadn’t been able to give them a ticket, and he was late for dinner, but told them if he saw them driving in his state, they were going to jail. He said, “I’ll get a drug dog on your ass, lickety-split. We don’t care for your sort in North Dakota.”

The cop had a good eye. At that point, they’d still had a pound of meth stashed in the RV, and if the cop had pushed a search, he would have gotten both the dope and the money.

“This is not our territory, and we gotta remember that,” Pilate told his disciples, as they crossed the line into South Dakota, and set up camp. “We don’t look like these people up here, and they don’t like people who look like us. We gotta be careful when we’re hauling dope. We gotta keep the dope and the money in different vehicles.”

“Hate to be pushed by those fuckers,” Kristen said. “Fuckin’ cops. We oughta kill one sometime.”

“We will,” Pilate said.

•   •   •

AS IT TURNED OUT,
South Dakota had been as bad as North Dakota. Sturgis had almost as many cops as it did bikers, although they tried to stay out of sight. Then they got into the coke, and when they left Sturgis, they had only a little more than four thousand dollars. Pilate had another connection in Wisconsin, hooked into him through a guy they knew in L.A. He could deliver wholesale coke, which they could have retailed for enough to get them back to the West Coast; except that they’d blown the money for the coke back in Sturgis.

Then there was the whole thing with Henry Fuller.

“Maybe had
too
much fun,” Pilate confided to Kristen, as they rolled on east. “I wish we’d put a boulder on top of that kid. Hold him down.”

“I’m worried about Laine,” Kristen said. “I could see her pullin’ back.”

“Well, it was her first time,” Pilate said.

“If we run into some cops, somewhere, she could talk. That’s what worries me.”

Pilate leaned back in the passenger seat, looking out at the gray-dirt sails of the Badlands, considering the problem. He said, finally, “She’s got that golden pussy. That’s what I’d hate to give up.”

“Pussy isn’t a problem. You said it yourself: pussy is more common than TV.”

Pilate yawned and said, “I’ll think about it.”

“We could have a really good time with her,” Kristen said. She looked hungry around the eyes.

“I’ll think about it,” Pilate said. Kristen could be a little scary.

He did think about it, though. What he thought was, if they took Laine off somewhere and cut her up, that could damage morale; the disciples all liked her, and might start wondering who was next.

He turned his head to take in Kristen. She might be down on Laine because Laine had that golden pussy. And the fact was, Kristen was the assistant principal in the group, the one who kicked ass. If they were going to have fun with anyone, maybe it should be Kristen: that’d probably
help
morale, instead of damaging it.

He half dozed, entertaining himself with fantasies of cutting up Kristen. The fine-woven treachery of the idea turned him on.

They’d killed a dozen people now and the numbers made him feel both powerful and comfortable. Powerful because he
could
do it, and make the others go along; and comfortable because he
had
done it, and it wouldn’t be something he’d miss in life.

Most of the victims had been chosen because they were the invisible people in the world. Street people, travelers, illegal aliens. You could stop by a Home Depot early in the morning and pick out anyone you wanted to play with. They’d jump right in the car, and the other wetbacks thought them
lucky.

He’d made one mistake, though. He’d once acted out of a powerful impulse, rather than calculation.

He’d been cruising down Sunset, stopped at a light, middle of the day, minding his own business. Okay, a little whacked on Skywalker OG. Then this blond chick, probably an actress, pulls up behind him in a BMW convertible, top down, sunglasses, red lipstick, white blouse, the whole bit. The light turned green and swear to God, she honked her horn like one split second after the light changed. He was a little doggy off the line, so what’d she do next? Dropped the hammer on the bimmer and,
BOOM!
, she was around him like he was a tourist and gone.

Pissed him off so badly that he had to hold on to the steering wheel with both hands to keep himself from shaking to pieces.

Took it as a sign.

The next sacrifice would be a woman.

A blonde. Most definitely an actress. They picked her up outside a yoga center on Melrose, hauled her up into the hills. They had a lot of fun with her before she died, begging them not to hurt her anymore.

But then . . . then the shit had hit the fan. They’d been lucky to get out of that one clean.

•   •   •

HE WOKE UP
when Kristen said, “Look at this.”

They were dropping headlong into a deep, broad river valley, with a small town on the far side. “The Mississippi River,” Pilate said, in his most solemn voice. “The zipper on the United States of America.”

They went on a bit, and a sign said: “Missouri River.” Kristen glanced at him, but didn’t correct him. He said, “I meant, Missouri,” but still, it ruined it for him.

They stopped on the other side of the Missouri for a root beer and a cheeseburger, then pushed on into the evening, across the Minnesota line, camped out overnight at the Walmart Supercenter in Worthington.

From Worthington they went north on Highway 60 and then 71, running up a very long state, and pulled into Bemidji at two o’clock on a fine, sunny afternoon, ate more cheeseburgers and got some pork chops and beer and potato chips and headed north again, still on 71, to the intersection of 72, and then north all the way to Highway 11, where they ran out of state.

“That’s Canada, right there,” Kristen said, pointing out the window.

“Never been there,” Pilate said. “The USA is good enough for me.”

They took Highway 11 into Baudette, stocked up on food and beer, then turned around on Highway 11 and ran back east a few miles on the two-lane, following behind Chet on land that was as flat as a tabletop, but dark: dark trees, dark fields, past marshes, shallow lakes, small farms. Fifteen minutes out of town, Chet swerved off on a dirt track past a rusty mailbox that led through a narrow crack in the roadside tree line. Two hundred yards back, they came to a dirty white house surrounded by a dirt patch on which two dirty old Chevy pickups were parked.

Chet got out of the car and an old man came to the front door of the house, pushed the screen door open, and stepped out. He had a mustache over a three-day beard, watery blue eyes behind plastic-rimmed glasses. He was wearing overalls and rubber boots, and carrying a pump shotgun, a 12-gauge. He asked Chet, “Where’n the hell you been? And what do you want?”

“Been in Los Angeles, Pap. Worked on some movies.”

The old man looked at the other cars in the caravan and said, “Must not of made any money on them. What do you want, anyway?”

“We was hoping to use the campground for a couple of days, rest up,” Chet said. “We’ve been on the road for a while.”

“Well . . . Go on ahead.” The old man waved at a farther track that led away from the house into the trees. “Makes no nevermind to me.”

“Thanks, Pap. Can we use the water hose when we need to?”

“Yeah, I guess. Be sure you turn it off. And don’t bother me no more. And stay off the bridge.”

Chet walked out to where everybody could see him and yelled, “Follow behind. Road’s kinda rough.”

They all followed him down through the trees to a small lake, and a puddle of cracked blacktop at lakeside, where they parked, and piled out of the cars. A single phone pole stuck out of one side of the parking lot; a single strand of wire threaded through the trees, and ended at a box on the phone pole, with four outlets. At the other side of the parking lot was an outhouse, a two-holer, the first the Californians had ever seen.

The overhead line continued to the corner of the lake, jumped over a fifteen-foot-wide creek, and disappeared into the trees on the other side. A narrow wooden bridge crossed the creek under the wire.

•   •   •

“NOT GREAT
, but I can live with it,” Pilate said.

They partied for the next three days. Couldn’t afford any more cocaine, but they still had the weed, and all the beer they could drink. They had more women than the men could keep up with, but the women, even if not all of them were entirely happy about it, would go both ways.

They also had to deal with the question of whether Minnesotans were actually aliens. Terry brought it up: “You know what? Everybody I seen around here has big heads. You seen that?”

They did, on their runs into town for food and beer: Minnesotans all had big heads. When they spotted a guy with a cowboy hat and a small head, they asked him if he was from Minnesota, and he told them no, he was from Montana.

“Food for thought, that’s what it is,” Pilate said.

On the morning of the second day, a white van bumped past them, crossed the bridge, and fifteen minutes later, bumped back out.

“What’s over there?” Pilate asked.

“Another campground,” Chet said. “Pap doesn’t want us disturbing the customers.”

“I can’t fuckin’ believe he has customers,” Pilate said.

Later that day, when he hadn’t seen anybody around, Pilate walked across the bridge and found another campground, with another phone pole with outlets, and three single-wide trailers up on blocks. The trailers were locked, and nothing was stirring around them. A garbage can sat near the entrance road, half full of trash, mostly food wrappers.

•   •   •

THEY WEREN’T LONG
for Minnesota.

The first of three Juggalo Gatherings was coming up, in Wisconsin, and Pilate didn’t want to miss it. When they picked up the cocaine in Wisconsin, they could cut it by half, and still push it out to the Juggalos for twice as much as they paid for the uncut stuff. After three days, they left the campsite, never said good-bye to Pap, heading first for Duluth, then over to Wisconsin.

In Duluth, they rambled around town for a while, rodeoed at a McDonald’s for cheeseburgers, fries, and malts, then stumbled over a busy mall. Pilate ordered Ellen and Kristen and Linda to set up shop, and though they were doubtful, they found a spot where cross-street foot traffic might give them a chance.

Pilate, in the meantime, went inside the mall with Raleigh, to look around. They were still there when Bell went by at a jog, spotted them, turned around and came back and said breathlessly, “You know who’s here?”

“Who?” Pilate asked.

“That traveler chick who was with Henry. She’s out in the parking lot.”

“Shit. She could cause us some trouble,” Pilate said. “She’s probably looking for him. Or us.”

“Yeah, after that crazy fuckin’ Kristen told her that we cut his heart out,” said Raleigh. “She’s probably got the cops right behind her.”

Pilate said to Raleigh, “She doesn’t know your car, far as we know.”