Rules of Prey (11 page)

“My husband’s going to love this,” one of the women cops muttered.

“Fuck your husband,” said Daniel.

“I’d like to,” said the cop, “but people keep putting me on nights.”

When the meeting broke, he asked Lucas to stay behind.

“You got the Ruiz thing fixed?”

“Yeah. I talked to her just before I came in. We’ll do it tonight, at her place. Six o’clock. She’s willing, if it’ll help, and it’ll cool out Carey.”

“I hope your dick isn’t getting you in trouble with that woman.”

“It’s under control,” Lucas said. “I’ll tip the papers and the TV people that you’ll be calling a press conference. And I’ll talk to the papers about doing their interviews at the same time Carey does hers. We’ll be back over here for the press conference at nine. Afterward, I’m going to head up to my cabin for a couple of days. I’ve got some time coming.”

“Jesus, this isn’t such a good time for a vacation.”

“I’ve got things covered. I’ll leave my number with the shift commander if you need me.”

“Okay, but tonight prep Ruiz for making some kind of appeal for cooperation, will you? You know the stuff.” Daniel leaned back in his chair, put one foot on his desk, looked
at his wall of photographs, and changed the subject. “You know what we need.”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll tell Anderson to give you location checks. We already know he lives alone. It’s a little house down by Lake Harriet.”

“Not far from where Lewis worked. The real-estate woman.”

“We thought of that,” Daniel said. “He didn’t buy the house from her agency, though.”

“Look. Don’t get too far out front on this thing, okay? I mean you personally,” Lucas said. “If there’s a leak to the press, tell them that you’re looking at a guy, but you think it’s thin.”

“You don’t believe it?”

“I’ve got a bad feeling.”

“Can you get something going this afternoon? That might tell us something.”

“I’ll give it a shot.”

Nobody said anything about a bag job.

From his office, Lucas called the newspapers and television stations and tipped friends that Daniel would be calling a press conference. He talked separately to assignment editors from both papers and suggested that they keep a soft-touch reporter around late, that there’d be a good next-day story breaking around six o’clock.

That done, he got Smithe’s address and phone number from Anderson and found the house on a city map. He knew the neighborhood. He thought about it for a minute, pursing his lips, then opened the bottom drawer of his desk, reached far into the back, and found the lock rake. It was battery-operated, roughly the same shape but only half the size of an electric drill, with two prongs sticking out where the drill bit would have been. One prong was bent, the other straight. Lucas unscrewed the butt cap, reversed the batteries into working position, and squeezed the trigger. The picks rattled for a second and he released the pressure and sighed.

• • •

Smithe’s house was tan stucco with a postage-stamp lawn. Fifteen-foot-tall junipers flanked the concrete steps that led to the front door. There were only occasional people on the quiet streets around the house. Lucas cruised by twice, then drove out to a street phone.

“Anderson.”

“This is Davenport. Where’s Smithe?”

“Just had a call. He’s at his desk.”

“Thanks.”

Next he dialed Smithe’s number and let it ring. After the thirtieth ring he took a pair of wire cutters from the glove compartment, looked around, nipped off the receiver, and dropped it on the floor of the car. If the receiver was gone, there was little chance that a passerby would manually disconnect the phone.

The Porsche was too noticeable to park outside Smithe’s house. Lucas dropped it a block away and walked down the street, the pick in his jacket pocket. A kid was pedaling a bike along the street and Lucas slowed and let him pass. At Smithe’s house he turned in and walked straight up to the steps without looking around.

He could hear the phone ringing from the porch. The lock was an original, from a door that was probably installed in the fifties. The pick took it out in less than a minute. Lucas pushed the door open with his knuckles and stuck his head inside.

“Here, boy,” he called. He whistled. Nothing. He stepped inside and pushed the door shut.

The house was still and smelled faintly of some chemical. What? Wood polish? Wax. Lucas cruised quickly through the ground floor on a preliminary survey, stopping only to lift the ringing phone, silencing it.

The living room was sparsely but tastefully furnished with an overstuffed couch-and-chair set and a teardrop glass coffee table from the fifties. The kitchen was a pleasant, sunny room with yellow tiles and a half-dozen plants perched on the counter near the window. There was a bathroom with a
cast-iron tub, a small bedroom with a double bed pushed into a corner, an empty chest of drawers, and a desk and chair, apparently used as an office and a guest bedroom. He checked the drawers in the desk and found bills, financial statements, and copies of income-tax returns.

The master bedroom had been converted into a media room, with a set of five-foot-tall speakers and a twenty-seven-inch television facing a long, comfortable couch. One wall of the media room was lined with photos. Smithe stood next to a smiling older couple that Lucas assumed were his parents. Another photo showed him with two other men, all showing a strong family resemblance, probably his brothers; they were dressed in high-school wrestling uniforms, flexing their biceps for the camera. There was a picture of Smithe throwing hay off a rack with his father. Smithe with a diploma. Smithe with a male friend on the streets of New York, arms wrapped around each other’s waists.

Where’s the bedroom? Lucas went down the hall, found the stairs going up. The bedroom ran the whole length of the house and featured a king-size bed still rumpled from the night before. Jeans, underwear, and other pieces of clothing were scattered around on chairs. A bookcase held a few books, mostly science fiction, and a small selection of gay skin magazines. Lucas looked at the chest of drawers. Keys, cologne, a money clip with the insignia of Ducks Unlimited, a small jewelry box, a photo of Smithe with another man, both bare from the waist up, arms around each other’s shoulders.

Lucas pulled open the top drawer. Prophylactics. Two boxes, one of lubricated, the other nonlubricated, both boxes about half-empty. He took one of the lubricated variety and dropped it in his pocket. Ran through the rest of the drawers: a bundle of letters from a man named Rich, fastened together with a rubber band. Lucas looked at two: chatty letters from an ex-lover. No threats, no recriminations.

Checked the closet. Athletic shoes, five pairs. Adidas, Adidas, Adidas, Adidas, and Adidas. No Nike Airs. Down the stairs, into the bathroom. The medicine chest had four bottles
of prescription drugs: two penicillin, one of them expired, a weak painkiller, a tiny bottle of ophthalmological ointment.

Through the kitchen, the basement stairs, and down. Basement unfinished. A gun rack with three shotguns. The back room: weights. A full set, with an elaborate weight bench. Pictures of weight lifters in full grease, pumped and flexed. A handmade exercise chart, with checks next to the days of the week when each exercise was completed. He didn’t miss often.

Back out to the main room. A chest of drawers. More guns? Lucas ran through it, nothing but tools. Up the stairs, through the living room. Two nice drawings, both in charcoal, nudes of long sinuous women. Glanced at the watch: in nine minutes now.

Into the office. Pulled out drawers. Financial records, letters. Nothing interesting. Brought up IBM computer. Loaded Word Perfect. Loaded files disks. Letters, business correspondence. Smithe worked at home. Nothing like a diary.

Last check. Looked at the photos in the media room again. Happy, Lucas thought. That was what he looked like.

Checked watch. Seventeen minutes. And out.

He stopped at Daniel’s office.

“What?” Daniel looked harassed.

Lucas dipped into his pocket, took out the packaged ring of the prophylactic, tossed it on the desk. Daniel looked down without touching it, then back up.

“ ‘Share,’ ” he read from the pack. He looked up at Lucas. “The notebooks have a list that the lab made up, the rubbers that use the kind of lubricant they found in the women.”

“Yeah.”

“This one on it?”

“Yeah.”

“God damn. We got anything we can make a warrant with?”

“It’d be thin.”

Daniel reached out and pushed an intercom button.

“Linda, get Detective Sloan for me. Detective Anderson down in homicide should be able to reach him. I want to talk to him right away.”

He took his finger off the button and looked at Lucas. “Any problems out there?”

“No.”

“I don’t want you on TV for the next few days. Stay out of sight at this press conference just in case somebody saw you on the street.”

“Okay. But I got in clean.”

“Christ, if this is the guy, we’re going to look good. Out in Los Angeles they can chase these guys for years, and some of them they never catch.” Daniel ran his fingers through his hair. “It’s gotta be him.”

“Don’t think like that,” Lucas said urgently. “Think cool. When we pick somebody up, the media’s going to go berserk. If it’s not him, you’ll be dangling from a tree limb. By your balls. Especially with the gay politics around here.”

“All right, all right,” Daniel said unhappily. He swung one hand in the air as though brushing away gnats. The phone rang and he snatched it up.

“Yeah. We’ve been waiting.” He looked at Lucas and mouthed “Sloan.” “Did you ever check that list of houses Lewis sold? . . . Yeah. How many? . . . What about dates? . . . Huh. Okay. Stay with that, pick up any more you can find. Talk to her boyfriend, see what bars they went to, any that we might cross with Smithe . . . . Yeah. We might be going for a warrant . . . . What? . . . Wait a minute.”

Daniel looked up at Lucas.

“Sloan says the garbage pickup is tomorrow. He wants to know if he should grab the garbage if Smithe brings any out.”

“Good idea. It’s not protected; we don’t need a warrant. If we find anything in it, that could build the warrant for us.”

Daniel nodded and went back to the phone. “Grab the garbage, okay. And good work . . . . Yeah.” He slammed the phone back on the hook.

“Lewis sold a house the next block over. Seven weeks before she was killed.”

“Oh, boy, I don’t know—”

“Wait, listen. Sloan’s been talking to people out there. Smithe is a jogger and he jogs down that same block almost every summer evening. Right past the house she sold.”

“That’s weak.”

“Lucas, if we get one more thing, anything, I’m going in for a warrant. We’ve got Laushaus on the bench, he’d give us a warrant to search the governor’s underwear. With the governor in it.”

“It’s not getting the warrant I’m worried about. I’m worried about the reaction.”

“I’ll handle it. We’ll be careful.”

Lucas shook his head. “I don’t know. I’ve got a feeling that everybody’s starting to run in one direction.” He glanced at his watch. “I’ve got to make some calls on the Ruiz interview. Take it easy, huh?”

Lucas talked to an assignment editor at the
Pioneer Press:

“Wally? Lucas Davenport.”

“Hey, Lucas, how’s the hammer hangin’?”

“Wonderful expression, Wally. Where’d you hear that?”

“I thought the pigs talked like that. Excuse me, I meant cops. Just trying to be friendly.”

“Right. You got one of your hacks who can meet me on the front porch of the St. Paul cop shop, say about six o’clock?”

“What’s up?”

“Well, to tell you the truth, we got a survivor from a maddog attack and we’re going public.”

“Whoa. Hold on.”

There was a series of muffled exclamations on the other end of the line, then a new voice, female. Denise Ring, the city editor.

“Lucas, this is Denise. Where’d this woman come from?”

“Hey, Denise. How’s the hammer hangin’?”

“What?”

“Wally just asked me how the hammer was hangin’. I thought it was newspaper talk.”

“Fuck you, Lucas. And fuck Wally. What’s with this survivor?”

“We got one. We held back, because we needed to talk to her a lot. But Jennifer Carey found out about it—”

“From you?”

“No. I don’t know where she heard it. St. Paul cops, I think.”

“You’re sleeping with her.”

“Jesus Christ, does everybody read my mail?”

“Everybody knows. I mean, we figured it was just a matter of time. She was the last available woman in town. It was either her or you’d have to start dating out-state.”

“Look, Denise, you want this story or what?”

“Yeah. Don’t get excited.”

“Jennifer said she was going public, whether we cooperated or not, so we talked to the survivor and she said she’d be willing to make an appeal. Jennifer wanted it exclusive, but Daniel said no. Said to call you and the
Star-Tribune,
so that’s what I’m doing.”

“Six o’clock? Cammeretta will be there. How about art?”

“Send a photographer. Jennifer will have a camera.”

“Is that what this press conference is about at nine?”

“Yeah. The survivor’ll be talking in public to the other stations, but you and TV3 and the
Strib
will have the exclusive stuff from the six-o’clock meeting.”

“Not exclusive for us. Jennifer will have it first.”

“But not as much—”

“And the
Strib
will be there with us.”

“But I’m sure you’ll do it better.”

“We always do,” Ring said. “Okay. Six o’clock. What’d you say her name was?”

Lucas laughed. “Susan B. Anthony. Wait. Maybe I got that wrong. I’ll know for sure at six.”

“See you then,” Ring said.

Lucas tapped the cut-off button, redialed the
Star-Tribune,
gave the assignment editor the same story, and then called Carla.

“You’ll be there, right?” She sounded worried.

“Yeah. I’ll come over about five and we’ll talk about what you want to say. Then when it’s time, I’ll walk over to the station and get them. That’ll be about six. It’ll be Jennifer Carey from TV3, a cameraman, two newspaper reporters, and two newspaper photographers. I know all of them and they’re pretty good people. We’ll break it off about seven. Then we’ll go out for something to eat and come over here to Minneapolis for the press conference. We can talk about that on the way over.”