Rules of Prey (14 page)

Smithe tipped his head toward McCarthy again. “He told
me that as soon as I started dealing in alibis, you’d have guys out on the street trying to knock them down.”

Lucas leaned on the interrogation table. “He’s absolutely right. We would. And if we can’t, I guarantee you’d be back on the street and nothing happens. Nothing. You haven’t been booked yet. You never would be. Right now, we’ve got a good enough case to pick you up, maybe take it to trial. I don’t know what these guys have been telling you, but I can tell you that we can put you with two of the victims and a third guy who is critical to the case, and there’s some physical evidence. But a good alibi would knock the stuffing out of it.”

Smithe went pale. “There can’t be. Physical evidence. I mean . . .”

“You don’t know what it is,” Lucas said. “But we have it. Now. I suggest you and Mr. McCarthy go whisper in the hallway for a couple of minutes and come back.”

“Yeah, we’ll do that,” McCarthy said.

They were back in five minutes.

“We’re done talking,” McCarthy announced, looking satisfied with himself.

Lucas looked at Smithe. “You’re making a bad mistake.”

“He said—” Smithe started, but McCarthy grabbed him by the arm and shook his head no.

“You’re playing the weak sister,” McCarthy said to Lucas. “From what you’ve said, there’re only two possibilities: You’ve got no case and you’re desperate to make one. In which case you won’t book him. Or you’ve got a case, in which case you’ll book him no matter what we say and use what he says against him.”

“McCarthy, a fellow out in the hall called you a dickhead,” Lucas said wearily. “He was right. You can’t even see the third possibility, which is why we’re all sweating bullets.”

“Which is?”

“Which is we got a good case that feels bad to a few of us. We just want to
know.
We’ve got pretty close to exact times on two of the attacks, real close on a third. If Mr.
Smithe was out of town, if he was talking to clients, if he was in the office all day, he’d be in the clear. How can it hurt to tell us now, before we book—”

“You’re just afraid to book because of what will happen if you’re wrong.”

“Goddamn right. The department will look like shit. And Smithe, not incidentally, will take it right in the shorts, no offense.”

“Now, what the fuck does that mean?”

“He knows I’m gay,” Smithe said.

“That’s a prejudicial remark if I ever—”

“Fuck it,” said one of the interrogators. “I don’t want to hear any more.”

He stalked out of the room and a minute later Daniel stepped in.

“No deal?” he asked Lucas.

Lucas shrugged.

“No deal,” said McCarthy.

“Take him upstairs and book him,” Daniel told the remaining interrogator.

“Wait a minute,” said Smithe.

“Book him,” Daniel snarled. He stormed out of the room.

“Good work, McCarthy, you just built your client a cross,” Lucas said.

McCarthy showed his teeth in what wasn’t quite a smile. “Go piss up a rope,” he said. They left in a group—Smithe, McCarthy, and the interrogation cop. As they went, the cop turned to Lucas.

“You know the difference between a skunk dead on the highway and a lawyer dead on the highway?”

“No, what?”

McCarthy turned his head.

“There’s skid marks in front of the skunk,” the cop said. Lucas laughed and McCarthy bared his teeth again.

“Look at them down there, like lice on a dog,” Anderson said gloomily, exploring his gums with a ragged plastic toothpick. On the street below, television cameramen, reporters,
and technicians were swarming around the remote-broadcast trucks parked outside City Hall.

“Yeah. Looks like Lester is going to have a full house,” Lucas said. Jennifer’s head bobbed through the swarm, headed toward the entry below them. “Got to run,” Lucas said.

He caught her just inside the entrance, dragged her protesting through the halls to his office, pushed her into the desk chair, and closed the door.

“You tipped Kennedy about the gay. You told me you wouldn’t.”

“I didn’t tip him, Lucas, honest to Christ.”

“Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit,” Lucas stormed. “You guys have washed each other’s hands before, I’ve seen you do it. As soon as Daniel told me that Kennedy had the tip, I knew it was from you.”

“So what are you going to do about it, Lucas? Huh?” She was angry now. “This is what I do for a living. It’s not a fuckin’ hobby.”

“Great goddamn way to make a living.”

“Better than renting yourself out as a stormtrooper.”

Lucas put his fists on his hips and leaned close to her face. She didn’t back off even a fraction of an inch. “You know what you did to get a break on a story? You pushed the department into booking an innocent man, which will probably kill the guy. He’s in the welfare department surrounded by women and they’ll never trust him again, no matter what anybody says. He’s a suspect, all right, but I don’t think he did it. I was trying to get them to go easy, but your fuckin’ tip pushed them into picking him up.”

“If they don’t think he did it, they shouldn’t pick him up.”

Lucas slapped himself on the forehead. “Jesus. You think all the questions are easy? Smithe might be guilty. He might not be guilty. I might be wrong about him, and if I am and if I talked the department into letting him go, he might go right back on the street and butcher some other woman. But I might be right and we’re destroying the guy, while the real killer is planning to rip somebody else. All we needed was
a little time, and you snooped on a private conversation out of my house.”

“And?”

Lucas turned cool. “I’ve got to make some basic decisions about whether to talk to you at all.”

“I didn’t really need to hear that phone call at your place,” Jennifer said. “I would have gotten it anyway. I’ve got sources here you wouldn’t believe. I don’t need you, Lucas. I might just tell you to go fuck yourself.”

“I’ll take the risk. I can’t put up with spying. I am considering—considering—calling a lawyer and having him call your general manager to tell him how you got the information and threatening to file suit against the station for theft of proprietary information.”

“Lucas—”

“Get out of here.”

“Lucas . . .” She suddenly burst into tears and Lucas backed a few steps away.

“I’m sorry,” he said, miserably. “I just can’t . . . Jennifer . . . stop that, goddammit.”

“God, I’m a wreck, my makeup. I can’t do this press conference . . . . God . . . can I use your phone?” She poked at her face with a tissue. “I want to call the station, tell them to let Kathy Lettice take it. God, I’m such a mess . . .”

“Jesus, stop crying, use the phone,” Lucas said desperately.

Still sniffling, she picked up the phone and dialed. When it was answered, her voice suddenly cleared. “Don? Jen. The guy’s name is Smithe and he works for welfare—”

“Goddammit, Jennifer!” Lucas shouted. He grabbed the phone, twisted it out of her hand, and slammed it on the hook.

“I cry good, don’t I?” she asked with a grin, and she was out the door.

“Davenport, Davenport,” Daniel moaned. He gripped handfuls of hair on the side of his head as he watched Jennifer finish the broadcast.

“ . . . called by some the smartest man in the department, told me personally that he did not believe that Smithe is guilty of the spectacular murders and that he fears the premature arrest could destroy Smithe’s burgeoning career with the welfare department . . .”

“Burgeoning career? TV people shouldn’t be allowed to use big words,” Lucas muttered.

“So now what?” Daniel asked angrily. “How in the hell could you do this?”

“I didn’t know I was,” Lucas said mildly. “I thought we were having a personal conversation.”

“I told you that your dick was going to get you in trouble with that woman,” Daniel said. “What the hell am I going to tell Lester? He’s been out there in front of the cameras making his case and you’re talking to this puss behind his back. You cut his legs out from under him. He’ll be after your head.”

“Tell him you’re suspending me. What’s bad? Two weeks? Then I’ll appeal to the civil-service board. Even if the board okays the suspension, it’ll be months from now. We should be able to put it off until this thing is settled, one way or another.”

“Okay. That might do it.” Daniel nodded and then laughed unpleasantly, shaking his head. “Christ, I’m glad that wasn’t me getting grilled. You better get out of here before Lester arrives or we’ll be busting him for assault.”

At two o’clock in the morning the telephone rang. Lucas looked up from the drawing table where he was working on Everwhen, reached over, and picked it up.

“Hello?”

“Still mad?” Jennifer asked.

“
You bitch.
Daniel’s suspending me. I’m giving interviews to everybody except you guys, you can go suck—”

“Nasty, nasty—”

He slammed the receiver back on the hook. A moment later the phone rang again. He watched it like a cobra, then picked it up, unable to resist.

“I’m coming over,” she said, and hung up. Lucas reached for it, to call her, to tell her not to come, but stopped with his hand on the receiver.

Jennifer wore a black leather jacket, jeans, black boots, and driving gloves. Her Japanese two-seater squatted in the driveway like red-metal muscle. Lucas opened the inner door and nodded at her through the glass of the storm door.

“Can I come in?” she asked. She was wearing gold-wire-rimmed glasses instead of her contacts. Her eyes looked large and liquid behind the lenses.

“Sure,” he said awkwardly, fumbling with the latch. “You look like a heavy-metal queen.”

“Thanks loads.”

“That was a compliment.”

She glanced at him, looking for sarcasm, found none, peeled off the jacket, and drifted toward the couch in the living room.

“You want a coffee?” Lucas asked as he closed the door.

“No, thanks.”

“Beer?”

“No, I’m fine. Go ahead, if you want.”

“Maybe a beer.” When he got back, Jennifer was leaning back on a love seat, her knee up on the adjacent seat. Lucas sat on the couch opposite her, looking at her over a marble-topped coffee table.

“So what?” he said, gesturing with the beer bottle.

“I’m very tired,” she said simply.

“Of the story? The maddog? Me?”

“Life, I think,” Jennifer said sadly. “The baby was maybe an attempt to get back.”

“Jesus.”

“That little scene with you today . . . God, I don’t know. I try to put a good face on it, you know? Gotta be quick, gotta be tough, gotta smile when the heavy stuff comes down. Can’t let anybody push you. Sometimes I feel like . . . you remember that little Chevrolet I had, that little Nova, that I wrecked, before I bought the Z?”

“Yeah?”

“That’s how my chest feels sometimes. All caved in. Like everything is still hard, but all bent up. Crunched, crumbled.”

“Cops get like that.”

“Not really. I don’t think so.”

“Look, you show me a guy on the street for ten or fifteen years—”

She held up a hand, stopped him. “I’m not saying it’s not tough and you don’t get burned out. Awful stuff happens to cops. But there are slow times. You can take some time. I never have time. If things get slow, for Christ’s sake, I’ve got to
invent
stuff. You show me a slow day, where a cop might cruise through it, and I’ll show you a day when Jennifer Carey is out interviewing some little girl who got her face burned off two months ago or two years ago because we had to have something by six
P
.
M
., or else. And we don’t have time to think about it. We just do it. If we’re wrong, we pay later. Do now, pay later. What’s worse, there aren’t any rules. You don’t find out until later if you’re right or wrong. Sometimes you never find out. And what’s right one day is wrong the next.”

She stopped talking and Lucas took a swig of beer and watched her. “You know what you need?” he said finally.

“What? A good fuck?” she asked sarcastically.

“I wasn’t going to say that.”

“Then what?”

“What you need is to leave the job for a while, get married, move in here.”

“You think being a housewife is going to fix things?” She looked almost amused.

“I didn’t say housewife. You said housewife. I was going to suggest that you move in here and not do a fuckin’ thing. Take a class. Think things over. Take a trip to Paris before the kid gets here. Something. That argument this afternoon, those fake tears, my God, that’s so tough it’s not human.”

“The tears weren’t fake,” she said. “The alibi was, afterward. I was thinking, I couldn’t break down and cry on the
job. Then I got home, and I thought, why not? I mean, I’m not stupid. You gave me that little lecture about Smithe, you think I don’t know I might have hurt him? I admit it. I might have hurt him. But I’m not sure. I’m—”

“But look at what you’re putting yourself through the wringer for. You got the name out to Kennedy, and for what? A ten-minute lead on the other reporters? Christ . . .”

“I know, I know all that. That’s why I’m over here. I’m screwed up. I don’t know that I’m wrong, but I’m not sure that I’m right. I’m living in murk and I can’t stop.”

Lucas shook his head. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Well.” She took her leg off the love seat. “Could you come over and sit next to me for a minute?”

“Um . . .” Lucas stood up, walked around the table, and sat down next to her.

“Put your arm up around my shoulder.”

He put his arm around her shoulder and she snuggled her face into his chest.

“You ready for this?” she asked in an oddly high-pitched, squeaky voice.

He tried to pull back and look down at her, but she clung to him. “Ready for what?”

She pressed her face against him even more firmly, and after a few seconds, began to weep.

No sex, she said later. Just sleep. He was almost asleep when she said quietly, “I’m glad you’re the daddy.”

Louis Vullion did not laugh.

Home late the night of the announcement, he neglected to look at his videotapes and learned of the arrest the next morning in the
Star-Tribune.

“This is not right,” he said, transfixed in the middle of his living room. He was wearing pajamas and leather slippers. A shock of hair stood straight up from his head, still mussed from the night.

“This is
not right,
” he hissed. He balled up the paper and hurled it into the kitchen.

“These people are idiots,” the maddog screamed.

He turned to the tapes and watched the announcement unfold, his rage growing. Then the face of Jennifer Carey, with her statement that the game inventor, the lieutenant, Lucas Davenport, disagreed, thought they had the wrong man.

“Yes,” he said. “Yes.”

He ran the tape back and played it again. “Yes.”

“I should call him,” he said to himself. He glanced at the clock. “No hurry. I should think about it,” he said.

Don’t make a mistake now. Could this be a ploy? Was the gamesman setting him up? No. That simply wasn’t possible. The game was free-form, but there were
some
rules; Davenport, or the other cops—whoever—wouldn’t dare permit this man, this gay, to be crucified as part of a ploy. But why was he arrested? Except for the gamesman, Davenport, the police seemed confident that they had a case. How could this mistake happen?

“So stupid,” the maddog said to the eggshell-white walls. “They are so fucking dumb.”

He couldn’t think of anything else. He sat at his desk and stared blindly at the papers there, until his shared secretary asked if he was feeling unwell.

“Yes, a little, I guess; something I ate, I think,” he told her. “I’ve got the Barin arraignment and then I think I’ll take the rest of the work home. Something closer to the, ah, facilities.”

Barin was a teenage twit who had drunk too much and had driven his car into a crowd of people waiting on a corner to cross a street. Nobody had been killed, but several had been hospitalized. Barin’s driver’s license had been suspended before the latest accident, also for drunken driving, and he had served two days in jail for the last offense.

This time, it was more serious. The state was in the throes of an antidrinking campaign. Several heretofore sacred cows, for whom the fix would have routinely been applied only a year before, had already done jail time.

And Barin was an obnoxious little prick attached to a large and foul mouth. His father, unfortunately, owned a computer-hardware company that paid a substantial retainer to the maddog’s firm. The father wanted the boy to get off.

But the boy was doomed. The maddog knew it. So did the rest of the firm, which was why the maddog had been allowed to handle the trial. Barin would serve three to six months and possibly more. The maddog would not be blamed. There was nothing to be done. The senior partners were patiently explaining that to the father, and the maddog, already indemnified against failure, secretly hoped the judge would sock the little asshole away for a year.

The arraignment was the last of the morning. The maddog arrived early and slipped onto a back bench in the courtroom. The judge was looking down at a young girl in jeans and a white blouse.

“How old are you, Miss Brown?”

“Eighteen, judge.”

The judge sighed. “Miss Brown, if you are sixteen, I would be distinctly surprised.”

“No, sir, I’m eighteen, three weeks past—”

“Be quiet, Miss Brown.” The judge thumbed through the charge papers as the prosecuting and defense attorneys sat patiently behind their tables. The girl had large doe-eyes, very beautiful, but her face was touched with acne and her long brown hair hung limply around her narrow shoulders. Her eyes were her best point, the maddog decided. They were frightened but knowing. The maddog watched her as she stood shifting from foot to foot, casting sideways glances at her public defender.

The judge looked over at the prosecutor. “One prior, same deal?”

“Same deal, Your Honor. Eight months ago. She’s been home since then, but her mother threw her out again. The caseworker says her mom’s deep into the coke.”

“What are you going to do if I let you out, Miss Brown?” the judge asked.

“Well, I’ve made up with my mom and I think I’m going to earn some money so I can go to college next quarter. I want to major in physical therapy.”

The judge looked down at his papers and the maddog thought he might be trying to hide a smile. Eventually he lifted his head, sighed again, and looked at the public defender, who shrugged.

“Child protection?” the judge asked the prosecutor.

“They sent her to a foster home the last time, but the foster mother wouldn’t have her after a couple of days,” he said.

The judge shook his head and went back to reading the papers.

She was quite a sensual thing in her own way, the maddog decided, watching her nervously lick her lips. A natural victim, the kind who would trigger an attack by a wolf.

The judge at last decided that nothing could be done. He fined her one hundred and fifty dollars on a guilty plea to soliciting for prostitution.

Barin, the twit, showed up just as the case was being
disposed. An hour later, when the maddog walked back to the clerk’s office, the Heather Brown file was in the return basket. He slipped it out and read through it, noted that she was picked up on South Hennepin. Heather Brown’s real name was Gloria Ammundsen. She had been on the street for a year or more. The maddog noted with interest in a narrative section that she had offered the arresting officer a variety of entertainments, including bondage and water sports.

The maddog took his extra work home, but couldn’t get anything done. He made a quick supper—sliced ham, fruit, a half-squash. Still agitated, he went out to his car and drove downtown, parked, and walked. Through Loring Park, where the gays cruised and broke and rebroke in their small groups. Over to Hennepin Avenue, and south, away from town. Punks on the street, watching him pass. One kid with a mohawk and dirty black jacket, unconscious on a pile of discarded carpet outside a drugstore. Skinheads with swastikas tattooed on their scalps. Suburban kids hanging out, trying to look tough with cigarettes and black makeup.

A few hookers. Not too obvious, not flagging down cars, but there along the streets for anyone who needed their services.

He looked at them carefully, walking by. All young. Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, he thought. Fewer sixteen, even fewer eighteen. Very few older. The older ones were the quick-blow-job-in-the-doorway sort, dregs so battered by the street, so unable to get inside, to a sauna, a back room, that they were little more than wet, mindless warm spots in the night, open to any sort of abuse that happened along.

He spotted Heather Brown outside a fast-food restaurant. Most of the hookers were blonde, either natural or bottle. Heather, with her dark hair, reminded him of . . . Who? He didn’t know, though it seemed a shadow was back there in his memory. In the night, away from the fluorescent lights of the courtroom, she was prettier.

Except for her eyes. Her eyes had been alive in the courtroom. Out here they had the thousand-yard stare found in
battle-fatigue cases. She wore a black blouse, a thigh-length black leather skirt, open-toed high heels, and carried an oversize black bag. Her body, her face,
said
something to him. Her
look
called to him.

“Whoa,” she said as he approached and slowed down.

“What’s happening?”

“Just out for a stroll,” he said pleasantly.

“Nice night for it, officer.” Her green eye shadow had been applied with a trowel.

The maddog smiled. “I’m not a cop. In fact, I won’t even try to pick you up. Who knows,
you
might be. A cop, I mean.”

“Oh, sure,” she said, cocking a hip so her short skirt rode up.

“Have a good one,” he said.

“Ships passing in the night,” she said, already looking down the street past him.

“But if I were to come back some night, do you usually go out for your walks around here?”

She turned and looked at him again, the spark of interest rekindled. “Sure,” she said. “This is kind of my territory.”

“You got a place where we could go?”

“What for?” she asked cautiously.

“Probably a half-’n’-half, if it doesn’t cost more than fifty. Or maybe you’d know something more exciting.”

She brightened up. He’d made the offer, mentioned a specific act and money, so he wasn’t a cop.

“No problem, honey. I know all kinds of ways to turn a boy on. I’m here most every night but Thursday, when my man takes me out. And Sunday, ’cause there’s no action.”

“Fine. Maybe in a night or two, huh? And you got a place we can go?”

“You got the cash, I got the crash,” she said.

“What’s your name?”

She had to think about it for a minute. “Heather,” she said finally.

• • •

“You are making a mistake,” the maddog said. He paced the living room. “It’s got to be a mistake.”

But it was tantalizing. He looked at the personnel directory on the table. Davenport, Lucas. The number. It would be a mistake, but how? Get him at home, late at night, he’d be off guard. No automatic tape to record the voice.

He thought about it and finally wrote the number on a piece of paper, went back out to the car, drove a mile to a phone booth, and dialed. The phone at the other end rang once. It was answered by a baritone voice, absolutely clear. No sleep in it.

“Detective Davenport?”

“Yeah. Who’s this?”

“An informant. I saw the story on television last night, your dissent from the actions of your superiors, and I want you to know this: you’re absolutely right about the maddog killer. The gay man is not him.
The gay is not him.
Do you get that?”

“Who is this?”

“I’m not going to tell you that, obviously, but I know that you have arrested the wrong man. If you ask him about leaving the notes, he won’t know about them, will he? He won’t know that you should never kill anyone you know. Never have a motive. Never follow a discernible pattern. You should do something to remedy this miscarriage or I’m afraid that you will be severely embarrassed. The maddog will demonstrate this man’s innocence sometime in the near future. Did you get all that, lieutenant? I hope so, because it’s all I have to say. Good-bye.”

“Wait—”

The maddog hung up, hurried to his car, and drove away. In a block he started to giggle with the excitement of it. He hadn’t anticipated the surge of joy, but it was there, as though he’d survived a personal combat. And he had, in a way. He had touched the face of the enemy.