John Sandford: Night Prey

"Blow me," the driver said genially, and eased away.

Sloan was a narrow man with a slatlike face. He wore a hundred-fifty-dollar tan summer suit, brown shoes a shade too yellow, and a fedora the color of beef gravy. "How do, Lucas," he said. His eyes shifted to Del. "Del, you look like shit, my man."

"Where'd you get the hat?" Lucas asked. "Is it too late to take it back?"

"My wife bought it for me," Sloan said, sliding his fingertips along the brim. "She says it complements my ebullient personality."

Del said, "Still got her head up her ass, huh?"

"Careful," Sloan said, offended. "You're talking about my hat." He looked at Lucas. "We gotta go for a ride."

"Where to?"

"Wisconsin." He rocked on the toes of the too-yellow shoes. "Hudson. Look at a body."

"Anybody I know?" Lucas asked.

Sloan shrugged. "You know a chick named Harriet Wannemaker?"

"I don't think so," Lucas said.

"That's who it probably is."

"Why would I go look at her?"

"Because I say so and you trust my judgment?" Sloan made it a question.

Lucas grinned. "All right."

Sloan looked down the block at Lucas's Porsche. "Can I drive?"

"Pretty bad in there?" Sloan asked. He threw his hat in the back and downshifted as they rolled up to a stop sign at Highway 280.

"They executed him. Shot him in the teeth," Lucas said. "Think it might be the Seeds."

"Miserable assholes," Sloan said without too much heat. He accelerated onto 280.

"What happened to what's-her-name?" Lucas asked. "Wannabe."

"Wannemaker. She dropped out of sight three days ago. Her friends say she was going out to some bookstore on Friday night, they don't know which one, and she didn't show up to get her hair done Saturday. We put out a missing persons note, and that's the last we know until this morning, when Hudson called. We shot a Polaroid over there; it wasn't too good, but they think it's her."

"Shot?"

"Stabbed. The basic technique is a rip-a stick in the lower belly, then an upward pull. Lots of power. That's why I'm looking into it."

"Does this have something to do with what's-her-name, the chick from the state?"

"Meagan Connell," Sloan said. "Yeah."

"I hear she's trouble."

"Yeah. She could use a personality transplant," Sloan said. He blew the doors off a Lexus SC, allowing himself a small smile. The guy in the Lexus wore shades and driving gloves. "But when you actually read her files, the stuff she's put together-she's got something, Lucas. But Jesus, I hope this isn't one of his. It sounds like it, but it's too soon. If it's his, he's speeding up."

"Most of them do," Lucas said. "They get addicted to it."

Sloan paused at a stoplight, then ran the red and roared up the ramp onto Highway 36. Shifting up, he pushed the Porsche to seventy-five and kept it there, cutting through traffic like a shark. "This guy was real regular," he said. "I mean, if he exists. He did one killing every year or so. Now we're talking about four months. He did the last one just about the time you were gettin' shot. Picked her up in Duluth, dumped the body up at the Carlos Avery game reserve."

"Any leads?" Lucas touched the pink scar on his throat.

"Damn few. Meagan's got a file."

They took twenty minutes getting to Wisconsin, out the web of interstates through the countryside east of St. Paul, the landscape green and heavy after a wet spring. "It's better out here in the country," Sloan said. "Christ, the media's gonna get crazy with this cop killed."

"Lotta shit coming down," Lucas said. "At least the cop's not ours."

"Four killed in five days," Sloan said. "Wannemaker will make five in a week. Actually, we might have six. We're looking into an old lady who croaked in her bed. A couple of the guys think she might've been helped along. They're calling it natural, for now."

"You cleared the domestic on Dupont," Lucas said.

"Yeah, with the hammer and chisel."

"Hurts to think about it." Lucas grinned.

"Got it right between the eyes," Sloan said, impressed. He'd never had a hammer-and-chisel job before, and novelty wasn't that common in murder. Most of it was a half-drunk guy scratching his ass and saying, Jesus, she got me really pissed, you know? Sloan went on: "She waited until he was asleep, and whack. Actually, whack, whack, whack. The chisel went all the way through to the mattress. She pulled it out, put it in the dishwasher, turned the dishwasher on, and called 911. Makes me think twice about going asleep at night. You catch your old lady staring at you…"

"Any defense? Long-term abuse?"

"Not so far. So far, she says it was hot inside, and she got tired of him laying there snoring and farting. You know Donovan up in the prosecutor's office?"

"Yeah."

"Says he'd of taken a plea to second if it'd been only one whack," Sloan said. "With whack-whack-whack, he's gotta go for first degree."

A truck moved in front of them suddenly, and Sloan swore, braked, swung behind it to the right and passed.

"The Louis Capp thing," Lucas said.

"We got him," Sloan said with satisfaction. "Two witnesses, one of them knew him. Shot the guy three times, got a hundred and fifty bucks."

"I chased Louis for ten years, and I never touched him," Lucas said. There was a note of regret in his voice, and Sloan glanced at him, grinned. "He got any defense?"

"Two-dude," Sloan said. Some other dude done it. "Ain't gonna work this time."

"He was always a dumb sonofabitch," Lucas said, remembering Louis Capp. Huge guy, arms like logs, with a big gut. Wore his pants down under his gut, so the crotch of his pants dropped almost to his knees. "The thing is, what he did was so simple, you had to be there to catch him. Sneak up behind a guy, hit him on the head, take his wallet. The guy must have fucked up to two hundred people in his career."

Sloan said, "He's as mean as he was dumb."

"At least," Lucas agreed. "So that leaves what? The Hmong gang-banger and the fell-jumped-pushed waitress."

"I don't think we'll get the Hmong; the waitress had skin under her fingernails," Sloan said.

"Ah." Lucas nodded. He liked it. Skin was always good.

Lucas had left the department two years earlier, under some pressure, after a fight with a pimp. He'd gone full-time with his own company, originally set up to design games. The computer kids he worked with had pushed him in a new direction, writing simulations for police dispatch computers. He'd been making a fortune when the new Minneapolis chief asked him to come back.

He couldn't return under civil service; he'd taken political appointment as deputy chief. He'd work intelligence, as he had before, with two main objectives: put away the most dangerous and the most active criminals, and cover the department on the odd crimes likely to attract media attention.

"Try to keep us from getting ambushed by the fruitcakes out there," the chief said. Lucas played hard to get for a little while, but he was bored with business, and he finally hired a full-time administrator to run the company, and took the chief's offer.

He'd been back on the street for a month, trying to rebuild his network, but it had been harder than he'd expected. Things had changed in just two years. Changed a lot.

"I'm surprised Louis was carrying a gun," Lucas said. "He usually worked with a sap, or a pipe."

"Everybody's got guns now," Sloan said. "Everybody. And they don't give a shit about using them."

The St. Croix was a steel-blue strip beneath the Hudson bridge. Boats, both sail and power, littered the river's surface like pieces of white confetti.

"You oughta buy a marina," Sloan said. "I could run the gas dock. I mean, don't it look fuckin' wonderful?"

"Are you getting off here, or are we going to Chicago?"

Sloan quit rubbernecking and hit the brakes, cut off a station wagon, slipped down the first exit on the Wisconsin side, and headed north into Hudson. Just ahead, a half-dozen emergency vehicles gathered around a boat ramp, and uniformed Hudson patrolmen directed traffic away from the ramp. Two cops were standing by a Dumpster, their thumbs hooked in their gun belts. To one side, a broad-backed blond woman in a dark suit and sunglasses was facing a third cop. They appeared to be arguing. Sloan said, "Ah, shit," and as they came up to the scene, ran his window down and shouted, "Minneapolis police" at the cop directing traffic. The cop waved him into the parking area.