John Sandford: Night Prey

"Jesus…" Lucas looked at the tech. "Anything?"

The tech nodded and said, "A ton of shit: I don't think the rug's ever been cleaned, and it must've been installed fifteen years ago. It's gonna be a goddamned nightmare, sorting everything out."

"Well, it's something, anyway," Lucas said.

"There's one other thing," Connell said. "Up in the bedroom."

Lucas followed her back up the stairs. Koop's bedroom was spare, almost military, though the bed was unmade and smelled of sweat. Lucas saw it right away: on the chest of drawers, a bottle of Opium.

Lucas: "You didn't touch it?"

"Not yet. But it wouldn't make any difference."

"Jensen said he took it from her place. If her fingerprints are on it…"

"I called her. Her bottle was a half-ounce. She always gets herself a half-ounce at Christmas because it lasts almost exactly a year."

Lucas peered at the perfume bottle: a quarter-ounce. "She's sure?"

"She's sure. Damnit, I thought we had him."

"We should check it anyway," Lucas said. "Maybe she's wrong."

"Yeah, we'll check-but she was sure. Which brings up the question, why Opium? Does he obsess on the perfume? Does the perfume attract him somehow? Or did he go out and buy some of his own, to remind him of Jensen?"

"Huh," Lucas said.

"Well? Is it the perfume or the woman?" She looked at him, expecting to pull a rabbit out of a hat. Maybe he could. Lucas closed his eyes. After a moment, he said, "It's because Jensen uses it. He's creeping into her apartment in the dark, goes into her bedroom, and something sets him off. The perfume. Or maybe seeing her there. But the perfume really brings it back to him. It's possible, if he's really freaked out, that he used everything in the bottle he stole from her."

"Do you think it's enough? The beard being shaved, and the perfume bottle?"

He shook his head. "No. We've got to find something. One thing."

Connell moved around until she was looking straight into Lucas's eyes from no more than two feet. Her face was waxy, pale, like a dinner candle. "I was sick again this morning. In two weeks, I won't be able to walk. I'll be back in chemo, I'll start shedding hair. I won't be able to think straight."

"Jesus, Meagan…"

"I want the sonofabitch, Lucas," she said. "I don't want to be dead in a hole and have him walking around laughing. You know he's the one, I know he's the one."

"So?"

"So we gotta talk. We gotta figure something out."

Koop got out of jail a few minutes after noon, blinking in the bright sunshine, his lawyer walking behind, a sport coat over his shoulder, talking.

Koop was very close to the edge. He felt as though he had a large crack in his head, that it was about to split in half, that a wet gray worm would spill out, a worm the size of a vacuum-cleaner hose.

He didn't like jail. He didn't like it at all.

"Remember, not a thing to anybody, okay?" the lawyer said, shaking his finger into the air. He'd learned not to shake it at his clients: one had almost pulled it off. He was repeating the warning for at least the twentieth time, and Koop nodded for the twentieth time, not hearing him. He was looking around at the outdoors, feeling the tension falling away, as though he were coming unwrapped, like a mummy getting its sheet pulled.

Jesus. His head was really out of control. "Okay."

"There's nothing you can say to the cops that would help you. Nothing. If you want to talk to somebody, talk to me, and if it's important, I'll talk to them. Okay?"

"No deals," Koop said. "I don't want to hear about no fuckin' deals."

"Is there any chance you can find the guy who sold you the stuff?" The lawyer looked like a mailman on PCP. Ordinary enough, but everything in his face too tight, too stretched. And though each of his words was enunciated clearly, there were far too many of them, spoken too quickly, a torrent of "I thinks" and "Maybe we'd bests." Koop couldn't keep up with them all, and had begun ignoring them. "What do you think, huh? Any chance you could find him? Any chance?"

Koop finally heard him, and shrugged, and said, "Maybe. But what should I do if I find him? Call the cops?"

"No-no. Nuh-nuh-no. No. No. You call me. You don't talk to the cops." The lawyer's eyes were absolutely flat, like old pasteboard poker chips. Koop suspected he didn't believe a word of his story.

Koop had told him that he bought the diamond cross and the matching earrings from a white boy-literally a boy, a teenager-wearing a Minnesota National Guard fatigue shirt, who hung around the Duck Inn, in Hopkins. The kid had a big bunch of dark hair and an earring, Koop had said. He said he bought the brooch and earrings for $200. The kid knew he was getting ripped off, but didn't know what else to do with them.

"How do we explain that you sold them to Schultz?" the attorney had asked.

Koop had said, "Hell, everybody knows Schultz. The cops call him Just Plain Schultz. If you've got something you want to sell, and you're not quite sure where it came from, you talk to Schultz. If I was really a smart burglar like the cops said, I sure as shit would never have gone to him. He's practically on their payroll."

The attorney had looked at him for a long time, and then said, "Okay. Okay. Okay. So you've been out of steady work since the recession started, except for this gig at the gym, and you saw a chance to pick up a few bucks, took it, and now you're sorry. Okay?"

That had been fine with Koop.

Now, with the lawyer following him out of the jail, babbling, Koop put his hands over his ears, pushed his head together. The lawyer stepped back, asked, "Are you all right?"

"Don't like that place," Koop said, looking back over his shoulder.

Koop hurt. Almost every muscle in his body hurt. He could handle the first part of the detention. He could handle the bend-over-and-spread-'em. But he could feel his blood draining away the closer he got to a cell. They'd had to urge him inside the cell, prod him, and once inside, the door locked, he'd sat for a moment, the fear climbing up into his throat.

"Motherfucker," he'd said aloud, looking at the corners of the cells. Everything was so close. And pushing in.

He could have gone over the edge at that moment. Instead, he started doing sit-ups, push-ups, bridges, deep knee bends, toe-raises, push-offs, leg lifts. He did step-ups onto the bunk until his legs quit. He'd never worked so hard in his life; he didn't stop until his muscles simply quit on him. Then he slept; he dreamed of boxes with hands and holes with teeth. He dreamed of bars. When he woke up, he started working again.

Halfway through the next morning, they'd taken him down to his lawyer. The lawyer'd said the cops had his truck, had searched his house. "Is this charge the only thing you see coming? The only thing, the only thing?" he'd asked. He seemed a bit puzzled. "The cops are all over you. All over you. This charge-this is minor shit. Minor shit."

"Nothing else I know of," Koop said. But he thought, Shit. Maybe they knew something else.

The lawyer met him again at the courthouse, for the arraignment. He waived a preliminary hearing at the advice of the lawyer. The arraignment was quick, routine: five thousand dollars bail, the bail bondsman right there to take the assignment of his truck.

"Don't fuck with the truck," Koop said to the bail bondsman. "I'll be coming to you with the cash, as soon as I get it."

"Yeah, sure," the bondsman said. He said it negligently. He'd heard all this too many times.

"Don't fuck with it," Koop snarled.

The bondsman didn't like Koop's tone, and opened his mouth to say something smart, but then he saw Koop's eyes and understood that he was a very short distance from death. He said, "We won't touch it," and he meant it. Koop turned away, and the bondsman swallowed and wondered why they'd let an animal like that out of jail once they had him in.