John Sandford: Night Prey

"Unless it wasn't really an attack," Sloan said. "Maybe it was consensual, they were relaxing afterwards, and he did her."

"Bullshit," Connell said.

Lucas nodded at her. "Too much violence," he said. "You wouldn't get that much violence after orgasm. That's sexual excitement you're looking at."

Helstrom looked from Lucas to Connell to Sloan. Connell seemed oddly satisfied by Lucas's comment. "He was smoking when he did it?"

"Get them to make the cigarette, if that's what it is. I can see the paper," Lucas told Helstrom. "Check the lot, see if there's anything that matches."

"We've picked up everything in the parking lot that might mean anything-candy wrappers, cigarettes, bottle tops, all that."

"Maybe it's marijuana," Connell said hopefully. "That'd be a place to start."

"Potheads don't do this shit, not when they're smoking," Lucas said. He looked at Helstrom. "When was the Dumpster last cleaned out?"

"Friday. They dump it every Tuesday and Friday."

"She went missing Friday night," Sloan said. "Probably killed, brought here at night. You can't see into the Dumpster unless you stand on your tiptoes, so he probably just tossed her in and pulled a couple of garbage bags over her and let it go at that."

Helstrom nodded. "That's what we think. People started complaining about the smell this morning, and a guy from the marina came over and poked around. Saw a knee and called us."

"She's on top of that small white bag, like she landed on it. I'd see if there's anything in it to identify who threw it in," Lucas suggested. "If you can find the guy who dumped the garbage, you might nail down the time."

"We'll do that," Helstrom said.

Lucas went back for a last look, but there was nothing more to see, just the pale-gray skin, the flies, and the carefully colored hair with the streak of white frost. She'd taken care of her hair, Lucas thought; she'd liked herself for her hair, and now all that liking was gone like evaporating gasoline.

"Anything else?" Sloan asked.

"Nah, I'm ready."

"We gotta talk," Connell said to Sloan. She was squared off to him, fists on her hips.

"Sure," Sloan said, an unhappy note in his voice.

Lucas started toward the car, then stopped so quickly that Sloan walked into him. "Sorry," Lucas said as he turned and looked back at the Dumpster.

"What?" Sloan asked. Connell was looking at him curiously.

"Do you remember Junky Doog?" Lucas asked Sloan.

Sloan looked to one side, groping for the name, then snapped his fingers, looked back at Lucas, a kernel of excitement in his eyes. "Junky," he said.

"Who's that?" Connell asked.

"Sexual psychopath who fixated on knives," Lucas said. "He grew up in a junkyard, didn't have any folks. Guys at the junkyard took care of him. He liked to carve on women. He'd go after fashion models. He'd do grapevine designs on them and sign them." Lucas looked at the Dumpster again. "This is almost too crude for Junky."

"Besides, Junky's at St. Peter," Sloan said. "Isn't he?"

Lucas shook his head. "We're getting older, Sloan. Junky was a long time ago, must've been ten or twelve years…" His voice trailed off, and his eyes wandered away to the river before he turned back to Sloan. "By God, he was seventeen years ago. The second year I was out of uniform. What's the average time in St. Peter? Five or six years? And remember a few years ago, when they came up with that new rehabilitation theory, and they swept everybody out of the state hospitals? That must've been in the mid-eighties."

"First killing I found was in '84, in Minneapolis, and it's still open," Connell said.

"We need to run Junky," Sloan said.

Lucas said, "It'd be a long shot, but he was a crazy sonofabitch. Remember what he did to that model he followed out of that Dayton's fashion show?"

"Yeah," Sloan said. He rubbed the side of his face, thinking. "Let's get Anderson to look him up."

"I'll look him up too," Connell said. "I'll see you back there, Sloan?"

Sloan was unhappy. "Yeah. See you, Meagan."

Back in the car, Sloan fastened his seat belt, started the engine, and said, "Uh, the chief wants to see you."

"Yeah? About what?" Lucas asked. "About this?"

"I think so." Sloan bumped the car out of the ramp and toward the bridge.

"Sloan, what did you do?" Lucas asked suspiciously.

Sloan laughed, a guilty rattle. "Lucas, there's two people in the department who might get this guy. You and me. I got three major cases on my load right now. People are yelling at me every five minutes. The fuckin' TV is camped out in my front yard."

"This wasn't my deal when I came back," Lucas said.

"Don't be a prima donna," Sloan said. "This asshole is killing people."

"If he exists."

"He exists."

There was a moment of silence, then Lucas said, "Society of Jesus."

"What?"

"Society of Jesus. That's what Jesuits belong to. They put the initials after their name, like, Father John Smith, SJ. Like the SJ on Wannemaker."

"Find another theory," Sloan said. "The Minneapolis homicide unit ain't chasin' no fuckin' Jesuits."

As they crossed the bridge, Lucas looked down at the Dumpster and saw Connell still talking to Helstrom. Lucas asked, "What's the story on Connell?"

"Chief'll tell you all about her," Sloan said. "She's a pain in the ass, but she invented the case. I haven't seen her for a month or so. Goddamn, she got here fast."

Lucas looked back toward the ramp. "She's got a major edge on her," he said.

"She's in a hurry to get this guy," Sloan said. "She needs to get him in the next month or so."

"Yeah? What's the rush?"

"She's dying," Sloan said.

The chief's secretary was a bony woman with a small mole on her cheekbone and overgrown eyebrows. She saw Lucas coming, pushed a button on her intercom, and said, "Chief Davenport's here." To Lucas she said, "Go on in." She made her thumb and forefinger into a pistol and pointed at the chief's door.

Rose Marie Roux sat behind a broad cherrywood desk stacked with reports and memos, rolling an unlit cigarette under her nose. When Lucas walked in, she nodded, fiddled with the cigarette for a moment, then sighed, opened a desk drawer, and tossed it inside.

"Lucas," she said. Her voice had a ragged nicotine edge to it, like a hangnail. "Sit down."

When Lucas had quit the force, Quentin Daniel's office had been neat, ordered, and dark. Roux's office was cluttered with books and reports, her desk a mass of loose paper, Rolodexes, calculators, and computer disks. Harsh blue light from the overhead fluorescent fixtures pried into every corner. Daniel had never bothered with computers; a late-model IBM sat on a stand next to Roux's desk, a memo button blinking at the top left corner of the screen. Roux had thrown out Daniel's leather men's-club furniture and replaced it with comfortable fabric chairs.

"I read Kupicek's report on the tomb burglaries," she said. "How is he, by the way?"

"Can't walk." Lucas had two associates, Del and Danny Kupicek. Kupicek's kid had run over his foot with a Dodge Caravan. "He's gone for a month."

"If we get a media question on the tombs, can you handle it? Or Kupicek?"

"Sure. But I doubt that it'll ever get out."

"I don't know-it's a good story." A persistent series of tomb break-ins had first been attributed to scroungers looking for wedding rings and other jewelry, though the departmental conspiracy freaks had suggested a ring of satanists, getting body parts for black Masses. Whatever, the relatives were getting upset. Roux had asked Lucas to look at it. About that time, polished finger and toe bones had started showing up in art jewelry. Kupicek had found the designer/saleswoman, squeezed her, and the burglaries stopped.