John Sandford - Buried Prey

“You figured this out? Wow,” she said. Her eyes were large. “Wait a minute, I just clipped the story…”

She went through a file of stories clipped from the next day’s paper, and said, “Here…” She scanned it, and then looked up: “There’s not a single word about a suspect. About this street guy.”

“We’ve been holding it tight. But here’s the thing: instead of giving it all to the reporter, have them ask the question: Did you arrest a bum, a transient, and then let him go? Are you looking for him? Do you have a photo? And ask if the Smith murder was involved.”

“What do you get out of this?”

Lucas grinned at her: “Friendship?”

She blushed and said, “I could use a little friendship. But I’ve got to finish clipping.”

Lucas watched her clip the rest of the papers, stuffing the day’s stories in little green envelopes, and thought about the stuff he’d given her, and smiled to himself. A few questions about Scrape would crank up the pressure, might bring in some tips about where he was and how he got loose after his arrest, and keep Lucas on the job.

He really didn’t want to go back to the patrol car. Not after the taste he’d had; and he wanted to stay in front of Daniel as long as he could.

As Catherine finished the clipping, Lucas went into the vault, an inner room of the newspaper library, and pulled a tied bundle of papers off a shelf. Some historic issue about Hubert Humphrey, judging from the headlines. Well, fuck a bunch of Hubert Humphrey. He spread the papers out on the floor, an inch or so thick.

When he came back out, she said, “What were you doing?”

“Hubert Humphrey’s suffered a tragedy,” he said. “Only a trained librarian could put it right.”

She came to look in the vault, turned to him and said, “This is a disgrace.”

An hour later, on their way out of the building, Catherine leaned in the door of the radio room and said, “Roy… listen, I was talking to a guy-”

“The guy with you?”

“No, no. This is just a friend,” she said.

The radio guy said, “Hi, friend.”

Lucas: “Hi.”

Catherine said, “Anyway, this guy says there was a ruckus down in his neighborhood tonight, right around midnight. There were some cops there-”

“Got that. The fight down at the Mill?”

“No. Listen, here’s the thing. My guy says somebody should ask the cops if it’s true that they arrested a transient in the case of the Jones girls, and then let him go, and now are trying to get him back. And they should ask if it’s true that the killing of the black kid the other day, Bobby’s story, if that guy was killed by the same transient who took the girls, at the same time.”

“The cops think a transient killed Smith, and kidnapped the girls?” The blind guy was skeptical.

“That’s what my guy heard. They were searching that alley where Smith got killed, at midnight, and they weren’t looking for evidence about Smith-they were looking for evidence about the girls. And he says they found some. They say Smith might have tried to interfere in the kidnapping. He might be a hero, not some dead dope dealer.”

“Pretty heavy-duty if it’s true,” the blind guy said.

“Thought you might get some cred if you pass it along,” Catherine said.

“I’ll do that. Thanks, Kate.”

They went down the back stairs, and Lucas walked her to her car in the parking lot across from the front of the building. She said, “You never come to my place. I think you’re afraid it might turn into a relationship.”

“That’s completely wrong,” he said. “With my hours…”

“You’re not going anywhere now,” she said. “So follow me.”

“Kate…”

But she was already rolling.

The thing about big girls, Lucas thought, the next morning, as he parked his Jeep outside the entrance to the alley, is that sometimes they can take more punishment than you’re prepared to hand out. He half limped around the corner and found Daniel, Sloan, Hanson, and Del staring through the open garage door at the trash can.

“Jesus, what happened to you?” Del asked. “You look like you fell out a window.”

Lucas shook his head: “Just tired. Been working too hard.” He looked into the garage, where a guy had pulled the flip-flop out of the trash can and set it on a plastic bag, and now was probing deeper into the trash. “Is that… have you talked to the Joneses? Were they wearing flip-flops?”

“Mary was,” Daniel said. “They were red and white, like this one, Miz Jones thinks. They got them at a Kmart, and we’ll be checking for size and brand and style.”

“Well, hell, it’s her flip-flop,” Lucas said. “What are the chances?”

“There’s always a chance it isn’t,” Hanson said. “The problem is, we got that box.”

“And?”

“We got some prints on it. They look like Scrape’s.”

Daniel said that they’d gotten a dozen partials off the box, none good-but when compared to the prints they’d taken from Scrape the day before, there seemed to be a few apparent matches.

Lucas scratched his ear and said, “Huh.”

Daniel said to Lucas, “We’re gonna take this flip-flop around to Miz Jones and have her look at it, and Sloan will check the Kmart connection. For you-that chick who knew where Scrape lived. I want you to find her again, and tour her around to all the places that he might have gone.”

“He could be halfway to California,” Hanson said.

Daniel: “He could be, but I doubt it. He had four dollars when we picked him up and he skipped at night. I think he’s hiding. We’ve got the highway patrol and every cop in Minnesota looking at hitchhikers.”

“Look at the trains,” Lucas said.

“What?”

“Have somebody check the train yards over by the university,” Lucas said. “Bums still ride trains-I was talking to a railroad security guy last year, after that guy got his legs chopped off. He said they still got all kinds of bums riding the boxcars. Especially out to the West Coast.”

Daniel said to Hanson: “Check that. Like right now. Get onto railroad security.”

Lucas said, “I’ve got a phone number in my notebook.”

Daniel said to Del, “I want you down at the place where he was living. Knock on all the doors, talk to the residents. Anything they know…” Del nodded, and Daniel said, “So let’s go. Go, everybody. Go away.”

After a couple of phone calls, Lucas found the blue-haired Karen Frazier standing at a bus stop just down the street from her office. He pulled up, leaned across, and popped the door and said, “I’ll give you a ride.”

“What do you want?” she asked, not getting in.

“More help,” he said. “Come on, get in. I’m not gonna bite.”

She got in and pulled the door shut: “So?”

“So where’re you going?”

“Back home. I live in Uptown.”

“So do I,” Lucas said. “But listen-this is confidential. We found a box last night with some of the girls’ clothes in it. Their mom fainted when she saw it.”

“Oh, no.” Her hands went to her face. “It was theirs? For sure?”

“For sure. One of them was wearing a bra with a kitty face on it.”

“Ah, God. I don’t want to hear that,” Frazier said.

“What I need is, a tour of the places where you think Scrape might go to hide. He took off in the night, after we let him go. He had no money, we’re checking hitchhikers and the freight trains, but we think he’s probably hiding out somewhere. Somewhere he could get in the dark.”

She thought for a minute, then said, “Scrape’s pretty good at hiding. He doesn’t go where the other transients go. Doesn’t hang out with them, doesn’t use the Mission. He’s not stupid, either-he’s just really schizophrenic, which can make him look stupid, but he’s not. If he wants to hide…”