John Sandford - Buried Prey

“For Christ sakes, don’t do that,” Lucas said. “Even if he didn’t do it, he’s still nuts and we took a great big long knife off him. He’s probably got another one by now.”

“I thought of that. That’s why I’m calling you,” Frazier said. “You think he did it?”

“I don’t know-there’s some other stuff going on, but there’s some evidence, too. Against him, I mean. So you sit tight: I’m coming over. Give me twenty minutes. I’ll meet you at the end of the bridge there.”

He’d planned to go back to Stacy, to look for Fell. Instead, he rolled out, brushed his teeth, skipped the shave, was in and out of the shower in one minute, and in two more, was dressed. He thought about calling in, as long as the phone was right there. On the other hand, if he picked up Scrape on his own…

He gave the phone a last look, and with only the slightest of misgivings, was on his way.

Frazier was sitting on a bench south of the Central Avenue bridge. Lucas pulled in, flipped his “Police” card onto the dash, locked the door, and walked over. She saw him coming and stood up.

“Everybody’s scared,” she said. “The newspaper had this huge story about letting him go, and how maybe he stabbed some black man. And you guys are hassling everybody. People are running out of town-”

“We’re still thinking about the girls,” Lucas said. “There’s not much chance anymore, but we gotta try.”

She looked doubtful: “It seems more like you’re doing it for television, than really looking.”

“We’re really looking,” Lucas said. “And I haven’t rousted anyone. I’ve been working the Smith killing.”

She turned away and looked off down the river.

“Anyway,” Lucas said. “There’s a guy named Millard, right? Where is he?”

“I don’t want you to talk to Millard, because he’ll put two and two together, and figure out where you got his name.”

Lucas shook his head: “I gotta know. I’ll cover you. But I gotta talk to him.”

“I can tell you what he said. He said, Scrape was right under the bridge when he saw him, but then he started walking down the bank. Millard said there are a bunch of old cave openings and drains down there, that go up under the bank. He thinks Scrape is in there.”

“I need to talk to Millard,” Lucas insisted. “I need to bring him down here.”

They argued for a minute, but Lucas knew her soft spot-the chance the girls were still alive somewhere-and she finally agreed to ride around with him, looking for Millard, and said she’d point him out.

“I feel like a Judas,” she said, as they walked back to the car.

“Yeah, I know,” Lucas said. He told her about working undercover on drugs, and the bad feeling he’d gotten from it. “Drugs kill people. Getting the dealers off the street is important. But I didn’t want to do it.”

And a few minutes later, “Is Millard his first name, or last name?”

“Don’t know,” she said. “He’s just Millard.”

“Like Madonna.”

She didn’t smile.

They found Millard at a free store a half-mile off the river, a place run by a bunch of old hippies who’d drifted into charitable work. Millard was sitting on a stoop at one end of the store, next to a table full of used shoes. He had a stack of shoes on the steps next to him, and he was trying them on, one pair at a time. A battered backpack sat on the sidewalk next to him.

Lucas dropped Frazier a block away, out of sight, then went around the block, pulled up across the street from the store, hopped out of the car, and walked across the street.

“Hey, Millard,” he said.

Millard looked up, and then sideways, as if trying to figure out a place to run. Lucas said, “Don’t run. I’d catch you in thirty feet and then I’d have to take you downtown.”

“Cop,” Millard said. He was a tall man, emaciated, windburned, with a long gray beard, and pale blue eyes under white eyebrows. He wore a thirties-style gray felt fedora, crushed on his skull like an accordion bellows, and a gray cotton shirt under an ancient navy blue wool suit.

Lucas said, “Yeah,” and then, “Donny White saw you with Scrape this morning, over by the Hennepin Bridge,” he said.

Millard was confused. “I never… Who? White?”

“The newspaper guy,” Lucas said, inventing as he went along. “Said he saw you with Scrape. The fact is, my man, you’re going off to prison, if that’s true.”

“I didn’t… I wasn’t with Scrape,” Millard said.

“You were seen,” Lucas said.

“I wasn’t with him,” Millard said, his voice rising toward a shout. “I wasn’t…”

One of the old hippies came out of the store, a short, square man with a red beard, and he asked, “Is there a problem?”

“Minneapolis police,” Lucas said. “I’m talking to Millard, here. You can go on back inside.”

“Could I see some ID?”

“Sure.” Lucas pulled his ID, hung it in front of the hippie for a moment, then slipped it back in his pocket.

“Maybe I should call a lawyer.”

Lucas shrugged. “Do what you want; but right now, go away. This is an official investigation.”

The hippie said, “I’ll be back.”

Lucas turned back to Millard. “So, I’m probably gonna have to arrest you. At least you’ll get three squares a day.”

“Look… look… I might have seen him, but I wasn’t with him,” Millard said. “I might have seen him down the river from the bridge.”

“Where’d he go? If you can show me, I’ll cut you loose.”

Millard shuffled around in a half-circle, thinking about it, eyes averted, and then said, “I can show you. But no jail.”

“Put on your shoes,” Lucas said.

Lucas walked him across the street, put him in the Jeep, threw his pack on the backseat. Millard hadn’t washed for a while, and Lucas dropped the windows. “How long you known Scrape?”

“I don’t know him,” Millard said. “I just know who he is.”

“You ever see him with a basketball?”

“Uh-huh. He’s had a basketball all year,” Millard said. “I don’t know where he got it. Pretty good ball, though.”

He took Lucas to the riverbank, and then south a couple hundred yards, farther than Lucas expected. “Right down there,” Millard said, pointing over the embankment. “There’s a cement thing that sticks out of the hill. That’s where I seen him.”

“I want you to sit right here, on the Jeep,” Lucas said. “If you run, I’ll catch you, and then you will go to jail. We ain’t fooling around here, Millard. You help me out, you’ll be okay. You fuck with me, you’re going to jail. Okay?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“You sure you got it?”

“Yeah, I’ll sit here on the Jeep.”

Lucas skidded down the embankment, through brush and broken glass, holding on to weeds to keep his balance. Two-thirds of the way down, he found what looked like the end of an old concrete storm sewer set into the riverbank. A barrier made of steel bars had been bolted to the concrete, but had rusted over the years, and one side of it had been broken free. The drain was dark, but Lucas could see trash from food wrappings inside the mouth of it, as well as the remains of campfires. If it no longer functioned as a drain, it’d be dry and safe, or at least easily defensible, with the iron bars over the entrance.

The floor was covered with a layer of sand, and what appeared to be new footprints were going in and out. He called, “Scrape? Scrape? Come out of there.”

He saw nothing in the dark, but a minute after he called, he heard a scuttling sound. Somebody was headed farther back into the tunnel.

“Scrape? I can hear you. Don’t make me come get you.”

Nothing but dark.