John Sandford - Buried Prey

Lucas shook his head. “That blouse wasn’t right.”

“What?”

“Wasn’t right. Why in the hell would you throw a blouse out a car window? I can see throwing the girl out, if nobody was looking. But why would you throw a blouse out? Tell me one reason.”

Sloan thought for a moment and said, “The guy killed her, took her blouse as a trophy. The bodies are already in a dumpster somewhere, and he was driving around with the blouse over his face, smelling the chick, getting off on it. At some point, he gets tired of it, or can’t smell her anymore, so he throws it out the window.”

Lucas grinned at him and said, “That’s perverted. I kinda like it.”

The night was still warm, for August, with a hint of rain in the still air. They drove back to Lucas’s place in Sloan’s Dodge, arms out the side windows, Lucas thinking how quiet the city was, and for all they knew, somewhere in its quiet heart, two little girls were being tortured by a monster.

Sloan dropped him, and went on his way. Lucas went inside, got a beer, sat at the kitchen table and looked at a blue three-ring binder stuffed with paper. In school, he’d lived in an apartment inhabited mostly by nerds from the computer center. Despite his jock status, he had been pulled into some of their role-playing games. Then he wrote a module, which had impressed the nerds, who said it was as good as the commercial modules.

Talking around with the computer guys, he developed an idea for a football-based strategy game, similar to the war games popular in the seventies, but that would be played on a computer. A computer guy promised to program it, if Lucas could write the scenarios. The work had been harder than he’d expected, and had been delayed when he’d had to take a course in statistics: he wanted the game to be real.

He sat and looked at paper, which, after the day hunting for the girls, looked like silly paper. Games. Something awful was happening outside, and he was sitting at the kitchen table looking at silly paper.

He fooled with the coaching modules for a while, then gave up and got a second beer, glanced at the clock. Two o’clock in the morning. He wondered if Cherry and McGuire had gone down to Kenny’s, and what they’d found.

Restless, he picked up his sport coat, climbed in his Jeep, and headed downtown, left the car at the curb, and walked into City Hall. The place was dark but busy, with cops all over the hallways. Lucas stopped a uniformed guy named Morgan and asked what had happened. “Nothing,” Morgan said. “No sign of them. People are talking about the river again.”

“I don’t think they’re in there,” Lucas said. “How many guys are working it?”

“Right now? A half-dozen. Daniel’s still here, but people are starting to freak-the TV people are driving around in their truck. It’s turning into a circus.”

“You seen Cherry or McGuire?” Lucas asked.

“Not for a while.”

Lucas went down to Homicide, stuck his head in the office, spotted Daniel with his feet up on a desk, talking to a couple of detectives. Lucas went in, idled off to the side for a minute, until Daniel said, “Davenport. What’s happening?”

“I wondered if Cherry and McGuire got anything at Kenny’s?”

Daniel shook his head and said, “Not much more than you got.” He looked at a piece of paper on his desk. “The place was closed, but they talked to the manager. He says it’s a guy named John. Nobody knows where he lives, or how to get in touch. Just a guy.”

“So they struck out,” Lucas said.

“Well, it’s something,” Daniel said.

“Right,” said one of the detectives. “We’ve got a suspect named ‘John.’ That narrows it down.”

Daniel ignored him: “How come you’re still running around?” he asked Lucas.

“Couldn’t sleep,” Lucas said. “I was thinking, you know, if it’s all right with you… I might go down and hit that massage place across from Kenny’s. Unless Cherry and McGuire already did.”

“No, they didn’t,” Daniel said. “Why would they?”

“Didn’t they get that? That John knows some of those chicks? Maybe that’s why they call him John. Maybe he is one,” Lucas said.

An annoyed look crept across Daniel’s face. “I guess they didn’t get that. You didn’t mention it?”

“They told us to take a hike,” Lucas said. “So… I’m not doing much.”

“Step outside with me,” Daniel said, standing up.

In the hall, he said, quietly, but showing some teeth, “You’re not fuckin’ with us, are you? Withholding information so you can get a shot at it? With these two girls, this wouldn’t be the time to make points.”

“Hell no,” Lucas lied. “I wouldn’t do that.”

“You should have told Cherry and McGuire what the woman said.”

“They didn’t want to hear it,” Lucas said. “They were like, ‘Uh-huh, go knock on doors, rook.’”

Daniel looked at him for a minute, then said, “I can’t pay you overtime. But if you go down there, I’ll back you up if anything comes out of it.”

Lucas nodded. “Okay. How long you gonna be here?”

“Not much longer. Don’t call me unless you get something serious-but call me if you do.” He gave Lucas his office and home phone numbers.

“Did we get anything tonight? Anything?”

Daniel shook his head. “We got that blouse, and it was Mary’s. Nobody knows how it got there. We think the kids might have walked past Andy’s Cleaners. One of the desk girls says she saw them. That’s only about a block from their house, so maybe she did. It was early, before they were missing.”

“But they were together?”

“That’s what the girl says,” Daniel said.

“Were they walking toward their house, or away?”

“Away.”

“Any blood on the blouse?” Lucas asked.

“Not sure. There’s a small discoloration, could be blood that somebody tried to wash out. We’ll know tomorrow morning.”

“You think they’re dead?” Lucas asked.

“Probably not yet. But they will be, soon.”

Paul’s therapeutic massage occupied the end store in a fivebusiness strip that included a movie rental place, a coin laundry, a dog groomer, and a medical-oxygen service. Lucas parked in front of the massage parlor. A light shone from one window, but a red neon “Open” sign had been turned off.

When Lucas climbed out of the Jeep and slammed the door, a curtain moved in the window, and he caught the pale flash of a woman’s face. He walked up to the entrance, tried the handle: the heavy steel-cored door was locked. He pounded on it, got no answer. He pounded louder, still got no answer, so he kicked it a few times, shaking the door in its frame, and heard a woman shout, “We’re closed. Go away.”

Lucas pounded again and shouted, “Police. Open up.”

He waited for a minute, then kicked the door a few more times-carefully, with the heel, since he was still wearing the loafers-stopped when he heard a bolt rattling on the other side of the lock. The door opened a couple of inches, a chain across the gap, and a narrow blond woman asked, “Cop?”

Lucas held up his badge: “We’re looking for two missing girls. I need information about a guy you know.”

“What guy?”

“His name is John. You guys hang out with him sometimes at Kenny’s. That’s all I know,” Lucas said.

The door opened another couple of inches. “Did he do it?”

“He was telling people that he knows who did,” Lucas said. He pushed the door with his fingertips, and she let it swing open a bit more. “So who is he?”

She looked back over her shoulder and shouted, “Sally.”

Lucas pushed on the door again, and she let it open. He took that as an invitation, and stepped into a ten-foot-long room with a Formica counter and yellowing white-plaster walls, like in a drycleaning shop. A couple of chairs sat against the window wall, with a low wooden table between them, holding an ashtray and a table lamp with a shade that had a burned spot on one side. A gumball machine sat in a corner, half empty, or half full, depending. Not a place that people would linger for long, Lucas thought.