John Sandford - Wicked Prey

The chief nodded at the body: "Charles found him. We think."

"Was he by himself? You know what happened?"

"Yeah, he was by himself. Damn fool didn't call in," the chief said, and a tear trickled out of one eye and he wiped it away.

The fire chief said, "See the skinny kid up there?" He pointed toward the motel office, where a kid in an ill-fitting brown suit and necktie was looking down at them. "He's the last guy Charles talked to, if you want to know exactly what happened."

Lucas nodded and asked, "What about the fire? Was there an accelerant? How long did it take?"

The fire chief was nodding. "The arson guys are here, walking around. They say gasoline and oil, probably. Molotov cocktail. There's a melted two-gallon plastic gas container in there, by the end of the bed." The bed frame and box spring was a tangled mass of metal.

Lucas stepped over to the burnt-out front wall of the room and looked through the hole that had been a window. Aside from the body, he could see nothing but motel equipment: beds, burned tables, telephones, lamps, television, a melted alarm clock, two burned picture frames.

"Doesn't look like they left much behind," Lucas said.

"They didn't-first thing the arson guys checked. They cleaned the place out."

"Don't know why this Cohn had to do this," the chief said. "He wasn't covering up anything. If he hadn't set it on fire, might have been longer before we found out about it."

"DNA," Lucas said. "Fire messes up the possibilities of pulling up DNA. If he'd been living there for a while, it'd be all over-body hair, skin, blood, semen, whatever. With this fire…"

"But you know who he is," the chief said.

"Can't prove it-but we do know it," Lucas said. "These guys killed a couple of cops in New York and pulled the same stunt. Burned the motel room. The NYPD got nothing out of it. No prints, no DNA, no nothing."

The chief's face stormed up. "New York? If he killed cops there, why in the hell weren't we warned? If we'd known he killed cops…"

"It was right on the photo," Lucas said. "With all the other personal information."

The chief looked down at a uniformed sergeant, a fortyish sandy-haired man with a brush mustache and small round glasses, who looked away, shrugged, and said, "Nobody thought he'd find anything. I mean, the guys sent him up here because ' you know."

Lucas said, "Because he was a fuckup?"

"Because they were busy with other stuff," the sergeant said, but his eyes said, Yeah, Charles was a fuckup.

"What was his first name?" Lucas said.

"Charles. His name was Charles Dee."

A half-dozen motel employees clustered in the office and on the concrete slab outside, their voices buzzing with suppressed excitement, and Lucas pulled two of them, Joshua Martin and Kyle Wayne, into the stairway to the second floor. "Tell me exactly what Officer Dee said to you. Every word, from the minute he walked in the door."

The two looked at each other: Kyle had dim gray eyes, and Lucas suspected there wasn't much content behind them. Kyle shrugged and Joshua said to him, "Okay, you tell me if I go wrong, okay?"

Kyle bobbed his head: "G."

"We were standing behind the desk…"

"Alone in the office," Lucas interjected.

Joshua nodded. "Yup. We were standing behind the desk, alone, and Kyle had come back from carrying some old lady's stuff up the stairs, she couldn't walk very good. I was counting out my change drawer, and we see this cop car pull through the lot and he parks. Then this guy comes in, Charles…"

"You knew him?"

Joshua shrugged. "We knew who he was. They sometimes put him on school patrol. Anyway, he comes in, and he's got this picture, and he says, "You ever seen this guy?"' We look at the picture, and Kyle says, "Whoa, dude, he looks just like that big tall dude."

Kyle did a body-bob and said, "Yup."

"I don't know what he's talking about, but Kyle says this guy was down in one-twenty, which is the one that's burned, so I guess he was," Joshua said. "Charles asked Kyle if he was sure, and Kyle said, "Dude, I don't know. Maybe not."

Kyle said, "I said, "Maybe not. But maybe yes." Not or yes, I said them both."

Joshua picked it up. "So, Charles went out of here, and Kyle went to watch him. I went to counting the money again."

"You watched him?" Lucas asked Kyle.

"Yeah, kinda. I didn't want him to see me, but I stuck my head out. He went down there and knocked on the door, and then he went inside. That's all I saw. I came back and got my plunger, "cause we've got a bad toilet, some asshole woman stuck a whole roll of toilet paper down it' anyway, I came back, and we heard this ' Vooooommtnm. We ran outside and saw the fire and called nine-one-one."

"Didn't see anybody else?" Lucas asked.

"Not then," Kyle said. "But, there was this chick…"

He and Joshua exchanged glances again, and Joshua said, "She has, like, this amazing rack, you know? I mean, we're talking Hollywood, and she's showing them off. We think she went into that room, when we both saw her that once. We didn't see her go in, but she was headed that way, and she wasn't checked in here."

"You boys know a hooker when you see one?" Lucas asked.

Kyle did: he shook his head and said, "Not a hooker. Hookers always carry these big bags. She wasn't carrying anything. Maybe car keys. She was coming back from somewhere and I think she went in that room."

"Would you recognize her if you saw her again?" Lucas asked.

"Oh, yeah," Joshua said. "I'd recognize her."

Lucas took down the description: mid-thirties, blond, long hair, mid-height. Hollywood tits.

"Looked me right in the eyes for a long time," Joshua said. "Really sorta…" His voice trailed away.

"… stroked your rod," Kyle finished.

Lucas was walking out of the office, then paused and turned back. "Kyle ' you said you came in here to get your plunger, and then you heard the explosion. How much time between the time you came back in and the explosion?"

Kyle said, "Well'"

He walked over to the door, pushed it open, then stepped back through and stomped around the desk and down a short hallway to a closet, opened it, got out a plunger, and walked back to the desk. "How long was that?"

Lucas said, "Thirty seconds."

"Then that's how long it was. Wasn't long."

"You didn't stop to chat or anything…"

"Nope. Went right back to the closet and got the plunger," he said.

"He did," Joshua said.

"When Officer Dee pulled into the parking lot, did he hang around outside, or did he come right in?"

"He came right in. You know, however long it takes to walk from his car to here."

Dee's car was thirty feet from the door. Fifteen seconds.

"And how long did you talk to him in here?" Lucas asked.

"Showed us the picture, Kyle said that thing about the corner room. We talked about it, and he walked out. Just, you know ' not too long."

"No conversation…"

"Not really. Not long, anyway."

Lucas nodded, gave them business cards and said, "If you think of anything else, give me a call."

Outside again, Lucas walked back to the crowd of cops, sorted out an arson guy.

"Is there any personal stuff in there? Anything left behind? Anything? Toothbrush?"

"Not that I've seen so far. But everything that wasn't nailed down, fell down, so there could be something under all the crap."

"Call me when you've worked through it; I need to know," Lucas said, and handed over a business card.

The arson guy nodded and stuck the card in his wallet. "What's up with that?"

"The kids up at the office say the fire started a couple of minutes after Dee went through the door-probably less than five minutes. The question is, since they can't see the office from their room, how'd they know he was coming? They had to know, they had to start cleaning the place out before he got there. Dee pulled into the parking lot, talked to the kids, walked down there ' they didn't have more than three or four minutes before he was knocking at their door. But they were ready for him, apparently, and got out within another minute or so."