John Sandford - Rules of Prey

When he'd been removed from the robbery detail, administration had to find a place to put him. His rank required some kind of office. Lucas found it himself, a storage room with a steel door on the basement level. The janitors cleaned it out and painted a number on the door. There was no other indication of who occupied the office. Lucas liked it that way. He unlocked it, went inside, and dialed Carla Ruiz' phone number.

"This is Carla." She had a pleasantly husky voice.

"My name is Lucas Davenport. I'm a lieutenant with the Minneapolis Police Department," he said. "I need to interview you. The sooner the better."

"Jeez, I can't tonight…"

"We've had another killing."

"Oh, no. Who was it?"

"A real-estate saleslady over here in Minneapolis. The whole thing will be on the ten-o'clock news."

"I don't have a TV."

"Well, look, how about tomorrow? How about if I stopped around at one o'clock?"

"That'd be fine. God, that's awful about this other woman."

"Yeah. See you tomorrow?"

"How'll I know you?"

"I'll have a rose in my teeth," he said. "And a gold badge."

The briefing room was jammed with equipment, cables, swearing technicians, and bored cops. Cameramen negotiated lighting arrangements, print reporters flopped on the folding chairs and gossiped or doodled in their notebooks, television reporters hustled around looking for scraps of information or rumor that would give them an edge on the competition. A dozen microphones were clipped to the podium at the front of the room, while the tripod-mounted cameras were arrayed in a semicircle at the rear. A harried janitor fixed a broken standard that supported an American flag. Another tried to squeeze a few more folding chairs between the podium and the cameras. Lucas stood in the doorway a moment, spotted an empty chair near the back, and took a step toward it. A hand hooked his coat sleeve from behind.

He looked down at Annie McGowan. Channel Eight. Dark hair, blue eyes, upturned nose. Wide, mobile mouth. World-class legs. Wonderful diction. Brains of an oyster.

Lucas smiled.

"What's going on, Lucas?" she whispered, standing close, holding his arm.

"Chief'll be here in five minutes."

"We've got a newsbreak in four minutes. I would be very grateful if I knew what was going on in time to call it in," she said. She smiled coyly and nodded at the cables going out the door. The press conference was being fed directly to her newsroom.

Lucas glanced around. Nobody was paying any particular attention to them. He tilted his head toward the door and they eased outside.

"If you mention my name, I'll be in trouble," he whispered. "This is a personal two-way arrangement between you and me."

She colored and said, "Deal."

"We've got a serial killer. He killed his third victim today. Rapes them and then stabs them to death. The first one was about six weeks ago, then another one a month ago. All of them in Minneapolis. We've been keeping it quiet, hoping to catch him, but now we've decided we have to go public."

"Oh, God," she said. She turned and half-ran down the hallway toward the exit, following the cables.

"What'd you tell that bitch?" Jennifer Carey materialized from the crowd. She'd been watching them. A tall blonde with a full lower lip and green eyes, she had a degree in economics from Stanford and a master's in journalism from Columbia. She worked for TV3.

"Nothing," Lucas said. Best to take a hard line.

"Bull. We've got a newsbreak in…" She looked at her watch. "Two and a half minutes. If she beats me, I don't know what I'll do, but I'm very smart and you'll be very, very sorry."

Lucas glanced around again. "Okay," he said, pointing a finger at her, "but I owed her one. If you tell her I leaked this to you too, you'll never get another word out of me."

"You're on," she said. "What is it?"

Late that night, Jennifer Carey lay facedown on Lucas' bed and watched him undress, watched him unstrap the hideout gun.

"Do you ever use that thing, or do you wear it to impress women?" she asked.

"Too uncomfortable for that," Lucas lied. Jennifer sometimes made him nervous. He felt she was looking inside his head. "It comes in handy. I mean, if you're buying some toot from a guy, you can't be packing a gun. They figure you for a cop or maybe some kind of nutso rip-off psychotic, and they won't serve, won't deal. But if you got a hideout in a weird place and you need it, you can have it in their face before they know what you're doing."

"Doesn't sound like Minneapolis."

"There are some bad folks around. Anytime you get that much money…" He peeled off his socks and stood up in his shorts. "Shower?"

"Yeah. I guess." She rolled over slowly and got off the bed and followed him into the bathroom. The print pattern from the bedspread was impressed on her belly and thighs.

"You could've brought McGowan home, you know," she said as he turned on the water and adjusted it.

"She's been coming on to me a little," Lucas agreed.

"So why not? It's not like you're bored by the new stuff."

"She's dumb." Lucas splashed hot water on her back and followed it with a squirt of liquid bath soap from a plastic bottle. He began rubbing it across her back and butt.

"That's never stopped you before," she said.

Lucas kept scrubbing. "You know some of the women I've taken out. Tell me a dumb one."

Jennifer thought it over. "I don't know them all," she said finally.

"You know enough of them to see the pattern," he said. "I don't go out with dummies."

"So talk to me like a smart person, Lucas. Did this killer torture these women before he killed them? Daniel was pretty evasive. Do you think he knows them? How does he pick them?"

Lucas turned her around and pressed his index finger across her lips.

"Jennifer, don't pump me, okay? If you catch me off guard and I blurt something out and you use it, I could be in deep trouble."

She eyed him speculatively, the water bouncing off his chest, his mild blue eyes darkened with an edge of wariness.

"I wouldn't use it before I told you," she said. "But you never blurt anything out. Not that you didn't plan to blurt out. You're a tricky son of a bitch, Davenport. I've known you for three years and I still can't tell when you're lying. And you play more goddamn roles than anyone I've ever met. I don't even think you know when you're doing it anymore."

"You should have been a shrink," he said, shaking his head ruefully. He cut the water off and pushed open the shower door. "Hand me that big towel. I'll dry your legs for you."

A half-hour later, Jennifer said hoarsely, "Sometimes it gets very close to pain."

"That's the trick," Lucas said. "Not going over the line."

"You come so close," she said. "You must have gone over it a lot before you figured out where to stop."

Two hours later, Lucas' eyes clicked open in the dark. Somebody was watching. He thought about it. The ankle gun was in the desk… Then Jennifer poked him, and he realized where it was coming from.

"What?" he whispered.

"You awake?"

"I am now."

"I've got a question." She hesitated. "Do you like me more than the others or are we all just meat?"

"Oh, Jesus," he groaned.

"Say."

"You know I do. Like you better. I can prove it."

"How?"

"Your toothbrush? It's the only one in the bathroom cabinet besides mine."

There was a moment of silence and then she snuggled up on his arm. "Okay," she said. "Go to sleep."

For the first twenty rings he hoped it would stop. He got out of bed on the twenty-first and picked up the receiver on the twenty-fifth.