John Sandford - Rules of Prey

Back out to the main room. A chest of drawers. More guns? Lucas ran through it, nothing but tools. Up the stairs, through the living room. Two nice drawings, both in charcoal, nudes of long sinuous women. Glanced at the watch: in nine minutes now.

Into the office. Pulled out drawers. Financial records, letters. Nothing interesting. Brought up IBM computer. Loaded Word Perfect. Loaded files disks. Letters, business correspondence. Smithe worked at home. Nothing like a diary.

Last check. Looked at the photos in the media room again. Happy, Lucas thought. That was what he looked like.

Checked watch. Seventeen minutes. And out.

He stopped at Daniel's office.

"What?" Daniel looked harassed.

Lucas dipped into his pocket, took out the packaged ring of the prophylactic, tossed it on the desk. Daniel looked down without touching it, then back up.

"'Share,'" he read from the pack. He looked up at Lucas. "The notebooks have a list that the lab made up, the rubbers that use the kind of lubricant they found in the women."

"Yeah."

"This one on it?"

"Yeah."

"God damn. We got anything we can make a warrant with?"

"It'd be thin."

Daniel reached out and pushed an intercom button.

"Linda, get Detective Sloan for me. Detective Anderson down in homicide should be able to reach him. I want to talk to him right away."

He took his finger off the button and looked at Lucas. "Any problems out there?"

"No."

"I don't want you on TV for the next few days. Stay out of sight at this press conference just in case somebody saw you on the street."

"Okay. But I got in clean."

"Christ, if this is the guy, we're going to look good. Out in Los Angeles they can chase these guys for years, and some of them they never catch." Daniel ran his fingers through his hair. "It's gotta be him."

"Don't think like that," Lucas said urgently. "Think cool. When we pick somebody up, the media's going to go berserk. If it's not him, you'll be dangling from a tree limb. By your balls. Especially with the gay politics around here."

"All right, all right," Daniel said unhappily. He swung one hand in the air as though brushing away gnats. The phone rang and he snatched it up.

"Yeah. We've been waiting." He looked at Lucas and mouthed "Sloan." "Did you ever check that list of houses Lewis sold?… Yeah. How many?… What about dates?… Huh. Okay. Stay with that, pick up any more you can find. Talk to her boyfriend, see what bars they went to, any that we might cross with Smithe… Yeah. We might be going for a warrant… What?… Wait a minute."

Daniel looked up at Lucas.

"Sloan says the garbage pickup is tomorrow. He wants to know if he should grab the garbage if Smithe brings any out."

"Good idea. It's not protected; we don't need a warrant. If we find anything in it, that could build the warrant for us."

Daniel nodded and went back to the phone. "Grab the garbage, okay. And good work… Yeah." He slammed the phone back on the hook.

"Lewis sold a house the next block over. Seven weeks before she was killed."

"Oh, boy, I don't know-"

"Wait, listen. Sloan's been talking to people out there. Smithe is a jogger and he jogs down that same block almost every summer evening. Right past the house she sold."

"That's weak."

"Lucas, if we get one more thing, anything, I'm going in for a warrant. We've got Laushaus on the bench, he'd give us a warrant to search the governor's underwear. With the governor in it."

"It's not getting the warrant I'm worried about. I'm worried about the reaction."

"I'll handle it. We'll be careful."

Lucas shook his head. "I don't know. I've got a feeling that everybody's starting to run in one direction." He glanced at his watch. "I've got to make some calls on the Ruiz interview. Take it easy, huh?"

Lucas talked to an assignment editor at the Pioneer Press:

"Wally? Lucas Davenport."

"Hey, Lucas, how's the hammer hangin'?"

"Wonderful expression, Wally. Where'd you hear that?"

"I thought the pigs talked like that. Excuse me, I meant cops. Just trying to be friendly."

"Right. You got one of your hacks who can meet me on the front porch of the St. Paul cop shop, say about six o'clock?"

"What's up?"

"Well, to tell you the truth, we got a survivor from a maddog attack and we're going public."

"Whoa. Hold on."

There was a series of muffled exclamations on the other end of the line, then a new voice, female. Denise Ring, the city editor.

"Lucas, this is Denise. Where'd this woman come from?"

"Hey, Denise. How's the hammer hangin'?"

"What?"

"Wally just asked me how the hammer was hangin'. I thought it was newspaper talk."

"Fuck you, Lucas. And fuck Wally. What's with this survivor?"

"We got one. We held back, because we needed to talk to her a lot. But Jennifer Carey found out about it-"

"From you?"

"No. I don't know where she heard it. St. Paul cops, I think."

"You're sleeping with her."

"Jesus Christ, does everybody read my mail?"

"Everybody knows. I mean, we figured it was just a matter of time. She was the last available woman in town. It was either her or you'd have to start dating out-state."

"Look, Denise, you want this story or what?"

"Yeah. Don't get excited."

"Jennifer said she was going public, whether we cooperated or not, so we talked to the survivor and she said she'd be willing to make an appeal. Jennifer wanted it exclusive, but Daniel said no. Said to call you and the Star-Tribune, so that's what I'm doing."

"Six o'clock? Cammeretta will be there. How about art?"

"Send a photographer. Jennifer will have a camera."

"Is that what this press conference is about at nine?"

"Yeah. The survivor'll be talking in public to the other stations, but you and TV3 and the Strib will have the exclusive stuff from the six-o'clock meeting."

"Not exclusive for us. Jennifer will have it first."

"But not as much-"

"And the Strib will be there with us."

"But I'm sure you'll do it better."

"We always do," Ring said. "Okay. Six o'clock. What'd you say her name was?"

Lucas laughed. "Susan B. Anthony. Wait. Maybe I got that wrong. I'll know for sure at six."

"See you then," Ring said.

Lucas tapped the cut-off button, redialed the Star-Tribune, gave the assignment editor the same story, and then called Carla.

"You'll be there, right?" She sounded worried.

"Yeah. I'll come over about five and we'll talk about what you want to say. Then when it's time, I'll walk over to the station and get them. That'll be about six. It'll be Jennifer Carey from TV3, a cameraman, two newspaper reporters, and two newspaper photographers. I know all of them and they're pretty good people. We'll break it off about seven. Then we'll go out for something to eat and come over here to Minneapolis for the press conference. We can talk about that on the way over."

"Okay. I'm going to do my hair. What else?"

"Wear a plain blouse. Not yellow. Light blue would be good if you've got one. Jeans are fine. Stay away from the makeup. Just a touch of lipstick. Jennifer's pretty good. You'll do fine."

"I'm Jennifer Carey. How are you?"

"I'm fine. I see you on the news…"

Lucas watched them talk as Jennifer's cameraman, the two newspaper reporters, and the two photographers looked curiously around the studio. Jennifer was watching Carla's face closely, gauging her reactions, smiling, encouraging her to talk.

"Okay, listen, guys," Jennifer said finally, turning to the newspaper people. "Why don't we do it this way. I need camera time, so why don't we have Carla tell her story for you guys and we'll film that, and you can get your pictures. That'll let Carla get what she wants to say in mind. Then we'll do our interview."