John Sandford - Rules of Prey

"This is not right, " he hissed. He balled up the paper and hurled it into the kitchen.

"These people are idiots," the maddog screamed.

He turned to the tapes and watched the announcement unfold, his rage growing. Then the face of Jennifer Carey, with her statement that the game inventor, the lieutenant, Lucas Davenport, disagreed, thought they had the wrong man.

"Yes," he said. "Yes."

He ran the tape back and played it again. "Yes."

"I should call him," he said to himself. He glanced at the clock. "No hurry. I should think about it," he said.

Don't make a mistake now. Could this be a ploy? Was the gamesman setting him up? No. That simply wasn't possible. The game was free-form, but there were some rules; Davenport, or the other cops-whoever-wouldn't dare permit this man, this gay, to be crucified as part of a ploy. But why was he arrested? Except for the gamesman, Davenport, the police seemed confident that they had a case. How could this mistake happen?

"So stupid," the maddog said to the eggshell-white walls. "They are so fucking dumb."

He couldn't think of anything else. He sat at his desk and stared blindly at the papers there, until his shared secretary asked if he was feeling unwell.

"Yes, a little, I guess; something I ate, I think," he told her. "I've got the Barin arraignment and then I think I'll take the rest of the work home. Something closer to the, ah, facilities."

Barin was a teenage twit who had drunk too much and had driven his car into a crowd of people waiting on a corner to cross a street. Nobody had been killed, but several had been hospitalized. Barin's driver's license had been suspended before the latest accident, also for drunken driving, and he had served two days in jail for the last offense.

This time, it was more serious. The state was in the throes of an antidrinking campaign. Several heretofore sacred cows, for whom the fix would have routinely been applied only a year before, had already done jail time.

And Barin was an obnoxious little prick attached to a large and foul mouth. His father, unfortunately, owned a computer-hardware company that paid a substantial retainer to the maddog's firm. The father wanted the boy to get off.

But the boy was doomed. The maddog knew it. So did the rest of the firm, which was why the maddog had been allowed to handle the trial. Barin would serve three to six months and possibly more. The maddog would not be blamed. There was nothing to be done. The senior partners were patiently explaining that to the father, and the maddog, already indemnified against failure, secretly hoped the judge would sock the little asshole away for a year.

The arraignment was the last of the morning. The maddog arrived early and slipped onto a back bench in the courtroom. The judge was looking down at a young girl in jeans and a white blouse.

"How old are you, Miss Brown?"

"Eighteen, judge."

The judge sighed. "Miss Brown, if you are sixteen, I would be distinctly surprised."

"No, sir, I'm eighteen, three weeks past-"

"Be quiet, Miss Brown." The judge thumbed through the charge papers as the prosecuting and defense attorneys sat patiently behind their tables. The girl had large doe-eyes, very beautiful, but her face was touched with acne and her long brown hair hung limply around her narrow shoulders. Her eyes were her best point, the maddog decided. They were frightened but knowing. The maddog watched her as she stood shifting from foot to foot, casting sideways glances at her public defender.

The judge looked over at the prosecutor. "One prior, same deal?"

"Same deal, Your Honor. Eight months ago. She's been home since then, but her mother threw her out again. The caseworker says her mom's deep into the coke."

"What are you going to do if I let you out, Miss Brown?" the judge asked.

"Well, I've made up with my mom and I think I'm going to earn some money so I can go to college next quarter. I want to major in physical therapy."

The judge looked down at his papers and the maddog thought he might be trying to hide a smile. Eventually he lifted his head, sighed again, and looked at the public defender, who shrugged.

"Child protection?" the judge asked the prosecutor.

"They sent her to a foster home the last time, but the foster mother wouldn't have her after a couple of days," he said.

The judge shook his head and went back to reading the papers.

She was quite a sensual thing in her own way, the maddog decided, watching her nervously lick her lips. A natural victim, the kind who would trigger an attack by a wolf.

The judge at last decided that nothing could be done. He fined her one hundred and fifty dollars on a guilty plea to soliciting for prostitution.

Barin, the twit, showed up just as the case was being disposed. An hour later, when the maddog walked back to the clerk's office, the Heather Brown file was in the return basket. He slipped it out and read through it, noted that she was picked up on South Hennepin. Heather Brown's real name was Gloria Ammundsen. She had been on the street for a year or more. The maddog noted with interest in a narrative section that she had offered the arresting officer a variety of entertainments, including bondage and water sports.

The maddog took his extra work home, but couldn't get anything done. He made a quick supper-sliced ham, fruit, a half-squash. Still agitated, he went out to his car and drove downtown, parked, and walked. Through Loring Park, where the gays cruised and broke and rebroke in their small groups. Over to Hennepin Avenue, and south, away from town. Punks on the street, watching him pass. One kid with a mohawk and dirty black jacket, unconscious on a pile of discarded carpet outside a drugstore. Skinheads with swastikas tattooed on their scalps. Suburban kids hanging out, trying to look tough with cigarettes and black makeup.

A few hookers. Not too obvious, not flagging down cars, but there along the streets for anyone who needed their services.

He looked at them carefully, walking by. All young. Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, he thought. Fewer sixteen, even fewer eighteen. Very few older. The older ones were the quick-blow-job-in-the-doorway sort, dregs so battered by the street, so unable to get inside, to a sauna, a back room, that they were little more than wet, mindless warm spots in the night, open to any sort of abuse that happened along.

He spotted Heather Brown outside a fast-food restaurant. Most of the hookers were blonde, either natural or bottle. Heather, with her dark hair, reminded him of… Who? He didn't know, though it seemed a shadow was back there in his memory. In the night, away from the fluorescent lights of the courtroom, she was prettier.

Except for her eyes. Her eyes had been alive in the courtroom. Out here they had the thousand-yard stare found in battle-fatigue cases. She wore a black blouse, a thigh-length black leather skirt, open-toed high heels, and carried an oversize black bag. Her body, her face, said something to him. Her look called to him.

"Whoa," she said as he approached and slowed down. "What's happening?"

"Just out for a stroll," he said pleasantly.

"Nice night for it, officer." Her green eye shadow had been applied with a trowel.

The maddog smiled. "I'm not a cop. In fact, I won't even try to pick you up. Who knows, you might be. A cop, I mean."

"Oh, sure," she said, cocking a hip so her short skirt rode up.

"Have a good one," he said.

"Ships passing in the night," she said, already looking down the street past him.

"But if I were to come back some night, do you usually go out for your walks around here?"

She turned and looked at him again, the spark of interest rekindled. "Sure," she said. "This is kind of my territory."