John Sandford - Rules of Prey

And waited. Rapped again. A noise? Then he saw her, rolling down the linoleum floor in her wheelchair. Not a wealthy woman, but such a face; such a fresh face, for one who had been so badly injured. An optimist.

She half-opened the inner door, left the outer one closed.

"Yes?"

"Miss Wheatcroft? I am Louis Vullion, an attorney with Felsen-Gore. I'm on the Minnesota Bar Association scholarship committee." He reached under his coat, took out a business card, opened the outer door, and handed it to her. She looked at it and said, curiously, "Yes?"

He held up the brown envelope. "I was just talking to Dean Jensen at the law school. Actually, I was over there picking up applications for the Felsen Legal Residencies and Dean Jensen said you must have neglected to submit yours. Either that, or it was lost?" He waved the brown envelope at her, started to fumble out the white application forms.

"I don't know about that," she said. "I never heard of them."

"Never heard of them?" The maddog was puzzled. How could she not have heard of them? "I'm sorry, I assumed all the top students knew about the residencies. They pay so well, and, you know, you probably get more experience in top-level personal injury and tort. They're at least as sought after as the clerkships, especially since they pay so well."

She hesitated, looked at his face, his clothes, the brown envelope, the business card. "Maybe you better come in, Mr,…"

"Vullion," he said, stepping inside. "Louis Vullion. Nasty night, isn't it?"

This one was different. Comfortable, almost. He took almost twenty minutes to kill her, lying nude beside her on her bed, the rubber firmly protecting him from seminal disclosures. He needed it. He came once as he worked on her and again when he finally slipped the knife under her breastbone and her back arched and she left him.

And he felt sleepy, looking at her, and laid his head upon her breast.

Cold. Stiff. He sat up, looked around. My God, he had been asleep. Panic gripped him and he looked down at her cooling body and then wildly around the room. How long? How long? He glanced at his watch. Nine-forty-five.

He stood, tore off the rubber, flushed it. His body was covered with blood. He stepped into the tiny, bathroom, turned on the shower, and rinsed himself. He kept the latex gloves on; he didn't want to leave prints. Not now. Not in his finest hour so far.

When he'd cleaned off most of the blood, he stepped out of the shower but left it to run. If he'd lost any hair in the shower, the water might wash it down the drain. He picked up a towel, then put it down. Hair again. He dried himself with his undershirt, and when he was reasonably dry, he stuffed the shirt in his coat pocket. Thinking about hair had made him paranoid. He had continued shaving his pubic hair, but he feared the loss of hair from his chest or head. He got his roll of tape, made a loop around his hand, and blotted the bed where he'd been lying. When he was finished, he looked at the tape; there were small hairlike filaments stuck to it, and what might have been one or two black pubic hairs, the woman's. Nothing red, nothing of his. He stuffed the tape in his coat pocket with the damp shirt, stepped into the bathroom, turned off the shower, and dressed.

When he was ready, he looked around, took stock. Still wearing the latex gloves. Sport coat, overcoat, hat, scarf, driving gloves. Was he forgetting anything? The business card. He found it on the floor. That was everything. Leave the sock and potato on the floor. Drop the note on her chest: Isolate yourself from random discovery. Ready. He patted her on the tummy and left.

He stepped out, walked down the sidewalk and around the house, stripping off the latex gloves as he walked. The old woman's apartment was dark. There was a light upstairs, in the third apartment, but nobody at the window. He walked briskly down the sidewalk, and, as he passed under a streetlight, noticed a dark stain on the back of one hand. He hesitated, looking at it. Blood? He touched it to his tongue. Blood. Sweet. He passed no one on the street on the way to his car. He opened it, climbed in, and drove.

Out to I-94. Pressure behind his eyes. He was going to do it. Telephone on a pole, outside a Laundromat. One guy inside, reading a newspaper while his clothes went around in the dryer. It was a mistake before, it would be a mistake again. But he needed it. He needed it like he needed the women. Someone to talk to. Someone who might understand. The maddog pulled in to the Laundromat phone, dialed Davenport's house.

And got an answering machine. "Leave a message," Davenport's voice said tersely, without identifying itself. There was a beep. The maddog was disappointed. It was not the same as human contact. He touched his tongue to the spot of blood on the back of his hand, savored it, then said, "I did another one."

The line stayed open and he wet his lips.

"It was lovely," he said.

"It was lovely."

Lucas listened a second time, the despair growing in his chest.

"Motherfucker," he whispered.

He ran the tape back and played it again.

"It was lovely."

"Motherfucker." He sank down beside the desk, put his elbow on it, propped his forehead up with his hand. He sat for three minutes, unable to think. The house huddled around him, dim, protective, quiet. A car rolled by in the street, its lights tracking across the wall. Rousing himself, he called Minneapolis and asked for the watch commander.

"Nothing here," he was told. St. Paul said the same. Nothing in Bloomington. There were too many suburbs to check them all. And Lucas thought it likely that the maddog had killed one in Lucas' own jurisdiction. It was a contest now. Explicitly.

"Lucas?" Daniel's voice had an ugly edge to it.

"I got a call. He's says he's done another one."

"Sweet bleedin' Jesus," Daniel said. In the background Lucas heard Daniel's wife ask if there had been another one, and where.

"I don't know where," Lucas said. "He didn't tell me. He just said it was lovely."

They found the law student two days later, in the late afternoon. She rarely missed class. When she was gone the first day, her absence was noted, but not investigated. When she missed the second day with no word from her, no excuse, a friend called her apartment but got no answer. At dinnertime the friend stopped and saw the light in the back. She knocked, peered through the window, saw a rubber grip handle of the wheelchair protruding from the bedroom doorway. Worried, she went to the old woman, who brought her keys. Together they found the Chosen.

"I was afraid the maddog had killed her," the friend wept when the first cops arrived. "I thought of it on the way over. What if the maddog's taken her?"

"Red Horse?"

"Annie, there's another one," Lucas said. He gave her the name and address. "Over by the university. A law student, crippled. Name Cheryl-"

"Spell it."

"Wheatcroft, C-h-e-r-y-l W-h-e-a-t-c-r-o-f-t. There have been a bunch of newspaper stories about her, I think, in the Strib. "

"I can look. We've got an on-line library."

"Look in the Pioneer Press too. She was a senior, right at the top of her class. Her folks are here; they live over on the east side of St. Paul. Nobody else knows about it yet, but everybody's going to find out pretty soon. There are about a million cops in the street, going in and out. And the medical examiner. We're attracting neighbors and students. But if you get a crew over here fast, you should catch the parents coming out."

"Five minutes," she said, and hung up.

"Cheryl Wheatcroft," Daniel said. He stood in the kitchen, hat less, coatless, angry. "What did she do to deserve this, Davenport? Did she sin? Did she fornicate in the nighttime? Did she miss Mass on Sunday? What did she fuckin' do, Davenport?"