John Sandford - Rules of Prey

Lucas looked away from the outburst, tried to deflect it with a question. "What'd they show her folks?"

"Her face. That's all. Her mother wanted to see the rest of her, but I told her old man to get her out of here. He was almost as bad as the old lady, but he knew what we were talking about, he got her out. That TV camera was right in their faces. Jesus Christ, those people are animals, the fuckin' TV people are as bad as the fuckin' maddog."

The homicide detectives moved around the apartment with their heads down, as though with poor posture they might somehow avoid Daniel's wrath. The talk was in whispers. It continued in whispers after Daniel left. When he went out the door, the TV cameras across the street caught his face and held it. For the next week, his profile, frozen in anguish like a block of Lake Superior ice, was used to promo the nightly news on Channel Eight.

Lucas stayed at the scene while the technicians processed it. "Is there anything out of the pattern?" he asked the medical examiner.

The chief examiner was on the scene in person. He turned his eyes on Lucas and gave him a tiny nod. "Yeah. He butchered her. The other ones, it was surgical. Go in, kill. This one, he cut apart. She was alive for most of it."

"Sex?"

"You mean did he rape her? No. Doesn't look like it. She has numerous stab wounds over the pelvic area, up into the vaginal opening, the rectum, then across the anterior aspect of the pelvis-"

"The what?"

"The front, the front, right up her front. It looks like… Mother of God…" The medical examiner ran his hands through his graying hair.

"Sam…"

"It looks like he was trying to find where the pain started. She has a case full of medical records, and from what I can tell, the spinal event that crippled her was relatively high. Above the hip, below the breasts. She would have lost the superficial… Jesus, Lucas, this is freaking me out. Can't you wait for the reports?"

"No. I want to hear it."

"Well, when you have a spinal accident, you lose varying amounts of muscular control and the super… the feeling in your lower body. The loss ranges from minor disability to total paralysis, where you lose everything. That's what happened to her. But depending on where the damage happens to the spine, you lose superficial sensory… you lose the feeling over different areas. We're talking about the pain. And it looks like he was systematically working up her body, trying to find where it began."

"What about all the stab wounds in the vaginal area?"

"I was about to say, that doesn't fit with the other pattern of wounds. That appears to be sexual. And it's not uncommon when there's a sexual motivation behind a murder. There was also substantial flensing of the breasts-"

"What? Flensing?"

"He was skinning her. I think he stopped when he realized she was dying. That's when he finally put the knife in, so he could do it himself. Kill her."

"Jesus God."

The technicians tramped in and out. Lucas poked through the cripple's possessions, found a small collection of graduation pictures tucked in the top drawer of her chest. She was wearing a black gown and mortarboard, tassel to the left. He slipped the picture in his pocket and left.

Lucas was awake when the newspaper hit his screen door. He lay with his eyes closed for a moment, then gave up and walked out to retrieve it.

A double-deck headline spread across the page. Beneath it a four-column color photograph dominated the page, a shot of the covered body being rolled out to the medical examiner's wagon on a gurney. The photographer had used a superwide lens that distorted the faces of the men pushing the gurney. HANDICAPPED, the headline said. TORTURE, it said. Lucas closed his eyes and leaned against the wall.

The meeting started angry and stayed that way.

"So there's nothing substantial?" They were gathered in Daniel's office-Lucas, Anderson, Lester, a dozen of the lead detectives.

"It's just like the others. He left us nothing," said Anderson.

"I'm not going to take this kind of answer anymore," Daniel suddenly shouted, smashing the top of his desk with his hand, staring at Anderson. "I don't want to hear this bullshit about-"

"It's not bullshit," Anderson shouted back. "It's what we got. We got nothing. And I don't want to hear any shit from you or Davenport about any fuckin' media firestorms-that's the first fuckin' thing you said when we came in: what about the fuckin' media? Fuck the fuckin' media. We're doing the best we fuckin' can and I don't want to hear any fuckin' shit about it…" He turned and stomped out of the room.

Daniel, caught in mid-explosion by Anderson's outburst, slumped back in his chair. "Somebody go get him back," he said after a minute.

When Anderson came back, Daniel nodded at him. "Sorry," he said, rubbing his eyes. "I'm losing it. We've got to stop this dirtbag. We gotta get him. Ideas. Somebody give me ideas."

"Don't cut the surveillance on McGowan," Lucas said. "I still think that's a shot."

"She was all over the place out at the Wheatcroft scene," one of the detectives said. "How'd she know? She was there a half-hour before the rest of the media."

"Don't worry about it," Daniel snapped. "And I want the surveillance on her so tight that an ant couldn't get to her on his hands and knees. Okay? What else? Anything? Anybody? What's happening with the follow-up on the people who might have gotten the gun from Rice?"

"Uh, we got an odd one on that," said Sloan. "Rice was over in Japan right after World War II and he brought back these souvenirs, these little ivory-doll kind of things? Net-soo-kees? Anyway, he told some guy about them, a neighbor, and the neighbor told him about this gallery that deals in Oriental art. This guy from the gallery comes over and he buys these things. Gave Rice five hundred dollars for fifteen of them. We got the receipt. I went over to talk to the guy, Alan Nester's his name, he's over on Nicollet."

"I've seen his place," said Anderson. "Alan Nester Objets d'Art Orientaux. Ground floor of the Balmoral Building."

"Pretty fancy address," said Lucas.

"That's him," said Sloan. "Anyway, the guy wouldn't give me the time of day. Said he didn't know anything, that he only talked to Mr. Rice for a minute and left. Never saw any gun, doesn't know about the gun."

"So?" asked Daniel. "You think he might be the guy?"

"No, no, he's too tall, must be six-five, and he's real skinny. And he's too old for the profile. Must be fifty. One of those really snotty assholes who wear those scarves instead of ties?"

"Ascots?"

"Whatever, yeah. I don't think he's the guy, but he was nervous and he was lying to me. He probably doesn't know anything about the maddog, but there's something he's nervous about."

"Look around, see what you can find out," Daniel said. "What about the other people?"

"We've got six more to do," he said. "They're the least likely ones."

"Do them first. Who knows, maybe somebody'll jump up and bite you on the ass." He looked around. "Anything else?"

"I've got nothing," Lucas said. "I can't think. I'm going out on the street this afternoon, catch up out there, then I'm going up north. I'm not doing any good here."

"Hang around for a minute, will you?" Daniel asked. "Okay, everybody. And I'm sorry, Andy. Didn't mean to yell."

"Didn't mean to myself," Anderson said, smiling ruefully. "The maddog is killing us all."

"Anderson doesn't want to talk about the media," Daniel said, rapping the pile of newspapers on his desk. "But we've got to do something. And I'm not talking about saving our jobs. We could see some panic out there. This might be routine in Los Angeles, but the people here… It just doesn't happen. They're getting scared."