John Sandford - Rules of Prey

Lucas dialed the number and passed the receiver to Sloan when it started to ring. Sloan asked for Shirley.

"This is Sloan," he said, "over at Minneapolis PD. How are you?… Yeah. Yeah. Great. Listen, I got a hot one, could you run it for me?… Right now?… Thanks. It's Louis Vullion." He spelled it for her. He waited a moment, then said, "Yeah, give me the whole thing."

He listened, said, "Aw, shit," and, "Whoa," and, "Hey, thanks, honey." He hung up the phone and turned to Lucas.

"Yeah?"

"Louis Vullion. White male. Twenty-seven. Five ten, one ninety, blue eyes. And some good news and some bad news. What do you want first?"

"The bad news," Lucas said quickly.

" Sparks is positive he had dark hair. He doesn't. He's a fuckin' redhead."

Lucas stared at Sloan for a moment, licked his lips. "Red hair?"

"That's what his license says."

"That's fuckin' wonderful," Lucas whispered, his face like stone.

"What?" Sloan was puzzled.

"Carla was sure he was light-complexioned. She was positive. You don't get anybody lighter than a redhead. Sparky was sure he had dark hair. I couldn't figure it out. But you put a redhead under those mercury-vapor lights down on Hennepin at night…" He pointed a finger at Sloan's chest, prompting him.

"Son of a bitch. It might look dark," Sloan said, suddenly excited.

"Fuck might, " ' Lucas said. "It would look dark. Especially from a distance. It fits; it's like a poem." He licked his lips again. "If that was the bad news, what's the good news?"

Sloan put up a finger. "Registered owner," he said, "of a midnight-blue Ford Thunderbird. He bought it three months ago."

Daniel's door was closed. His secretary, Linda, was typing letters.

"Who's in there?" Lucas asked, pointing at the door. Sloan was standing on his heels.

"Pettinger from accounting," Linda said. "Lucas, wait, you can't go in there…"

Lucas pushed into the office, with Sloan trailing selfconsciously behind. Daniel, startled, looked up in surprise, saw their faces, and turned to the accountant.

"I'm going to have to throw you out, Dan," he said. "I'll get back this afternoon."

"Uh, sure." The accountant picked up a stack of computer printouts, looked curiously at Lucas and Sloan, and walked out.

Daniel pushed the door shut. "Who is he?" he rasped.

"A lawyer," said Lucas. "A lawyer named Louis Vullion."

"Where is he?" Lucas spoke into a handset as he pulled to the curb a block from the maddog's apartment. The five-year-old Ford Escort fit seamlessly into the neighborhood.

"Crossing the bridge, headed south. Looks like he might be on his way to the Burnsville Mall. We're just north of there now."

There was a six-unit net around the maddog, twelve cops, seven women, five men. They followed him from his apartment to a parking garage not far from his office. They watched him into the office, through a solitary lunch at a downtown deli. He was limping a bit, they said, and was favoring one leg. From the fall into the ditch? They watched him back to the office, through a trip to the courthouse, up to the clerk's office, back to his office.

While he worked through the afternoon, an electronics technician fastened a small but powerful radio transmitter under the bumper of his car. When the maddog left the office at night, the watchers followed him back to his car. He returned to his apartment, apparently ate dinner, and then left again. Heading south.

"He's gone into the mall parking lot."

Lucas glanced at his watch. If the maddog turned around and drove back to his apartment as quickly as he could, it would still take twenty minutes. That was almost enough time.

"Out of his car, going inside," the radio burped. The net would be on the ground now, moving around him.

Lucas turned the radio off and stuck it in his jacket pocket. He did not want police calls burping out of his pocket at an inopportune moment. The power lockpick and a disposable flashlight were under the seat. He retrieved them, shoved the flashlight in another pocket, and slipped the pick beneath his coat, under his arm.

He got out of the car, turned his collar up, and hurried along the sidewalk, his back to the wind, the last dry leaves of fall scurrying along by his ankles.

The maddog lived in a fourplex, each unit two stories with an attic, each occupying one vertical corner of what otherwise looked like a Victorian mansion. Each of the four apartments had a small one-car attached garage and a tiny front porch with a short railing for the display of petunias and geraniums. The flowerpots stood empty and cold.

Lucas walked directly to the maddog's apartment, turned in at his entry walk, and hurried up the steps. He pressed the doorbell, once, twice, listened for the phone. It was still ringing. He glanced around, took out the power pick, and pushed it into the lock. The pick made an ungodly loud clatter, but it was efficient. The door popped open, then stopped as it hit the end of a safety chain. The maddog had gone out through the garage, and that door would be automatically locked.

Lucas swore, groped in his pocket, and pulled out a board full of thumbtacks and a couple of rubber bands. Glancing around again, he saw nothing but empty street, and he pushed the door open until it hit the end of the chain. Reaching in as far as he could, he pushed a thumbtack into the wood on the back of the door, with the rubber band beneath it. Then he stretched the rubber band until he could loop it over the knob on the door chain. When he eased the door shut, the rubber band contracted and pulled the chain-knob to the end of its channel. With a couple of shakes, it fell out.

"Hey, Louis, what's happening?" Lucas called as he pushed the door open. There was no response. He whistled for a dog. Nothing. He pushed the door shut, turned on the hall light, and pried the thumbtack out of the door. The hole was imperceptible. He took out the handset, turned it on, and called the surveillance crew.

"Where is he?"

"Just went into a sporting-goods store. He's looking at jackets."

Lucas thumbed the set to the monitor position and quickly checked the apartment for any obvious indications that Vullion was the maddog. As he passed the ringing telephone, he lifted it off the hook and then dropped it back on, silencing it.

In a quick survey of the first floor he found a utility room with the water heater, washer and dryer, and a small built-in workbench with a drawer half-full of inexpensive tools. A door in the utility room led out to the garage. He opened it, turned on the light, and looked around. A small snow-blower, a couple of snow shovels, and a stack of newspapers packaged for disposal in brown shopping bags. If he had time, he would stop back and go through the papers. With luck, he might find one that had been cut to make the messages left on the maddog's victims' bodies. There was nothing else of interest.

He shut the garage door, walked through the tiny kitchen, opening and closing cabinet doors as he passed through, poked his head into the living room, checked a small half-bath and a slightly larger office space with an IBM computer and a few lawbooks.

The second floor was divided between two bedrooms and a large bathroom. One of the bedrooms was furnished; the other was used as storage space. In the storage room he found the maddog's luggage, empty, an electronic keyboard which looked practically unused, and an inexpensive weight bench with a set of amateur weights. He checked the edges of the weights. Like the keyboard, they appeared practically untouched. Vullion was a man with unconsummated interests…

A battered couch sat in one corner, along with three boxes full of magazines, a Playboy collection that appeared to go back a dozen years or more. He left the storeroom and walked to the other bedroom.