Rules of Prey (17 page)

She looked away, and there was suddenly a smell in the room and he looked down at her pelvis and realized that she had wet herself.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” he said. But he was delighted. She’d wet herself in fear. She knew the power.

But he wouldn’t rape her now. The thought of lying in cold urine was distasteful. And rape wasn’t necessary, anyway. The maddog stretched out beside her, reached over and kissed her gently on the cheek as she strained away from him. “It’ll just take a second,” he said. She began frantically jerking her arms against the bonds. He laid the point of the knife just below her breastbone and felt the orgasm rising up within him as he pressed the knife up and in. The girl’s eyes opened,
straining, straining, and then the light went out and it all stopped for her. The maddog peered into her eyes as the light faded, felt the waves of the orgasm receding and the pressure lifting off his mind.

It had gone very well, he thought. Very well.

He stepped back from the bed and looked at her. Not pretty, he thought, but there was something beautiful in her attitude. He stripped off the rubber and tossed it in the toilet and flushed and began to get dressed, stopping frequently to look at his work. Inside, he rejoiced.

When he was dressed, he took a last long look, reaching out to stroke her cooling leg, and started toward the door.

“Whoops,” he said aloud. “Can’t forget the note.” He fished it out of his jacket pocket and dropped it on her body.

Outside, it was a beautiful crisp fall night. He walked across the blacktopped parking lot, risking a quick glance toward the motel office. The clerk was visible inside the window, the blue light of a television bathing his face. He didn’t look out. Keeping his head carefully averted, the maddog walked down the sidewalk and around the corner, where he pulled off the jacket and hat. He rolled the jacket with the hat inside and tucked it under his arm. He turned another corner and was at his car. He climbed inside and tossed the jacket on the floor of the car. If anybody had seen him get in the car, it would not have been a man in a red jacket wearing a billed hat.

He drove six blocks back toward the loop and stopped at a bar. A police car, flashing red lights but without a siren, sped past down Hennepin while he had the first drink. He nursed it, then nodded at the bartender for a refill. When he came out, an hour had passed since he’d left the motel room.

“Another unnecessary risk,” he told himself. “I won’t drive by, though. Only close enough to watch.”

From a traffic signal a block away, he could see at least four police cars at the motel. As he waited for the light to change, a television truck rolled up to the motel and a dark-haired girl got out of the passenger side. He recognized her
at once, Annie McGowan, the woman who said he was impotent.

A car horn sounded from behind and he glanced in the rearview mirror and then at the traffic signal, which had turned green. He turned the corner and pulled over to the curb. McGowan was talking to a cop and the cop was shaking his head. A group of people walked down the sidewalk past the maddog’s car, attracted by the police lights and the television truck.

The maddog was tempted to join them, but decided against it. Too risky; he’d taken risks enough. Besides, there was enough of a glow from the killing that he should go home where he could relax and enjoy it. A long hot bath, close the eyes, and rerun the part where the light went out in Heather Brown.

It had been one of the best weekends of the year, with warm days and crisp, cold nights. Brilliant color lingered in the woods, and the faint scent of burning birch logs hung in the air.

“We’ve got at least another week for the leaves. Maybe two,” Carla said. A stand of maples on the north end of the lake was a flaming orange. “Too bad you don’t have more maples.”

“I thought about that when I bought the place,” Lucas said. “I didn’t want maples. They’re pretty, but I wanted the pines. They give the place a North Woods feel. A little further south, down in the maples and oaks, it feels like farm country.”

They drifted along the shoreline, working the bucktail lures around emergent weeds, docks, and fallen timber. “There are some people who’d say it’s already too late for bucktails, but I don’t hold with that. And they’re more fun to throw,” Lucas said.

In three hours of casting they caught five northern pike and had two musky follows.

“Bad day for musky, huh?” Carla said as they headed back to the dock.

“Hate to tell you this, but that was a good day. Two follows is all right. Lots of days, you don’t see any.”

“Great sport.”

“Don’t have to fool around with cleaning any fish, anyway,” he said with a grin.

“When do I have to leave here?” she asked.

“What do you mean,
have to leave
?”

“I assume that the hot pursuit by the television people will have tapered off by now. I could go back. But jeez, you know, I’ve been living in that studio with a hot plate. I hate to go.”

“Hey, stay a month if you want,” Lucas said. “I’ve got to come up in two or three weeks and pull the dock out. After that, there won’t be much to do until the freeze and the snow comes in.”

“I accept,” Carla said, laughing. “Maybe not a month, but for a couple of more weeks. You don’t know how much of a break this is for me. I brought up a couple of drawing pads and some pastels and I’m having a great time.”

“Good. That’s what the place is for.”

She looked over at him. “I’m glad you could stay an extra day. It’s quiet here all the time, but on Saturday and Sunday there are a few people around. Today we had it to ourselves. It’s kind of special on the weekdays.”

After dinner, Lucas started a fire in the fireplace, dragging in birch logs cut the previous fall. When the fire was going, they sat on the couch and talked and watched television and then a rental movie,
The Big Chill.

Toward the end of the movie Lucas started working on her blouse buttons. When the phone rang, he had her blouse off and she was straddling his hips, tickling him. He looked up at her and said, suddenly somber, “I don’t want to answer. He’s killed somebody else.”

Carla stopped giggling and half-turned and reached out to grab the receiver and thrust it at him. He looked at it for a second and then reluctantly took it.

“Davenport,” he said, sitting up.

“Lucas,” said Anderson, “we’ve got another one.”

“Shit.” He looked at Carla and nodded.

“You better get down here.”

“Who is it?”

“A hooker. We’ve got a street name, that’s all. Heather Brown. Maybe fifteen. Knife, just like the others. The note’s there.”

“I don’t know her. You check on Smithe?”

“Yeah, he’s up at the family farm. We figure she was done around seven o’clock. A TV crew followed him up to the farm. They did some film at six. He’s still up there. He’s out of it.”

“How about the girl’s pimp?”

“We’re looking for him. That’s one reason we need you down here—we need you to look at her, see if you recognize her, shake down some of her people.”

“Vice working it?”

“Yeah. They know her, but they haven’t come up with anything yet.”

“Where was it?”

“Down on South Hennepin. Randy’s.”

“Yeah, I know it. Okay, I’ll be down as soon as I can.”

He hung up and turned to Carla, who was slipping into her blouse. He reached out and pressed a palm against one of her breasts.

“I’ve got to go,” he said.

“Who was it?” Her voice was low, depressed.

“A hooker. In a hot-bed hotel. It’s the guy, all right, but it’s kind of . . . weird. It sounds almost spontaneous. And it’s the first time he’s gone near a hooker.” He hesitated. “I’ve got a favor to ask you, but I don’t want you to take it the wrong way.”

She wrinkled her forehead and shrugged. “So ask.”

“Could you take a walk down to the dock for a few minutes?”

“Sure . . .”

“I’ve got to make a phone call, and . . .” He gestured helplessly. “It’s not that I don’t trust you, but it would be best if I was talking in private. Sometimes I do things that are considered mildly outside the law. If there were ever a grand jury . . . I wouldn’t want you to perjure yourself or even think you had to.”

She smiled uncertainly. “Sure. So I take a walk. No problem.”

“It feels like a problem,” Lucas said, running his hands
through his hair. “Every time I get into this situation with a woman, they think I don’t trust them.”

“You’ve been in it a lot?” she asked.

“A couple of times. Drives me crazy.”

“Okay. So you’re a cop.”

She picked up one of his long-sleeved flannel shirts that she’d been wearing in the cool evenings and smiled at him. “Don’t worry about it, for God’s sake. I’ll be down at the dock, just call when you’re done.”

He watched her go down the steps and along the path through the front yard, and a moment later saw her silhouette against the dark water as she stepped out on the dock. He picked up the phone and dialed.

“I need to talk to Annie McGowan immediately. This is an emergency.”

“Can I tell her who’s calling please?”

“Tell her Red Horse.”

A moment later McGowan was on the line. “Red Horse?”

“Annie, there’s been another killing. Have you heard yet?”

“No.” Her voice was quick, excited. “Where’s it at?”

“It’s a hooker at Randy’s Motel, down on Hennepin. Young girl. Her street name was Heather Brown. We’ve got people on the scene right now, you better get a crew up there. And let me give you one more piece of information about him, that our shrinks worked out. The chief and the other detectives will probably try to deny it, because they don’t want this kind of sensitive information getting out, but we were expecting him to kill a hooker.”

“Jeez, why?”

“Our shrinks think the guy is probably so ugly, so unattractive to women that not only can’t he get it up, he can’t get a woman on his own, either. One probably contributes to the other. We don’t know that it’s appearance, though. Maybe it’s body chemistry or something. You know, maybe he’s got like world-class body odor.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah, you get the idea. Really repellent, like a human lizard. I wouldn’t give this to anybody, but I liked the way
you blended my last tip, about the impotence, into your story. Now that he’s killed the hooker, I think maybe this last piece of information will give the Now Report viewers some exclusive insight into the mind of a serial murderer, you know.”

“This is really heavy, Luca . . . uh, Red Horse. Let me get this stuff going and I’ll get back to you. Are you at home?”

“No. I’m way up north, three hours away. I’m about to start back, I’ll get there just before midnight. I’ll be at my house, probably, sometime after one o’clock, and I’ll be up until three or so. If you have to call, call then.”

“Okay. Thanks, Red Horse.”

Carla was on the dock, wrapped in the flannel shirt.

“You going?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll walk you up to your car.”

“I wanted to spend more time,” he said.

“So come back.”

“If I can.” He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her and she clung to him for a moment, then broke away and turned to the cabin. Lucas dropped into the Porsche, brought it around in a circle, and headed back to the Cities.

Driving at speed on the narrow roads of the North Woods thrilled him, but he usually did it in the daytime. At night the roadside timber seemed to step in, to press closer to the road. He overran his headlights, brush and phone poles flicking in and out of his vision without leaving time for thought.

Thirty miles out, just across the Minnesota border, he passed a roadside rest and the red lights came up behind him as a highway-patrol car burst onto the road.

Lucas wrenched the car to the shoulder and climbed out with his badge case in his hand. The patrolman was already on the road, one hand on his weapon, the other holding a long steel flashlight.

“I’m a Minneapolis cop making an emergency run back to the Cities,” Lucas said as he walked toward the
patrolman, extending the badge case. “Lieutenant Lucas Davenport. The maddog killer just ripped a hooker, a little girl. I’m trying to get back.”

“Uh-huh,” the patrolman said. He looked at the badge case and ID card with his light, then flashed it momentarily in Lucas’ face.

“If you can call your dispatcher and have them patch you through to our dispatch—”

“I’ve seen you on TV,” the patrolman said. He handed the badge case back. “I’m not going to give you a ticket, but a word to the wise, okay? I clocked you at eighty-three miles an hour. If you drive from here to the Interstate at fifty-five instead of eighty-three, it’ll cost you an extra two minutes. If you drive at eighty-three and you hit a deer or a bear, you’ll be dead. You’re lucky you haven’t hit one already. They’re really moving right now. You hit a big old sow-bear broadside with that car, it’d be like hitting a brick wall.”

“Right. I’m just sort of freaked out.”

“Well, cool off,” said the patrolman. “I’ll call up ahead, tell the guys on the Interstate that you’re trying to make up a little extra time. Keep it under a hundred and they won’t hassle you, once you get on the Interstate.”

“Thanks, man.” Lucas headed back to his car.

“Hey, Davenport.”

Lucas stopped with the door half-open. “Yeah?”

“Get that cocksucker.”

The motel was a shabby single-story L-shaped building with a permanent hand-painted vacancy sign. There were a half-dozen squad cars and four television trucks parked in front when Lucas rolled in. He saw Jennifer and, further down the street, Annie McGowan, both with cameramen. Lucas squeezed the Porsche between two squad cars, got out, locked it, and started toward the yellow tape that blocked the motel driveway.

“Lucas.”

“Hey, Jennifer . . .”

“You son of a bitch, you fed her another one.”

“Who?”

“You know who. McGowan.” Jennifer turned her head to glare down the street at the other woman.

“I did not,” Lucas lied. “I was up north at my cabin, for Christ’s sake.”

“Well, somebody’s feeding her select stuff. She’s laughing up her sleeve at the rest of us.”

“That’s the way it goes in the news biz, huh?” He crouched and slipped under the tape. “Give me a call tomorrow, I’ll see if I can get something for you.”

“Hey, Lucas, you’re not still angry? About the Smithe thing?”

“We have to talk,” he said. “We have to figure out some kind of arrangement. You off tomorrow night?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“So I’ll take you to dinner somewhere private. We’ll work something out.”

“Great.” She smiled and he turned and saw Anderson standing in a crowd outside the motel manager’s office.

“So what?” he asked, taking Anderson by the sleeve.

“Come on down and take a look.” He led the way toward the rear of the motel.

“Who found her?”

“The night clerk,” Anderson said, glancing back. “The girl’d stop by and rap on the window when she was coming and going. She rapped going in, but never came back out. After a while, he kind of stuck his head out and says he saw this crack of light around her door. The killer apparently didn’t pull it all the way shut when he left. That made the clerk curious and he walked down and knocked. And there she was.”

“Did he see the killer? The clerk?”

“Uh-uh. He says he didn’t see anybody.”

“This clerk, is it Vinnie Short?”

“I don’t know his name,” Anderson said. “He’s short, though.”

Heather Brown was bound like the others, but unlike the others, her arms were stretched out at right angles to her
body, as though she’d been crucified. The handle of the knife protruded from her chest under her breastbone. Her head was turned to one side, her eyes and mouth open. Her tongue stuck out, obscenely pale. She had long narrow scars on her thighs, white against her too-even machine tan.

“I don’t know her,” Lucas said. A vice officer walked in. “You know her?” Lucas asked.

“Seen her around a few times, she’s been on the street a couple years,” the vice cop said. “She used to be over on University, in St. Paul, but her old man OD’d on crank and she disappeared for a while.”

“You’re talking about Louis the White?”

“Yeah. See the scars on her legs? That was Louis’ trademark. Used to beat them with coat hangers. Said it never took more than twice.”

“But he’s dead,” said Lucas.

“Eight months ago. Good riddance. But I’ll tell you something. His girls did the specialty tricks. Golden showers, bondage, spanking, like that. So this guy may have known her. The way she’s tied up . . . it’d be hard to tie somebody up like that if she wasn’t cooperating.”

“You guys don’t know who’s running her now?”

“Nope. Haven’t seen her around for a while,” said the vice cop.

“We’ve talked to the night clerk but he claims he doesn’t know anything about her,” Anderson said. “Said she’s been around two, three weeks. She’d come into the office, pay for the room, leave. She’d take a room for the night, bring two or three guys back, knock on the window when she was coming and going. She’d remake the bed herself.”

“How much did she pay for the room?”

“I don’t know,” the vice cop said. “I could check.”

“Usually it’s one guy, one rent. They don’t usually take them for the night. Not if the motel knows what’s going on.”

“This guy knows,” said the vice cop.

“It’s Vinnie Short?”

“Yeah.”

“We have a long relationship. I’ll go talk to him,” Lucas said. He looked around the room again. “Nothing, huh?”