Rules of Prey (26 page)

“Whoa.” Sloan was nonplussed. The amounts were too big. “That’s what they are? Net-skis?”

“I guess. That’s what the curator was saying.”

“I didn’t know.”

“I bet Alan Nester does.”

They stopped at Rice’s house.

“Eight thousand dollars?” she said in wonderment. A tear trickled down one cheek. “But he bought fifteen of them . . .”

“Mrs. Rice, I expect that when your husband asked Mr. Nester to come over here, all he really wanted was an evaluation so he could sell them later, isn’t that what you told us?” Lucas asked.

“Well, I don’t really remember . . .”

“I remember your saying that in the first interview,” Sloan said insistently.

“Well, maybe,” she said doubtfully.

“Because if he did, then he cheated you,” Lucas said insistently. “He committed a fraud, and you could recover them.”

“Well, that’s what he come over for, to valuate them,” Mary Rice said, nodding her head vigorously, her memory suddenly clearing up. She picked up the mouse, handling it tenderly. “Eight thousand dollars.”

“Now what? Get a warrant?” Sloan asked. They were on the walk outside Rice’s house again.

“Not yet,” Lucas said. “I don’t know if we have enough. Let’s hit Nester first. Tell him what we’ve got, ask him to cooperate on the gun thing. Tell him if he cooperates, we’ll let it go as a civil matter between his attorney and Rice’s attorney. If he doesn’t, we get a warrant, bust him, and put it in the press. How he ripped off a man who was dying of cancer and was trying to leave something for his wife.”

“Oooh, that’s ugly.” Sloan smiled. “I like it.”

“Where’s Nester?”

The man behind the counter was small, dark, and much younger than Nester.

“He’s not here,” the man said. There was a chill in the
air; Lucas and Sloan didn’t look like customers. “Might I ask who is inquiring?”

“Police. We need to talk to him.”

“I’m afraid you can’t,” the young man said, raising his eyebrows. “He left for Chicago at noon. He’ll already be there and I have no idea where he’s staying.”

“Shit,” Sloan said.

“When’s he due back?” Lucas asked.

“Tuesday morning. He should be in by noon.”

“Do you have any netsukes?” Sloan asked.

The young man’s eyebrows went up again. “I believe we do, but you’d have to ask Alan. He handles all the more expensive items.”

Lucas took off his coat and tossed it on the mattress. The two surveillance cops, one tall, one short, were sitting on folding chairs, facing each other, with another chair between them. They were playing gin, the cards laid out on the seat of the middle chair. One of the cops watched the window while the other surveyed his hand. They were good at it. Their shift covered the prime time.

“Nothing?” asked Lucas.

“Nothing,” said the tall cop.

“Anything from the cars?”

“Not a thing.”

“Who’s in them?”

“Davey Johnson and York, up north, behind McGowan’s. Sally Johnson and Sickles, out east. Blaney is over on the west side with a new guy, Cochrane. I don’t know him.”

“Cochrane’s that tall blond kid, plays basketball in the league,” the short cop chipped in. He fanned his cards, dropped them on the seat of the chair between them, and said, “Gin.”

A radio against one wall played golden-oldie rock. A police radio sat silently next to it.

“He’s about due,” Lucas said, peering out into the street.

“This week,” the short one agreed. “Which is odd, when you think about it.”

“What’s odd?”

“Well, one of the notes he left said something about ‘Don’t set a pattern.’ So what does he do? He kills somebody every two weeks. That’s a pattern if I ever saw one.”

“He kills when he needs to,” Lucas said. “The need builds up, and eventually he can’t stand it.”

“Takes two weeks to build up?”

“Looks like it.”

The police radio burped and all three of them turned to look at it. “Car,” it said. And a moment later, “This is Cochrane. It’s a red Pontiac Bonneville.”

The tall cop leaned back, picked up a microphone, and said, “Watch it. It’s the right size, even if it’s the wrong color.”

“Coming your way,” Cochrane said. “We got the tag, we’ll run it.”

Lucas and the surveillance cop watched the car roll down the street and ease to the curb two houses down. It sat with its lights on for one minute, two, and Lucas said, “I’m going down there.”

He was at the stairs when the tall cop said, “Hold it.”

“What?”

“It’s the girl.”

“High-school girl down the street,” said the short cop. “She’s going up to the house now. Must be a date.”

Lucas walked back in time to see her going through the porch door. The car left.

“Could be something going on with her phones,” the short cop said a while later. The phone-monitoring station was at the other surveillance post, behind McGowan’s house.

“What? You mean McGowan’s?” asked Lucas.

“There were a bunch of calls last week and over the weekend. There’d be a whole group, a half-hour apart, more or less. But whoever it is doesn’t leave a message on the answering machine. The machine answers and they hang up.”

“Everybody does that—hangs up on machines,” Lucas said.

“Yeah, but this is a little different. It’s the first time it’s happened, for one thing, a bunch of calls. And she has an unlisted number. If it was a friend, you’d think he’d leave a message instead of calling over and over.”

“It’s like somebody’s checking on her,” said the tall cop.

“Can’t trace them?”

“It’s two rings and click, he’s gone.”

“Maybe we ought to change the machine,” said Lucas.

“Maybe. She’s due home in, what, an hour and a half?”

“Something like that.”

“We could do it then. Set it for five rings.”

Lucas went back to the mattress and the two cops started the gin game again.

“What do I owe you?” asked the tall cop.

“Hundred and fifty thousand,” said the short one.

“One game, double or nothing?”

Lucas grinned, closed his eyes, and tried to think about Alan Nester. Something there. Probably the fear that the netsuke purchase would be discovered and questioned. The purchase bordered on fraud. That was almost certainly it. Damn. What else was there?

Half an hour later, the cop radio burped again.

“This is Davey,” a voice said, carrying an edge of excitement. “It’s showtime, folks.”

Lucas rolled to his feet and the tall cop reached back and grabbed the microphone.

“What do you got, Davey?”

“We got a single white male dressed in dark slacks, dark jacket, dark gloves, watch cap, dark shoes, on foot,” Davey Johnson said. Johnson had been on the street for years. He didn’t get excited without reason, and his voice was crackling with intensity. “He’s heading your way, coming right down the street toward you guys. If he’s heading for McGowan’s, he’ll be in sight of the side of the back-lot house in one minute. This dude’s up to something, man, he ain’t out for no country stroll.”

“York with you?”

“He’s gone on foot, behind this guy, staying out of sight. I’m staying with the unit. God damn, he’s walking right along, he’s crossing the street, you other guys out on the wings, start moving up, goddam—”

“We see him out the side windows of our house,” said a new voice.

“That’s Kennedy at the other post,” the tall cop said to Lucas.

Lucas turned and headed for the stairs. “I’m going.”

“He’s going in the alley,” he heard Kennedy call as he ran down the first few steps. “He’s in her yard. You guys move . . .”

Lucas ran down the three flights of steps to the front door and brushed past the white-haired architect who stood in the hallway with a newspaper and a pipe, and ran out into the yard.

The maddog parked five blocks from McGowan’s house, facing the Interstate. Checked the street signs. Parking was okay. Lots of cars on the same side of the street.

The weather had turned bad early in the morning. A cold rain fell for a while in the afternoon, died away, started again, stopped. Now it felt like snow. The maddog left the car door unlocked. Not much of a risk in this neighborhood.

The sidewalk was still damp, and he walked along briskly, one arm swinging, the other holding a short, wide pry bar next to his side. Just the thing for a back door.

Down one block, another, three, four, onto McGowan’s block. A car started somewhere and the maddog turned his head in that direction, slowed. Nothing more. He glanced quickly around, just once, knowing that furtiveness attracts attention all by itself. His groin began to tingle with the preentry excitement. This would be a masterpiece. This would set the town on its ear. This would make him more famous than Sam, more famous than Manson.

Maybe not Manson, he thought.

He turned into the alley. Another car engine. Two cars? He walked down the alley, reached McGowan’s yard, glanced around again, took a half-dozen steps into the yard. A car’s wheel squealed in deceleration a block away, the other end of the alley.

Cops.

In that instant, when the turning wheels squealed against the blacktop, he knew he had been suckered.

Knew it. Cops.

He ran back the way he had come.

Another car, down the block. A tremendous clatter behind him; one of the cars had hit something. More cops. A door slammed. Across the street. Another one, behind McGowan’s.

He turned out of the alley, the pry bar slipping from beneath his jacket and falling to the grass, and he ran across the yard one house down from McGowan’s, through bridal wreath, running in the night, hit a lilac bush, fell, people shouting, “Hold it hold it hold it . . .”

The maddog ran.

The rookie Cochrane was at the wheel, and tires squealed as he slowed and cranked left into the alley, an unintended squeal, and his partner blurted “Jesus!” and quick as a turning rat, they saw the maddog run into the alley ahead of them. Cochrane wrenched the car straight in the alley, smashed through two empty garbage cans, and went after him.

The maddog was running between houses when the other wing car burst into the alley toward them and Cochrane almost hit it. The other car’s doors flew open and the two cops inside leapt out and went after the maddog. Cochrane’s partner, Blaney, yelled, “Go round, go round into the street . . .” and Cochrane swung the car past the other unit toward the street at the end of the alley.

Sally Johnson jumped out of her car and saw Lucas coming from across the street, running in a white shirt, and she turned and ran after her partner, Sickles, between houses as Cochrane’s car cranked around her car and went out toward the street.

The maddog had already crossed the next street, and Sally Johnson snatched her radio from her belt carrier and tried to transmit, but couldn’t find words as she ran fifteen feet
behind Sickles, Sickles with his gun out. Another cop, York, came in from the side and behind her, gun out, and Sally Johnson tried to get her gun out and saw the maddog go over a board fence across the street and dead ahead.

The maddog, fear and adrenaline blinding him to anything but the tunnel of space in front of him, space with no cops, sprinted across the street, as fast as he had ever run, hit the board fence, and vaulted it in a single motion. He could never have done it if he’d thought about it, the fence four feet high, as high as his chest, but he took it like an Olympian and landed in a yard with an empty swimming pool, a small boat wrapped in canvas, and a dog kennel.

The dog kennel had two separate compartments with rugs for doors and inside each compartment was a black-and-tan Doberman pinscher, one named July and the other named August.

August heard the commotion and pricked up his ears and poked his head out and just then the maddog came sailing over the fence, staggered, sprinted across the yard, and went over the back fence. Either dog could have taken him, if they’d had the slightest idea he was coming. As it was, July, exploding from her kennel, got his leg for an instant, raked it, and then the man was gone. But there was more business coming. July had no more than lost the one over the back fence than another came over the front.

The maddog never saw the Doberman until it was closing in from the side. And a good thing, because he might have hesitated. He saw it just as he hit the fence, a dark shadow at his feet, and felt the ripping pain in his calf as he went over the back fence.

Carl Werschel and his wife, Lois, were almost ready for bed when the dogs went crazy in the backyard.

“What’s that?” Lois asked. She was a nervous woman. She worried about being raped on a remote North Woods
highway by gangs of black biker rapists, though neither she nor anyone else had seen a black biker gang in the North Woods. Nevertheless, it was clear in her dreams, the bikers hunched over her, ravens circling overhead, as they did the foul deed on what seemed to be the hood of a ’47 Cadillac. “It sounds like . . .”

“Wait here,” Carl said. He was a very fat man who worried about black biker gangs himself and had stockpiled both ammo and plenty of camouflage clothing against the day. He got the Remington twelve-gauge pump from beneath the headboard and hustled for the back door, jacking a shell into the chamber as he went.

Just for an instant, Sickles, who was forty-five, felt a little kick of joy as he cleared the board fence. He was forty feet and one fence behind the maddog and he was in good shape, and with any luck, with the other guys coming in from the side . . .

The dogs hit him like a hurricane and he went down, clenching his gun but losing the flashlight he’d had in the other hand. The dogs were at his shoulders, his back, going crazy, barking, snarling, ripping his hands, the back of his neck . . .

Sally Johnson cleared the fence and almost landed in the tight ball of fury around Sickles, and one of the dogs turned toward her, slavering, coming, and Sally Johnson shot the dog twice and then the other one was coming and she turned and aimed the pistol, aware of Sickles on his hands and knees off to the left, enough clearance, and she pulled the trigger once, twice . . .

Carl Werschel ran out his side door with the twelve-gauge and saw the young punk in jeans and black jacket shooting his dogs, shooting them down. He yelled “Stop!” but he didn’t really mean “Stop,” he meant “Die,” and with an atavistic Prussian-warrior joy he fired the shotgun at a thirty-foot range into Sally Johnson’s young head. The last thing
Sally Johnson saw was the long muzzle of the gun coming up, and she wished she could say something on the radio to stop it from happening . . . .

Sickles felt the dogs go, and he started to roll out, when the long finger of fire reached out and knocked back the partner who had just saved him from the dogs. He knew that much, that he’d been saved. The finger of fire flashed again and Sally went down. Sickles had been around long enough to think, “Shotgun,” and the cops’ tone poem muttered somewhere in his unconscious as he rolled half-blind with blood: “Two in the belly, one in the head, knocks a man down and kills him dead.” He fired three times, one shot piercing Werschel’s belly, wiping out his liver, knocking him backward, the second shot ruining his heart. Werschel was dead before he hit the ground, though his mind ticked over for a few more seconds. Sickles’ third shot went through the wall of the house, into the dining room, through a china cabinet and a stack of plates inside it, through the opposite wall, and, as far as cops investigating later could prove, into outer space. The slug was never found.

When Werschel opened up with the shotgun, the maddog had crossed the street and had fallen into a trench being dug to replace a storm sewer. It was full of wet, yellow clay. He clambered out the far side, a mud ball, not understanding why he had not yet been caught.

And he would have been, except that the north car, with Davey Johnson on board, had closed onto the block when the shotgun blast lit up the neighborhood. Johnson dumped the unit and headed into the fight. His partner, York, on foot, had been caught in mid-block when the maddog changed direction, hadn’t seen it happen, and wound up running behind Sickles and Sally Johnson and just ahead of Lucas, who had cut across McGowan’s yard.

Cochrane and Blaney had driven out of the alley intending to turn north, in the direction the maddog was running, when
the firefight started. The firefight took all priority. They assumed Sickles and Sally Johnson had cornered the maddog, found him armed, and shot it out. And when the bad guy’s shooting a shotgun . . . Like Davey Johnson, they dumped their car and went in on foot.