“Ah, jeez, could you handle that? Make up some shit and tell him I said it.”
“You want me to kick Del’s ass?”
“Find out what he was doing, anyway. You get that stuff from Minneapolis?”
“Yup.” She’d bound the paper into a blue report cover. “Photos are in the back. I borrowed the photo printer down in crime scene. You should buy one for us. You’re rich enough.”
He ignored the suggestion. “Is Del coming in?”
“He was in. He went back out on the Ransom thing. Dannie’s with him. Husband and wife.”
“Christ, like Jack Sprat and his old lady.”
She smiled, a white-tooth Wisconsin dairy smile as Lucas headed into his office: “But who’d suspect they were cops?” she called after him.
Ransom was not a payoff. Ransom was a man who’d run a series of home-improvement scams with the help of a local lawyer and an outstate bank. Del and Dannie Carson were about to take out a second mortgage on a house they supposedly owned, to pay for a new roof, windows, garage door, and driveway, work that would never be done, even though the money had been paid. When the bank came around to foreclose on the mortgage, two or three months down the road, the governor would hold a press conference. Ransom would go to jail, the bank would cough up a few million dollars, and the governor would be hailed as the champion of the poor and benighted . . .
With any luck.
But why had Del driven eight hundred miles over the weekend? That was as far as Kansas City and back . . .
LUCAS WAS HIGH ENOUGH in the BCA hierarchy to get an extra seventy square feet of office space and rich enough—Carol was right about that—to buy two comfortable chairs to fill it with. He got a steno pad from his desk, dropped into one of the chairs, and started reading through the bound murder file: much of it he already knew from talking with Sloan and Elle the week before.
And he thought, “Elle.” He should give her a call.
He made a note to do that and pushed farther into the file. Made another note: Larson worked in some kind of artsy-crafty store, and Rice worked in a hardware store. A craft connection? Weak. A retail connection, people whom a killer might see in the routine course of business? Also weak. Larson was single, just breaking off a relationship, maybe. Rice was out looking?
He was poring over the photos when Carol came to the door: “There’s a parole officer on the phone for you. About the case. He says it might be urgent.”
Lucas nodded: “Put him through.”
HE STEPPED OVER to his desk and when the phone rang, picked it up. “Davenport.”
“Mr. Davenport, agent, uh . . . Yeah, this is Mark Fox down in Owatonna. I’m a parole officer. I just read the Star-Tribune story about this serial killing and I called Gene Nordwall and he said I should call you . . .”
“What’s up?”
“There’s this guy . . . A few weeks back a guy named Charlie Pope was turned loose from St. John’s,” Fox said. “He was a Level Two, convicted in St. Paul of raping a woman and trying to strangle her. There was evidence that he might have killed another woman or maybe two, way back.”
“I don’t remember the case.”
“It was years ago. And he didn’t kill anyone in the case he was convicted on.” Fox spent a couple of minutes outlining Pope’s career and added, “Frankly, he’s nuts. He doesn’t say much, but he’s crazier than a loon.”
“They let him go?”
“He was only convicted on the one rape, and he was coming to the end of his sentence. They couldn’t hold him. They decided the best thing to do was to let him go a few months early—he was pretty desperate to get out—and make a long-term ankle bracelet a part of the deal. A few weeks back, he cut the bracelet off and split. He was staying in a trailer down here in Owatonna. When I went over to look for him, there was no sign of him.”
“Trailer still there?”
“Yeah. I sealed it and told the manager to keep an eye on it,” Fox said. “I didn’t know what had happened to him. I still don’t. Anyway, I thought this might have something to do with your problem.”
“Good call,” Lucas said.
“I would have gotten in touch after the Larson thing, but I didn’t know about it until I saw the Star-Tribune story.”
“Bureaucracy,” Lucas said. “Give me a number—I’ve got a meeting with the Minneapolis homicide people in about ten minutes, but I might come down there and bring some guys with me. Do we need a warrant to look at that place?”
“Not if you’re with me. I’d be happy to meet you there,” Fox said.
“I’ll get back to you within the hour, tell you one way or the other,” Lucas said.
“One last thing,” Fox said. “He’s in your DNA database. They made damn sure of that before he left St. John’s.”
SLOAN CAME IN, with Elle Kruger trailing behind, looking a little abashed. She was wearing street clothes, as she had started to do more often: the full traditional nun’s habit, she said, had started to feel too much like an affectation. “I wasn’t sure I should come,” she said, near-sightedly peering around, checking out Carol. Elle came to dinner twice a month, had become tight with Weather, but she’d never been to his new office.
“Glad to have you, as long as I don’t have to put you on my budget,” Lucas said. He put them in the soft chairs and dropped in behind his desk. “I just got a call from a parole officer . . .”
He filled them in on what Mark Fox had said, and Sloan said, “So Pope disappeared just before Larson was killed? That’s the best lead we’ve had so far. Why didn’t we hear about it?”
“Usual BS. He didn’t know about Larson, nobody knew to ask about Pope, time passes,” Lucas said. “Anyway, I’m getting Pope’s file sent up from St. John’s.” To Elle: “Sloan has you all filled in on the Rice killings?”
“Not so much on the detail, as on the behavior,” she said.
“One important detail,” Lucas said. “Adam Rice apparently tried to fight the guy off, and there was blood and skin under his fingernails. If it’s not his own blood . . . well, we have Pope’s DNA in the database here. We oughta know tomorrow if we’ve got a match.”
“We’re looking for him now?” she asked.
Lucas nodded. “Yes. There’s a bulletin out, I’m sending it to Iowa and Wisconsin, too. We’ve got a six-week-old picture from St. John’s. They took it just before they let him go.”
“Gonna be a black eye for the state, letting him go,” Sloan said.
Elle said, “Could I see Pope’s file?”
“Sure. Don’t tell anybody. It’s supposed to be a confidential medical file . . . I’ll get Carol to make a copy for you. What about behavior . . . ?”
Elle had a simple nylon briefcase with her and said, “I’ve got a note . . .” As she dug into it, it occurred to him that the old nun’s costume, by isolating her face, had kept her young even as she aged. Now, dressed in the gray-and-black garb of her order, she looked like a thin, middle-aged woman who’d lived an ascetic, but sedentary, life. Her hair, which he hadn’t seen for twenty years after she’d gone into the convent, had turned steel gray, and her wrists and ankles seemed frail.
Then she looked over the note at him, and her eyes were as young as a kindergartener’s: “There are some interesting aspects to the behavior of this man. I think, after looking at the material that Mr. Sloan gave me, that he is probably intelligent. A planner. Nothing spontaneous or extemporaneous about this—he chose his victims, he knew when they would be alone and when he could get them without being interrupted. He knew where to leave Angela Larson’s body where it would have the greatest impact, but at a place where he could stop, take a little time to arrange her, and then leave, without being seen or noticed or monitored in any way. That’s not necessarily easy to do in a large city. Security cameras are everywhere, and as far as we know, he has not been seen by a single one.”
Lucas pointed a finger at Sloan: “Security camera at the store where Rice worked?”
“I’ll call.”
Elle continued: “There’s also something interesting in the way he tortures his victims. He’s methodical. I pointed this out to Mr. Sloan . . .”
“She won’t call me by my first name,” Sloan said to Lucas, grinning at Elle. Then, “Sorry, go ahead.”
“He beat both of them with some kind of whip, but not in an uncontrolled frenzy. If he were in a frenzy, he would keep hitting them in the same place, but these victims look like they had been put through a mechanical shredder—some of the slashes cross each other, but most of them are carefully laid in, proceeding down and around their bodies, as though he’s being . . . careful. Thorough.”
“Nuts,” Lucas said.
“He’s crazy, but it’s not an uncontrollable frenzy. Not mechanically uncontrollable, at any rate. He’s like a punisher: remote from his victim. Like a paid torturer in a prison.”
“Is he taunting us? Is he going to call somebody? Will he look for publicity?” Lucas asked.
“He could very well,” she said, nodding. “He’s intelligent, but the way he displays the bodies, he’s looking for attention. I don’t think he’ll call the TV stations—he’ll call a newspaper, if he does call.”
Sloan asked, “Why not TV?”
“Because they would record him, and he wouldn’t want his voice on tape. He will be careful.”
“What else?” Lucas asked.
“He’s strong. Probably attractive. Quite likely charismatic—a person who might attract his victims’ attention in some way. Not necessarily a pleasant way, but somebody they would notice.”
“You think they knew him?”
She considered it for a moment, then nodded: “Maybe. That’s a hard call. These two people were unattached—it’s possible that he seduced them in some way before the attack. Or he might simply be visually appealing to them. That would get him close without a fuss. They may have welcomed his attention—he could very well be soft-spoken, somebody you would trust.”
She looked up at Lucas. “One thing I would do is this: I would check on current and previous relationships that the victims had, and see if the men with whom they were involved are similar in some ways. The same appearance, somehow, the same attitude, or some particular status. Did they both like tall, dark men? Then the killer may be tall and dark . . .”
“You’re assuming . . . a sexual connection with Rice. The sheriff says Rice was absolutely straight,” Lucas said. “A widower with a kid. Nothing we’ve got would suggest that he had any homosexual contacts ever, even as a boy. We’ve talked to people who have known him for his entire life.”
Elle pulled at her lower lip, and Sloan said, “Yeah, but . . . in that culture down there, out in the countryside, an interest in homosexuality might be pretty well hidden.”
Elle nodded: “Very much hidden, especially if a man were essentially bisexual—he would always have his relationships with women as a cover. Even if somebody else knew about it, about any homosexual impulses that Rice might have had, that man might not admit it because of the implication that he might be gay . . .”
Lucas to Elle: “One of the crime-scene guys said he’d seen similar violence and it was usually gay, and the specific sexual mutilation usually came from a former lover, a jilted lover . . .”
“This is not like that,” she said quickly. “I know precisely what your technician was saying, but as I said, this was not done in an emotional frenzy. This was cold and calculated and, I think, enjoyed. This does not seem to me to have been done in anger.” She paused: “I could be wrong. Nothing is for certain.”
“Good.” Lucas made a note.
Carol knocked and stuck her head into the office: “The stuff from St. John’s is here, on the Pope guy. You want paper or electronic?”
“Paper. Three copies,” Lucas said. “Right away.”
Carol’s eyes involuntarily ticked over to Elle, raised perhaps a millimeter, and then she said, “Three copies,” and left.
THEY TALKED FOR ANOTHER twenty minutes, then Elle looked at her watch and said, “I’ve got a seminar.”
“Pick up the copy of the Pope file on your way out,” Lucas said. “I’ll be on my cell phone.”
“I’ll read it right after the seminar,” she said. “I’ll call this afternoon.”
WHEN SHE WAS GONE, Lucas asked Sloan, “Are you going to Owatonna with me?”
“Absolutely, but we got some bureaucratic shit to figure out first,” Sloan said. “Pennington absolutely doesn’t want to be the media face on this. And he doesn’t want me involved. He says you guys gotta do it.”
“Ahhh . . . ,” Lucas said. Pennington was the Minneapolis chief. Lucas didn’t like him. “Nordwall didn’t want to do it, either. Maybe Rose Marie could do it. She can screw something out of Pennington in trade.”
Lucas got Rose Marie on the phone, outlined the problem.
“I’m not going to do it,” she said. “I’m trying to pull the string on this special session. Either you or McCord can do it. I’ll talk to McCord this afternoon and figure it out. I’ll talk to the governor, too . . . Be helpful if you could get the guy before he kills anyone else.”
“We might’ve had a break,” Lucas said. He told her about Pope. “If it’s him, we’ll look pretty good. Otherwise . . . right now, we don’t have anything that would point at anybody in particular.”
“So he’s going to do somebody else; if he’s not this Pope guy.”
“If he’s careful, he could do a few,” Lucas said.
“Goddamnit, we don’t want that. I’ll talk to the governor, I’ll talk to McCord, and we’ll figure something out and get back to you.”
“I’m on the cell,” Lucas said. He hung up and said to Sloan: “Let’s go.”
OWATONNA WAS AN HOUR south of St. Paul, straight down I-35, back in the sea of corn and beans. A few miles out of Owatonna, they took a phone call from Nordwall. “Where you at?”
“In my car, on the way to Owatonna.” He told Nordwall about Charlie Pope.
“Okay, that’s something,” Nordwall said. “I got something else for you. Bill James, the guy I got doing the biography you wanted? He says that Rice was almost perfectly straight.”
“Almost,” Lucas said.
“Yeah—almost,” the sheriff said. “There’s a bar in Faribault called the Rockyard. Country bar, bunch of shit kickers, fights in the parking lot, Harleys and trucks, and so on. Live music Fridays and Saturdays. Anyway—a friend of Rice’s named Andy Sanders said there’s a bartender there, named Carl, who everybody calls Booger. If you talk to Booger, he can introduce you to some young ladies who will fall in love with you, if you’ve got the money. Sanders said Rice had been going up for the girls.”
“Hookers.”
“We just have girls down here, Lucas,” Nordwall said mildly. “Some of them have hasty love affairs.”
“But straight: male on female.”
“Straight. Sanders says no-way, no-how would Rice ever have gotten friendly with a gay guy. But I figure, you could meet some bad people at the Rockyard. There’s always a little shit going through there, a little cocaine, a little meth, and you could probably buy yourself an untraceable pistol if you asked just right.”
“All right. We just went past there. We’ll hit it on the way back.”
“Good.”
“Anybody gonna give us shit?” Lucas asked.
“No, no, it’s not that tough. It’s just a little . . . sleazy.”
“With some guys who like to fight.”
“Occasionally.”
6
OWATONNA IS A SMALL CITY known to a few architecture buffs for a Louis Sullivan jewel-box bank. They got lost for a while, running down edge-of-town streets, and finally found Charlie Pope’s trailer in a weedy mobile-home park down a dead-end road.
Pope’s trailer was a mess. An aging Airstream travel-trailer, once silver, it had been hit by something—a falling tree?—that had put a dent across the top; the whole thing sat maybe
five degrees off level, the tires shot, steel wheels visible through the rotting rubber. Weeds grew window-high around it, and a box elder tree flaked bark, leaves, and red bugs onto it.
As they pulled into the trailer park’s visitor parking lot, a blade-thin black cat ran out from one of the other homes, paused, one foot in the air, to look at them, and then disappeared into the brush behind Pope’s place. Some of the mobile homes in the park were well kept, with neatly cut yards; most were not. Either way, Pope’s place was the neighborhood slum.
MARK FOX WAS SITTING on the hood of his Jeep, which was tucked in an overgrown parking slot next to Pope’s trailer. Fox was a tall, thin, cowboy-looking guy with a weathered face, black roper boots, a black T-shirt, and a denim jacket and jeans. He was smoking a cigarette when they pulled up. He crushed it into a rust spot on the hood of the Jeep as they got out of the Porsche.
“Must’ve been more money coming out of the legislature than I thought, cops riding around in a Porsche,” he said as they shook hands.
Lucas shrugged: “Guy’s gotta have a four-wheel drive to get around in, this part of the country.”
Sloan rolled his eyes and said, “We know the guy for three seconds and the bullshit starts . . . This is Pope’s place?”
Fox looked at the trailer and said, “Yup. Such as it is. Come on in.”
“I sorta know why he ran for it,” Sloan said. “If I lived here, I’d run for it, too.”
“Ah, it’s different inside,” Fox said. “It’s worse.”
HE TOOK THEM INSIDE. A sour odor of human dirt hung about the place, with a underlying tone of sewage: there might be a cracked sewer pipe somewhere, or something wrong with the septic system. Sloan said, wrinkling his nose, “Smells like an armpit with an onion in it.”
Fox: “Or an asshole.”
“Hold that thought,” Lucas said.
The three of them were too much for the tiny kitchen, and Fox continued six feet down the trailer into a nominal living room. The kitchen was made of dented metal cupboards, a stove the size of a breadboard, and a yellowed microwave. Fox said, “When he cut the bracelet off, he left it here on the floor. No sign of him. I put out a bulletin but never heard back from anybody.”