“Never touched the bitch,” Price said, testing, his eyes lingering on her.
“But you knew her,” Connell said.
“I knew who she was,” Price said.
“Sleep with her?” Lucas asked.
“Nope. Never got that close,” Price said, looking at Lucas. “Had a nice ass on her, though.”
“Where were you when she was killed?” asked Connell.
“Drunk. My buddies dropped me off at my house, but I knew if I went inside I’d start barfin’, so I walked down to this convenience store for coffee. That’s what got me.”
“Tell me,” said Connell.
Price looked up at the ceiling, stuck the cigarette in his mouth, looked down at it long enough to light it, blew some smoke and closed his eyes, remembering. “I was out drinking with some buddies. Shit, we were drinking all afternoon and shootin’ pool. And so about eight o’clock my buddies brought me home ’cause I was too fuckin’ drunk to drink.”
“That’s pretty drunk,” Lucas said.
“Yeah, pretty,” Price said. “Anyway, they dumped me off on my porch, and I sat there for a while, and when I could get going, I decided to go up to the corner and get some coffee. There was a 7-Eleven in one of them side-street shopping centers. There was like a drugstore and a cleaners and this bookstore. I was in the 7-Eleven, and she came down from the bookstore to get something. I was drunker’n shit, but I remembered her from some welding I done for her.”
“Welding?”
“Yeah.” Price laughed, the laugh trailing off into a cough. “She had this piece-of-shit ’79 Cadillac, cream over key-lime green, and the bumper fell off. Just fuckin’ fell off one day. The Cadillac place wanted like four hundred bucks to fix it, so she brought it over to my place and asked me what I could do. I welded the sonofabitch back on for twenty-two dollars. If that bumper hadn’t fell off, I’d be a free man today.”
“So you remembered her,” Connell prompted. “In the store.”
“Yeah. I said hello and come on to her a little bit, but she wasn’t having it, and she left. I sort of followed along.” Price’s voice was slow and dreamy, pulling details out of his memory. “She went down to this bookstore. I was so fuckin’ drunk, I kept thinking, Hell, I’m gonna get lucky with this chick. There was no chance. Even if she’d said, ‘Hell, yes,’ I was in no shape to . . . you know. Anyway, I went into the bookstore.”
“How long did you stay?”
“About five minutes. There was a crowd in there, and I didn’t fit so good. For one thing, I smelled like a Budweiser truck had peed on me.”
“So?” Connell prompted.
“So I left.” His voice hardened, and he sat up. “There was this pimply-faced asshole kid in there, a clerk. He said I stayed, and that later, when this book thing was over, I followed her out of the store. That’s what he said. The lawyer asked him on the witness stand, he said, ‘Can you point to the man who followed her out?’ And this kid said, ‘Yessir. That’s the man right there.’ He pointed to me. I was a gone motherfucker.”
“But it wasn’t you.”
“Hell no. The kid remembered me because I bumped into him. Sorta pushed him.”
“What’s this tattoo business?” Lucas asked.
Price’s eyes slid toward the escort, back to Lucas, back to the escort, back to Lucas, and his chin moved quickly right and left, no more than a quarter inch. “Tattoo? Kid didn’t have no tattoo.”
Connell, jotting down notes, missed it. She looked up. “According to my notes,” she said, but Lucas rode over her.
“We gotta talk,” he said to her. “I’d rather Mr. Price didn’t hear this. . . . C’mon.”
The escort had been browsing The Encyclopedia of Pop, Rock and Soul. He looked up and said, “I could take him. . . .”
“The corner is fine,” Lucas said, pulling Connell along.
“What?” she asked, low-voiced.
Lucas got his back to Price and the escort. “D. Wayne doesn’t want to talk about tattoos in front of the guard,” Lucas said. “Talk to him for another five minutes, then ask the guard where the ladies’ room is. Get him to take you—it’s back through one set of doors.”
“I can do that,” she said.
The escort was back in his book when they sat down again. “So where’d you go when you left the store?” Lucas asked.
“Home.”
“You didn’t stay with her? You didn’t try again?”
“Fuck, no. I was too drunk to follow her anywhere. I went back to the convenience store and got a couple more beers—never even got my coffee. I barely made it back home. I sat on my steps for a while, drank the beers, then I went inside and passed out. I didn’t wake up until the cops came to get me.”
“Must’ve been more to it than that,” Lucas said.
Price shrugged. “There wasn’t. The guy across the street even saw me sittin’ on the steps, and said so. They found the fuckin’ beer cans next to the step. Said it didn’t prove nothing.”
“Must’ve had a horseshit attorney,” Lucas said.
“Public defender. He was all right. But you know . . .”
“Yeah?”
Price leaned back and looked at the ceiling again, as though weary of the story. “The cops wanted me. I was stealing stuff. I admit that. Tools. I specialized in tools. Most people steal, like, stereos. Shit, you can’t get nothing for a stereo compared to what you can get for a good set of mechanic’s tools, you know? Anyway, the cops were trying to get me forever, but they never could. I’d steal something, and before anybody knew it was gone, there was three niggers down in Chicago with a new welding rig, or something. I go into a shop, take out the tools, drive two hours and a half down to Chicago, unload them, drive back, and be drunk on my butt with the money in my pocket before anybody knows anything happened. I thought I was pretty smart. The cops knew, and I knew that they knew, but I never thought they’d just get me. But that’s what they did.”
“I read a file that said you might have done a couple of liquor stores, that some people got hurt. Old man got beat with a pistol,” Connell said.
“Not me,” Price said, but his eyes slid away.
“Took some booze with the cash,” Connell said. “You are a booze hound.”
“Look, I admitted the stealing,” Price said. He licked his lips. “But I didn’t kill the bitch.”
“When you were in the store, did you see anybody else that might have been with her?”
“Man, I was drunk,” Price said. “When the cops come for me, I couldn’t even remember seeing this gal, until they reminded me a lot.”
“So you don’t know shit about shit,” Lucas said.
A little coal sparked in Price’s eye that said he’d like to be alone with Lucas. “That’s about it,” Price said. Lucas held his eyes, and the coal died. “There were people down in the bookstore that night that nobody ever found. They were reading poems down there, and there was a whole bunch of people. It could have been any of them, more’n me.”
Connell sighed, then looked at the escort. “Excuse me—is there a ladies’ room back there?”
“Noooo . . .” He had to think about it. “Closest one is out.”
“I wonder, do you mind? Could you?”
“Sure.” The escort looked at Price. “You sit still, okay?”
Price spread his hands. “Hey, these guys are trying to help me out.”
“Sure,” the guard said. And to Connell: “Come along, girl.”
Lucas winced, but Connell went. As soon as the door closed, Price leaned forward, voice low. “You think they’re listening in?”
“I doubt it,” Lucas said, shaking his head. “This is a defendant’s interview room. If they got caught, they’d be in deep shit.”
Price looked around at the pale walls, as though trying to spot a microphone. “I gotta take the chance,” he said.
“On what?” Lucas asked, letting the skepticism ride in his voice.
Price leaned toward h
im again, talking in a harsh whisper. “At my trial I said I saw another con in the bookstore. A guy with a beard and PPP on his hand. Prison tattoo, ballpoint ink and straight pin. Nobody ever found him.”
“That’s why we’re here,” Lucas said. “We’re trying to track the guy.”
“Yeah, well, it wasn’t PPP,” Price said. He looked around at the walls again, then back to Lucas. He was literally sweating, his hammered forehead glistening in the lights. “Jesus Christ. You can’t tell anybody.”
“What?”
“I’ve seen the tattoo again. It wasn’t PPP. I was looking at it upside down, and got it backwards. It was 666.”
“Yeah? What is it—some kind of cult?”
“No, no,” Price whispered. “It’s the goddamn Seeds.”
Now Lucas dropped his voice. “You sure?”
“Sure I’m sure. There are four or five of them in here right now. That’s what’s got me nervous. If they knew I was talking about them, I’d be a dead motherfucker. The 666 comes from Bad Seeds; that used to be the bikers.”
“Can you describe him?”
“I can do better than that. His name is Joe Hillerod.”
“How’d you get that?” They were both talking in whispers now, and Lucas had picked up Price’s habit of scanning the walls.
“They brought me up here, and after I got through orientation and went into the population, one of the first guys I see, shit, I thought it was him. They looked just fuckin’ exactly alike. The guy even had the same tattoo.”
“This is the Joe guy?”
“No, no, this is Bob. The guy in here was Bob Hillerod, Joe’s brother.”
“What?”
“See, I started lifting weights, just to get close to this guy. Bob. I find out he’s been in for a while—from way before this chick gets killed. And I see he’s older than the guy in the store. I couldn’t figure it out. But then I hear, Bob’s got a brother, six or seven years younger. It’s got to be him. Got to be.”
Lucas leaned back, his voice rising. “Sounds like bullshit.”
“No, no, I swear to Christ. It’s him. Joe Hillerod. And this Joe—he’s been inside. For sex.” Price reached out and touched Lucas’s hand. His eyes were wide, frightened.
“Sex?”
“Rape.”
“Did you ask Bob . . . is it Bob in here?”
“Yeah, Bob was here, Joe was out. Joe is the guy. Bob is out now, but Joe is the guy.”
“Did you ask Bob if Joe has the tattoo?”
Price leaned back. “Fuck no. One thing you learn in here is, you don’t ask about those fuckin’ tattoos. You just pretend they’re not there,” he said. “But Joe was inside. He was one of the Seeds. He’s got it, I bet. I bet anything.”
WHEN CONNELL AND the escort returned, Lucas was taking notes. “Harry Roy Wayne and Gerry Gay Wayne,” Price was saying, “They’re brothers and they work at the Caterpillar place down there. They’ll tell you.”
“But that’s all you got?” Lucas asked.
“You got everything else.” D. Wayne slumped on the couch, smoking a second cigarette. He picked up the pack and put them in his pocket.
“I won’t bullshit you,” Lucas said. “I don’t think that’s enough.”
“It will be if you catch the right guy,” Price said.
“Yeah. If there is one,” Lucas said. He stood up and said to Connell, “Unless you’ve got some more questions, we’re outta here.”
14
“WHAT DO WE have?” Connell asked as they waited for the car. She was digging into a pack of chive-flavored potato chips, sixty cents from a machine.
“A hell of a coincidence,” Lucas said. He told her briefly about Price’s nervous statement, and about Del’s investigation at the fire, the dead deputy, and the .50-caliber tubes. “So the Seeds are in the Cities.”
“And this Joe Hillerod was convicted of rape?”
“Price said sex, so I don’t know exactly what it was. If our guy is a member of the Seeds, it’d explain a lot,” Lucas said. “Gimme a couple of chips.”
She passed the pack. “What does it explain?”
Lucas crunched: starch and fat. Excellent. “They’ve had years of hassles with the law, they’ve even got a lawyer on retainer. They know how we operate. They move around all the time, but mostly in the Midwest, the states we’re talking about. The gaps in the killings—this Joe guy might have been inside.”
“Huh.” Connell took the chips back, finished them. “That sounds very good. God knows, they’re crazy enough.”
CONNELL MADE A long phone call from the airport, talked to a woman at her office, took some notes. Lucas stood around, looking at nothing, while the pilot avoided him.
“Hillerod lives up near Superior,” Connell said when she got off the phone. “He was convicted of aggravated assault in Chippewa County in March of ’86 and served thirteen months. He got out in April of ’87. There was a killing in August of ’87.”
“That’s neat. He didn’t do any other time?”
“Yeah. A couple of short jail terms, and then in January of ’90, he was convicted for sexual assault and served twenty-three months, and got out a month before Gina Hoff was assaulted in Thunder Bay.”
“But wasn’t the South Dakota case—”
“Yeah,” she said. “It was in ’91, while he was inside. But that was the weirdest of all the cases I found. That’s where the woman was stabbed as much as ripped. Maybe that was somebody else.”
“What’s he done since he got out?” Lucas asked.
Connell flipped through her notes. “He was charged with a DWI in ’92, but he beat it. And a speeding ticket this year. His last known address was somewhere up around Superior, a town called Two Horse. Current driver’s license shows an address in a town called Stedman. My friend couldn’t find it on a map, but she called the Carren County sheriff’s department, and they say Stedman is a crossroads a couple of miles out of Two Horse.”
“Did your friend ask them about the Hillerods?”
“No. I thought we ought to do that in person.”
“Good. Let’s get our ass back to the Cities. I want to talk to Del before we start messing with the Seeds,” Lucas said. He looked across the lounge at the pilot, who was sipping a cup of coffee. “Assuming that we make it back.”
HALFWAY BACK, LUCAS, with his eyes closed and one hand tight around an overhead grip, said, “Twenty-three months. Couldn’t have been much of a rape.”
“A rape is a rape,” Connell said, an edge in her voice.
“You know what I mean,” Lucas said, opening his eyes.
“I know what men mean when they say that,” Connell said.
“Kiss my ass,” Lucas said. The pilot winced—almost ducked—and Lucas closed his eyes again.
“I’m not interested in putting up with certain kinds of bullshit,” Connell said levelly. “A male commentary on rape is one of them. I don’t care if the guy back at Waupun calls me a girl, because he’s stupid and out of touch. But you’re not stupid, and when you imply—”
“I didn’t imply jackshit,” Lucas said. “But I’ve known women who were raped who had to think about it before they realized what happened. On the other hand, you get some woman who’s been beaten with a bat, her teeth are broken out, her nose is smashed, her ribs are broken, she’s gotta have surgery because her vagina is ripped open. She doesn’t have to think about it. If it’s gonna happen, which way would you want it?”
“I don’t want it at all,” Connell said.
“You don’t want death and taxes, either,” Lucas said.
“Rape isn’t death and taxes.”
“All of the big ones are death and taxes,” Lucas said. “Murder, rape, robbery, assault. Death and taxes.”
“I don’t want to argue,” Connell said. “We have to work together.”
“No, we don’t.”
“What, you’re gonna dump me because I argue with you?”
Lucas shook his head. “Meag
an, I just don’t like getting jumped when I say something like, ‘It must not have been much of a rape,’ and you know what I’m talking about. I mean, there must not have been a lot of obvious violence with the rape, or they would have given him more time. Our killer is ripping these women. He might be smoking a cigarette while he’s doing it. He’s a fuckin’ monster. If he rapes somebody, he’s not gonna be subtle about it. I don’t know the details of this rape, but twenty-three months doesn’t sound like our man.”
“You just don’t want it to be that easy,” Connell said.
“Bullshit.”
“I’m serious. I keep getting the feeling you’re playing some kind of weird game, looking for this guy. I’m not. I want to nail the asshole any way I can. If it’s easy, that’s good. If it’s hard, that’s okay too, as long as we put him in a cage.”
“Fine. But stay out of my face, huh?”
DEL WAS SITTING on the City Hall steps, elbows on his knees, smoking a Lucky Strike. He was watching red ants crawl out of a crack in the sidewalk. His hair was too long and plastered down with something that might have been lard. He wore an olive-drab army shirt with faded spots on the sleeves where sergeant’s stripes had been removed, and a fading name tag over the right pocket that said “Halprin,” which wasn’t his name. The army shirt was missing its buttons, and was worn open, showing a giveaway rock-station T-shirt that said “KQ Sucks.” Tattered khaki pants with dirt on the knees and black canvas sneakers completed his outfit. The sneaks had a hole near the base of his right big toe, and through the hole, the visible skin was as grimy as the shoes.
“Dude,” he said, his head bobbing as Lucas and Connell came up. He had the nervous submissiveness of somebody who has eaten out of garbage cans for too many years.
Connell walked past him with a glance. When Lucas stopped, she said, “C’mon.”
Lucas, hands in his pockets, nodded at Del. “What’re you doing?”
“Watchin’ ants,” Del said.
“What else?”
Connell, who’d gotten as far as the door, drifted back toward them.
“Asshole’s getting out in a few minutes. I want to see who picks him up.” Del snapped the cigarette into the street and looked up at Lucas. “Who’s the chick?”