Prey: Night Prey Part 22

Koop stiffened. When people put spare keys on their car, they usually put in a spare house key, just in case. And if she had-and if she'd changed them since she changed her locks. . . .

He'd have to look.

KOOP WENT TO the roof as soon as it was dark. Jensen had changed to a robe, and he watched as she read, listened to a stereo, and checked the cable movies. He was becoming familiar with her personal patterns: she never watched talk shows, never watched sitcoms. She sometimes watched game shows. She watched the news rerun on public television, late at night.

She liked ice cream, and ate it slowly, with a lot of tongue-on-the-spoon action. When she was puzzled about something, trying to make up her mind, she'd reach back and scratch the top of her a.s.s. Sometimes she'd lie in bed with her feet straight up in the air, apparently looking past them for no reason. She'd do the same thing when she put on panty hose-she'd drop onto her back in bed, get her toes into the feet of the hose, then lift her legs over her head and pull them on. Sometimes she'd wander around the apartment while she was flossing.

Once, she apparently caught sight of her reflection in the gla.s.s of her balcony's sliding doors, and dropped into a series of poses, as though she were posing for the cover of Cosmo. She was so close, so clear, that Koop felt she was posing for him.

She went to bed at midnight, every working night. Two women friends had come around, and once, before Koop began following her home, she hadn't shown up at all until midnight. A date? The idea p.i.s.sed him off, and he pushed it away.

When she went to bed-a minute of near nakedness, large b.r.e.a.s.t.s bobbling in the fishbowl-Koop left her, bought a bottle of Jim Beam at a liquor store, and drove home.

He barely lived in his house, a suburban ranch-style nonent.i.ty he'd rented furnished. A garden service mowed the lawn. Koop didn't cook, didn't clean, didn't do much except sleep there, watch some television, and wash his clothes. The place smelled like dust with a little bourbon on top of it. Oh, yes, he'd brought in Wannemaker. But only for an hour or two, in the bas.e.m.e.nt; you could hardly smell that anymore. . . .

THE NEXT MORNING, Koop was downtown before ten o'clock. He didn't like the daylight hours, but this was important. He called her at her office.

"This is Sara Jensen. . . . h.e.l.lo? h.e.l.lo?"

Her voice was pitched higher than he'd expected, with an edge to it. When he didn't answer her second h.e.l.lo, she promptly hung up, and he was left listening to a dial tone. So she was working.

He headed for the parking ramp, spiraled up through the floors. She was usually on five, six, or seven, depending on how early she got in. Today, it was six again. He had to go to eight to find a parking place. He walked back down, checked under the b.u.mper of her car, found the key box. He opened it as he walked away. Inside was a car key and a newly minted door key.

Shazam.

HE FELT LIKE victory, going back in. Like a conqueror. Like he was home, with his woman.

Koop spent half the day at her apartment.

As soon as he got in, he opened a tool chest in front of the television. If somebody showed up, a cleaning woman, he could say he'd just finished fixing it . . . but n.o.body showed up.

He ate cereal from one of her bowls, washed the bowl, and put it back. He lounged in her front room with his shoes off, watching television. He stripped off his clothes, pulled back the bedcovers, and rolled in her slick cool sheets. m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.ed into her Kleenex.

Sat on her toilet. Took a shower with her soap. Dabbed some of her perfume on his chest, where he could smell it. Posed in her mirror, his blond, nearly hairless body corded with muscle.

This, he thought, she'd love: he threw the mirror a quarter-profile, arms flexed, b.u.t.t tight, chin down.

He went through her chest of drawers, found some letters from a man. He read them, but the content was disappointing: had a good time, hope you had a good time. He checked a file cabinet in a small second bedroom-office, found a file labeled "Divorce." Nothing much in it. Jensen was her married name-her maiden name was Rose.

He went back to the bedroom, lay down, rubbed his body with the sheets, turned himself on again. . . .

By five, he was exhausted and exhilarated. He saw the time on her dresser clock, and got up to dress and make the bed: she'd just about be leaving her office.

SARA JENSEN GOT home a few minutes before six, carrying a sack full of vegetables under one arm, a bottle of wine and her purse in the opposite hand. The wet smell of radishes and carrots covered Koop's scent for the first few steps inside the door, to the kitchen counter, but when she'd dropped her sacks and stepped back to shut the door, she stopped, frowned, looked around.

Something wasn't right. She could smell him, but only faintly, subconsciously. A finger of fear poked into her heart.

"h.e.l.lo?" she called.

Not a peep. Paranoid.

She tilted her head back, sniffing. There was something . . . She shook her head. Nothing identifiable. Nervous, she left the hallway door open, walked quickly to the bedroom door, and poked her head inside. Called out: "h.e.l.lo?" Silence.

Still leaving the door open, she checked the second bedroom-office, then ventured into the bathroom, even jerking open the door to the shower stall. The apartment was empty except for her.

She went to the outer door and closed it, still spooked. Nothing she could put her finger on. She started unpacking her grocery sacks, stowing the vegetables in the refrigerator.

And stopped again. She tiptoed back to the bedroom. Looked to her right. A closet door was open just a crack. A closet she didn't use. She turned away, hurried to the hall door, opened it, stopped. Turned back. "h.e.l.lo?"

The silence spoke of emptiness. She edged toward the bedroom, looked in. The closet door was just as it had been. She took a breath, walked to the closet. "h.e.l.lo?" Her voice quieter. She took the k.n.o.b in her hand, and feeling the fright of a child opening the bas.e.m.e.nt door for the first time, jerked the closet door open.

n.o.body there, Sara.

"You're nuttier'n a fruitcake," she said aloud. Her voice sounded good, broke the tension. She smiled and pushed the closet door shut with her foot, and started back to the living room. Stopped and looked at the bed.

There was just the vaguest body-shape there, as though somebody had dropped back on the bedspread. Had she done that? She sometimes did that in the morning when she was putting on her panty hose.

But had she gotten dressed first that morning, or made the bed first?

Had her head hit the pillow like that?

Spooked again, she patted the bed. The thought crossed her mind that she should look under it.

But if there were a monster under there . . .

"I'm going out to dinner," she said aloud. "If there's a monster under the bed, you better get out while I'm gone."

Silence and more silence.

"I'm going," she said, leaving the room, looking back. Did the bed tremble?

She went.

16.

THE CARREN COUNTY courthouse was a turn-of-the-century sandstone building, set in the middle of the town square. A decaying bandstand stood on the east side of the building, facing a street of weary clapboard buildings. A bronze statue of a Union soldier, covered with pigeon droppings, guarded the west side with a trapdoor rifle. On the front lawn, three old men, all wearing jackets and hats, sat alone on separate wooden benches.

A squirrel ignored them, and Lucas and Connell walked past them, the old men as unmoving, unblinking as the Union soldier.

George Beneteau's office was in the back, off a parking lot sheltered by tall, spreading oaks. Lucas and Connell were pa.s.sed through a steel security door and led by a secretary through a warren of fabric part.i.tions to Beneteau's corner office.

Beneteau was a lanky man in his middle thirties, wearing a gray suit with a string tie under a large Adam's apple, and a pair of steel-rimmed aviator sungla.s.ses. He had a prominent nose and small hairline scars under his eyes: old sparring cuts. A tan Stetson sat on his desk in-basket. He showed even, white teeth in a formal smile.

"Miz Connell, Chief Davenport," he said. He stood to shake hands with Lucas. "That was a mess over in Lincoln County last winter."

The observation sounded like a question. "We're not looking for trouble," Lucas said. He touched the scar on his throat. "We just want to talk to Joe Hillerod."

Beneteau sat down and steepled his fingers. Connell was wearing sungla.s.ses that matched his. "We know that Joe Hillerod crossed paths with our killer. At least crossed paths."

Beneteau peered at her from behind the steeple. "You're saying that he might be the guy?"

"That's a possibility."

"Huh." He sat forward, picked up a pencil, tapped the pointed end on his desk pad. "He's a mean sonof.a.gun, Joe is. He might kill a woman if he thought he had reason . . . but he might need a reason."

Lucas said, "You don't think he's nuts."

"Oh, he's nuts all right," Beneteau said, tapping the pencil. "Maybe not nuts like your man is. But who knows? There might be something in him that likes to do it."

"You're sure he's around?" Lucas asked.

"Yes. But we're not sure exactly where," Beneteau said. His eyes drifted up to a county road map pinned to one wall. "His truck's been sitting in the same slot since you called yesterday, down at his brother's place. We've been doing some drive-bys."

Lucas groaned inwardly. If they'd been seen . . .

Beneteau picked up his thought and shook his head, did his thin dry smile. "The boys did it in their private cars, only two of them, a couple of hours apart. Their handsets are scrambled. We're okay."

Lucas nodded, relieved. "Good."

"On the phone last night, you mentioned those .50-caliber barrels you found in that fire. The Hillerods have some machine tools down in that junkyard," Beneteau said.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." Beneteau stood up, looked at a poster for a missing girl, then turned back to Lucas. "I thought we oughta take along a little artillery. Just in case."

THEY WENT IN a caravan, two sheriff's cars and an unmarked panel truck, snaking along a series of blacktop and gravel roads, past rough backwoods farms. Mangy cud-chewing cows, standing in patchy pastures marked by weather-bleached tree stumps, turned their white faces to watch the caravan pa.s.s.

"They call it a salvage yard, but the local rednecks say it's really a distribution center for stolen Harley-Davidson parts," Beneteau said. He was driving, his wrist draped casually over the top of the steering wheel. "Supposedly, a guy rips off a good clean bike down in the Cities or over in Milwaukee or even Chicago, rides it up here overnight. They strip it down in an hour or so, get rid of anything identifiable, and drop the biker up at the Duluth bus station. Proving that would be a lot of trouble. But you hear about midnight bikers coming through here, and the bikes never going back out."

"Where do they sell the parts?" Connell asked from the backseat.

"Biker rallies, I guess," Beneteau said, looking at her in the rearview mirror, "Specialty shops. There's a strong market in old Harleys, and the older parts go for heavy cash, if they're clean." They topped a rise and looked down at a series of rambling sheds facing the road, with a pile of junk behind a gray board fence. Three cars, two bikes, and two trucks faced the line of buildings. None of the vehicles were new. "That's it," Beneteau said, leaning on the accelerator. "Let's try to get inside quick."

Lucas glanced back at Connell. She had one hand in her purse. Gun. He slipped a hand under his jacket and touched the b.u.t.t of his .45. "Let's take it easy in there," he said casually. "They're not really suspects."

"Yet," said Connell.

Beneteau's eyes flicked up to the rearview mirror again. "Got your game face on," he said to Connell in his casual drawl.

They clattered across a small board bridge over a drainage ditch and Lucas hooked the door handle with the fingers of his right hand as Beneteau drove them into the junkyard's parking lot. The other car went a hundred feet down the road, to the end of the lot, while the panel truck hooked in short. There were four deputies in the van, armed with M-16s. If somebody starting pecking at them with a fifty, the M-16s would hose them down.

The gravel parking lot was stained with oil and they slid the last few feet, raising a cloud of dust. "Go," Beneteau grunted.

Lucas was out a half second before Connell, headed toward the front door. He went straight through, not quite running, his hand on his belt buckle. Two men were standing at the counter, one in front of it, one in back, looking at a fat, greasy parts catalog. Startled, the man behind the counter backed up, said, "Hey," and Lucas pushed through the swinging counter gate and flashed his badge with his left hand and said, "Police."

"Cops," the counterman shouted. He wore a white T-s.h.i.+rt covered with oil stains, and jeans with a heavy leather wallet sticking out of his back pocket, attached to his belt with a bra.s.s chain. The man at the front of the counter, bearded, wearing a railway engineer's hat, backed away, hands in front of him. Connell was behind him.

"You Joe?" Lucas asked, crowding the counterman. The counterman stood his ground, and Lucas shoved his chest, backing him up. An open doorway led away to Lucas's right, into the bowels of the buildings.

"That's Bob," Beneteau said, coming in. "How you doing, Bob?"

"What the f.u.c.k do you want, George?" Bob asked.

A cop out front yelled, "We got runners . . ." and Beneteau ran back out the door.

"Where's Joe?" Lucas asked, pus.h.i.+ng Bob.

"Who the f.u.c.k are you?"

"Keep them," Lucas said to Connell.

Connell pulled her pistol from her purse, a big stainless-steel Ruger wheelgun, held with both hands, the muzzle up.

"And for Christ's sake, don't shoot anybody this time, unless you absolutely have to," Lucas said hastily.

"You're no fun," Connell said. She dropped the muzzle of the gun toward Bob, who had taken a step back toward Lucas, and said, "Stand still or I'll punch a f.u.c.kin' hole right through your nose." Her voice was as cold as sleet, and Bob stopped.

Lucas freed his gun and went through the door into the back, pausing a second to let his eyes adjust to the gloom. The walls were lined with shelves, and a dozen freestanding metal parts racks stood between the door and the back wall. The racks were loaded with bike parts, fenders and tanks, wheels, stacks of Quaker State oil cans, coffee cans full of rusty nails, screws, and bolts. Two open cans of grease sat on the floor, and two open-topped fifty-five-gallon drums full of trash were at his elbow. A metal extrusion that might have been a go-cart cha.s.sis was propped against them. The only light came from small dirty windows on the back wall, and through a door at the back right. The whole place smelled of dust and oil.

Lucas started toward the door, gun barrel up, finger off the trigger. Then to the left, between a row of metal racks, he saw a scattering of white. Beyond it, an open door led into a phone booth-size bathroom, the brown-stained toilet directly in front of the door. He stepped toward the smear of white, which had broken out of a small plastic bag. Powder. Cocaine? He bent down, touched it, lifted his finger to his nose, sniffed it. Not c.o.ke. He thought about tasting it: for all he knew it was some kind of powdered bike cleaner, something like Drno. Put a tiny taste on his tongue anyway, got the instant acrid cut: speed.

"s.h.i.+t." The word was spoken almost next to his ear, and Lucas jumped. The rack beside him lurched and toppled toward him, boxes of odd metal parts sliding off the shelf. Something heavy and sharp sliced into his scalp as he put an arm out to brace the rack. He pushed the rack back, staggering, and a man bolted out from behind the next row, ran down to the right toward the door, and out.

Lucas, struggling with the rack, aware of a dampness in his hair, fought free and went after him. As he burst through the door into the light, he heard somebody yell and looked right, saw Beneteau standing in an open field, pointing. Lucas looked left, saw the man cutting toward the junkyard, and ran after him.

Lost him in the piles of trash. Old cars, mostly from the sixties; he spotted the front end of a '66 bottle-green Pontiac LeMans, just like the one he'd owned when he'd first been in uniform. Lucas stalked through the piles, taking his time: the guy couldn't have gone over the fence, he'd have made some noise. He moved farther in: wrecks with hand-painted numbers on their doors, victims of forgotten county-fair enduro races.

Heard a clank to his left, felt a wetness in his eyebrow. Reached up and touched it: blood. Whatever had fallen off the shelf had cut him, and he was bleeding fairly heavily. Didn't hurt much, he thought. He moved farther left, around a pile, around another pile. . . .

A thin biker in jeans, a smudged black T-s.h.i.+rt, and heavy boots looked up at the board fence around the yard. He was dark-complected, with a tan on top of that.

The man goggled at Lucas's b.l.o.o.d.y head. "Jesus, what happened to you?"

"You knocked some s.h.i.+t on me," Lucas said.

The man showed a pleased smile, then looked at the top of the fence. "I'd never make it," he said finally. He stepped back toward Lucas. "You gonna shoot me?"

"No, we just want to talk." Lucas slipped the pistol back in its holster.

"Yeah, right," the man said, showing his yellow teeth. Suddenly he was moving fast. "But I'm gonna kick your a.s.s first."

Lucas touched the b.u.t.t of his pistol as the man's long wild swing came in. He lifted his left hand, batted the fist over his shoulder, hooked a short punch into the biker's gut. The man had a stomach like an oak board. He grunted, took a step back, circled. "You can hit me all day in the f.u.c.kin' gut," he said. He'd made no attempt at Lucas's pistol.