Rules of Prey (29 page)

“Come on. Let’s do it.” Sloan was leaning in the doorway.

“No fuckin’ point, man,” Lucas said. He felt lethargic, emotionally frozen. “We know what he’s hiding. He’s worried about his reputation. He ripped off the Rices and he’s afraid somebody will find out.”

“How do you feel?”

“What?”

“How do you feel? Since the Fuckup?”

Lucas grinned in spite of himself. The disaster at McGowan’s had been dubbed the Fuckup. Everybody from the mayor to the janitors was using it. Lucas suspected everybody in town was. “I feel like shit.”

“So come on,” Sloan urged. “We’ll go over and jack that mother
up.
That ought to clear out your glands.”

It was better than sitting in the office. Lucas lurched to his feet. “All right. But I’ll drive. Afterward we can go out and get something decent to eat.”

“You buying?”

The shop assistant went into the back room to get Nester, who was not happy to see them.

“I thought you understood my position,” he said, heading for the telephone. “This has now become harassment. I’m going to call my attorney first thing, rather than listen to you at all.”

“That’s up to you, Nester,” Lucas said, baring his teeth.

“It might not be a bad idea, in fact. We’re trying to decide whether to bust you on felony fraud or to let Mrs. Rice’s attorney handle it as a civil matter. You want to be stubborn,
we’ll put the cuffs on and drag you downtown and book you right now.”

The shop assistant’s head was swinging back and forth like a spectator’s at a tennis match. Nester glanced at him, his hand on the telephone, and said, “I have no idea what you’re speaking of.”

“Sure you do,” Lucas said. “We’re talking about netsukes that might be worth a quarter-million dollars, that you were asked to valuate for insurance purposes. You told the owner that they were virtually worthless and bought them for a song.”

“I never,” Nester sputtered. “I was never asked to valuate those netsukes. They were offered for sale and I paid the asking price. That is all.”

“That’s not what Mrs. Rice says. She’s willing to take it to court.”

“Do you think a jury would believe some . . . some
washerwoman
instead of me? It is my word against hers—”

“You wouldn’t have a chance,” Sloan said in his soapiest voice. “Not a chance. Here’s a guy who fought for his country and brought home some souvenirs, not knowing what he had. Then he goes through life, a good guy, pushing a broom, and finally dies of cancer that slowly eats its way up his body, killing him inch by inch. He wants to sell whatever personal possessions he can, to help his wife after he’s dead. She’s aging herself and they’re living hand to mouth. Probably eating dog food—I can guarantee they will be, by the time their lawyer gets done with it.”

“Maybe cat food. Tuna parts,” Lucas chipped in.

“And they’ve got this treasure trove, without knowing it,” Sloan continued. “Could be a happy ending, just like in a TV movie. But what happens? Along comes this slick-greaser dealer in objets d’art who gives them five hundred dollars for a quarter-million bucks’ worth of art. Do you really think a jury would side with you?”

“If you do, you’re living in a dream world,” Lucas said. “I’ve got some friends in the press, you know? When I feed
them this story, you’ll be more famous than the maddog killer.”

“That’s not a bad idea, you know?” Sloan said, looking sideways at Lucas as he picked up the hint. “We haul him in, book him for fraud, and put out the story. It could take some of the heat off—”

“You better come back to my office,” said Nester, now deathly pale.

They followed him through a narrow doorway into the back. A storeroom protected with a steel-mesh fence took up most of the space, with a small but elegantly appointed office tucked away to one side. Nester lowered himself behind the desk, fussed with calendar pages for a moment, then said, “What can we do about this?”

“We could arrest you for fraud, but we don’t really want to. We’re worried about other things,” Lucas said, lowering himself into an antique chair. “If you just tell us what we want to know, we’ll suggest that Mrs. Rice get a lawyer and work this out in civil court. Or perhaps you could negotiate a settlement.”

“I
talked
to this person,” Nester protested, nodding at Sloan. “I told him everything that happened between Mr. Rice and myself.”

“I had a very strong feeling that you were holding back,” Sloan said. “I’m not usually wrong.”

“Well. Frankly, I thought if you learned about the price paid for the netsukes, which was the price Mr. Rice asked—let the seller beware—that you might feel it was . . . inappropriate. I was not hiding it, I was merely being discreet.”

Lucas grimaced. “If you had told us that, or even suggested it, we wouldn’t have hassled you,” he said. “We’re trying to trace the gun Rice had. We’re running down everybody who talked to him while he had it.”

“I never saw a gun and he never mentioned a gun or offered to sell one,” Nester said. “I didn’t see anyone else while I was there, not even Mrs. Rice. We didn’t talk. I went in and said I would be interested in looking at the netsukes. He backed his wheelchair up, got them from a box and gave
them to me, and went back to his reading. I asked how much, he said five hundred dollars. I gave him a check and left. We didn’t exchange more than fifty words.”

“That doesn’t sound like Rice,” Sloan said. “He was supposed to be quite a talker.”

“Not with me,” Nester said.

Lucas looked at Sloan and shook his head.

“I think because he was so involved with his will,” Nester continued. “He had to read it and sign it before his attorney picked it up.”

“His attorney?” Lucas asked. He turned to Sloan. “His attorney?”

Sloan started paging through his workbook.

“He said his attorney was on his way,” Nester said, looking from one to the other. “Does that help?”

“We don’t show any attorney,” Sloan said.

Lucas felt his throat tighten. “Did he say what his attorney’s name was?”

“No, nothing like that. Or I don’t remember,” Nester said.

“We may want to talk to you some more,” Lucas said, standing up. “Come on, Sloan.”

Sloan pumped a quarter into the pay phone. Mary Rice picked it up on the first ring.

“Your husband’s will, Mrs. Rice, do you have a copy of it there? Could you get it? I’ll wait.”

Lucas stood beside him, looking up and down the street, bouncing on the balls of his feet, calculating. A lawyer. It would fit. But this was ridiculous. This would be too easy. Sloan shifted from foot to foot, waiting.

“Did you look in the top drawer of your dresser?” Sloan said finally. “Remember you told me once you’d put stuff there . . . Yeah, I can wait.”

“What is she doing?” Lucas blurted. He wanted to rip the phone away from Sloan and shout the woman into abject obedience.

“Can’t find it,” Sloan said.

“Let’s run down there and shake down the house or—”

Sloan put up a hand and went back to the phone. “You did? Good. Look at the last page. Is the lawyer’s name there? No, not the firm, the lawyer. There should be a signed name with the same name typed underneath . . . . Okay, spell it for me. L-o-u-i-s V-u-l-l-i-o-n. Thank you. Thank you.”

He wrote the name in his book, Lucas looking over his shoulder. “Never heard of him,” Lucas said, shaking his head.

“Another call,” Sloan said. He took a small black book from his shirt pocket, opened it, found a number, and dug in his pocket for a quarter. He came up empty.

“Got a quarter?” he asked Lucas.

Lucas groped in his pockets. “No.”

“Shit, we gotta get change . . .”

“Wait, wait, we can use my calling card, just dial zero. Here, give me the phone. Who is this, anyway?”

“Chick I know up at the state Public Safety.”

Lucas dialed the number and passed the receiver to Sloan when it started to ring. Sloan asked for Shirley.

“This is Sloan,” he said, “over at Minneapolis PD. How are you? . . . Yeah. Yeah. Great. Listen, I got a hot one, could you run it for me? . . . Right now? . . . Thanks. It’s Louis Vullion.” He spelled it for her. He waited a moment, then said, “Yeah, give me the whole thing.”

He listened, said, “Aw, shit,” and, “Whoa,” and, “Hey, thanks, honey.” He hung up the phone and turned to Lucas.

“Yeah?”

“Louis Vullion. White male. Twenty-seven. Five ten, one ninety, blue eyes. And some good news and some bad news. What do you want first?”

“The bad news,” Lucas said quickly.

“Sparks is positive he had dark hair. He doesn’t. He’s a fuckin’ redhead.”

Lucas stared at Sloan for a moment, licked his lips. “Red hair?”

“That’s what his license says.”

“That’s fuckin’ wonderful,” Lucas whispered, his face like stone.

“What?” Sloan was puzzled.

“Carla was sure he was light-complexioned. She was positive. You don’t get anybody lighter than a redhead. Sparky was sure he had dark hair. I couldn’t figure it out. But you put a redhead under those mercury-vapor lights down on Hennepin at night . . .” He pointed a finger at Sloan’s chest, prompting him.

“Son of a bitch. It might look dark,” Sloan said, suddenly excited.

“Fuck
might,
” Lucas said. “It
would
look dark. Especially from a distance. It fits; it’s like a poem.” He licked his lips again. “If that was the bad news, what’s the good news?”

Sloan put up a finger. “Registered owner,” he said, “of a midnight-blue Ford Thunderbird. He bought it three months ago.”

Daniel’s door was closed. His secretary, Linda, was typing letters.

“Who’s in there?” Lucas asked, pointing at the door. Sloan was standing on his heels.

“Pettinger from accounting,” Linda said. “Lucas, wait, you can’t go in there . . .”

Lucas pushed into the office, with Sloan trailing self-consciously behind. Daniel, startled, looked up in surprise, saw their faces, and turned to the accountant.

“I’m going to have to throw you out, Dan,” he said. “I’ll get back this afternoon.”

“Uh, sure.” The accountant picked up a stack of computer printouts, looked curiously at Lucas and Sloan, and walked out.

Daniel pushed the door shut. “Who is he?” he rasped.

“A lawyer,” said Lucas. “A lawyer named Louis Vullion.”

“Where is he?” Lucas spoke into a handset as he pulled to the curb a block from the maddog’s apartment. The five-year-old Ford Escort fit seamlessly into the neighborhood.

“Crossing the bridge, headed south. Looks like he might be on his way to the Burnsville Mall. We’re just north of there now.”

There was a six-unit net around the maddog, twelve cops, seven women, five men. They followed him from his apartment to a parking garage not far from his office. They watched him into the office, through a solitary lunch at a downtown deli. He was limping a bit, they said, and was favoring one leg. From the fall into the ditch? They watched him back to the office, through a trip to the courthouse, up to the clerk’s office, back to his office.

While he worked through the afternoon, an electronics technician fastened a small but powerful radio transmitter under the bumper of his car. When the maddog left the office at night, the watchers followed him back to his car. He returned to his apartment, apparently ate dinner, and then left again. Heading south.

“He’s gone into the mall parking lot.”

Lucas glanced at his watch. If the maddog turned around and drove back to his apartment as quickly as he could, it would still take twenty minutes. That was almost enough time.

“Out of his car, going inside,” the radio burped. The net would be on the ground now, moving around him.

Lucas turned the radio off and stuck it in his jacket pocket.
He did not want police calls burping out of his pocket at an inopportune moment. The power lockpick and a disposable flashlight were under the seat. He retrieved them, shoved the flashlight in another pocket, and slipped the pick beneath his coat, under his arm.

He got out of the car, turned his collar up, and hurried along the sidewalk, his back to the wind, the last dry leaves of fall scurrying along by his ankles.

The maddog lived in a fourplex, each unit two stories with an attic, each occupying one vertical corner of what otherwise looked like a Victorian mansion. Each of the four apartments had a small one-car attached garage and a tiny front porch with a short railing for the display of petunias and geraniums. The flowerpots stood empty and cold.

Lucas walked directly to the maddog’s apartment, turned in at his entry walk, and hurried up the steps. He pressed the doorbell, once, twice, listened for the phone. It was still ringing. He glanced around, took out the power pick, and pushed it into the lock. The pick made an ungodly loud clatter, but it was efficient. The door popped open, then stopped as it hit the end of a safety chain. The maddog had gone out through the garage, and that door would be automatically locked.

Lucas swore, groped in his pocket, and pulled out a board full of thumbtacks and a couple of rubber bands. Glancing around again, he saw nothing but empty street, and he pushed the door open until it hit the end of the chain. Reaching in as far as he could, he pushed a thumbtack into the wood on the back of the door, with the rubber band beneath it. Then he stretched the rubber band until he could loop it over the knob on the door chain. When he eased the door shut, the rubber band contracted and pulled the chain-knob to the end of its channel. With a couple of shakes, it fell out.

“Hey, Louis, what’s happening?” Lucas called as he pushed the door open. There was no response. He whistled for a dog. Nothing. He pushed the door shut, turned on the hall light, and pried the thumbtack out of the door. The hole was imperceptible. He took out the handset, turned it on, and called the surveillance crew.

“Where is he?”

“Just went into a sporting-goods store. He’s looking at jackets.”

Lucas thumbed the set to the monitor position and quickly checked the apartment for any obvious indications that Vullion was the maddog. As he passed the ringing telephone, he lifted it off the hook and then dropped it back on, silencing it.

In a quick survey of the first floor he found a utility room with the water heater, washer and dryer, and a small built-in workbench with a drawer half-full of inexpensive tools. A door in the utility room led out to the garage. He opened it, turned on the light, and looked around. A small snow-blower, a couple of snow shovels, and a stack of newspapers packaged for disposal in brown shopping bags. If he had time, he would stop back and go through the papers. With luck, he might find one that had been cut to make the messages left on the maddog’s victims’ bodies. There was nothing else of interest.

He shut the garage door, walked through the tiny kitchen, opening and closing cabinet doors as he passed through, poked his head into the living room, checked a small half-bath and a slightly larger office space with an IBM computer and a few lawbooks.

The second floor was divided between two bedrooms and a large bathroom. One of the bedrooms was furnished; the other was used as storage space. In the storage room he found the maddog’s luggage, empty, an electronic keyboard which looked practically unused, and an inexpensive weight bench with a set of amateur weights. He checked the edges of the weights. Like the keyboard, they appeared practically untouched. Vullion was a man with unconsummated interests . . .

A battered couch sat in one corner, along with three boxes full of magazines, a
Playboy
collection that appeared to go back a dozen years or more. He left the storeroom and walked to the other bedroom.

In the ceiling of the hallway between the two bedrooms was an entry panel for the attic, with a steel handle attached
to it. Lucas pulled down on the handle, and a lightweight ladder folded down into the hallway. He walked up a few steps, stuck his head into the attic, and flashed the light around. The attic was divided among the four apartments with thin sheets of plywood. Vullion’s space was empty. He backed out, pushed the ladder with its attached door back into place, and took out the handset.

“Where is he?”

“Still in the store.”

Time to work.

Lucas put the radio back in his pocket, took a miniature tape recorder from the other, thumbed it on, and went into the bedroom.

“Bedroom,” he said. “Closet. Sport coat, forty-two regular. Suit, forty-two regular. Pants, waist thirty-six. Shoes. Nike Airs, blue, bubble along outer sole. No Reeboks . . . .

“Bedroom dresser . . . lubricated Trojan prophylactics, box of twelve, seven missing . . . .

“Office,” he said. “Bill from University of Minnesota Law Alumni Association. Federal tax returns, eight years. Minnesota, Minnesota, Minnesota, Minnesota, Minnesota, Texas, Texas, Texas. Shows address in Houston, Texas, under name Louis Vullion.

“Computer files, all law stuff and correspondence, opening correspondence, all business . . . .

“Kitchen. Under sink. Bag of onions, no potatoes . . .”

Lucas went methodically through the apartment looking for anything that would directly associate Vullion with the killings. Except for the Nike Airs, there was nothing. But the indirect evidence piled up: the life in Texas before the year at the University of Minnesota law school, the clothes that said his size was right, the prophylactics . . .

“Where is he?”

“Looking at shoes.”

The lack of direct evidence was infuriating. If Vullion had kept souvenirs of the kills, if Lucas had found a box of surgeon’s gloves in association with a box of Kotex, with a roll of tape next to them . . . or if the kitchen table had been
littered with the shreds of a newspaper that one of his messages had been cut from . . .

If he had kept those things, they could find a way to get a warrant and take him. But there was none of it. Standing arms akimbo, Lucas looked around the unnaturally neat living room, and then realized: it was unnaturally neat.

“We scared the cocksucker and he cleaned the place out,” Lucas said aloud. If they had talked to Nester the previous week, before the incident at McGowan’s . . . No point in thinking about it. He started to turn out of the living room, when the videocassette recorder caught his eye. There were no tapes in evidence, but an empty tape carton sat beside the television. He reached down, turned the machine on, and punched the eject button. After a minute’s churning, the VCR produced a tape.

“Where is he?”

“Leaving the shoe store.”

Lucas turned on the television and started the tape. It was blank. He stopped it, backed it up, ran it again, and was startled when his own face popped up on the screen.

“God damn, the interview,” Lucas muttered to himself. The camera cut to Carla. He watched the interview through to the end, waited until the screen went blank, and turned off the recorder and the television.

What little doubt he had had disappeared with the video recording. He walked back to the bedroom, lifted the bedspread, and pushed his arm between the mattress and box springs. Nothing.

He dipped back in his jacket pocket and took out an envelope and shook out the pictures. Lewis, Brown, Wheatcroft, the others. Handling the photos by their edges, he pushed them under the mattress as far as he could reach. A thorough search would find them.

When it was done, he straightened the bedspread and began moving out of the apartment, working as methodically on his way out as he had on the way in. Everything in place. Everything checked. All lights out. He peered out at the sidewalk. Nobody there. He put the chain back on the front door
and went into the garage. He took ten minutes to check the newspapers. None were shredded. He restacked the bundles as he’d found them, and let himself out through the garage door.

Back on the sidewalk, he walked briskly away. He had almost reached the Ford Escort when the monitor beeped.

“He’s out of the mall, headed toward his car. Three and five stay on the ground, lead cars saddle up now . . . .”

Lucas and Daniel sat alone in Daniel’s dimly lit office, looking at each other through a yellow pool of light cast by a desk lamp. “So even if we got in, we wouldn’t find anything,” Daniel concluded.

“I couldn’t swear to that, but it looks to me like he cleaned the place out. He may have hidden something—I didn’t have enough time to really tear the place apart,” Lucas said. “But I didn’t find anything conclusive. The Nikes are right, the rubbers are right, his size is right, the car is right. But you know and I know that we could find that combination in fifty people out there.”

“Fifty people who are also lawyers and hang around the courthouse and have a Texas accent and would get a gun from Rice?”

“But we’ve got no direct evidence that he got the gun from Rice. And all the other stuff is real thin. You’ve got to believe that he’d get the best attorney around, and a good attorney would cut us to pieces.”

“How about voice analysis on the tapes?”

“You know what the courts think of that.”

“But it’s another thing.”

“Yeah. I know. It’s tempting . . .”

“But?”

“But if we keep watching him, we should get him. He didn’t get his kill. He’s scared now, but if he’s compelled to kill, he’ll be going back out. Sooner or later. I’d bet in the next week. This time, we won’t lose him. We’ll get him entering some place and he’ll have all that shit with him, the Kotex and the potato and the gloves. We’ll have him cold.”

“I’ll talk to the county attorney. I’ll tell him what we have now and what we might get. See what he says. But basically, I think you’re right. It’s too thin to risk.”

Surveillance posts were set up in an apartment across the street from the maddog’s and one house down; and behind and two houses down.

“It was the best we could do, and it ain’t bad,” the surveillance chief said. “We can see both doors and all windows. With the freeway on the south, he can only get out of the neighborhood to the north, and we’re north of him. And he ain’t going to see us anyway.”

“What’s that glow? Is he reading in bed?”

“Night-light, we think,” the surveillance chief said.

Lucas nodded. He recalled seeing one in the bedroom but couldn’t say so. “He’s trying to keep away the nightmares,” he said instead.

“He’d have them if anybody did,” said the surveillance chief. “Are you going to work a regular schedule with us?”

“I’ll be here every night,” Lucas said. “If he breaks off his regular work pattern during the day, I want you to beep me. I’ll come running. He hasn’t ever hit anybody in the early morning, so I’ll head home after he goes to bed. Get some sleep. I’ll check with the surveillance team first thing in the morning.”

“Stay close. When it goes down, it could go fast.”

“Yeah. I was at the Fuckup, remember?”

Lucas looked out the window at the maddog’s apartment, at the steady dim glow from the second floor. This time there wouldn’t be a fuckup.