Hidden Prey ld-15 Read online

  He'd been born in St. Louis County, in 1944; his wife was also from St. Louis County, born in 1945. Spivak's father had owned the bar before him. His father and mother had both been born in Mahnomen County, his father in 1912 and his mother in 1914; Mahnomen didn't have a regular vital-records registration at the time, and the birth certificates came from a Catholic hospital, which had since burned down.

  Spivak had served with the Eighth U.S. Army in peacetime Korea, from 1962 to 1964. He had been honorably discharged, though he'd received two article fifteens-administrative punishment-for drunkenness. He'd had money withheld from his paycheck in both cases, as fines.

  "Ain't shit," Reasons said, when they were done. "Nothing with NCIC, nothing with the sheriff. He did a little tearing around when he was a kid, went in the army, got out, got married and had kids, and runs a bar."

  "Maybe Nadya got something…"

  She hadn't: "We can't even find his phone number," she said. She was sitting in a high-backed chair looking at her laptop. Out the window, they could see a sailboat heading north into the lake. "He is delisted."

  "Unlisted," said Reasons.

  "We need phone books in Russia," she said. "Your phone books are outstanding in the whole world. Your Yellow Pages. I would cry to have Yellow Pages like this in Russia."

  Was she doing a tap dance, Lucas wondered, watching her eyes, or was this all there was? "So tomorrow, we go push on Spivak."

  They'd been together all day, and nobody mentioned dinner. After they agreed to meet in the morning, Lucas took the elevator down to his room, said good-bye to Reasons, and called home and talked to Weather and Sam.

  Weather said that the new garage door matched the other two perfectly, and that if he looked on page two of the Pioneer Press, he would see that the governor's daughter's boyfriend had been arrested for possession of a controlled substance after a party the two of them attended together, and there was a rumor around the university that the kid was taking the fall for the girl.

  "Probably wind up as the highway commissioner," Lucas said.

  "I just don't want you to get involved. I don't want you to have anything to do with it," Weather said. "I don't want you fixing anything."

  He promised he wouldn't.

  After he got off the phone, he went down to the lobby, bought both the St. Paul and Minneapolis newspapers, rode back up, and read them as he watched the evening news. Then, restless, he called Nadya's room to see if she wanted to get a bite. No answer.

  He cleaned up a bit, went back down, drove out to the mall, and spent an hour browsing through a bookstore, and then, with a half dozen magazines under his arm, did a walk around to see what was in the place, crossed the highway to an outdoor-sports shop, where he looked at guns and fishing equipment, and finally headed back to the hotel.

  He was suffering from the nothing-to-do, out-of-town blues. If there was nothing from Spivak the next day, he thought, and nothing obvious to do in the afternoon, he might zip back home for dinner. He could be back in two hours…

  He was watching a Seinfeld rerun and reading a Gray's Sporting Journal when his cell phone buzzed at him:

  "Lucas?" A male voice, hushed but intense.

  "Yeah?"

  "Listen, man, there's something weird going on here, and I don't know what the fuck to do," the words tumbling over each other. "I'm watching the guy's car, waiting for the bar to close, and it closes but he doesn't come out. All the lights go out except one in the back, and nothing's moving. So I get a plastic garbage can and I carry it over to the window and I stand on it and peek in, and the guy is standing on a six-pack of beer, bottles, with a rope around his neck and there's somebody in there with him. The guy's legs are shaking like crazy but the place has got a big fucking metal door on the back and there's no way I can kick it and if I go in through the front it'll be too late and I don't have a gun, it's back in my car…"

  "You mean right now?" Lucas asked.

  "I mean right fuckin' now. I'm still standing on this fuckin' trash can and I can see the guy standing there."

  "Don't move," Lucas said. "Just hang on, I'm going on the other phone."

  He had no phone numbers. He dialed 911 and when the operator came up, said, trying to remain calm and authoritative, "I'm Lucas Davenport. I'm an agent with the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. I've got an emergency up in Virginia, and I need the telephone number of the Virginia cops right now…"

  The operator said, "Please slow down, sir. You need the emergency number for Virginia? Can you describe the nature…?"

  "Give me the fuckin' number," Lucas shouted. "The emergency number for Virginia…"

  The woman tried to calm him again and he shouted her down and she transferred him to a supervisor, while, in his other ear, the male voice was saying, "What's going on, man? You got something coming?" and then the supervisor came up and said, "Can I help you?"

  In the end, he thought, it took him only a minute to get through to the Virginia cops: "I am an agent with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, my name is Lucas Davenport. Anthony Spivak at Spivak's Bar is being hanged in the back room of the bar and you have to get a couple of cars there RIGHT NOW."

  "Sir, tell me again who you are…"

  The cops got something going, and ten seconds later, in the cell phone, the male voice said, "He's out, there's a guy out the back and let me see, ah holy, I'm running…" Then the voice went away, but Lucas could hear a clunking, wrestling sound, and the male voice shouting something, then the cell phone apparently hit the floor, and Lucas got back on the other phone and shouted, "I've got a man in the bar, I've got a man in the bar, be careful with him, he's not armed, he's my man."

  The cell phone went out. Lucas dialed it, but got no answer. On the hotel phone, he shouted at the Virginia cop, "What's going on? I've lost my guy."

  "We're on the scene now, sir. Can you tell me your location? You said your name is Louis?"

  "Lucas Davenport. I'm in Duluth." He was trying to shout calmly. "I will be there in one hour. Call Rose Marie Roux, the commissioner of Public Safety. I will give you her home phone number and she will fill you in. I will be on my cell phone on the way up-here's the number…"

  When he was off the phone, he tried his man's cell phone again, got nothing. He thought about calling Nadya, decided against it, didn't have time to pick up Reasons. He'd call him from the road. He clipped on his. 45, picked up a jacket, and was at the door when the phone rang. "Shit." He went back, picked it up.

  A woman's high-pitched voice asked, "Is this Lucas Davenport?"

  "Yes. What is it?" He assumed it was the front desk, and he had no time for it.

  "Mary Wheaton, the lady who was murdered… she told me about it. She told me she saw the other man murder the Russian man, the story that was in the newspaper."

  The words confused him for a moment: Who the hell was this, and why was she bothering him? "What?"

  "She saw the murder of the Russian man. She told me about it, and I thought I should call."

  "Who is this?" A crank, he thought-but then, maybe not. There had been a second woman.

  "I'm not going to tell you. For one thing, you sound mean."

  "I'm in a hurry," Lucas said. "Just tell me what she told you."

  "You really sound mean…"

  The woman was frightened and, Lucas thought, he did sound mean. He took a breath, and said, "I'm sorry. You caught me at a really bad moment. What did Mrs. Wheaton tell you?"

  "She said she was down by the grain elevators, in some weeds, right by the lake. Watching the lake. She was drinking, she had a bottle, and she heard a man walking toward her so she stayed hidden. The men down there can be really tough. So she was hiding down there in the weeds, and she heard some shots. She thought they were shots, but they were quiet…"

  "She was probably right, the gun may have had a sound suppressor on it," Lucas said, as softly as he could, trying to be agreeable. He was still burning off the adrenaline from the cell-phone call.
"What did she see?"

  "She said one man shot the other man, and she made a noise. When she made the noise, the man with the gun saw her, and she ran away, and he chased her. She thinks he shot his gun at her and missed, and then she fell down and he caught her, and he pointed his gun and tried to shoot her, but the gun didn't work. She had a knife and she slashed at him because she was afraid that he might try to strangle her or something. He ran away and got in his car and drove off."

  "Where was his car?"

  There was a second of calculation, Lucas thought, and then: "She said it was over by the street, over by the Goodwill store."

  "Do you know what she was drinking? What kind of bottle it was?"

  More calculation: "No, she didn't say, but I imagine it was an inexpensive wine. She didn't drink so much hard liquor."

  "I didn't even know she drank," Lucas said. "I thought she was more of a schizophrenic. I didn't think she had an alcohol problem."

  "Oh, she drank," the woman said. "Wine, mostly. Sometimes, when she was on her meds, it made her crazy. Crazier."

  "Did she tell you what the man looked like? The man with the gun?"

  "He looked like a college boy, but he might have been older than that. It was dark, and she couldn't see him that well. He was blond and not really tall, but a little tall. Six feet. Strong-looking. She thought he was an American because before she cut him, he said, 'Shit,' in English, just like an American would."

  "She cut him," Lucas said. "Was she sure?"

  "Pretty sure. Not positive."

  "Blond, strong, American. You didn't see the car, see what make it was?"

  "No, uh, she didn't say anything about that."

  "Anything that you can think of that she said, that might be of more use? Anything about the guy? It's really important, because he's still out there and we think he's nuts."

  "She didn't say too much… just that thing about how the shots weren't too loud."

  "Did she say what she took off the body?"

  "Nothing like that," the woman said, and Lucas heard the lie in her voice.

  "How did you find me?"

  "I thought about where a state policeman would stay in Duluth, and called, and they switched me up to your room."

  Smart enough, Lucas thought. He took the shot: "Listen, miss. We know that Mary Wheaton was killed by mistake. We know there was another woman down there. I mean, we know it was you. We would really like to talk to you. For your own protection. We found the place you were staying…"

  She said, frightened, "I'm going to hang up now."

  "No, no, no, wait, wait, wait. Tell me one thing. Please. Did you-did she-shit, however you want to say it, did somebody recover a computer from the dead man? And what happened to it? It could be critical."

  Another pause, then: "She gave it to me. She was afraid to sell it in Duluth, because it was full of Russian. So I took it down to Minneapolis and I sold it. I needed money to get back to Los Angeles."

  "Who did you sell it to?"

  "A man, a young man, a student, maybe, at the university."

  "What'd you do, just walk around asking people? Did you have a contact?"

  "I had a contact. This is a man who… buys things."

  "Okay. Tell me this, then. Please. I'm really not mean, I'm just anxious, I don't want you to hang up before I can ask these questions…"

  "You sound mean," she said again. She said, "I'm outa here. I'm going to LA. Don't bother to look for me."

  "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Lucas said urgently. "Tell me, this young man, do you have a name? Can you tell me what he looks like?"

  "His name is George. He is blond and he's good-looking. He has a square jaw and blue eyes and a short haircut; he puts gel in his hair. He was wearing one of those football jackets, you know, the kind that is wool with leather sleeves, red wool with white leather sleeves."

  "When did you sell the computer? How long has he had it?"

  "Two days… I sold it to him the night before last."

  "Where?"

  "At Moos Tower, the medical building. There's a cafeteria in the basement. He had a table. There are two or three guys who buy stuff there. Stolen stuff. In Moos Tower."

  "Can you…?"

  "I'm going to hang up now. I'm afraid you're tracing this call."

  "No, no, please…"

  But she was gone. And maybe, he thought, to LA, where they'd never find her.

  "Ah, boy…"

  Hoping she'd call back, Lucas left the room phone open, got on his cell phone and called the duty man at BCA offices in St. Paul. "The call would have gone into the main desk, and they transferred it up to my room: see if you can pin it down. Where it came from-we need the number."

  Then he made another call, and a woman answered. "Marcy? Lucas."

  She was happy to hear from him. "Hey, man, you haven't called for weeks. What's going on?"

  Lieutenant Marcy Sherrill was head of the Intelligence Unit for the Minneapolis police, and a protege. He sketched in quickly what had happened, and said, "So I've got a problem. Is there any chance that you could put somebody over at the U, and see if you can figure out who this guy is? I'll come down and get him, but I need to get something started."

  "I'll put somebody over there right now-it's a little late, there may not be too many people to talk to, but I can have somebody there in twenty minutes."

  "Thanks, sweetie. How's the love life?"

  "We gotta talk. Do you know Don Cary?"

  "Yeah-but he was married the last time I checked." Lucas looked at his watch. Time was running…

  "Not anymore," Marcy said. "His wife, you know, was a computer freak. She said, 'Fuck Minnesota,' and took off for California. He wasn't invited. The divorce was final last week."

  "You might be moving on him a little too quick."

  "Actually, he started mooning around here two months ago, and we've gone out for a lunch a few times. He was pretty much over her before she left… The marriage had been in trouble since about week one. He'd like to have a kid or two."

  "He's a pretty good guy, for a lawyer. He plays a mean game of lawyer-league basketball," Lucas said. "Marcy, we gotta talk, and I gotta run, right now. I gotta."

  "Keep your ass down; I'll get back."

  He hung up, looked at the phone for five seconds, ten seconds, willing a call from the witness woman. Nothing; he tossed his keys up in the air, caught them, and took off, listening for the ring of the telephone until the door banged shut behind him.

  Chapter 9

  Lucas kept a police flasher in the back of the truck, spent the ten seconds necessary to stick it to the roof of the car and plug it into the cigarette lighter, and took off, running at speed up the hill, through a couple of red lights, and out the back side of Duluth toward Virginia. As soon as he got free of traffic, he called Reasons, but got his wife.

  "He is not here just now," she said, in an accent much like Nadya's. "He has a cell phone…"

  Lucas took the number and redialed. Reasons came up after three rings, and Lucas said, "We got a problem, man."

  He explained, and when he was done, Reasons said, "You want me to come?"

  "I don't know what you'd do. The place is overrun by cops already, but I thought you oughta know."

  "Jesus, I oughta come." Reasons sounded anxious. "But my wife… she's been giving me some shit about being gone all the time, and I was just on my way home."

  "Go home then. I'll fill you in tomorrow."

  "Thanks. If anything more comes up, let me know."

  Lucas fumbled around in his pocket, found the numbers he'd scribbled down for the Virginia cops, and dialed in again. As he did, he looked down at the speedometer: he was pushing the car along at ninety-five, and the car didn't like it. The Virginia cops came up and Lucas identified himself: "What happened at Spivak's? Is my guy okay?"

  "I'm sorry, sir, but I can't release any information on that," the woman said. Her voice was cool, almost bored. "It's an ongoing incident. If you c
ould call back in an hour…"

  "Jesus Christ, was anybody hurt? I'm with the fuckin' BCA." He was talking too loud again.

  "Sir, this is being recorded…"

  "Go ahead and record it, you moron!" he shouted. "I'm trying to find out if my guy is okay. What'd you do, shoot him?"

  "Sir…"

  He hung up, tried his man's phone, and got an answering-machine recording. He dialed Rose Marie Roux at her home in Minneapolis, was told by her husband that she was at a concert with a girlfriend. "Aaron Copland, the cowboy shit. I took a pass."

  Frustrated, Lucas dropped the phone on the passenger seat and concentrated on driving. But he couldn't stand it, and ten minutes later, he picked up the phone and called Virginia again. Same woman: "Sir, I've reported this incident to my supervisor. I cannot give you any information…"

  Lucas clicked off and pushed the car until it wouldn't push anymore, and instead, whimpered with the wind and tire noise. The side of the highway, for all practical purposes, was empty, the houses a half mile apart, and he was flying through a tunnel carved out by his not-especially-bright headlights. He got off at the first Virginia exit, throttled back to sixty as he went through town and still squealed his tires on the turn onto the main drag.

  Two cop cars were parked outside Spivak's, light bars turning, a cop standing next to one of them. A silver civilian car was double-parked beside the cop cars. Probably another city car, Lucas thought. He dumped the Acura across the street from the bar, killed the engine, and headed for the bar entrance at a trot.

  A cop was writing on a clipboard, using his car hood as a desktop. When Lucas started across the street, he looked up and called, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, where you goin' there?" and Lucas held up his ID and said, "BCA-you got one of my guys." He was at the door and the cop yelled, "Hey, wait a minute, buddy," and then Lucas was inside, moving through the bar into the back. The cop was behind him, and yelled, "Hey! Hey!"

  Then Lucas was through the bar and past Setters and Pointers and into the back, into the party room where they'd interviewed Spivak. Three uniformed cops and two guys in civilian clothes were talking. Lucas's man, Micky Andreno, was perched on a chair to the side, legs crossed, hands cuffed. "You all right?" Lucas asked.