Gathering Prey Page 19

  “Got it.” Laurent rang off, and Lucas ambled down the field, twenty or thirty yards in front of the woman. She was moving a bit faster than he was, and he slowed enough that she’d catch him about the time she got to the car. As he came up to the car, he glanced back and saw Laurent moving up on the woman. Lucas angled toward the car. From where he was, she’d walk down the far side of it; he touched the call button on his phone, and Laurent said, “Yeah?”

  “Follow her as she goes around the car. I’ll be on the other side, we’ll have her between us. Roll the patrol car.”

  The woman never saw them until they were right there. She popped the trunk lid, and Laurent came up beside her, and Lucas slightly behind her. The cop car was already rolling up, and Laurent said, “Excuse me, miss,” and when she looked up, he showed her his badge and said, “I’m the Barron County sheriff, and you’re under arrest. Put your hands on the trunk lid, please.”

  She sputtered, “What? What? What did I do?”

  She tried to back away, but bumped into Lucas, who said, “Put your hands on the trunk lid, please.”

  She put her hands up on the trunk lid as the patrol car stopped directly behind her and the driver got out. Laurent quickly patted her down, and then the deputy cuffed her as a crowd started to congeal down around the squad car.

  A woman called, “What’d she do?”

  “She escaped from the hospital,” Laurent said. “She’s a nurse, she’s got the Ebola virus. We’re trying to keep her away from contact with other people. We don’t think she’s really a danger, so don’t be worried. Well, not too worried.”

  The crowd thinned, and the cuffed woman said, “I do not, I do not—”

  Lucas said, “They all say that,” to the crowd, and to the woman, “Do what the doctor says. We’re trying to help you.”

  The uniformed cop read her rights from a recital card—more mumbled than read, Lucas thought—and five seconds later, she was in the back of the patrol car, on her way out of the park. Lucas and Laurent followed, leaving the reserves behind to watch the park, and keep an eye on the woman’s two clown-faced friends.

  • • •

  THE UNIFORMED COP had been told not to talk to the woman; they wanted what they had to say to be a shock. They caught up with the patrol car halfway to town, and followed it in.

  At the sheriff’s office, a female clerk gave the woman a more thorough search, took a thin back-pocket wallet away from her, and a cell phone, and then the uniformed deputy locked her in the holding cell.

  Lucas and Laurent walked over to Pat’s to get sandwiches and soft drinks, sat at a picnic table outside on the sidewalk, ate, and took their time getting back to the woman. Lucas checked her wallet: it had seventy dollars in cash, a California driver’s license for a Melody Walker, and a Visa and Macy’s credit card for the same name.

  Lucas called the driver’s license information into the BCA and asked for a complete sheet on the woman. She’d been in the holding cell for more than half an hour before they turned on the video camera in the interview room, then went down to the holding cell.

  She was frightened. When they opened the door, she was huddled in a corner, her hands in fists in front of her chest, her head slumped down. “I didn’t do anything,” she wailed. “What are you doing to me?”

  That was an opening that Lucas had hoped for: she’d had her rights read to her, now the problem was to get her to ask questions and to talk.

  “We’re taking you to an interview room—it’s just down the hall,” Laurent said. They escorted her out of the cell and down to the interview room, and Lucas said, “Sit down.” He pointed at a chair on the far side of a narrow table. She quickly sat down, while Lucas and Laurent loomed over her.

  “You’ve been arrested on suspicion of murder on a Wisconsin warrant, Melody. That woman at the Hayward Gathering died. But you know that, because you helped kick her to death.”

  “I did not. I wasn’t there, I didn’t even know about it until yesterday,” she blurted. “I was down by the bonfire, they had to come and get me.”

  Lucas looked at Laurent and spread his hands, a “There it is, and on tape” gesture. Laurent tipped his head and then nodded.

  The woman said, “What?”

  “When were you expecting Pilate to get here?” Lucas asked. “Or is he already here?”

  “What do you know about Pilate?” she asked.

  “Quite a bit. We know all about your little ritual out in the Black Hills, when you crucified Henry on that pine tree. We know about the dead drug dealer in Hayward, and we know about Skye. We believe you killed an actress out in Los Angeles. I might mention that both California and South Dakota have the death penalty—”

  “I didn’t have anything to do with any of that,” she said. “Nothing. I never hurt nobody.”

  “How many people are traveling with Pilate, anyway?” Laurent asked.

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. Mmm, eight or nine cars and the RV, I guess. Two people in every car, except for Jason, so . . . maybe nineteen people.”

  “Who actually killed Henry?” Lucas asked. “Who actually used the knife?”

  Her eyes narrowed now, and she said, “Say, aren’t I supposed to have a lawyer?”

  Laurent nodded. “Absolutely. That’s why we read your rights to you back at the park. All you have to do is ask.”

  “But there’s a problem with that,” Lucas said. He was walking an exceptionally narrow line—she’d asked whether she was supposed to have a lawyer, but hadn’t actually asked for one, or demanded one. “I’m not trying to talk you out of getting a lawyer. In fact, I’m sure you’re going to need one. The problem we’re facing is, we’ve got a lot of you California killers running around out there—”

  “I am not a killer!”

  Lucas continued, “. . . and we have no time to fool around. Everyone we arrest is looking at the death penalty, except those who provide us with some substantive help. If you help us, you may avoid the death penalty. Normally, getting a lawyer wouldn’t be a problem—and we’ll get one for you right now, if you want—but lawyers take time. We don’t have time. We have to find somebody to help us, and that’s the person who gets the break. How much of a break, I don’t know—but some break. Everybody else is going down. If we leave you with a lawyer, and find somebody else to help us before you get back to accept the offer—then the offer is no longer good.”

  “That’s not fair,” she said.

  “Melody, do you think nailing Henry Fuller to a tree was fair?” Lucas asked. “Was it fair to kick Skye to death?”

  “I had nothing to do with that,” she said. “That was almost all the guys, and, well, a couple of the girls, but most of us girls, we could hardly stand to watch.”

  Lucas and Laurent looked at each other for another long moment, then Lucas said, “You know what? I think we should get her an attorney whether she wants one or not.”

  “We’re on a pay-as-you-go basis with the Chippewa County defender up in Sault Ste. Marie,” Laurent said. “He could be down here in a couple of hours, if I yelled at him. Unless he’s in court, or something, that could take longer.”

  Lucas said, “Step outside for a minute,” and when they were outside, and the door closed behind him, Lucas said to Laurent, “I don’t like the way she’s responding. There might be some kind of impairment issue here. Some kind of . . . psychological difficulty. I think you better get the lawyer on the road.”

  “Okay.”

  “Keep the video rolling, though. I’ll go in there and keep her talking.” When Laurent went to do that, Lucas stuck his head back in the interview room and asked, “Coke? Coffee? Water?”

  “I’d like some water.”

  Lucas got a bottle of water from a vending machine, went back in and gave it to her. “We’ve got a lawyer coming now. You don’t have to talk to us at all anymore, and in fact, I recommend that you don’t. You never really did have to, though I told you the truth about getting a break for help
ing us.”

  “I don’t want to go to jail,” she said. “I never did nothing. To anybody.”

  “You were there.”

  “Not for that. Not for hurting people. That was all Pilate and Kristen and . . . and those guys. Not me.”

  • • •

  LAURENT CAME BACK in the room. “He’s on the way. He told me no more questions until he gets here.”

  “All right.” Lucas looked at the woman and said, “Melody, umm . . . I think you’d be a lot happier in here than in the holding cell. It’s kind of dark and cold in there. If we leave you in here, you won’t try to run away or anything?”

  “No, no, no, no . . .”

  “We could probably get you some magazines,” Laurent said, speaking for the camera. “The lawyer will be here in an hour or so and he has told us not to talk to you anymore, so we won’t. If you need a bathroom or anything, knock on the door. Our clerk will hear you, and somebody will take you down to the restrooms.”

  • • •

  THEY TOLD THE CLERK to get the woman some magazines, then went back to Laurent’s office.

  “We got everything but an explicit confession,” Laurent said. “Melody wasn’t exactly a grim-faced Pilate loyalist, she was quick enough to unload on him . . .”

  “Yeah, I think we got him, if we can find him,” Lucas said. “I see two possible problems, though. I got the feeling that she’s not all there, which is why I wanted her to have a lawyer—the lawyer’s for our sake, not for hers. The other thing was, she wasn’t specific enough. We got a good piece of it, but we need specifics, and if she’s challenged on grounds of mental incompetence, and the decision goes against us, we’re back to zero. We need to use her as a crowbar to get somebody else talking.”

  “Names and specific acts.”

  “Yeah. We need to pinpoint the actual guys who did the killings, and the people who inspired them to do it,” Lucas said. “That means Pilate, if he didn’t actually use a knife. The small fry, we need to keep them talking.”

  • • •

  LAURENT CALLED THE DEPUTIES still at the Gathering. None of them had seen anybody who might be Pilate. The two men who’d been with Melody Walker had gone to look for her, after a while, and seemed puzzled by her absence. They’d walked down to the car to look around, but then had gone back to their blanket with a bunch of hot dogs and Dr Peppers and were still sitting there.

  “You want to bust them?” Peters asked.

  “Not yet, but you guys stay close to them,” Lucas said. “I would really like them to point us at Pilate. But be careful: keep in mind that they’re nuts.”

  “We’ll do that, but unless these guys are really, really stupid, their girlfriend’s disappearance is going to start to worry them.”

  “I know: we’re walking on a thin edge here,” Lucas said. “We may change direction later in the day, so stay cool and keep watching.”

  When everybody at the park knew what they were doing, Lucas and Laurent spent a few minutes looking at Melody Walker’s cell phone, and Lucas noted the numbers in her favorites list, but no names were associated with the favorites. Lucas called the numbers into the BCA duty officer, and asked that they all be pinged, with the results called back to him as soon as they came in.

  “What next?”

  “We need to get a response on those cell phone numbers, and we need to get back out to the park. If Pilate comes in, we want to be there.”

  Raleigh and Linda crossed the UP like Columbus crossing the Ocean Sea, not knowing exactly where they were going, or what they’d find at the end, but dumbfounded by the lack of people: they were from L.A., and had never been in a place where you might find a square mile of space, or four or five, all to yourself.

  Even the towns weren’t really towns. Santa Monica was a town. Venice was a town. Marina Del Rey was a town. But the towns in the UP?

  “Most of the goddamn buildings in Santa Monica got more people in them than that town,” Raleigh said, looking back at the cluster of shops and houses around a convenience store, where they’d stopped for gas. He was right.

  • • •

  RALEIGH HAD HUNG AROUND the Hayward Gathering, staying back in the crowd in his face paint, as instructed by Pilate. Linda was with him, a sad, heavy woman face-painted as a cat. During the Gathering, she wore a skintight black suit with a long cat’s tail and black combat boots. Before she hooked up with the disciples, she’d been working retail at a Home Depot in Glendale, California, and hadn’t been good at it. She’d never been able to remember what products were in which aisle.

  She and Raleigh were in the crowd when Lucas and Letty found Skye and watched as the local cops poured in, with the big dark-haired plainclothes cop directing traffic. The dark-haired girl was the same one that Pilate had punched out. Raleigh could tell that she was hurting from the kicks in the ribs and she was already showing a massive welt under one eye.

  He was at first puzzled by the big cop’s relationship to the girl. He’d seemed angry when they found Skye, but controlled. His attitude toward the dark-haired girl was different: he was more upset by her beating than by Skye’s death and he kept coming back to her, over and over. Raleigh had been watching them, and the other cops, for an hour, before he tripped off on it. Of course! She was the big cop’s daughter. They looked alike, acted alike. They were close.

  Interesting, he thought, but not critical. Pilate wanted the disciples to stay off their phones as much as they could, in case the cops had some way of tracking them, despite the phone shields, so he didn’t bother to call in that night.

  The next day, the local newspaper came out. Raleigh didn’t read newspapers, but they were free around the Gathering, so he took a look, to see what the cops were saying. One thing they said was that a Minnesota cop named Lucas Davenport had been working with the Sawyer and Polk county sheriffs’ offices first on the rescue of Shirley (Skye) Bellows, and later on her murder.

  “Our feeling is that she knew the man who killed Henry Mark Fuller in South Dakota, and that she might have approached him about the murder,” Davenport had said. The story, and a photo, occupied the top half of the front page and the photo showed the big cop at the Gathering, with two deputies, and identified him as Davenport.

  Below the story Raleigh found four police artist sketches of Pilate, Kristen, Bell, and himself: Pilate was listed as “Porter Pilate,” the only time Raleigh had ever heard of Pilate having a first name. He, Kristen, and Bell were listed only by their single names. The image of Pilate was a good one: Raleigh thought he’d be able to pick him out, on the basis of the sketch alone. The sketches of the other three were not nearly as good, except that Kristen had those filed teeth, which would give her away to anyone who saw both the teeth and the drawing. As for himself and Bell, he doubted that anyone could pick them out.

  Precisely at midnight, he took out his phone, shook it out of its sack—they all had sacks that supposedly blocked cell phone signals, so they couldn’t be tracked—and turned his phone on and called Pilate, who came up immediately.

  “Yeah?”

  “They got one of those police drawings of you in the newspaper in Hayward,” he said. “It’s pretty good. If people see it, and you, they could pick you out.”

  “Shit. But that newspaper won’t no way make it to the UP, right?”

  “Probably not, but it’s not the paper’s drawings, it’s the cops’. They might be spreading them around. You got to watch all the newspapers, in case you pop up somewhere else.”

  “Good information,” Pilate said. “What else?”

  “That chick you whacked just before we left, the one who got hauled away by the fat man. Turns out she’s a cop’s kid. At least, I think she is. They acted that way.”

  “Good. Happy to do it. What else?”

  “That’s about it. Anybody in trouble?” Raleigh asked.

  “Not as far as I know,” Pilate said. “They’re all calling in right now. Talk to you later.”

  When Ralei
gh hung up, and had slipped the phone back in its sack, Linda asked, “Now what? We still camping out?”

  “Nope. We’re finding a motel. I’m gonna do you.”

  “Don’t hurt me,” she said.

  “Gonna hurt you a little bit,” he said. “That’s what I do, huh?”

  • • •

  RALEIGH AND LINDA stayed for the whole Hayward Gathering. The Skye murder scene was still taped off on the last day of the Gathering, but there was only one sheriff’s deputy keeping an eye on it. The cops were apparently done with it, and Davenport, the Minnesota cop, was no longer around.

  Raleigh talked to Pilate most nights, at midnight, usually for no more than a few seconds—Pilate was getting paranoid. The four pictures printed in Hayward had also shown up in a paper in southern Wisconsin, where some of the disciples had gone to hide out. Pilate wouldn’t say where he was.

  Raleigh and Linda started out for the UP, with three days to go before the Sault Ste. Marie Gathering. They had money for food and gas, but not enough for a nightly motel. They did have a stash of weed, and just before leaving Wisconsin, managed to sell two ounces of low-grade AK-47 to a musky fisherman staying in a motel in Presque Isle.

  “That only leaves us an ounce for ourselves,” Linda whined.

  “Gonna have to make do,” Raleigh said. “Need the motels more’n we need the weed.”

  They needed the motels because Raleigh’s sex life involved slapping Linda around, and then taking her orally or anally, which she hated. Which was why he did it. Or how he got the most pleasure out of it, when there was only one chick available, and nobody to watch. He didn’t want her to enjoy herself. He wanted to use her, and for her to know that she was being used, like an appliance. She was an appliance.

  “All you gotta do is toast the bread,” he said. “You don’t have to like it. That’s what you’re for. Shut the fuck up and get to work.”

  He was afraid to take that attitude in a park campground, where somebody might be watching or listening—he was not a man of the North Woods, but more of a city guy. Who was to know what might be back in all those trees?