Gathering Prey Read online

  Biggs grinned at them through the red, white, and black face paint: “Hey. I been bullshitted by better cops than you. I want the lawyer.”

  Lucas and Frisell backed out of the cell and the city cop locked the door behind them. Frisell said, “No Academy Award for that.”

  Collins was shakier. Frisell said, “Screw him. Why should we give him a break? We got everything we need from Melody and Linda. I’d stick the needle in this guy myself.”

  “What’re you talking about?” Collins whined. “What’d those bitches tell you? They are the craziest bitches I ever seen.”

  Lucas said, “Ten dead, and they’re crazy? You miserable piece of shit, I wish I’d shot you back in the park.”

  “I had nothin’ to do with no killings. I was along for the ride, ’cause I knew some guys who could get us some dope along the way. I heard somebody say they killed this boy out in South Dakota and I took right off, I didn’t want to hear about that shit.”

  “What about Neal Malin in Hayward? Was he your boy? One of your dope guys?”

  Collins’s eyes slid away. “I heard about that, too. They told me there was an accident. I wasn’t there, but they said they was freebasin’ or something and the RV exploded.”

  “What kind of freebasing gets your throat cut?” Lucas asked. “What kind of freebasing do you do with gasoline?”

  “I don’t know nothin’ . . . I gotta have a lawyer. I can tell you about this, but I gotta have a lawyer first.”

  They backed out of the cell and Lucas told the others, “He might be the most reliable one. Let’s keep him away from everyone else.”

  Bennett came up and gave Lucas a page ripped from a legal pad: “The phone numbers from their cell phones. The Collins guy had a ‘Pilate.’”

  “Excellent.”

  The city cop said, “We don’t have facilities to keep people here. You gotta talk to Rome, tell him we need to start shifting people up to Sault Ste. Marie.”

  “I got that,” Barnes said. “I’ll talk to Rome, but we can probably borrow a bus from the school, or maybe get Amos Krall’s van and haul them up in that.”

  They were still figuring out the logistics of it, when Lucas’s phone rang and “Unknown” showed up in the caller field. “Yeah?”

  “Lyle Ellis here—I’m the defender. I’m over at the sheriff’s office. I was told you wanted to speak to me?”

  “Yeah, Mr. Ellis. Listen, we’ve got two people there, where you are, and two more locked up at the city,” Lucas said. “It would be good if you could rep them all, at least for the time being. Did the sheriff explain the problem to you?”

  “Yes. As he sees it, anyway,” Ellis said. “I understand you’re from Minnesota, but I don’t quite understand your status up here.”

  “We can talk about that later,” Lucas said. “The two women being held at the sheriff’s office tell us there are nineteen traveling killers, with maybe ten bodies behind them: think the Manson gang, but worse, with the leader still running around loose here in the UP. What I want to tell you is that you’re dealing with people who in my opinion are probably insane. Literally insane and proven killers. You have to take care about your own safety. Do not get crosswise with them. In my opinion, you may want to take a cop in with you for the preliminary talk, and then, after they’re transferred up to Sault Ste. Marie, talk to them privately only when you can have a bodyguard with you.”

  “You’re not scaring me, Officer Davenport,” Ellis said. “This ain’t exactly my first rodeo.”

  “Maybe not your first, but it’s different from anything else you’ve handled, because it’s different from what anybody has handled, anywhere,” Lucas said. “Nobody’s dealt with this rodeo before. They’re nuts. You need to protect yourself.”

  “All right. I’ll think about what you’ve said.”

  “Mr. Ellis, I’ll tell you what—you sound like a guy who’s so sure of himself that he could get killed. Don’t do that. There’s one man who was crucified in South Dakota, before he was castrated and slashed to death, another who got his throat slit in Wisconsin, and a woman who was kicked to death.”

  “I’ll try not to be stupid,” Ellis said.

  “Try real hard,” Lucas said, and hung up.

  Barnes said, “That must have been Lyle Ellis. He really isn’t the sharpest knife in the dishwasher. I’ve known him for years. I’ll . . . talk to him.”

  • • •

  THEY LEFT BARNES and Bennett and the city cop to figure out a safe way to transfer the four disciples to Sault Ste. Marie—Barnes was arguing that the best way would be chain up each one in the back of different SUVs, and drive them up separately. That would have all four of them in jail in three hours or so, and they wouldn’t be able to communicate with each other. Lucas thought that was the best idea he’d heard so far, and said so.

  While Barnes and Bennett handled that, Lucas and Frisell headed back out to the park. Frisell no longer had a weapon, but Lucas suggested that if he could handle it, having already been involved in a shooting, he could be useful walking around the park, keeping an eye on things.

  “I don’t want you to think I’m a cold-blooded killer,” Frisell said. “But, look, Lucas—shooting that guy really doesn’t bother me. Just doesn’t. I got a kid hurt in a sophomore football game last year, and he tried to tough it out and didn’t tell me, and got hurt worse. Cracked two vertebrae. That’s been tearing me up for a year. I should have seen it. I should have known. He’s still walking around in a girdle, almost a year later, and I kick myself in the ass every time I see him. But this Raleigh guy? Not a problem.”

  Lucas half laughed and said, “You and me both. I don’t meet many people like us. I’ve been in some shootings, and they were all good, and the thing that bothered me most about them was all the fuckin’ paperwork. On the other hand, I see cops who shoot somebody, perfectly good shooting, and they’re never the same again. And it’s real, they’re not faking it.”

  “I believe that,” Frisell said. “Not me, though. I didn’t go there to shoot anyone. I feel about as bad as I would if a drunk driver crossed the road and crashed into me, and he died and I didn’t. I mean, not very. And I’ll tell you, Rome’s the same way. And the other guys, too, I think.”

  “I hope it’s really that way, that you don’t wake up and find your ass has fallen off,” Lucas said. Lucas called the new list of phone numbers into the BCA: “Ping them all. Let me know.”

  The scene at the park was Hayward all over again, a shifting mass of painted-face Juggalos and Juggalettes in a semicircle around the shooting scene, a couple of uniformed deputies keeping the crowd back. A fire pile was going up at one end of the field, while a band was doing a sound check at the bandstand at the other end.

  Lucas and Frisell parked and walked over to the circle. Laurent spotted them, walked around some crime scene tape and came over and said, “Herb Jackson’s down from Sault. Herb’s their crime scene guy.”

  Lucas said, “Good,” and told Laurent about the half-assed interrogations at the sheriff’s office and the city jail. “It’s really a matter of rounding them up, now. Only one guy’s hanging tough, everybody else seems happy to deal.”

  “What about Lyle Ellis?” Laurent asked. “Did he call you?”

  “Yeah, he’s at your office now, should be interviewing the women.”

  • • •

  HERB JACKSON, the crime scene tech, was a little pissy about the way the scene had been handled before he got there, but that was typical, and didn’t particularly bother Lucas: as far as he was concerned, covering the shooting scene was mostly a waste of time. There had been several witnesses to the shooting, and determining the exact location of each spent 9mm shell wouldn’t make any difference one way or the other. But, that’s what crime scene techs did, and he was usually happy enough to leave them to it. If nothing else, the county attorney could argue that the scene had been handled competently, when the county was sued by the guy who’d been shot in the lip.


  On the other hand, he did have a priority. He said, “Herb, I need to talk to you over here.”

  As far from the crowd as possible: Lucas could see video cameras being pointed at them and some had zoom mikes. Laurent followed them over to the far side of the car, where Lucas quietly told them what Melody Walker had said about Linda Petrelli taking Henry Fuller’s penis as a trophy. “If she’s telling the truth, it could be in the car. Might not be obvious what it is . . . or it may be, I don’t know. If you find it, treat it with care, because it’s going to hang these assholes.”

  “Gosh darnit, I’ve never . . .” Jackson said. “I mean, I’ve seen some weird things . . .”

  “Yeah. I know. Just be aware of what you’re dealing with,” Lucas said.

  “Peters and Sellers are still out there, looking around,” Laurent said. “Haven’t seen any more plates from California.”

  “Herb needs to process the other two cars, the ones from Biggs and Collins,” Lucas said. “Collins admits he’s a dealer.” To Jackson: “Take a close look for hidden panels and so on.”

  “I will. I did a class on that down in Lansing,” Jackson said.

  “What are you going to do?” Laurent asked Lucas.

  “Hook up with Peters and Sellers, wander around the park. Raleigh Waites recognized me because Pilate left a spy behind at the shooting scene in Hayward, and he saw me working the murder scene down there. Pilate may have another one here . . . we have to be aware of that.”

  “Wish we could get our hands on that sonofabitch,” Laurent said. “Teach him he doesn’t bring this shit to the UP.”

  • • •

  NOTHING HAPPENED. They didn’t spot anybody.

  Lucas, Laurent, Peters, Sellers, and Frisell walked every inch of the park, shouldering through the crowds, watching each other at the same time—looking for somebody tracking them. They saw nothing. An hour passed, and two. Lucas talked to the enormously fat man again, who’d seen nothing. The duty officer at the BCA called and said that the phones were being pinged through AT&T and Verizon, but they were seeing nothing at all.

  “It’s possible that they were warned and they’ve all got their phones sewn upside those special bags—or they pulled the batteries,” Lucas told the duty officer. “Do this—get the phone companies to hammer on them from about eleven o’clock tonight until one in the morning. One of the women we picked up said Pilate might expect them to call around midnight. They might stay off the phones except for that window in the middle of the night.”

  “Gotcha. I’ll pass the word along. Davy’s got the night shift, I’ll have him call either way, whether we get something or not.”

  • • •

  LUCAS GAVE IT another hour and then told Laurent, “We should leave one guy here, to look at newcomers, but send everybody else home. They need to get to bed early tonight. If we ping Pilate at midnight, and locate him, we’ll want to roll out and get on top of him. Get out to the site, wherever it is, throw a ring around it, and then hit him at first light.”

  “Just like deer hunting,” Laurent said.

  “Deer don’t shoot back, usually.”

  “True. Okay, Peters has a court case tomorrow. I’ll have him stay late, and send the rest of them home.”

  “I’ve got a question for you,” Lucas said. “What if Pilate’s not in Barron County?”

  Laurent shrugged: “Up here, we have mutual aid agreements—all I have to do is call the sheriff’s office in whatever county I’m going to, they’ll say come on ahead, and I’m good. The budgets are so tight that nobody ever says no. If he’s up here in the UP, I’m happy enough to go after him. This is all . . . pretty interesting. I think the guys would go, too. I’ll ask.”

  “Good. Check with them. If he’s deep in the woods somewhere, outside of Barron County, we might want help from the locals, too.”

  “I’ll call around tonight, get set in advance,” Laurent said. “Let me know as soon as you find out where they are.”

  “If they call me, you’ll be the first to know,” Lucas said. “Maybe it’ll all go down easy.”

  “Raleigh Waites didn’t go down easy. Neither did that Bony guy in Wisconsin.”

  “You really are Father Christmas,” Lucas said. “You were supposed to say, ‘Yeah, there’ll be nothing to it.’”

  “When I was in Iraq,” Laurent said, “we had a standard answer for somebody who suggested that an op was going to be easy.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah: Run!”

  • • •

  LUCAS WENT BACK to the Holiday Inn, took a shower, laid out some clothes so he could get dressed in a hurry, called Weather, told her what was happening, talked to Letty for a while—she was hurting worse than she had the first day, but Weather said that was normal.

  When he got off the phone, he turned off the light and tried to sleep. But it was too early, and he didn’t. Instead, he lay in bed in the dark and thought about the possibilities, and when that got boring, called Del: “Is everything okay?”

  “Well, yeah. I mean there aren’t any emergencies going on. What are you up to?”

  “Trying to sleep, but can’t. Almost got shot today, don’t tell Weather . . .”

  He told Del about it, and Del said, “Jesus, you got lucky.”

  “Yeah, somewhat.”

  When he got off the call to Del, he turned the lights off again, couldn’t sleep, got his iPad out, browsed the Internet for a while, eventually worked his way around to eleven-thirty, and two minutes later, got a call from the duty officer. “We got five hits on those phone numbers, right away. Two of them were in California, but three of them are up there in the UP. We got a hit on the Pilate phone number and two others. I got the GPS coordinates figured out. You got a map?”

  “Let me call one up,” Lucas said.

  If the GPS locations were correct, the Pilate calls were coming out of a state park campground in the deep woods of Cray County, forty miles west and north of where Lucas was.

  “Keep pinging them. We’re on the way,” Lucas said. He was on his feet, pulling on his jeans. He called Laurent and said, “We’re going to Cray County, talk to the locals there, wherever that is.”

  “Already did. I called all the sheriffs in the UP and we’re good everywhere. We can pick up a couple of their deputies and maybe a couple more reserve deputies when we get there. The question is, do we want to go in there at one o’clock in the morning? We’d wind up chasing people through the woods in the dark.”

  Lucas thought about it, then said, “I guess not. I’m going, but let your guys sleep. It gets light what, at six o’clock? Forty miles? Get them up at four-thirty, get out of town before five-thirty.”

  “It’s a straight shot over there. We go in a convoy, with lights, we can be there in less than an hour,” Laurent said. “Peters is coming—he canceled his court date. Let me get you the names of the sheriff’s deputies over there. You probably ought to check in with them. I’ll call them and tell them you’re coming.”

  • • •

  LUCAS WAS ON THE ROAD a little after midnight, the names of the Cray County cops in his notebook and a hand-drawn map of the campground where Pilate was. There was nothing open in Jeanne d’Arc, not even the gas station, so he headed west. Twenty miles out, he spotted a combination sporting goods store–roadhouse–gas station that was still open, got a Diet Coke and a cheeseburger and fries to go, and got back on the road with a full tank of gas.

  Lewis State Park was totally off the grid, on the far side of the county seat at Winter. Winter did have an open gas station/convenience store, and the clerk pointed him down the main street to the county courthouse. The annex in back, where the sheriff’s office was, showed a light, but the door was locked and nobody answered when he knocked.

  He had a phone number for the deputy on duty, called it, and the deputy picked up, said, “This is Carl.”

  “Carl, this is Lucas Davenport. I’m down at the sheriff’s office.”

 
“Hey. I’m out on road patrol, right at the far end of my run. You seen the store?”

  “Yeah.”

  “They got good coffee, you could wait for me there,” Carl said.

  “I’m going to run out to Lewis Park, take a look at the situation.”

  “Okay. You’re only about ten miles from there, so . . . if you just look around, and then head back, we’ll probably just about meet up.”

  “Thanks. See you then.”

  • • •

  TEN MILES OUT OF WINTER, he passed a highway sign marking the turnoff, but kept going, without slowing. At the first side road, which was a driveway, he pulled over, got out his phone: no service. He turned around and drove slowly past the entry road to the park. He could see nothing, not even a glimmer of light.

  He drove back to Winter, working out exactly what he wanted to do. At Winter, Lucas tried his phone again, got one bar, called the BCA duty officer. “No more pings. Everything slowed down after midnight, and all of a sudden, they were gone. There’s two phones up by Lake Superior and another one in the woods halfway between Winter and Lake Superior. I looked at a satellite view of the GPS location, but there’s not a darn thing there.”

  When he got off the phone, Lucas tried his iPad, got one bar on that, too, but managed to slowly download a terrain map of Lewis State Park. The main feature, as with Overtown Park in Barron County, was a lake and a campground. Otherwise, the land around the lake was flat and probably swampy, since there wasn’t much relief above the lake’s water level. A Google satellite view showed a chunk of forest around the lake, and several expansive clear-cuts back from the entry road.

  He was looking at the Google view when a Ford pickup bounced into the parking lot and an older man wearing a T-shirt, sweatpants, and gym shoes got out. Lucas stepped out to meet him, asking, “Carl?”

  “Nope. I’m the sheriff, Phil Turner.” He was a short man, thin, with a bristling white mustache and a thick chest and arms. They shook hands and Turner said, “Carl called me. I told him I’d probably be up until two. You’d be Davenport?”