Hidden Prey ld-15 Page 5
"Look around your city. You can be a cook, a waiter, a miner, a truck driver, a salesman, but do you really have a chance against the capitalist? Against the people who own the companies, who hire the cooks, the waiters, the miners? Open your eyes, look around."
Carl had looked, and he had seen what Grandpa saw. Later, when he was older, he got the hard stuff: Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin. People he could never name in school. All of it secret.
At the hospital, Carl had been sewn up, and the wound had healed cleanly. Three days after Moshalov was removed, Carl began patrolling Duluth, one night in his own beat-up Chevy, the next in Grandpa's Taurus, concentrating on the harbor areas, making nightly passes on the downtown saloons.
He and Grandpa agreed: he couldn't become a Duluth regular, somebody seen driving by every night. He had to make his runs at odd times, when he was less likely to be seen by the same person twice, less likely to be remarked upon. Good training.
The care had paid off. He'd finally spotted the woman, tracked her, guessed where she was going. He felt the same excitement he felt during hunting season, when he saw a deer threading its way through the woods, toward his stand.
He parked on a side street, and when the woman walked by, at the bottom of the street, he fell in behind her. She never noticed, never looked, just rattled along with her shopping cart banging down curbs, occasionally talking to herself.
When she turned the corner, she triggered Carl. He stepped out, camoed and ready, the wire strung between his fingers, the big nails in his palms as handles on the garrote; the garrote had been built by Grandpa.
"Nothing special, all the parts can be thrown away, and be perfectly innocent. But it's deadly effective," Grandpa had said, snapping the wire under the bare bulb in the basement workshop. They'd had gourds growing on the fence behind the house. Grandpa got one, and Carl practiced slipping the wire over the gourd, and then snapping the noose tight. The wire slashed through the yellow gourd like a straight razor.
"Works the same way with a neck," Grandpa said. His eyes came to life as they worked with the wire. The idea of killing with the garrote was interesting-it was a traditional tool used by resistance groups and revolutionaries, Grandpa said, and that was what they now were: a resistance cell, living underground.
Carl turned the corner and almost stumbled over the tramp. She saw him at the last minute, seemed to snarl, then to start away. "Run," she called, as though instructing her legs. "Runnn…"
He was moving fast and he threw the wire over her neck, put his knee in her back and pushed. He could smell her now, the same stink he'd smelled the first time they met. He bent her, felt the wire cut in, felt it tremble and sing. She didn't attack him as she had the first time. She flailed her arms, like a bird trying to fly, and they turned once or twice on the street, bumped into her shopping cart.
The cart jerked away and then began rolling slowly down the hill toward the intersection, bumping along, rattling, right through the intersection and on down the hill, picking up speed…
She was dead.
Carl felt her go and for the first time this night, felt something, a cold little thrill, unrelated to the people's cause. He lowered her to the pavement, unwrapped the wire, had to pull it out of her flesh, like pulling a piece of sticky tape off a wall. He could smell the blood in the damp night air; and in the light of the single visible streetlamp, saw a reflection from the whites of her eyes. They were unmoving.
He stood still for a moment, listening, trying to see into the dark; heard cars at the bottom of the hill, and the cart still rattling down the blacktop toward the street below. Time to move. He walked fifteen feet to the corner, turned toward his car, glanced back once at the lump on the sidewalk.
Stuffed the garrote in his pocket, felt a wetness. When he took his hands out to look, found them covered with blood. An imperfect weapon still, he wiped the blood on his pants. The woman had been a fountain…
He moved on, quickly. Had to clean up. Had to get rid of the garrote and the clothes.
Had to report.
Chapter 4
Jerry Reasons watched Lucas slide four feet down a pile of broken concrete-block chips to the lake. Reasons was a cop and a muscle-man, with a broken nose and a crooked smile and a chipped tooth. He wore a black golf shirt that showed off his ball-bat forearms and Mack-truck chest; his jeans looked like they were painted on his perfect, sculpted butt. He had a Glock on a belt clip under his right hand, and a badge in a belt clip over his left pocket. He said, "I hate the fuckin' Russians."
"Yeah?" Lucas stood with one foot on a chunk of eroded concrete, the other on the lake bank, stooped and stuck his hand in the water. The day was unexpectedly warm and windless, but Superior was as cold as ever, the color of rolled steel. He'd been on the lake a few times, but had never been easy with it. Fall overboard in Superior, you had fifteen minutes to get out before the cold killed you. He looked back up at Reasons. "Hate 'em, huh?"
They were at the end of a boat slip, one that must have been a half mile long and a couple of hundred feet across. The TDX grain elevator stood along one side of the slip, a series of off-white ten-story-high cylinders full of wheat, soybeans, and various kinds of agricultural pellets.
"Yeah. You ask them a question about one of their buddies bein' killed, and you can see them thinking it over, what to say. They're figuring out whether or not to lie. You see it all the time," he said. "You pick up a drunk Russian on the street, you ask, 'You been drinking?' and the guy thinks it over. He smells like a fuckin' distillery, he's got puke running down his shirt, he's got a bottle in his hand, he can't stand up, and he's thinking it over. What happens if I say yes? Fuckin' Russians."
"So you don't like Russians," Lucas said. He shook the water off his hand, patted his hand against his pants leg, and climbed back up the bank. They started back through the weeds toward the dirt track that led to the elevator. The ground was rough, hard to walk on. They'd followed what Reasons said was a chase path that had been crushed through the weeds, though there was no longer much evidence of the chase, if there had been one. Reasons thought that the victim had run from the gun, had taken a fall or two-the gunman may have fallen as well-and then, perhaps disoriented, he'd turned back toward the elevator. The gunman had caught him on the pad, and had killed him. Lucas thought that was possible, if a little strange. "You ever known one personally? A Russian?"
Reasons kept a toothpick in the corner of his mouth. Using his tongue, he switched the toothpick from the left side to the right side, cleared his throat, and said, "I married one."
Lucas grinned at him. "That's good."
"I don't know what I was thinking," he said. He scratched his neck. "Living with the bitch is like having a rock in your shoe. A big rock. Though I gotta say, she still turns my crank."
"You got nothing from the Russians on the ship?"
Reasons shook his head. "Nothin'. They didn't know a thing. They weren't sure the moon was gonna come up. Or go down, if it did come up."
Lucas nodded. "Listen: in the file, you had a note that said, 'Kid?' And then there was something about the coat and the temperature. What was that all about?"
Reasons turned and looked up at the elevator. "This guy Kellogg was what they call a grain trimmer. When it's time to load up a boat, he goes on board to supervise." He pointed at a long metal pipe, a foot or two in diameter, that dangled from the side of the building. "The grain comes down through that big pipe, outa the elevator and into the ship's hold. He'd just gotten done and walked over to the rail for a cigarette. He was standing right there." Now he pointed to a spot in the empty air at the end of the slip. The Russian ship had been sent on its way a week earlier. "That's when he saw the guy walking away from the body. He yelled at him and the guy runs. The guy was small, almost like a kid. He's not sure about that, because the perspective from up there is goofy-way high, looking down, in the dark. But he thought the guy was small."
"How about the coat?"
"He sai
d the guy was wearing a long coat. I checked with the weather service, they said the temperature down at lakeside that night was sixty-one degrees. It'd been a hot day. I wondered about the coat."
"Kellogg never went after him, didn't try to find him."
Reasons shook his head. "No. He had to get help for the hurt guy, and all the cabins and the gangway and shit were all at the back of the boat, way back there…" He pointed again, to the far end of the slip. "Besides, he was scared shitless after he saw the blood."
"Have any thoughts?" Lucas had figured Reasons out during the ride between Duluth police headquarters and the grain terminal. Beneath an assumed cynicism, the muscleman was a fairly smart guy.
Reasons scratched his head, as though stirring up a few thoughts. "Not many. There was… You know about the Minnesota Rangers?"
Lucas touched his nose with his index finger, thinking. He had: "The militia guys?"
"Yeah. Skinheads. Some old Vietnam veterans, Gulf War veterans, bikers. They go around in long black coats, like in that Matrix movie. Even in the summer. Shave their heads. They think that America is a socialist hell and that we're all being turned into batteries."
Lucas showed a little skepticism. "You think one tried to prove his manhood by killing a Russian?"
Reasons shook his head: "No. I don't. This was too cold for a fruitcake. You'd maybe take a trophy, cut off an ear or something, but open his pants up and search him? I don't think so. The killer was after something specific. But…" He turned his hands palms up, an I can't help myself gesture.
"What?"
"One of our intelligence guys heard a rumor that the Rangers were taking credit. You know, like the PLO takes credit when they blow something up? I went out to see Dick Worley, he's the leader out there at their war grounds. He said nobody he knew had heard anything. I put some bullshit on him, but he said that, honest to God, nobody knew anything about it. They hadn't even heard the rumor that they'd done it."
"You believed him."
Reasons nodded. "Yeah, pretty much."
"What are the war grounds?" Lucas asked.
"One of those paint-ball places. They play capture the flag, and all that. War games."
Lucas looked up at the grain terminal. There was a tiny window at the top, with a man's face framed in it. He was looking down at them. "Bummer."
They mooched around the area again, and Lucas said, "The idea of a chase… that's a little odd."
"Maybe it never happened," Reasons said. "But that night, and the next morning, you could see where somebody had been beating through the weeds. Falling down a lot, too, or wrestling around. And it was fresh, like the weeds had just been broken. I think maybe they're connected. If somebody had another idea, though, I'd be happy to hear it."
"I got nothing." Lucas looked at his watch, took a last look around the murder scene, and then asked, "You want to meet another Russian? The guy'll be here in an hour. Or you could haul my ass back to the station, and I'll go get him."
"I'll go with you," Reasons said.
"Maybe you'll hate him."
"Probably. But I go back to the office, they're gonna have me chasing down bums."
"Yeah?" They started back toward the car, which Reasons had parked next to the terminal.
"Somebody offed this old lady last night, street person, kinda crazy. You know. Schizo. Strangled her with a wire, we think. That's what the doc thinks, anyway. Cut her throat with it. We got four guys going around interviewing winos-not my idea of a good day."
"Any leads?"
"Nothing. Her pushcart-she had a shopping cart-found it a block away, down the hill. It's possible that somebody tried to take it away from her."
"Killed her for a cart full of junk?" Lucas eyebrows were up.
"Hey, if it was another wino… but we dunno. Found her on the sidewalk, head cut halfway off, big puddle of blood. Whoever did it was a strong motherfucker, is what the ME says."
"You're a strong motherfucker," Lucas observed.
Reasons's brown eyes snapped over at Lucas, and he grinned: "Yeah, I am. Lift every day. It made me wonder… you know, if I know the guy. Wonder if he pumps a little iron?" He thought about it, then shook his head: "Nah. Probably another wino."
The track into the terminal was not much more than a long series of potholes and ruts. They bumped out of it, over a curb, and turned up toward the city.
The south end of Superior is shaped like a pocketknife blade, pointing down into Minnesota; the lake itself is sunken into the landscape, with steep hills and bluffs along the shore. On the east side of the tip of the knife point is Superior, Wisconsin; Duluth, Minnesota, is on the west side, built on the flats along the lake, up a long lakeside hill, and then onto the plateau west of the crest.
The main airport is on the west side, a twenty-minute drive from the lake. They took Garfield Avenue out of the terminal area, crossed the interstate, climbed the hill, and dodged traffic on the main east-west drag. Lucas knew a little about the town, but Reasons kept up a running commentary on the local attractions as he drove, and got Lucas oriented on the main business and governmental areas.
"Be a nice place if it wasn't so fuckin' cold," Lucas said.
"Ah, it ain't bad. When it gets really bad in January, we can always run down to the Cities and get a little sun."
"Very little sun," Lucas said. "The whole fuckin' state's a freezer."
"I kind of like it," Reasons said.
"Yeah, so do I."
The airport terminal building was a concrete-and-red-brick wedge. They parked in an open lot and went inside, showed their ID to security so nobody would get excited about their guns, and figured out where the baggage would be coming in.
"I can't remember a case like this Russian," Reasons said, as they walked to the baggage claim. "Sixty percent of the time, you know who did it two minutes after you arrive. Twenty-five percent of the time, you figure it out in the next day or two. The rest of the time, you look at it and you say, shit-we ain't gonna solve this one. And you don't, except by accident." He turned and stared out one of the windows, brooding a bit: "This one's like a hybrid-a lot of dumb-fuck stuff, and the rest of it is 'Uh-oh, we ain't gonna solve it.' "
"Planned, cold, probably for business or political or money reasons-maybe even espionage reasons-but with an old gun and crappy ammo and he almost breaks a leg running off into the weeds," Lucas said.
"Don't know it was an old gun," Reasons said.
"Who'd put fifty-year-old ammo in a new gun?" Lucas asked. "You pay four or five hundred dollars for a gun, and you're not gonna pay ten bucks for a box of nines?"
Reasons nodded: "Won't argue with that."
The Northwest flight was only ten minutes late. When they'd confirmed the arrival time, they wandered off, both bought copies of the Duluth News Tribune. Lucas turned to the sports to see what, if anything, had happened with the Twins. They'd lost to Baltimore, 6-1; the story didn't try to make the game sound exciting.
The front page was dominated by a hard-news story and a sidebar, a weeper, about the murdered street person:
Mary Wheaton was a thin, round-shouldered woman who pushed a shopping cart full of treasures she collected daily from the gutters and alleys of Duluth, a familiar figure to downtown store owners. They were shocked when they heard of her murder.
"She wasn't quite right, but there was nothing bad about her," said Bob Anderson, of Five Corners Hardware. "She'd come in most days and get a dollar from somebody. The folks at the Burger King'd always give her a burger and fries. That's about all she needed to keep herself together. I hope to God they get the animal who did this…"
The rest of the story was in the same vein. A file photo showed Wheaton pushing a shopping cart along a downtown street, peering nearsightedly, and maybe unhappily, at the photographer.
"You read about the murder?" Reasons asked.
"Yeah. Just sounds like… what it is," Lucas said.
"Like a dime-a-dozen down in the Cities."
They strolled back toward the baggage claim, Reasons still looking at the article, then at the photo again, and he said, "You wanna hear a joke about an old lady beggar and a photographer?"
"If I've got to."
"Wait a minute. I don't tell jokes good, so I got to think it out," Reasons said. He thought for a moment, then said, "There was this old lady bum, she used to push a shopping cart full of shit around this rich neighborhood. This newspaper photographer was out one day, looking for a good feature shot, and he sees her and asks if he can get a picture of her. She says, yes, and he takes a couple, and they get to talking.
"She tells him that she used to be rich, that she grew up right in that very neighborhood. She used to go to balls and big parties and she went to a fancy school, and then she inherited about a million bucks. But over the years she had a couple of bad marriages and her husbands took it all, and she didn't know how to work, and over the years, she kept going down, down, down.
"And now, here she was, in her old age, pushing a cart around the neighborhood where she used to be rich, asking people for money so she could eat. So the photographer goes back to the newspaper, and tells the story to his editor, this really sad story, and the editor says, 'Wow, that is really sad. What'd you give her?'"
"And the photographer says, 'Oh, about f-4.5 at 125.'"
Lucas smiled and said, "You told that all right."
"Ahh, there are guys in the office who really know how…" He looked up at a monitor. "They're in."
They folded their newspapers and stuffed them into a trash can. A couple of minutes later, fifteen or twenty passengers wandered in. Half of them were too young, and most of the other half too Minnesotan, too certain of what they were doing, and too worried about their luggage, to be the Russian.
Lucas was looking at a stout man in a gray suit when Reasons leaned over and asked, "You think it could be the chick?"