Buried Prey (25 page)

OUT IN THE CAR, Lucas said, “You know, Hanson . . . Wouldn’t have to be a cop—it could be a cop’s friend, just asking about the case.”

“I haven’t had any breakfast,” Del said. “Why don’t we stop over at Cub and get something? And figure this out.”

They sat in the parking lot eating deli sandwiches, and talked about Hanson, then started back to the BCA. They were a mile out when Shrake called on Lucas’s cell: “Minneapolis SWAT’s outside a place off Portland about Forty-second, not on Portland but over a block, it’s like Fifth Avenue or something, no details but the word is, the guy inside is the one who shot Marcy.”

“What?”

“That’s what we’re hearing, man,” Shrake said. “Some biker guy. Supposedly some kind of grudge thing, Marcy had been bustin’ his balls. Jenkins and I are on the way over. We’ll keep you in touch—”

“That makes no goddamn sense,” Lucas said. “That’s crazy. This doesn’t have anything to do with Marcy, it’s Barker who’s the one. That’s who the shooter was after.”

“I’m just telling you what I hear,” Shrake said. “The guy’s a doper.”

“We’re coming. We’re on 494 coming up to 94; get us some better directions. I think we’ll turn around and come up from the south.”

“Might be quicker,” Shrake said. “And you better hurry.”

“I bet they got a nine-one-one tip on the guy,” Lucas said.

“Why? We got DNA on the shooter; giving up the wrong guy won’t help him.”

Lucas said, “Yeah . . . maybe the guy doesn’t know about DNA. Or maybe he’s just fuckin’ with us. Or maybe he’s playing for time, maybe he’s getting his shit together and trying to get out of town.”

MINNEAPOLIS HAD BARRICADED a two-block radius from the target home on Fifth Avenue, an older white-stuccoed place on an embankment with a two-car detached garage in back. They parked outside the perimeter, walked past Jenkins’s Crown Vic and through the perimeter, flashing their BCA identification at the uniformed cops barricading the streets.

They found Jenkins and Shrake loitering outside the SWAT team’s command post. Lucas asked, “What’s happening?”

“Still in there,” Jenkins said. “They got a negotiator on the phone; he says the guy sounds pretty high.”

“Probably flushing all their junk down the toilet, what they can’t get up their noses,” Del said. “How many are in there?”

“A guy named Donald Brett and his old lady, Roxanne. Maybe a kid. Probably a kid.”

“I know that guy,” Del said.

“Asshole?” Shrake asked.

“Oh yeah,” Del said.

Lucas: “Crazy enough to kill a cop?”

“Probably,” Del said. “He’s your basic hometown psycho who’s been self-medicating with crank and cocaine for years.”

“Can’t see anything from here,” Lucas said, peering down the street at the target house.

“Couple guys went up and were getting ready to take the door down, a pit bull came around the house and started tearing up their ass, and they shot it. Dog’s still there,” Jenkins said. “When they went back to the door, Brett had pushed a table in the entryway. They can’t get the door open now.”

“That’s a handy table,” Del said.

“Probably done it before,” Shrake said.

Lucas: “I’m gonna go find the guy in charge.”

THEY FOUND the guy in charge, a Xavier Cruz, sitting on a tripod stool behind a SWAT van. Inside, another guy was sitting on the floor of the van, talking into a telephone, a finger in his off-ear: the negotiator. Cruz saw them coming and said, “Davenport. Del.”

“How’d you figure the guy out?” Lucas asked.

“Got a nine-one-one tip,” Cruz said. “Guy said he was bragging to friends over at the White Nights.”

“You got the nine-one-one guy?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“He said he didn’t want to be involved,” Lucas suggested.

“Something like that,” Cruz said. “Why?”

Lucas said, “Because the guy on the phone was the killer. He did the same thing to us back on the Jones case. Did it twice; we still got the recordings.”

Cruz said, “Huh,” like, maybe yes, maybe no.

The negotiator was saying, “You gotta man up, Don. You gotta man up. You got responsibilities, you got a wife, you got kids. If you’re not involved, it won’t take long for us to figure it out.”

Del said to Cruz, “If you put me on the phone, I can probably get him out of there in a couple of minutes.”

Cruz studied him for a few seconds, then asked, “You pals?”

“Not exactly. But he knows me. I don’t bullshit him.”

Cruz shrugged: “Gotta ask the man,” and flipped a thumb at the negotiator.

WHEN THE MAN TOOK a short break, they asked him, and he said, “I’m working him around. I don’t need somebody setting me back.”

“If you think I’ll set you back, then let’s not do it,” Del said. “But I wouldn’t. I think I could get him to come out.”

The man looked at Cruz, who shrugged again and said, “Brett’s got us by the nuts—we can’t get in, we can’t shoot in, we can’t even gas in, without knowing who else is in there. We know there are at least two more. . . .”

They both looked at Del, and then the negotiator said, “I’ll give you a couple minutes with him, if he comes back on the phone.”

THEY GOT BRETT BACK on the line, and after a little back-andforth, the negotiator gave the phone to Del.

Del said, “Hey, Don, this is Del. Yeah, it’s Del. I saw you at Einstein’s a couple weeks ago, you were getting a bag of bagels, and we bullshitted for a while. Yeah, the Jewish chick. Yeah, yeah.” He listened for a minute, and then said, “Listen, Don, I
know
you didn’t do it. I
know
you didn’t. We’re looking for a guy, and it ain’t you. Not only are we looking for him, the guy was shot in the arm yesterday, and if you don’t have a bullet hole in your arm, you’re good. And we’re getting DNA from the blood from his bullet wound, and if it ain’t your DNA, then it wasn’t you. Yeah, yeah, hey, it was on TV. You been watching TV, haven’t you? Yeah, it’s been on TV.”

After a moment, Del took the phone away from his ear and said, “He’s talking to his old lady. She was watching TV.”

He listened on the phone for another minute, then said, “They’re not gonna shoot you. If you want, I’ll come up there, and you can come out behind me. We already told the SWAT boss that you didn’t do it. Yeah, yeah. We told him. He’s right here. Who’s that crying?”

Another few seconds, then, “Of course she’s scared. She’s probably scared shitless. No point in staying in there, nobody here’s going away. Yeah, they’ll take you downtown, look for bullet holes, probably make you give them a DNA sample. . . . You just take a little swab and swab the inside of your cheek. The cheek in your mouth. Yeah . . . well, yeah, they’re a little pissed about the dog, but you’d be a little pissed, too, if a goddamn pit bull was biting your ass. . . . Wasn’t all that funny, from our point of view. Huh? Okay. Yeah, I’ll do that. I’ll come down and knock.”

CRUZ ASKED, “You want a vest?”

“Yeah, might as well,” Del said. “If he shoots me, I trust you to plug him.”

“Think there’s a chance of that?” Cruz asked. “If there is—”

“Nah, he’s not gonna shoot me,” Del said.

“But take the vest,” Lucas said.

“You want to come with me?” Del asked Lucas.

“Fuck no,” Lucas said. “He might shoot both of us.”

“I was planning to stand behind you,” Del said.

“You guys slay me,” Cruz said, no sign of a smile. “A laugh a minute.”

SO DEL WENT DOWN to the white house, walked up the bank to the front steps, and up the steps and peered in the window, then pulled open an outer screen door, and they saw him talking, and then talking some more, and then he opened the front door and they saw Brett in the doorway. He was a large man with a black beard.

“He looks right,” Cruz said.

“Yeah, he does,” Lucas admitted. “But it’s not him.”

“I think it might be,” Cruz said.

“He wouldn’t be coming out if he had a bullet hole,” Lucas said.

“We’ll see,” Cruz said.

Brett stepped out on the porch, Del said something, and he put his hands on top of his head, POW style, and Del backed away and Brett followed him. A SWAT guy came off the corner of the house, then another one, and a minute later, Brett was sitting on the lawn, his hands cuffed, and SWAT was inside the house.

Lucas asked Cruz, as they walked toward the house, “Can I ask him one question?”

“Okay with me, if it’s okay with him.”

Del was standing over Brett, and Lucas came up and asked, “You give him his rights?” He could hear a girl child crying from up in the house.

“Yeah, the SWAT guy did.”

Lucas squatted next to the doper: “I got one question for you, about who might’ve told the cops that you were the shooter. The guy who ratted you out. It’s gotta be somebody about fifty years old. Fat. Black hair, big black beard. Know anybody like that?”

Brett shook his head in exasperation: “Man, I’m a biker. Everybody’s heavy and fat and got a black beard.”

Lucas stood up and shook his head at Del. “He’s . . . ah, fuck it.”

Del asked Brett, “You got any kind of bullet hole in you?”

“No, man, I never been shot.”

“They’re gonna look at you downtown.”

“Man, I keep telling you, I haven’t been shot,” Brett said. “They can take all the DNA they want, I’ll jack off in a bottle, whatever they need.”

A SWAT guy came out carrying the girl. She was maybe five, and still crying, and her mother came out behind her, and she was crying.

Brett said to the SWAT guy, “Look what you did.”

Lucas said to Del, “Come on, let’s go. This is bullshit.”

“It’s not bullshit,” Cruz said. “We had a credible tip.”

“It’s bullshit,” Lucas said.

ON THE WAY BACK to the car, Del said, “Made more friends in the MPD.”

“Fuck ’em,” Lucas said. “We got led around by the nose when the Jones girls were killed, and they’re being led around by the nose now.”

“What if you’re wrong?”

“I’m not wrong. I’m pissed, and frustrated.”

They drove back to the BCA, mostly in silence, and finally Lucas said, “I’ll call Cruz this afternoon, and kiss and make up.”

And a few minutes later, he added, “Fell knows Brett. Somehow he knows him. Maybe if we talked to Brett a little more—”

“He isn’t the brightest bulb on the pole lamp,” Del said. “He started out stupid and then started sniffing glue, so I wouldn’t expect too much.”

BACK AT THE BCA, he walked down to the office where Sandy, the researcher, worked. She was poking at a computer, looked up when Lucas loomed, and said, “It’s impossible. I can’t even give you a probability, because too many records are gone, and too many people took teacher training.”

“How many names you got?”

“I haven’t counted them—must be a couple of hundred. But the problem is, this is all before everything got computerized. Personal computers were brand-new, and a lot of stuff was still kept on paper. I can keep trying—”

“Ah, give it up,” Lucas said. He turned away, then turned back. “Hey, a guy from Minneapolis, a former cop named Brian Hanson, apparently fell out of his boat up on Vermilion. Could you see if there are any news feeds?”

“Sure.” She rattled some keys, and a news story popped up. “TV station out of Duluth,” she said.

Lucas read over her shoulder: neighbors heard him arrive, heard the boat go out, very early in the morning. The boat, a Lund, was found turning circles in the lake just after dawn, the motor running. Another fisherman had hopped into the boat, found Hanson’s hat, fishing rod, and open tackle box. No body had been found yet.

“Not uncommon,” Sandy said. “He was peeing over the side, like all men do, and he fell in, and the boat motored away. The water’s cold enough all year round, he dies of hypothermia, and sinks. Happens all the time.”

“Yeah, but . . . He worked on the Jones case, and died the day after they found the bodies. It worries me that they haven’t found
his
body.”

“You think he might have faked his own death?”

Lucas scratched his head: “
That
hadn’t occurred to me.”

BACK IN HIS OFFICE, working more from simple momentum than anything like intelligence, he called the St. Louis County Sheriff’s Office, got hooked up with the deputy who’d covered the accident, and got the names of the two fishermen who’d chased down the empty boat. The cop said there was nothing especially suspicious in the disappearance: “It happens. And when it does, there’s nothing really to work with. A guy falls over the side, the boat drifts away, he sinks, and that’s it. No signs of violence, no disturbance . . . nothing. He’s just gone—but he’ll be back. Give him about ten days, he’ll come bobbing up.”

Lucas called around until he found one of the fishermen, an assistant manager at a Target store in Virginia. The boat, he said, “had been chugging right along.”

“How fast?” Lucas asked. “I mean, fast as you could walk?”

“Fast as you could jog,” the guy said.

“Big boat? Nineteen, twenty?”

“Uh-uh. Sixteen. The cops towed it back in, no problem.”

“How big was the engine?” Lucas asked.

“A forty.”

“Life jacket in the boat?”

“Can’t really . . . you know, I don’t think there was.”

Lucas thanked him and hung up. Thought about it for a second, said, “Ah,” to nobody, picked up the phone again, and called Virgil Flowers, a BCA agent who worked mostly outstate. “Where are you?” he asked, when Virgil came up.

“Sitting in the Pope County Courthouse. That Doug Spencer deposition.”

“Got a question for you,” Lucas said. “You used to have a little Lund, right?”

“Yeah. It’s all I could afford on my inadequate salary.”

“We got a guy who apparently fell overboard while he was fishing out of a sixteen-footer,” Lucas said. “His hat was found in the boat, two fishing rods and tackle box, so he wasn’t taking a fish off. The boat was found running, about as fast as you could jog. No body. So why did he fall overboard?”

After a moment of silence, Virgil said, “He was moving around, for some reason, stepped on something like a net handle or the rod handle, and he slipped and the gunwale caught him in the back of the legs, below the knees and he fell over backwards.”