Buried Prey (9 page)

“All right, all right,” Lucas said. “I hope it’s not for nothing.”

“Bring a flashlight,” Sloan said. “Listen, weren’t you there last night when that soldier guy found the blouse?”

“Yeah, that was us.”

“Well, Tom’s is about two blocks up that alley. I think this could be something.”

“Twenty minutes,” Lucas said. “I gotta stop at Walgreens and get some Vicks.”

He changed into an old pair of jeans and high-topped hiking boots, a T-shirt with terminally stained underarms, and a year-old canvas fishing shirt, still new enough to be stiff.

His biggest fear wasn’t the filth of a dumpster; it was AIDS. The disease was exploding in the Cities, and the papers said that a major component in its spread, besides gay sex, was blood-toblood contact with needles used by junkies.

And needles wound up in dumpsters.

Five minutes after Sloan’s call, he was back in his Jeep. He made a quick stop at a Walgreens, picked up the thickest pair of yellowplastic kitchen gloves they had, and a jar of Vicks VapoRub.

TOM’S PIZZA WAS a failing storefront pizza joint distinguished by its low prices and juicy bluebottle flies. The flies looked a little too much like Tom’s pizza ingredients for the high-priced trade, though some argued that they added a certain
je ne sais quoi
to the cheese-and-mushroom special.

Lucas parked on the street at the side of the building and walked around back, carrying the bag with the gloves and the Vicks, and the heavy shirt, and found Sloan, Hanson, Lester, and Jack Lacey, the owner of Tom’s, standing in the alley looking up at the dumpster. The bright motion-sensor light shone down from the roof, onto the space around the store’s back entrance, half illuminating the dumpster. A stepladder stood next to it.

Lucas said, “Hey,” as he walked up, and Sloan said, “I owe you,” and Lucas said, “You really do.” Lucas made the mistake of sniffing at the dumpster and gagged and turned away: “Holy shit; when was this thing dumped?”

“They get it once a week,” Lacey said. “It goes out tomorrow. It’s been hot.”

“Maybe they ought to get it twice a week,” Lucas said. “This is disgusting.”

“Only in the summer . . .”

“Listen, it’s been nice chatting,” Lester said. “So, let’s get your ass in there.”

Lucas looked at the dumpster, sighed, pulled on the heavy canvas shirt, unscrewed the jar of Vicks, put a daub in each nostril.

“He’s a goddamned pro,” Sloan said, with false heartiness.

“Gonna ruin everything I’m wearing,” Lucas said.

Lester said, “Put in for it. I’ll approve it.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Lucas climbed the ladder and looked into the dumpster—and looking was almost as bad as smelling. The basic component of the mess inside was rotten cheese, along with rotten meat, rotten crusts, rotten grease, rotten greasy cardboard, and flies. He’d always wondered where flies went at night, and now he knew. He could see a couple of cylindrical cartons that once contained tomato sauce; and a rat, with tiny black ball-bearing eyes, each with a highlight from the overhead alley spot.

The rat saw him coming and ran up the far corner and over the side. Lester cried, “Man, look at the size of that sonofabitch,” and Hanson said, “Don’t get bit. It might have rabies.”

Hanson had his pistol out, tracking the rat. Sloan shouted, “Don’t shoot it, don’t shoot it, the ricochet . . .”

Lester said, “Remind me to bring my old lady here for dinner.”

Lacey: “Hey. There aren’t any rats
inside. . . .”

When the excitement died, and Hanson put his gun away, Lucas said, “Ah Jesus,” put his hips on the edge of the dumpster, swiveled, and let himself drop inside. The mass of cardboard—it was mostly cardboard—was saturated with various fluids, and was soft and slippery underfoot, almost like walking on moss.

He was breathing through his mouth, but with a nose full of Vicks, couldn’t smell much of the crap anyway. He said, “Get out of the way,” and bent and started throwing cardboard over the side, watching carefully where he put his fingers, looking for needles. In two minutes, his gloves and lower legs were covered with rotting cheese and tomato sauce, and another rat made a break for it, running up the corner, and again the guys outside yelled at it, and Lucas threw more crap over the side.

He’d been digging for five or six minutes when a patrol car turned into the alley and the light bar flared, and Lester walked around and yelled, “Turn the goddamn light off,” and the light died. A patrol cop shouted back, “We got a call on you guys. . . . What’s going on?”

“Had to check the dumpster,” Lester said.

Lucas peered over the edge of the dumpster at the car, and one of the cops inside said, “Hey, it’s Davenport.”

The other guy started laughing, and then called, “Hey, plainclothes.”

“Fuck you,” Lucas shouted back, and started throwing more crap out.

The car left, and Sloan asked, “How’s it going?”

“Fuck you.”

They all laughed.

HALFWAY DOWN, Lucas found the box.

It was sitting flat on its bottom, as though it had been carefully placed inside the dumpster, a box that you might use to move books, its top flaps carefully interleaved. “Got something,” he reported.

“Get it out,” Lester said.

“Sort of stuck in here . . .” He threw more crap over the side, excavating around it. The box had been soaked in sludge on one side—mostly grease, with a little tomato sauce—and had weakened. He cleared a space all the way around it, then slipped a hand beneath it, and lifted it out.

He put the box on the top of the stepladder, boosted himself onto the edge of the dumpster, swung his legs over, and carried the box down. He put it on the ground under the door light, moth shadows flicking crazily across it, and as the other four crowded around, pulled the flaps apart.

Inside were two small pairs of jeans, carefully folded, a small brassiere, and a white blouse.

“Motherfucker,” Lester said.

“They’re dead. I told you they were dead,” Hanson said.

Sloan’s hands were in his hair, holding on, as though he couldn’t stand his thoughts. Lacey had been smoking a cigarette, and turned away, dropped it in the alley and stomped it out, as though he were angry at the butt.

Lucas carried the soggy box around to Hanson’s car and put it in the trunk, and asked, “When are you gonna get Mr. Jones down there?”

“I’ll call him from the office after I talk to Daniel,” Lester said.

“I want to be there,” Lucas said. “But I gotta get cleaned up. Wait for me.”

“You’re not important enough to wait for,” Hanson said. “So you better hurry.”

Lucas headed for his Jeep, and Lacey called after him, “Who’s going to throw this shit back in the dumpster?”

“I investigate, I don’t clean up,” Lucas yelled back, and then he was in his Jeep and rolling.

AT HIS APARTMENT, he stripped naked, put all the clothes except his boots and the newer canvas shirt in a garbage bag and threw it at the door. He put the shirt in another garbage bag, and left it on the kitchen table; he’d take it to a laundromat and wash it for an hour or so. The boots he carried back to the shower, and washed them with soap and hot water, until they looked clean, then left them on the floor to dry out. He scrubbed himself down, washed his hair, dried, dressed, picked up the garbage bag by the door, threw it in the trash on the way out, and headed downtown.

The box was on Daniel’s desk, sitting on top of a pile of newspaper. Daniel was sitting behind his desk, while Sloan and Lester took the two guest chairs. Hanson wasn’t around. An amused look flitted across Daniel’s face when Lucas walked in, and he said, “They tell me you smelled worse than the box.”

“They were right,” Lucas said. “I ruined about fifty bucks’ worth of clothes, if I manage to save the boots. You’ll be getting the bill.”

“Go ahead and put in for the boots,” Daniel said. “A little bonus.”

“Is Jones on the way?” Lucas asked.

“Talked to him five minutes ago,” Sloan said. “He’s coming.”

“But it’s theirs,” Daniel said. “The girls’.” There was no doubt in his voice.

They all sat there, for a moment, in silence, and then Lucas said, “I’d like to know a little more about that nine-one-one tip.”

The tip, Daniel said, had come from somebody who identified himself as a neighbor who didn’t want to get involved. He said he’d gone into the alley to move his car, and saw the guy with a basketball and a box, and saw him stop and loft the box into the dumpster, and then walk around the corner at Tom’s. He said he knew about the basketball from neighborhood rumor—that the cops were looking for the guy with the basketball.

“So everybody in the world knows Scrape,” Lucas said.

“Not the whole world,” Sloan said. “But the neighborhood around Matthews Park is pretty contained—and when you’re talking about a pedophile, the word gets around fast.”

Lester: “The thing about Scrape is, all he does is walk. He walks up and down every street down there, every day. They all know who he is.”

“I still don’t like it,” Lucas said. “We get an anonymous tip that Scrape threw the clothes in the dumpster, and we’re only chasing him in the first place because of a tip from a guy we can’t find, who might be some kind of an asshole operating under a phony name.” He remembered, then, and looked at his watch: eight o’clock. “Shit.”

“What?”

“I had an appointment at seven tonight. Gotta make a call.”

“What you’re gonna find as you get into investigations,” Lester said, “is that all kinds of weird shit happens.”

“I already learned that,” Lucas said. “Weird shit happens on the street, too—but there’s weird shit and then there’s
weird shit
. When it’s too weird, you gotta think about it some more. I need a phone.”

He went into the outer office, to an empty desk, got Kenny’s number from the operator, and called. He asked for Katz, got him, identified himself. “Has John Fell been in? John Fell?”

“Not tonight. Not so far.”

HE’D JUST HUNG UP when George Jones, followed by a frightened-looking woman who Lucas recognized from the papers as his wife, Gloria, stepped into the office, trailed by Hanson, who’d apparently gone to meet them at the door. Hanson said, “This is Detective Davenport, who recovered the box for us.”

The two nodded vaguely at Lucas, and they all went into Daniel’s office. Daniel, Lester, and Sloan were all on their feet, and Daniel said a few words about how hard it all was, and then opened the top of the box.

Gloria Jones, a slightly too-heavy woman with red-tinted hair, began to tremble and her husband took her arm. Together, they peered into the box, and then Gloria reached into it and picked up the brassiere and said, “The kitty bra,” and fainted.

She would have fallen if Lucas hadn’t caught her, under the arms, and he eased her into a chair, but she was unconscious, and Daniel was shouting about an ambulance, and everybody but Lucas and George Jones went running.

Daniel was back in a few seconds and said, “We’ve got an ambulance on the way; it’ll be here in a minute.”

“I think she fainted,” Lucas said. “She’s coming back.”

“Can’t take a chance,” Daniel snapped. “It could be her heart.”

She came back, but then the medics were there to take care of her, and the cops all moved to the outer office. George Jones said, “The kitty bra—it was Nancy’s first bra. It has a kitty face in the front.”

And it did.

GLORIA JONES WAS WHEELED to the ambulance for the oneminute ride to the emergency room, and George went with her. The cops gathered back in Daniel’s office, and Daniel said, “We’re looking at a double murder, now. Anybody doubt that?”

They all shook their heads.

“There’s gonna be tremendous heat,” Daniel said. “We’ve gotta get Scrape back, right now. We need to know who called nine-one-one, even if we have to tear the neighborhood apart. I don’t give a shit if the guy doesn’t want to get involved, we find him.”

Hanson: “Best to do it right now, everybody home from work but still awake . . .”

Sloan: “Oughta get an entry team this time, gettin’ Scrape.”

Daniel began issuing orders, and the detectives started moving, and Hanson turned back to Daniel’s desk and looked into the box, and Lucas, who hadn’t been told anything, asked, “What am I doing?”

Daniel looked up at him and said, “Uhhh . . . Lucas, man, you did really good. And I’m keeping you around for a few more days. But we’ve got something else for you.”

Lucas didn’t understand. “Something else? What the hell? I’m all over this one,” he said.

“But this one, we’re just chasing the guy down. We . . . don’t need you to do that. So now, you’re gonna get all over the other one,” Daniel said. “And it’s important. The Smith murder. Capslock caught it this morning, but Sandola is on vacation, and we don’t want Capslock wandering around by himself interviewing gangbangers.”

“Smith murder? What’s the Smith murder? What’re you talking about?” Lucas was tired, and now was a little pissed.

Daniel spread his hands, as if explaining the real world to a moron: “Life goes on, even when kids get kidnapped. Billy Smith, a little dipshit gangbanger and crack salesman, got his ass stabbed to death. We found him this morning. He’s over at the ME’s office right now. We need to get a clean white face on it, and you’re the guy.”

“A clean white face?”

Hanson stepped in: “See, Billy had him some friends in the community, and if we don’t step up and take it seriously, they’ll call the mayor and their councilman, and they’ll call the chief, and the chief will call QD here . . .”

“And I hate that,” Daniel said. “I hate to get called. So even though we know we won’t catch the killer unless somebody calls us, we gotta look like we’re serious about it. That means sending white guys in good clothes down there, to talk to folks, and take notes on what they say. Capslock caught it, and he needs a partner.”

“Fuck me,” Lucas said, his hands on his hips.

“Yesterday, you were walking around with a flashlight picking up drunks. Today you’re investigating a murder. Just take it,” Daniel said. And: “Capslock’s getting dinner at the XTC. You need to get over there and introduce yourself.”