Stolen Prey (16 page)

Lucas said, “Jesus, it
is
. It’s like a
clue
. Like somebody dropped a matchbook from a bar.”

“Whatever,” Morris said. “Anyway, the crime-scene guys are gonna work this, and I’m gonna run over to Zapp’s. You’re welcome to come, if you want. It’s as much your case as mine.”

Lucas was in Zapp’s every month or so. He looked at his watch. “Not open yet.”

“I called John Sappolini, he’s gonna meet us there. He’s calling his crews in.”

“Let’s go,” Lucas said.

M
ORRIS RODE OVER
with Lucas, and Lucas filled him in on the murders in Wayzata. “I’ll send you the book. But it’s the same guys.”

“I don’t want that shit starting up here,” Morris said.

“I hear you,” Lucas said.

Shaffer called, Lucas told him about Pruess, and Shaffer said he’d be down as soon as he could make it. Lucas gave him Morris’s cell phone number, but didn’t mention that he was riding along.

When he got off, Morris said, “I wish I wasn’t gonna be working with him.”

“Something personal?”

“Just style. He’s one of those ball-bearing guys, who goes ricocheting around banging into people,” Morris said. “He’s got no sense of humor. No style.”

“He’s sort of a cowboy guy,” Lucas said. “He and his wife used to teach line dancing. They came down to the office a few times and gave lessons to guys who wanted them, and their wives. Everybody was wearing cowboy boots.”

“Now, see, that’s something I didn’t know,” Morris said. “I can’t believe that guy can dance. Not that line dancing is really dancing.”

“Of course it is, and it’s very romantic,” Lucas said. “I actually got addicted to it, for a while.”

Morris bit: “Really? I never would’ve thought you were that kind of guy.”

Lucas nodded. “Got so bad my shrink put me in a two-step program.”

M
ORRIS TRIED
not to laugh, but finally let it out, and they laughed for a block or two, until Lucas’s cell phone rang. He looked at the screen: Virgil Flowers.

“What’s up?” Lucas asked.

“Got a minute?”

“Yeah, I’m just riding around with Roger Morris. He’s wearing a hot-pink short-sleeved dress shirt.”

“Tell him he looks fabulous,” Flowers said.

Lucas passed the word, then said, “Roger gives you the sign of the horns, and knowing your second ex-wife, he’s probably right. Anyhow…”

“I found out that there are roughly a million riding stables out here, or people with horses, anyway,” Flowers said. “Using my quick intellect, I called up everybody I knew, and I’m starting to get some serious vibes from the Waseca area. Horse people there have seen them. Hauling horse shit on an old Ford flatbed.”

“Man, that’s terrific,” Lucas said. “What’s next?”

“I’m going over there, talk to the various sheriffs, the county agents, anybody else. I don’t have anything definite, though—I’m basically checking in. Wanted you to know I’m not out fishing, even though it is Saturday, and my day off.”

“Hey, Virgil—find them for me. Honest to God, I’ll introduce you to one of my old girlfriends.”

“Thanks anyway,” Flowers said. “But she’d be too old for me. I’ll call you tonight or tomorrow, soon as I get anything.”

“Too old? What the hell…” Flowers was gone.

“What’s that?” Morris said, when Lucas rang off.

“Best news I’ve had all summer,” Lucas said, as they turned into Zapp’s parking lot.

Z
APP’S PIZZA
was a tightly run ship, with good pizza and bread, a bunch of red-vinyl booths in the back, along with a half dozen tables, and, this early in the morning, an empty salad bar. The owner, John Sappolini, was not happy about the napkin, but had no trouble talking to police. “Half the cops in St. Paul eat here,” he said.

He’d once told Lucas that he called the place Zapp’s because his Wells Fargo small-business counselor suggested he not call it Sapp’s.

Sappolini had two crews working eight-hour shifts, from ten o’clock in the morning until two o’clock in the morning, with the restaurant open from eleven o’clock until one. After the call from Morris, he’d called both crews in. He had the first ones brew up a few gallons of coffee, and Lucas and Morris sat at one of the tables and everybody pulled chairs around to talk about the situation; Rivera and Martínez sat out on the edge.

They’d been talking for fifteen minutes, with late-arriving members of the crew straggling in as they talked. One of the last ones in was a short, wide-shouldered man who listened for one minute and then said, “There was a short Mexican kid in here yesterday afternoon with a gun in his belt. I think.”

Lucas looked at him and asked, “You think?”

“Couldn’t see it because he was wearing an iguana shirt,” the man said.

“Guayabera,” Morris said.

The guy shook his head. “No, iguana. It’s like a golf shirt, but instead of like that polo pony, you know, it had an iguana on it.”

“Yes, they sell them in Mexico, on the coast,” Rivera said.

The pizza guy said, “See?”

“
Sí
,” Rivera said.

“So what else about him?” Lucas asked.

“He was just a kid, and he was looking for a place to pray while he waited for the pizzas, so I sent him down to the cathedral. He went, or at least he said he went, and he said he saw the big windows, and Jesus spoke to him.”

“Spoke to him,” Lucas repeated.

“Yeah, he said Jesus spoke to him, and Jesus told him he was going to die soon.”

Morris looked at Lucas, and they simultaneously shrugged. From the back, Rivera asked, “How many pizzas did he buy?”

“Two. Extra large.”

Rivera said, “Enough for three or four.”

The pizza guy didn’t know whether the kid had arrived on foot or had come by car, but had the impression that he’d been on foot. “I don’t know why, it’s just an impression.”

Morris: “Is a cold-blooded killer going to church? I don’t think so.”

“But you’d be wrong,” Rivera said. “Some of these bangers, they go to church every Sunday and pray for their souls. And because their mothers make them go.”

“Then, if he is one of the guys, they’d be holed up around here somewhere,” Morris said. They all looked out the window.

“I’ll tell you what,” Lucas said, when they looked back. “We’ve probably got DNA on these guys, we probably have at least one
fingerprint and maybe more, they’ve committed at least five torture-murders of the worst kind. If we catch them, they’re going away forever, so they’ve got nothing to lose by shooting as many cops as they see. They’ve probably got an arsenal with them, and they’ve had lots of practice.”

Morris said, “Huh. Better talk to SWAT.”

“Better talk to everybody,” Lucas said. “You don’t want a lot of patrol cops rolling around sticking their noses into everything. If somebody finds them just sort of spontaneously, he’ll probably be killed. I think you put together a good crew, start working the neighborhood, but you gotta be discreet. You don’t want to scare them off, but you don’t want to get anybody killed, either. No impetuosity.”

“No impetuosity,” Morris repeated.

W
HEN THEY’D
extracted everything they could from the Zapp’s crews, they broke up. Lucas headed over to the BCA, and Morris went back to the murder scene—from there he’d head to police headquarters, which was about five minutes away, to arrange for a careful survey of the neighborhoods around Zapp’s.

R
IVERA AND
M
ARTÍNEZ
went back to their car, and Rivera dug his pistol out from under the front seat and said to Martínez, “You drive.”

“To where?”

“Up and down these streets. If he walked, he is not far. We’ll circle the streets, go out for a kilometer—”

She said, “This is crazy. We—”

“We know the car. This neighborhood, most of the cars are on the street,” Rivera said. “I predict that we will find them.”

“Then what?”

“Then we will see,” Rivera said.

“You are too crazy,” Martínez said. She bit her lip, as though she feared she’d gone too far.

All Rivera said was, “Drive.”

T
HE NEIGHBORHOOD
around Zapp’s Pizza was all old. From north to south, it varied from rich, south of Grand Avenue, to increasingly poor, north of Summit Avenue, to poor, next to I-94. Grand Avenue itself was mostly commercial and apartments.

Rivera didn’t think the shooters would be in an apartment. Somebody, he thought, had probably arranged a house. The house wouldn’t be on Summit, because those houses were basically mansions. This would be more discreet, in a neighborhood where people might be a bit more reluctant to ask questions.

The streets stepped back from the expressway were the most likely place, he told Martínez. The faces on the sidewalks were of every shade of black, brown, and white, from African to Scandinavian to Latino and American Indian. The Mexicanos would fit here, he said.

Even so, there were a lot of streets to look at, in the grid around Zapp’s. They started a little after ten o’clock in the morning. Rivera was a little surprised when it took them only three hours to find them; or that they found them at all.

After several false alarms—it seemed that half the people in
St. Paul drove oversized SUVs—and a stop for a quick lunch and to fill up the car’s gas tank, they spotted the Tahoe sitting down a driveway, tight between two aging white houses.

“There it is,” Rivera said suddenly. Martínez looked that way, and saw the truck. “There. Keep going, keep driving … Yes, Texas plates.” He was sweating with excitement. “Go to the corner.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Look in the window,” Rivera said. “See what is what.”

“Crazy,” Martínez said. “David, don’t do this.”

“You sound like an American, like Shaffer,” Rivera said. “Pull over, pull over.”

She pulled over and Rivera jacked a round into the chamber of the single-action pistol, and said, “When you see me look at the window, call Lucas. Do not call before you see me look in.”

“David, please, please don’t do this. Let me call the police. You watch them. I will call—”

“I won’t be made a fool. I will look before we call. I’ll know that I am right.”

“All you will do is look in?”

“The situation could develop,” Rivera said. “Be ready.”

“Ah, no, David…” She grabbed his jacket sleeve. “Don’t go, don’t go—”

“Call Lucas when you see me look in,” Rivera said again, and he hopped out. She watched him down the street, a stout man with a dark face behind his sunglasses, his street-side hand under his jacket. He walked right past the house, only glancing at it, but she shook her head. He did not look like a pedestrian: he looked like a cop giving the place the once-over.

R
IVERA’S HEART
was pounding like a trip hammer. He gave the house what he thought was a casual glance, went on by. The house was small, shabby, probably built after World War II. He’d seen houses like it in eastern California, in Riverside, in parts of San Diego, and down the coast in Baja.

The house would probably have a living room in the front, he thought, with a hall at one side leading back to a kitchen, a utility room, and a side door. A hall on the other side of the living room would lead back to two bedrooms and a single bath. There’d be a stairway leading to an attic, or a converted third bedroom, under the roof.

A large window looked out at the street from the left side of the front door, and a smaller one from the right. The window on the left had drapes, with a two-inch gap between them. The gap was dark, but there could have been somebody standing back, watching him. The window on the right had venetian blinds, fully lowered. He continued down the block, then came back in a hurry, walking across the lawns of the adjacent houses, close to the front of houses, the gun now in his hand.

He came into the house on the side with the venetian blind, and clambered up the concrete stoop. There was a small head-height window in the front door, and the door looked weak. He stood beside the door, unmoving, listening.

He heard laughter, and the sounds of a video game, not far behind the door. They were probably sitting on a couch in the living room, he thought. At least two, but from the jumble of voices, he thought probably three.

And the door looked
really
weak—dry rot in the wood, flaking paint. He risked a peek at the door window, just his left eye, drifting slowly across a corner of the glass. There was no entryway: the door opened directly on the living room, and he could see one man, and the shoulder of another, on the couch. The man he could see had a game remote in his hand and was looking to his right, at what must have been the TV. Then a third man, just his arm and shoulder, came into view, for a second or two. He was also watching the game. Two of the faces were from the mug shots.

He had them.

H
E TURNED
and looked at the car, and saw Martínez looking at him. He put his hand to his ear, gesturing “phone,” and she waved, a flash of her hand.

Rivera got his guts together, stood back, took a deep breath. He’d done this before. He was a large man, and strong, and he could kick like a horse.

With one quick move, he shifted back on his right foot, lifted his left, and kicked the door as hard as he could, two inches from the knob. The door exploded open and he was inside, behind the muzzle of the gun.

Inside was chaos, three men scrambling off the couch, a game console and cables and a bag of Cheetos flying, and Rivera screamed at them in Spanish, “Stop! Stop or I’ll kill you! Stop!”

One of the men didn’t stop: Dos had a gun on the back of the couch, and quick as a snake, he reached over for it and got his hand on it and started to swing back to Rivera, but he did it too
fast and fumbled the pistol and it went up in the air and landed on the rug with a thump.

They all froze, looked first at the gun and then at Rivera, and Rivera said to Dos, “Too bad for you,” and shot him twice in the heart. To the others: “Raise your hands.”

Uno and Tres raised their hands, and Rivera heard footsteps behind him and saw Martínez coming and called, “Did you call…?”

Martínez came up close behind and took a small revolver out of her purse and put it one inch behind Rivera’s skull and pulled the trigger. The slug blew through the back of his head and emerged at the forehead and Rivera went down, dead as Dos.