Broken Prey

delivered the goods from the inside.
    Luck was an entirely different matter. Luck either kissed you on the ass, or it didn’t. Not much you could do about it but get ready in case it happened.
     
    IGNACE SLIPPED INTO THE LIBRARY two minutes behind Hubbard. They met at the library because Hubbard had never seen a cop there, and back in the Female-Problems stacks, you might go decades without seeing one.
    Hubbard was peering into a book called The Vaginal Perspective when Ruffe turned the corner. The cop slipped the book back on the shelf and asked, shocked, “You ever see what’s in these things?”
    Ruffe looked at the ranks of books and shuddered. “No.” To Hubbard: “Whatcha got, Bob? I got that thing on the Mikasa shop and the Mini-Cooper . . .”
    “This ain’t funny,” Hubbard said urgently, pitching his voice to a near-whisper. He was a blond, fleshy man with pink cheeks made rosier by booze. He was holding a manila envelope. “You gotta, gotta, gotta cover for me. Honest to God, I don’t even think I oughta be here.”
    Now Ruffe was interested. Hubbard was sweating.
    “So whattya got?”
    “You owe me big for this one,” Hubbard said.
    “What is it?” Ruffe pressed.
    “You owe me, and you’re gonna pay,” Hubbard said. “I get to name a story.”
    “Whoa, man. That’d depend. What story you want . . . what story you got .”
    “The story I want is just a nice story for a lady I know. The story I got . . .”
    “What?”
    “We got a serial killer,” Hubbard said. “You know Sloan?”
    “Yeah.” They were close enough that Ignace could smell the afternoon martinis on Hubbard’s breath, and maybe something else—peanut-butter cheese crackers? With martinis? “He thinks I’m an asshole.”
    “You are an asshole, Ruffe.”
    “Yeah, yeah . . .” Ignace didn’t mind what the small-towners thought, if it got him to the Times ; he made a keep-rolling motion with his finger.
    “Sloan caught this killing a couple of weeks back,” Hubbard whispered. “It was really fuckin’ ugly, but everybody chilled on it, because we don’t want a lot of shit from the TV stations.”
    Ignace thought for a second, his eyes narrowing: “Angela Larson, from Chicago. Everybody thinks it’s a boyfriend problem.”
    “Well, it wasn’t. It never was. She was tortured, raped, and displayed . . . you know what displayed is?”
    “Yeah.” Ignace was hooked now. He could feel Lady Luck puckering up. “But how do you know it was serial?”
    “Because this morning, this old buddy of Sloan’s from the BCA calls him up, and they haul ass down to Mankato. The word is—and the word is good—that it’s an identical killing, except for one thing. The victim was tortured and raped, just like Larson. Only it was a guy . Then they were both killed the same way: their throats were cut.”
    “Throats?” Ignace whispered. They both turned and looked up and down the stacks. “You mean, like with a razor?”
    “Just like with a razor,” Hubbard said. “To top it off, the killer also killed the second victim’s child. Swatted him like a fly. Killed the kid, then went ahead and raped and killed the father.”
    Ruffe was impressed. “Jesus. You got something from the scene?”
    “Not from that one—but I got the inside shit from the Larson case, what they never told anybody. And I got a Xerox of a crime-scene photograph. You can’t use the picture. In fact, I’m not even gonna give it to you, come to think of it. I’ll let you look at it.”
    Ignace wet his lips. “I promise you I wouldn’t put it in the paper. Especially not if it was a Xerox.”
    “Uh-uh. I can’t take the chance,” Hubbard said, shaking his head. “The thing is, what I’m giving you could have come from lots of people, but the picture had to come from Homicide. They’ll know it was me. You can look at it so you can write up the crime scene. I figured you’d want to do that.”
    “Bob . . .”
    “You swear to God you’ll cover me.”
    “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let me see the goddamn thing. And who do I talk to for on-the-record?”
    “Okay. The sheriff down in Blue Earth County. His name is Nordwall. And Sloan, I guess. I’d stay away from the BCA guy, his name is Lucas Davenport. He’s got better sources at the Star-Tribune than you do. He’d find out in two minutes who you were talking to.”
    “He couldn’t, because I’ve never told anybody. I never will,” Ignace said. “I only use you for