Broken Prey

the tips.”
    “Some of the guys have noticed I get a little print on my cases.” He was carefully holding the manila envelope out of reach.
    “Well, tough shit. You can either have it or not,” Ignace said. “Let me see the fuckin’ photograph. Give me a couple names . . . I can always pin it on somebody else.”
    “You owe me a story,” Hubbard repeated.
    “Yeah, yeah . . .”
     
    HUBBARD SHOOK THE XEROX out of the envelope and passed it over. Ignace looked at it for a moment: the photograph was harshly lit, in the night, giving it a garish vibe. The woman looked like she’d been crucified in the dirt, her body bright white against the short spring foliage. He said, “Huh. Horseshit photo.”
    “It wasn’t a goddamn portrait studio,” Hubbard rasped.
    “I can tell. Focused right on her pussy. Photo guy probably peddled it out to the Internet.”
    “Rufus . . .”
    “Fuck you, Bob,” Ignace said. He pulled a narrow reporter’s notebook out of his back pocket, looked at the photo for a few more seconds, then made some rapid notes in perfect Gregg shorthand. When he was done, he said, “Give me some names. I need to start at the bottom and confirm some of this shit from outsiders, before I go to Sloan.”
    Hubbard nodded. “Okay: the new victim’s name was Adam Rice, the kid’s name was Josh, and Adam’s mom’s name is Laurina Rice. She’s listed . . .”
    “What about a wife?”
    “I heard she died a while back, but I don’t know the details . . .”
     
    THEY TALKED FOR ANOTHER two minutes, and then Ignace folded the notebook and said, “Bob, I owe you. I truly do.”
    “Well, I’ll tell you what I want. Write this down in your fuckin’ notebook. There’s a new restaurant named Funny Capers in Uptown. I want a story about it. A good story. What a happenin’ place it is. Like that. They got music on Friday and Saturday nights.”
    “Girlfriend? Or investment?” He’d opened the notebook again and was taking it down.
    “A friend of mine,” Hubbard said. His eyes flicked away.
    “If I need some last-minute comments on the place, can I call you at home?”
    Hubbard flinched. “Jesus Christ, don’t do that.”
    Ignace said, “One more thing. We got no art for this murder. Suppose we went with a graphic of a straight razor. I mean, would that be fucked up? Are they saying razor, or could it be a box cutter or something?”
    “Fuck, I don’t know, I guess a razor would be all right,” Hubbard said. He ducked down a bit, to look through a bookshelf, looking for anyone who might know him. “Do what you want—and give me that Xerox.” He took the Xerox back, stuffed it into his jacket pocket. “Wait five minutes before you come out. Read something, or something.”
    “It’s a library, Bob, they might get suspicious.”
    “Okay, go look at blow jobs on the Internet. Just give me five minutes.”
     
    RUFFE’S RADIO WAS RUNNING hard on the way back to the paper: I shall not be moved; that’s what Ignace said, just before he led the attack on the hijackers. Tragically . . . Is that a cashmere sweater? It’s eighty degrees out here . . . Wonder if alpaca comes from alpacas? Four-wheel drift; could you do that in a Jeep? . . .
    He took the elevator up to the newsroom, bustled back to his desk. Most reporters dreaded calling survivors in a murder or tragic accident. Ignace didn’t mind. He called Laurina Rice first, got a sober, cold-voiced woman, and asked, “Laurina?”
    “Laurina is . . . indisposed,” the cold-voiced woman said. Ignace recognized her immediately: the officious neighbor or relative who was “protecting” somebody the media might want to talk to. “May I tell her who called?”
    “I just heard about Adam and Josh, and I really need to talk to her,” Ignace said. Then he pulled out a reporter’s cold-call trick, an implication of intimacy with the target. “Is this Florence?”
    “No, no, uh, just a minute.”
    Most people involved in tragedies want to talk, Ignace had found, if only you could get through to them. He waited ten seconds, and then had Laurina on the line: “Laurina: I’m terribly sorry about Adam and Josh . . .”
    “Oh, my God, oh, my God, they wouldn’t even let me see them . . .”
    “Do they know when it happened?” Ignace asked.
    “They think yesterday . . . uh, who is this?”
    “Ruffe Ignace from the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. We’re alerting people around the state that we have