Broken Prey

would check on current and previous relationships that the victims had, and see if the men with whom they were involved are similar in some ways. The same appearance, somehow, the same attitude, or some particular status. Did they both like tall, dark men? Then the killer may be tall and dark . . .”
    “You’re assuming . . . a sexual connection with Rice. The sheriff says Rice was absolutely straight,” Lucas said. “A widower with a kid. Nothing we’ve got would suggest that he had any homosexual contacts ever, even as a boy. We’ve talked to people who have known him for his entire life.”
    Elle pulled at her lower lip, and Sloan said, “Yeah, but . . . in that culture down there, out in the countryside, an interest in homosexuality might be pretty well hidden.”
    Elle nodded: “Very much hidden, especially if a man were essentially bisexual—he would always have his relationships with women as a cover. Even if somebody else knew about it, about any homosexual impulses that Rice might have had, that man might not admit it because of the implication that he might be gay . . .”
    Lucas to Elle: “One of the crime-scene guys said he’d seen similar violence and it was usually gay, and the specific sexual mutilation usually came from a former lover, a jilted lover . . .”
    “This is not like that,” she said quickly. “I know precisely what your technician was saying, but as I said, this was not done in an emotional frenzy. This was cold and calculated and, I think, enjoyed. This does not seem to me to have been done in anger.” She paused: “I could be wrong. Nothing is for certain.”
    “Good.” Lucas made a note.
    Carol knocked and stuck her head into the office: “The stuff from St. John’s is here, on the Pope guy. You want paper or electronic?”
    “Paper. Three copies,” Lucas said. “Right away.”
    Carol’s eyes involuntarily ticked over to Elle, raised perhaps a millimeter, and then she said, “Three copies,” and left.
     
    THEY TALKED FOR ANOTHER twenty minutes, then Elle looked at her watch and said, “I’ve got a seminar.”
    “Pick up the copy of the Pope file on your way out,” Lucas said. “I’ll be on my cell phone.”
    “I’ll read it right after the seminar,” she said. “I’ll call this afternoon.”
     
    WHEN SHE WAS GONE , Lucas asked Sloan, “Are you going to Owatonna with me?”
    “Absolutely, but we got some bureaucratic shit to figure out first,” Sloan said. “Pennington absolutely doesn’t want to be the media face on this. And he doesn’t want me involved. He says you guys gotta do it.”
    “Ahhh . . . ,” Lucas said. Pennington was the Minneapolis chief. Lucas didn’t like him. “Nordwall didn’t want to do it, either. Maybe Rose Marie could do it. She can screw something out of Pennington in trade.”
    Lucas got Rose Marie on the phone, outlined the problem.
    “I’m not going to do it,” she said. “I’m trying to pull the string on this special session. Either you or McCord can do it. I’ll talk to McCord this afternoon and figure it out. I’ll talk to the governor, too . . . Be helpful if you could get the guy before he kills anyone else.”
    “We might’ve had a break,” Lucas said. He told her about Pope. “If it’s him, we’ll look pretty good. Otherwise . . . right now, we don’t have anything that would point at anybody in particular.”
    “So he’s going to do somebody else; if he’s not this Pope guy.”
    “If he’s careful, he could do a few,” Lucas said.
    “Goddamnit, we don’t want that. I’ll talk to the governor, I’ll talk to McCord, and we’ll figure something out and get back to you.”
    “I’m on the cell,” Lucas said. He hung up and said to Sloan: “Let’s go.”
     
    OWATONNA WAS AN HOUR south of St. Paul, straight down I-35, back in the sea of corn and beans. A few miles out of Owatonna, they took a phone call from Nordwall. “Where you at?”
    “In my car, on the way to Owatonna.” He told Nordwall about Charlie Pope.
    “Okay, that’s something,” Nordwall said. “I got something else for you. Bill James, the guy I got doing the biography you wanted? He says that Rice was almost perfectly straight.”
    “Almost,” Lucas said.
    “Yeah—almost,” the sheriff said. “There’s a bar in Faribault called the Rockyard. Country bar, bunch of shit kickers, fights in the parking lot, Harleys and trucks, and so on. Live music Fridays and Saturdays.